Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
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
Latin America news roundup
TREE FELLING FALLS: Political shifts in Brazil and Colombia have “had a significant impact on tree felling”, with large reductions in deforestation occurring in both countries over 2023, according to analysis from the University of Maryland and the World Resources Institute that was covered by BBC News. Tree loss in the Brazilian Amazon decreased by 39%, although in the Cerrado – an important savannah in Brazil – it increased by 6%. In Colombia, primary forest loss decreased by nearly 50%, compared to last year. But, the outlet added, “increased tree felling and fires in Bolivia, Laos and Nicaragua wiped out many of these gains”.
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE: According to satellite data released last week, Venezuela “is battling a record number of wildfires”, fuelled in part by intense drought in the region, Reuters reported. More than 30,000 “fire points” were recorded in the country during the first three months of the year. The newswire wrote: “Man-made fires that are often set to clear land for agriculture are spreading out of control thanks to high temperatures and low rainfall in northern South America, as well as a lack of prevention planning, researchers say.” A University of Oxford fire researcher said that the fires “could be a worrying sign for what’s ahead” when Brazil enters its dry season.
COMMISSION CHANGE: The scientific community must “speak out strongly” against proposed changes to Mexico’s National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), two academics wrote in an editorial in the journal Science. They explained that the government intends to “reduce CONABIO from a multi-ministry federal government agency to a branch within the environment ministry” and argued that this change would “strip CONABIO of its independent voice, credibility and influence on national and international policy”. The government is expected to make a final decision by the end of this month.
DENGUE ‘SURGE’: The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned of a “surge in dengue cases in the Americas”, with more than 3.5m cases recorded to date – “three times more cases than those reported for the same period in 2023”, which was itself a record year, PAHO director Jarbas Barbosa said. According to PAHO: “Several environmental and social factors contribute to the spread of dengue, including rising temperatures, extreme weather events and the El Niño phenomenon.” Urbanisation and population growth also play a role, the organisation added.
Africa drought ‘disaster’
NATIONAL EMERGENCIES: More than 24 million people in southern Africa face hunger, malnutrition and water scarcity due to the combined impact of drought and floods, according to a warning from the charity Oxfam, CNN reported. It comes after Zimbabwe joined Zambia and Malawi in declaring a state of disaster over the drought, according to Sky News. Zimbabwe president Emmerson Mnangagwa made the emergency declaration in a speech on 3 April, where he called for $2bn (£1.6bn) in humanitarian aid, the broadcaster said. The Associated Press (AP) spoke to a mother affected by the drought in Zimbabwe.
CLIMATE ROLE: The “erratic” weather in southern Africa, which has lurched between drought and floods in recent months, is likely “spurred” by human-caused climate change, which is making extreme events more unpredictable, the AP said. It added that conditions have been worsened by El Niño, the naturally occurring climate phenomenon that periodically affects much of the globe. In southern Africa, El Niño “means below-average rainfall” and “sometimes drought”, the newswire reported.
EXTREME CONTINENT: Many other parts of the continent continued to face severe – and, in many cases, record-breaking – extreme weather. Much of northern Africa continued to face extreme heat, with the Moroccan city of Oujda recording a “minimum temperature” for April that was 7C higher than the previous record, according to a Twitter account tracking extreme temperatures. That temperature was close to the all-time record, logged in the month of July. (“Minimum temperature” refers to the coolest temperature in a 24-hour period, with high minimum temperatures indicating dangerously hot nights.) West Africa also continued to face record heat. Carbon Brief reported on how Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, was coping with the extreme temperatures.
Spotlight
The ‘grave threat’ of ghost roads
In this spotlight, Carbon Brief reports on a new study detailing the impact of “ghost roads” on deforestation rates in the Asia Pacific region.
“Ghost roads” – illegal or informal roads that do not appear on any map – are fast expanding in biodiversity-rich tropical nations.
Carved out by farmers, miners, loggers, land grabbers and drug traffickers, these illicit roads give more direct access to pristine tropical forests – and help extractors carry out their activities while evading detection by authorities or NGOs.
The absence of ghost roads from official records or international datasets makes understanding the scale of their impact on tropical forests extremely difficult.
A new study published in Nature this week aimed to reverse this.
“I think we all knew that ghost roads were a serious problem, but they hadn’t been studied in a concerted way,” study author Prof Bill Laurance, a conservation biologist at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, told Carbon Brief.
Volunteer army
The research team focused on three tropical islands in the Asia Pacific: Borneo, Sumatra and New Guinea.
To try to understand the extent of ghost roads on the islands, the researchers deployed an army of more than 200 trained volunteers.
These volunteers walked over 1.42m plots, each one square kilometre in area, noting down the existence of roads that were missing from leading global datasets.
Study lead author Jayden Engert, a conservation ecologist and PhD student at James Cook University, told Carbon Brief that a broad range of people volunteered to help out with the mapping effort:
“We found volunteers through many different avenues, chiefly by advertising within our university and at other universities. We also ran a volunteer Map-athon with the Facebook group ‘Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends’, which brought in a decent amount of volunteers and also helped to raise awareness of the issue.”
Ghosts detected
The mapping effort revealed 1.37m km of ghost roads – 3-6.6 times more roads than were present in leading road datasets.
“I was blown away by how many unmapped roads there were,” Engert told Carbon Brief.
To understand how the ghost roads could be affecting deforestation rates, the scientists developed a map of their study area and quantified the percentage of forest loss in each plot.
They then used modelling to determine how the forest loss correlated with 38 biological and socioeconomic factors related to tree cover, including population density, distance to the nearest city and protected-land status – as well as ghost-road density and distance from ghost roads.
The research found that ghost-road density had by far the strongest link with forest loss out of all of the 38 factors studied.
Furthermore, ghost-road building “almost always preceded local forest loss”, the researchers wrote in their study.
They also found that the relationship between road density and forest was nonlinear, “with deforestation peaking soon after roads penetrate a landscape and then declining as roads multiply and remaining accessible forests largely disappear”.
They concluded by saying:
“Collectively, our findings suggest that burgeoning, poorly studied ghost roads are among the gravest of all direct threats to tropical forests.”
Laurance told Carbon Brief that their findings are likely to apply to other parts of the tropics:
“There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that other developing tropical nations are facing similar challenges with ghost roads. We also have been working in the Amazon and central Africa for the past several decades, and there we see many similar and equally daunting realities on the ground.”
News and views
FARM FLU: The US Department of Agriculture has confirmed cases of the “highly pathogenic” avian influenza in dairy cows in Idaho, bringing the number of confirmed outbreaks to 12 herds across five states, with other tests ongoing in presumptive positive cases. The country’s largest fresh egg producer also reported an outbreak, leading to “rising concern” despite assurances that the “risk to the public remains low”, the Associated Press reported. The detection of the virus in cattle raises “critical questions about whether the country is equipped to handle an influenza outbreak after the coronavirus pandemic…exposed the weaknesses in the nation’s public health infrