World leaders gathered in Paris this week to pledge to make 2024 the “pivotal year” for improving access to clean cooking.
At an International Energy Agency (IEA) summit attended on Tuesday by heads of state and ministers from 27 countries, a total of $2.2bn was pledged to boost uptake of clean cooking technologies.
The summit focused on improving access to clean cooking in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly four out of five people still rely on open fires to prepare food.
Ensuring global access to clean cooking by 2030 could save 2.5 million people – mostly women and children – from premature deaths associated with breathing fire smoke, the IEA says. It could also save 1.5bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e), around the same as a year of global shipping and aviation emissions.
But while the case for achieving universal clean cooking is clear, questions remain over how finance should be leveraged and what kind of solutions should be pursued.
The conference featured speeches from a number of fossil-fuel executives, who argued that cookstoves using liquified petroleum gas (LPG) offer the quickest and “cleanest” solution for boosting cooking access.
This drew criticism from African commentators, who noted that fossil-fuel representatives actually outnumbered African women, who made up just 17% of the people at the summit.
The role that carbon offsets should play in helping to distribute clean cookstoves in Africa was also much touted by heads of state and industry representatives.
Academic research has found that the “carbon credits” issued by cookstove projects in the past have been “largely worthless”. But advocates told the conference that new guidelines could enable the development of “high integrity” credits for projects in Africa.
Carbon Brief attended the summit at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris and spoke to experts about what the new global pledge could mean for climate, energy, nature and gender goals.
- How could clean cooking aid climate, nature and gender goals?
- What are the solutions on offer for clean cooking in Africa?
- How will improved access to clean cooking be financed?
How could clean cooking aid climate, nature and gender goals?
Around 2.3 billion people – close to a third of the global population – lack access to clean cooking facilities, relying instead on wood, kerosene or coal as their primary cooking fuel.
The number of people without access to clean cooking is declining in Asia and Latin America. But in sub-Saharan Africa, continued population growth means the number of people without clean cooking access is still increasing.
Household air pollution, mostly from the inhalation of cooking smoke, is linked to around 3.7 million premature deaths each year, the IEA says. In Africa, women and children, who spend the most time at home, account for 60% of early deaths related to smoke inhalation and indoor air pollution.
Ensuring global access to clean cooking by 2030 is a key component of goal seven of the Sustainable Development Goals.
According to IEA projections, meeting this target could save 2.5 million people – mostly women and children – from premature deaths associated with breathing fire smoke.
In sub-Saharan Africa, many women and children are burdened with collecting firewood for hours each day in order to prepare a meal. The IEA projects that universal access to clean cooking could save the average household nearly 1.5 hours a day, which would likely, in turn, increase female participation in schooling and employment.
In addition to this, the IEA estimates that universal access to clean cooking – achieved in the way their scenario suggests – could save a total of 1.5bntCO2e from a combination of reduced combustion emissions and avoided deforestation for firewood.
At the summit in Paris on 14 May, heads of state and high-level private-industry figures repeatedly emphasised the clear benefits of improving clean cooking access in Africa – with many admitting they had neglected the issue for too long.
In his opening remarks to the summit, Akinwumi Adesina, a former Nigerian agricultural minister who is now president of the African Development Bank Group, spoke candidly of his experiences growing up in a low-income neighbourhood without access to clean cooking.
“I don’t wear glasses just because I went to university,” he told the summit, explaining that, as a child, he spent years standing over fire smoke, which likely damaged his vision.
He told the story of a female friend that died in a kerosene accident after fetching the fuel for use in cooking. Her family could not afford to buy a gas stove.
“How can we let these things happen?” he asked the conference.
Many speakers emphasised that, compared to other parts of the energy sector, such as heavy industry, improving access to clean cooking is “solvable”, as the technology needed is already available at a relatively low cost.
The IEA estimates that $4bn will need to be leveraged annually until 2030 in order to achieve universal clean cooking access. By comparison, total clean energy technology investment will need to reach $4tn per year by 2030 to meet net-zero, IEA says.
The clean cooking summit itself raised $2.2bn for clean cooking, the IEA said. IEA executive director Dr Fatih Birol promised that his agency would track where each penny was spent and reveal the results in a year.
Despite the new financial pledges and renewed focus, some lamented the lack of inclusion of African women at the conference.
Writing for African Arguments, the Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate noted that the number of fossil-fuel executives outnumbered African women, who made up just 17% of the people in attendance.
One male session chair even cracked a joke about the lack of women speaking at the summit, telling the audience that the IEA should be pleased that clean cooking will no longer be viewed as “just a women’s issue”.
Later on at the summit, Graça Machel, a former Tanzanian education minister and deputy chair of the Elders, a group of global leaders started by former South African president Nelson Mandela, appealed for African women to be directly involved in high-level decision making on clean cooking. She told the conference:
“We need to build the capacity of women themselves so they aren’t just recipients. African women – we want to be investors, entrepreneurs, managers and customers. Any policy has to have the face of women, taking into account the magnitude [of our presence]. In our countries, we are millions. Clean cooking is about African women.”
What are the solutions on offer for clean cooking in Africa?
More than 238 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in informal housing, making the distribution of clean cooking technologies challenging.
Traditional “unclean” cooking involves a pot perched on top of a simple fire burning wood or waste products, or a kerosene dispenser.
According to the IEA, the main options for clean cooking include:
- Improved biomass stoves: An enclosed stove that burns solid fuel, but keeps heat from escaping and improves combustion, thereby reducing polluting smoke.
- E-cooking or electric stoves: Primarily hot plates, induction stovetops, rice cookers or electric pressure cookers that are plugged into an electricity source, which can come from renewable power.
- LPG stoves: A fossil-fuel burner that uses a mixture of propane and butane distributed in large pressurised cylinders.
- Biodigesters: A large vessel where organic matter (animal manure, agriculture residues or food waste) is decomposed into biogas. This biogas is then used in a burner-type stove.
- Ethanol: A simple burner that attaches to a small canister containing alcohol fuel made from crops, such as corn or sugar, that has been fermented and distilled.
- Gas stoves: A burner that uses fossil-fuel gas typically delivered to customers via distribution pipelines.
The IEA infographic below demonstrates how each of these methods work.
At the summit, fossil-fuel executives from companies such as TotalEnergies, Shell, Eni, Indian Oil and Equinor were keen to stress the role that LPG cookstoves should play in providing clean cooking access in Africa.
Patrick Pouyanné, chairman of the board and chief executive officer at TotalEnergies – one of the fossil fuel companies behind the controversial East African oil pipeline project – told the summit that his company will invest more than $400m in the development of LPG for cooking by 2030.
Eirik Wærness, senior vice president and chief economist at Equinor – a key funder of the controversial Rosebank oil field in UK waters – boasted that his company already supplies 10% of India’s LPG. He told the conference:
“We should not let the best – which is renewable energy – stand in the way of the good [LPG]. We will do all that we can to provide LPG – and also LNG [liquified natural gas] – as a viable, clean fuel.”
The IEA’s scenario for achieving universal clean cooking access sees a key role of LPG cookstoves. It notes that, in the last decade, 70% of people who gained “clean” cooking access globally did so through LPG.
In its scenario, LPG remains the “primary solution to deliver clean cooking access”, representing nearly half of new household access in 2030.
Below, an IEA graphic breaks down the numbers of households gaining access to different types of clean cooking in 2022 (left) and how its scenario expects households to gain access from 2023-2030.
At the sidelines of the summit, Carbon Brief spoke to Dr Donnee Alexander, chief science officer for the Clean Cooking Alliance, a UN-backed NGO which helped to coordinate the summit.
Asked about whether a focus on LPG cookstoves over renewable-energy methods could risk locking African nations into further fossil-fuel dependency, she responded:
“I think Africa should be able to transition however they so desire. Because they have no energy. For me to say, ‘you need to transition in a certain way’, when a woman is cooking over an open fire and dying prematurely because she’s experiencing smoke inhalation every day of her life, who am I to say that she should not be transitioning to a much cleaner option compared to the baseline?”
But several African commentators reject the idea that fossil fuels are the key solution to Africa’s clean cooking crisis.
In her commentary on the summit, Nakate says:
“Natural gas is not clean…burning LPG or methane at home emits nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and benzene, all [of] which can potentially trigger respiratory complications, including childhood asthma…Instead of trying to make gas affordable, the summit should seek to unlock investments that establish and scale ambitious and people-centred energy programmes. This is the most reasonable way to deliver decentralised energy to communities on the continent.”
Her thoughts are echoed by Mohamed Adow, founder and director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank in Kenya.
In a statement, he said there is “no evidence” that gas is the solution to providing clean cooking access in Africa, adding:
“What we need is a woman-centred approach that puts their needs first, not those of a greedy private sector looking to make profits. Rather than subsidies for private companies, that money would be better used investing in high efficiency, low-cost electric cookers for Africans.”
While most of the speakers at the summit focused on LPG, there was some recognition that renewable energy could be a way forward for providing clean cooking.
Stanlake Samkange, assistant executive director at the World Food Programme, said that his organisation had traditionally focused on supplying cleaner fuel stoves, but that “2024 is a departure”. He added:
“We are not just focusing on fuel efficient stoves but clean cooking…We are looking at electronic stoves and e-cooking. In Madagascar, we are looking to link that to solar panels.”
How will improved access to clean cooking be financed?
The IEA estimates that $4bn will need to be leveraged annually until 2030 in order to achieve universal clean cooking access.
The clean cooking summit raised $2.2bn from public and private sources. This included new pledges from the EU, France, Denmark, the US, the UK and firms, including fossil-fuel companies.
It follows on from a high-level clean cooking event at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, where the African Development Bank pledged to allocate a separate $2bn for clean cooking over the next decade.
At the Paris summit, Birol pledged that the IEA will closely monitor where the finance is spent and reveal the results in a year.
Throughout the conference, heads of state, ministers and company CEOs made it clear that they saw clean cookstove carbon-offset projects as key for leveraging finance and distributing new technologies in Africa.
Offsetting involves developed nations or companies paying for projects that distribute clean cookstoves, allowing them to then claim they have reduced their own emissions by paying to cut carbon in another country. (For a full breakdown, see Carbon Brief’s carbon offsets explainer.)
Stephanie Mbombo, presidential special envoy for the new climate economy for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said that her president saw carbon offsets as the “key driver” for access to clean cooking, telling the summit:
“[With] carbon credits, we will save the world, but we will also save ourselves.”
The CEOs of clean cookstove carbon-offset companies were invited to speak alongside senior political figures and made bold claims about how they could play a pivotal role.
“With carbon credits, it’s solved, it’s done,” said Peter Scott, the CEO of the cookstove company BURN Manufacturing.
This sentiment was echoed in the declaration issued from the summit.
It said that participants “acknowledge the significant role that carbon credits and climate finance have already played in scaling clean cooking efforts, recognising the potential for further expansion of this support”.
But academic research has found that clean cookstove carbon-offset projects are “largely worthless” in emissions reductions terms.
A study in the journal Nature Sustainability found that nine in 10 of the 96m cookstove credits certified by leading carbon registries do not avoid the emissions they claim.
What is more, investigations by journalists, including at Climate Home News, have uncovered serious faults with clean cookstove projects, such as faulty stoves being distributed without communities being given access to repairs or replacements.
Gilles Dufrasne, policy lead at Carbon Market Watch, a watchdog of carbon offsets, told Carbon Brief that cookstove projects have “perhaps” been the least successful at achieving emissions reductions out of all types of carbon-offset projects. He added:
“This is a case of projects that very likely have significant positive impacts for sustainable development, and likely also positive climate impacts, but where the quantification of these impacts is extremely shaky. Most projects issue many more credits than they should, and that’s a problem if countries use it to meet their nationally determined contributions – as this [clean cooking summit declaration] suggests they could.”
Acknowledging the need for more “high integrity” cookstove credits, the conference saw the Clean Cooking Alliance launch new “principles for responsible carbon finance in clean cooking”.
Alexander told Carbon Brief the goal of the principles was to “address the challenges in the carbon market to ensure that we have both higher integrity but also higher demand”.
She said that the new principles could bring about tangible ways of improving the outcomes of cookstove carbon-offsets projects:
“We’re saying let’s measure reduction in fuel use [from distributing clean cookstoves], utilising standard methodologies. Or let’s have digital monitoring and verification so we know exactly when the stove is used. Things like that start to bring more integrity into the system.”
Dufrasne added to Carbon Brief that, with current projects offering little guarantee that promised emissions reductions will be achieved, there is a risk that the sale of more carbon credits to developed nations will lead to these countries reducing their emissions by less than if they had invested in alternative climate measures:
“Getting countries and companies to pledge finance to a fund, which then finances cookstove projects – with or without credits – is likely to be a better way.”
The post Clean cooking: What new global pledge means for climate, nature and gender goals appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Clean cooking: What new global pledge means for climate, nature and gender goals
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Blazing heat hits Europe
FANNING THE FLAMES: Wildfires “fanned by a heatwave and strong winds” caused havoc across southern Europe, Reuters reported. It added: “Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares (1,700 square miles) in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006.” Extreme heat is “breaking temperature records across Europe”, the Guardian said, with several countries reporting readings of around 40C.
HUMAN TOLL: At least three people have died in the wildfires erupting across Spain, Turkey and Albania, France24 said, adding that the fires have “displaced thousands in Greece and Albania”. Le Monde reported that a child in Italy “died of heatstroke”, while thousands were evacuated from Spain and firefighters “battled three large wildfires” in Portugal.
UK WILDFIRE RISK: The UK saw temperatures as high as 33.4C this week as England “entered its fourth heatwave”, BBC News said. The high heat is causing “nationally significant” water shortfalls, it added, “hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires”. The Daily Mirror noted that these conditions “could last until mid-autumn”. Scientists warn the UK faces possible “firewaves” due to climate change, BBC News also reported.
Around the world
- GRID PRESSURES: Iraq suffered a “near nationwide blackout” as elevated power demand – due to extreme temperatures of around 50C – triggered a transmission line failure, Bloomberg reported.
- ‘DIRE’ DOWN UNDER: The Australian government is keeping a climate risk assessment that contains “dire” implications for the continent “under wraps”, the Australian Financial Review said.
- EXTREME RAINFALL: Mexico City is “seeing one of its heaviest rainy seasons in years”, the Washington Post said. Downpours in the Japanese island of Kyushu “caused flooding and mudslides”, according to Politico. In Kashmir, flash floods killed 56 and left “scores missing”, the Associated Press said.
- SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: China and Brazil agreed to “ensure the success” of COP30 in a recent phone call, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
- PLASTIC ‘DEADLOCK’: Talks on a plastic pollution treaty have failed again at a summit in Geneva, according to the Guardian, with countries “deadlocked” on whether it should include “curbs on production and toxic chemicals”.
15
The number of times by which the most ethnically-diverse areas in England are more likely to experience extreme heat than its “least diverse” areas, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- As many as 13 minerals critical for low-carbon energy may face shortages under 2C pathways | Nature Climate Change
- A “scoping review” examined the impact of climate change on poor sexual and reproductive health and rights in sub-Saharan Africa | PLOS One
- A UK university cut the carbon footprint of its weekly canteen menu by 31% “without students noticing” | Nature Food
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Factchecking Trump’s climate report
A report commissioned by the US government to justify rolling back climate regulations contains “at least 100 false or misleading statements”, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists. The report, compiled in two months by five hand-picked researchers, inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed” and misleadingly states that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”80
Spotlight
Does Xi Jinping care about climate change?
This week, Carbon Brief unpacks new research on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s policy priorities.
On this day in 2005, Xi Jinping, a local official in eastern China, made an unplanned speech when touring a small village – a rare occurrence in China’s highly-choreographed political culture.
In it, he observed that “lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of silver and gold” – that is, the environment cannot be sacrificed for the sake of growth.
(The full text of the speech is not available, although Xi discussed the concept in a brief newspaper column – see below – a few days later.)
In a time where most government officials were laser-focused on delivering economic growth, this message was highly unusual.
Forward-thinking on environment
As a local official in the early 2000s, Xi endorsed the concept of “green GDP”, which integrates the value of natural resources and the environment into GDP calculations.
He also penned a regular newspaper column, 22 of which discussed environmental protection – although “climate change” was never mentioned.
This focus carried over to China’s national agenda when Xi became president.
New research from the Asia Society Policy Institute tracked policies in which Xi is reported by state media to have “personally” taken action.
It found that environmental protection is one of six topics in which he is often said to have directly steered policymaking.
Such policies include guidelines to build a “Beautiful China”, the creation of an environmental protection inspection team and the “three-north shelterbelt” afforestation programme.
“It’s important to know what Xi’s priorities are because the top leader wields outsized influence in the Chinese political system,” Neil Thomas, Asia Society Policy Institute fellow and report co-author, told Carbon Brief.
Local policymakers are “more likely” to invest resources in addressing policies they know have Xi’s attention, to increase their chances for promotion, he added.
What about climate and energy?
However, the research noted, climate and energy policies have not been publicised as bearing Xi’s personal touch.
“I think Xi prioritises environmental protection more than climate change because reducing pollution is an issue of social stability,” Thomas said, noting that “smoggy skies and polluted rivers” were more visible and more likely to trigger civil society pushback than gradual temperature increases.
The paper also said topics might not be linked to Xi personally when they are “too technical” or “politically sensitive”.
For example, Xi’s landmark decision for China to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 is widely reported as having only been made after climate modelling – facilitated by former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua – showed that this goal was achievable.
Prior to this, Xi had never spoken publicly about carbon neutrality.
Prof Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of law not involved in the research, noted that emphasising Xi’s personal attention may signal “top” political priorities, but not necessarily Xi’s “personal interests”.
By not emphasising climate, he said, Xi may be trying to avoid “pushing the system to overprioritise climate to the exclusion of the other priorities”.
There are other ways to know where climate ranks on the policy agenda, Thomas noted:
“Climate watchers should look at what Xi says, what Xi does and what policies Xi authorises in the name of the ‘central committee’. Is Xi talking more about climate? Is Xi establishing institutions and convening meetings that focus on climate? Is climate becoming a more prominent theme in top-level documents?”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP EFFECT: The Columbia Energy Exchange podcast examined how pressure from US tariffs could affect India’s clean energy transition.
NAMIBIAN ‘DESTRUCTION’: The National Observer investigated the failure to address “human rights abuses and environmental destruction” claims against a Canadian oil company in Namibia.
‘RED AI’: The Network for the Digital Economy and the Environment studied the state of current research on “Red AI”, or the “negative environmental implications of AI”.
Coming up
- 17 August: Bolivian general elections
- 18-29 August: Preparatory talks on the entry into force of the “High Seas Treaty”, New York
- 18-22 August: Y20 Summit, Johannesburg
- 21 August: Advancing the “Africa clean air programme” through Africa-Asia collaboration, Yokohama
Pick of the jobs
- Lancaster Environment Centre, senior research associate: JUST Centre | Salary: £39,355-£45,413. Location: Lancaster, UK
- Environmental Justice Foundation, communications and media officer, Francophone Africa | Salary: XOF600,000-XOF800,000. Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Politico, energy & climate editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels, Belgium
- EnviroCatalysts, meteorologist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
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 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 13 August 2025: Fossil-fuelled bird decline; ‘Deadly’ wildfires; Empty nature fund
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
‘Deadly’ wildfires
WINE BRAKE: France experienced its “largest wildfire in decades”, which scorched more than 16,000 hectares in the country’s southern Aude region, the Associated Press said. “Gusting winds” fanned the flames, Reuters reported, but local winemakers and mayors also “blam[ed] the loss of vineyards”, which can act as a “natural, moisture-filled brake against wildfires”, for the fire’s rapid spread. It added that thousands of hectares of vineyards were removed in Aude over the past year. Meanwhile, thousands of people were evacuated from “deadly” wildfires in Spain, the Guardian said, with blazes ongoing in other parts of Europe.
MAJOR FIRES: Canada is experiencing its second-worst wildfire season on record, CBC News reported. More than 7.3m hectares burned in 2025, “more than double the 10-year average for this time of year”, the broadcaster said. The past three fire seasons were “among the 10 worst on record”, CBC News added. Dr Mike Flannigan from Thompson Rivers University told the Guardian: “This is our new reality…The warmer it gets, the more fires we see.” Elsewhere, the UK is experiencing a record year for wildfires, with more than 40,000 hectares of land burned so far in 2025, according to Carbon Brief.
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Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “Cropped” email newsletter. A fortnightly digest of food, land and nature news and views. Sent to your inbox every other Wednesday.
WESTERN US: The US state of Colorado has recorded one of its largest wildfires in history in recent days, the Guardian said. The fire “charred” more than 43,300 hectares of land and led to the temporary evacuation of 179 inmates from a prison, the newspaper said. In California, a fire broke out “during a heatwave” and burned more than 2,000 hectares before it was contained, the Los Angeles Times reported. BBC News noted: “Wildfires have become more frequent in California, with experts citing climate change as a key factor. Hotter, drier conditions have made fire seasons longer and more destructive.”
FIRE FUNDING: “Worsening fires” in the Brazilian Amazon threaten new rainforest funding proposals due to be announced at the COP30 climate summit later this year, experts told Climate Home News. The new initiatives include the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, which the outlet said “aims to generate a flow of international investment to pay countries annually in proportion to their preserved tropical forests”. The outlet added: “If fires in the Amazon continue to worsen in the years to come, eligibility for funding could be jeopardised, Brazil’s environment ministry acknowledged.”
Farming impacts
OUT OF ORBIT: US president Donald Trump moved to “shut down” two space missions which monitor carbon dioxide and plant health, the Associated Press reported. Ending these NASA missions would “potentially shu[t] off an important source of data for scientists, policymakers and farmers”, the outlet said. Dr David Crisp, a retired NASA scientist, said the missions can detect the “glow” of plant growth, which the outlet noted “helps monitor drought and predict food shortages that can lead to civil unrest and famine”.
FARM EXTREMES: Elsewhere, Reuters said that some farmers are considering “abandoning” a “drought-hit” agricultural area in Hungary as “climate change cuts crop yields and reduces groundwater levels”. Scientists warned that rising temperatures and low rainfall threaten the region’s “agricultural viability”, the newswire added. Meanwhile, the Premium Times in Nigeria said that some farmers are “harvest[ing] crops prematurely” due to flooding fears. A community in the south-eastern state of Imo “has endured recurrent floods, which wash away crops and incomes alike” over the past decade, the newspaper noted.
SECURITY RISKS: Food supply chains in the UK face “escalating threats from climate impacts and the migration they are triggering”, according to a report covered by Business Green. The outlet said that £3bn worth of UK food imports originated from the 20 countries “with the highest numbers of climate-driven displacements” in 2024, based on analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. The analysis highlighted that “climate impacts on food imports pose a threat to UK food security”. Elsewhere, an opinion piece in Dialogue Earth explored how the “role of gender equity in food security remains critically unaddressed”.
Spotlight
Fossil-fuelled bird decline
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new study tracing the impact of fossil-fuelled climate change on tropical birds.
Over the past few years, biologists have recorded sharp declines in bird numbers across tropical rainforests – even in areas untouched by humans – with the cause remaining a mystery.
A new study published this week in Nature Ecology and Evolution could help to shed light on this alarming phenomenon.
The research combined ecological and climate attribution techniques for the first time to trace the fingerprint of fossil-fuelled climate change on declining bird populations.
It found that an increase in heat extremes driven by climate change has caused tropical bird populations to decline by 25-38% in the period 1950-2020, when compared to a world without warming.
In their paper, the authors noted that birds in the tropics could be living close to their “thermal limits”.
Study lead author Dr Maximilian Kotz, a climate scientist at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain, explained to Carbon Brief:
“High temperature extremes can induce direct mortality in bird populations due to hyperthermia and dehydration. Even when they don’t [kill birds immediately], there’s evidence that this can then affect body condition which, in turn, affects breeding behaviour and success.”
Conservation implications
The findings have “potential ramifications” for commonly proposed conservation strategies, such as increasing the amount of land in the tropics that is protected for nature, the authors said. In their paper, they continued:
“While we do not disagree that these strategies are necessary for abating tropical habitat loss…our research shows there is now an additional urgent need to investigate strategies that can allow for the persistence of tropical species that are vulnerable to heat extremes.”
In some parts of the world, scientists and conservationists are looking into how to protect wildlife from more intense and frequent climate extremes, Kotz said.
He referenced one project in Australia which is working to protect threatened wildlife following periods of extreme heat, drought and bushfires.
Prof Alex Pigot, a biodiversity scientist at University College London (UCL), who was not involved in the research, said the findings reinforced the need to systematically monitor the impact of extreme weather on wildlife. He told Carbon Brief:
“We urgently need to develop early warning systems to be able to anticipate in advance where and when extreme heatwaves and droughts are likely to impact populations – and also rapidly scale up our monitoring of species and ecosystems so that we can reliably detect these effects.”
There is further coverage of this research on Carbon Brief’s website.
News and views
EMPTY CALI FUND: A major voluntary fund for biodiversity remains empty more than five months after its launch, Carbon Brief revealed. The Cali Fund, agreed at the COP16 biodiversity negotiations last year, was set up for companies who rely on nature’s resources to share some of their earnings with the countries where many of these resources originate. Big pharmaceutical companies did not take up on opportunities to commit to contributing to the fund or be involved in its launch in February 2025, emails released to Carbon Brief showed. Just one US biotechnology firm has pledged to contribute to the fund in the future.
LOSING HOPE: Western Australia’s Ningaloo reef – long considered a “hope spot” among the country’s coral reefs for evading major bleaching events – is facing its “worst-ever coral bleaching”, Australia’s ABC News reported. The ocean around Ningaloo has been “abnormally” warm since December, resulting in “unprecedented” bleaching and mortality, a research scientist told the outlet. According to marine ecologist Dr Damian Thomson, “up to 50% of the examined coral was dead in May”, the Sydney Morning Herald said. Thomson told the newspaper: “You realise your children are probably never going to see Ningaloo the way you saw it.”
‘DEVASTATION BILL’: Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, signed a “contentious” environmental bill into law, but “partially vetoed” some of the widely criticised elements, the Financial Times reported. Critics, who dubbed it the “devastation bill”, said it “risked fuelling deforestation and would harm Brazil’s ecological credentials” just months before hosting the COP30 climate summit. The newspaper said: “The leftist leader struck down or altered 63 of 400 provisions in the legislation, which was designed to speed up and modernise environmental licensing for new business and infrastructure developments.” The vetoes need to be approved by congress, “where Lula lacks a majority”, the newspaper noted.
RAINFOREST DRILLING: The EU has advised the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) against allowing oil drilling in a vast stretch of rainforest and peatland that was jointly designated a “green corridor” earlier this year, Climate Home News reported. In May, the DRC announced that it planned to open the conservation area for drilling, the publication said. A spokesperson for the European Commission told Climate Home News that the bloc “fully acknowledges and respects the DRC’s sovereign right to utilise its diverse resources for economic development”, but that it “highlights the fact that green alternatives have facilitated the protection of certain areas”.
NEW PLAN FOR WETLANDS: During the 15th meeting of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, held in Zimbabwe from 23 to 31 July, countries agreed on the adoption of a new 10-year strategic plan for conserving and sustainably using the world’s wetlands. Down to Earth reported that 13 resolutions were adopted, including “enhancing monitoring and reporting, capacity building and mobilisation of resources”. During the talks, Zimbabwe’s environment minister announced plans to restore 250,000 hectares of degraded wetlands by 2030 and Saudi Arabia entered the Convention on Wetlands. Panamá will host the next COP on wetlands in July 2028.
MEAT MADNESS: DeSmog covered the details of a 2021 public relations document that revealed how the meat industry is trying to “make beef seem climate-friendly”. The industry “may have enlisted environmental groups to persuade people to ‘feel better’ about eating beef”, the outlet said, based on this document. The strategy was created by a communications agency, MHP Group, and addressed to the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. One of the key messages of the plan was to communicate the “growing momentum in the beef industry to protect and nurture the Earth’s natural resources”. MHP Group did not respond to a request for comment, according to DeSmog.
Watch, read, listen
MAKING WAVES: A livestream of deep-sea “crustaceans, sponges and sea cucumbers” has “captivated” people in Argentina, the New York Times outlined.
BAFFLING BIRDS: The Times explored the backstory to the tens of thousands of “exotic-looking” parakeets found in parks across Britain.
PLANT-BASED POWER: In the Conversation, Prof Paul Behrens outlined how switching to a plant-based diet could help the UK meet its climate and health targets.
MARINE DISCRIMINATION: Nature spoke to a US-based graduate student who co-founded Minorities in Shark Science about her experiences of racism and sexism in the research field.
New science
- Applying biochar – a type of charcoal – to soils each year over a long period of time can have “sustained benefits for crop yield and greenhouse gas mitigation”, according to a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study.
- New research, published in PLOS Climate, found that nearly one-third of highly migratory fish species in the US waters of the Atlantic Ocean have “high” or “very high” vulnerability to climate change, but the majority of species have “some level of resilience and adaptability”.
- A study in Communications Earth & Environment found a “notable greening trend” in China’s wetlands over 2000-23, with an increasing amount of carbon being stored in the plants growing there.
In the diary
- 18-29 August: Second meeting of the preparatory commission for the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction | New York
- 24-28 August: World Water Week | Online and Stockholm, Sweden
- 26-29 August: Sixth forum of ministers and environment authorities of Asia Pacific | Nadi, Fiji
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 13 August 2025: Fossil-fuelled bird decline; ‘Deadly’ wildfires; Empty nature fund appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 13 August 2025: Fossil-fuelled bird decline; ‘Deadly’ wildfires; Empty nature fund
CCL submits a formal comment on EPA’s proposed endangerment finding rollback
By Dana Nuccitelli, CCL Research Manager
On July 29, the EPA proposed to rescind its 2009 endangerment finding that forms the basis of all federal climate pollution regulations.
Without the endangerment finding, the EPA may not be allowed or able to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from sources like power plants or vehicle tailpipes, as they have done for years. News coverage has framed this as a “radical transformation” and a “bid to scrap almost all pollution regulations,” so it has appropriately alarmed many folks in the climate and environment space.
At CCL, we focus our efforts on working with Congress to implement durable climate policies, and so we don’t normally take actions on issues like this that relate to federal agencies or the courts. Other organizations focus their efforts on those branches of the government and are better equipped to spearhead this type of moment, and we appreciate those allies.
But in this case, we did see an opportunity for CCL’s voice — and our focus on Congress — to play a role here. We decided to submit a formal comment on this EPA action for two reasons.
First, this decision could have an immense impact by eliminating every federal regulation of climate pollutants in a worst case scenario. Second, this move relates to our work because the EPA is misinterpreting the text and intent of laws passed by Congress. Our representatives have done their jobs by passing legislation over the past many decades that supports and further codifies the EPA’s mandate to regulate climate pollution. That includes the Clean Air Act, and more recently, the Inflation Reduction Act. We at CCL wanted to support our members of Congress by making these points in a formal comment.
There has been a tremendous public response to this action. In just over one week, the EPA already received over 44,000 public comments on its decision, and the public comment period will remain open for another five weeks, until September 15.
To understand more about the details and potential outcomes of the EPA’s actions, read my article on the subject at Yale Climate Connections, our discussion on CCL Community, and CCL’s formal comment, which represents our entire organization. As our comment concludes,
“In its justifications for rescinding the 2009 endangerment finding, the Reconsideration has misinterpreted the text of the Clean Air Act, Congress’ decadeslong support for the EPA’s mandate to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles and other major sources, and the vast body of peer-reviewed climate science research that documents the increasingly dangerous threats that those emissions pose to Americans’ health and welfare. Because the bases of these justifications are fundamentally flawed, CCL urges the EPA to withdraw its ill-conceived Reconsideration of the 2009 endangerment finding. The EPA has both the authority and the responsibility to act. Americans cannot afford a retreat from science, law, and common sense in the face of a rapidly accelerating climate crisis.”
After the EPA responds to the public comment record and finalizes its decision, this issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court several years from now.
In the meantime, CCL will continue to focus our efforts on areas where we can make the biggest difference in preserving a livable climate. Right now, that involves contacting our members of Congress to urge them to fully fund key climate and energy programs and protect critical work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Department of Energy. We’ve set an ambitious goal of sending 10,000 messages to our members of Congress, so let’s all do what CCL does best and make our voices heard on this critical issue.
This action by the EPA also reminds us that federal regulations are fragile. They tend to change with each new administration coming into the White House. Legislation passed by Congress – especially when done on a bipartisan basis – is much more durable. That’s why CCL’s work, as one of very few organizations engaging in nonpartisan advocacy for long-lasting climate legislation, is so critical.
That’s especially true right now when we’re seeing the Trump administration slam shut every executive branch door to addressing climate change. We need Congress to step up now more than ever to implement durable solutions like funding key climate and energy programs, negotiating a new bipartisan comprehensive permitting reform bill, implementing healthy forest solutions like the Fix Our Forests Act, and advancing conversations about policies to put a price on carbon pollution. Those are the kinds of effective, durable, bipartisan climate solutions that CCL is uniquely poised to help become law and make a real difference in preserving a livable climate.
For other examples of how CCL is using our grassroots power to help ensure that Congress stays effective on climate in this political landscape, see our full “Holding the Line on Climate” blog series.
The post Holding the line on climate: EPA appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.
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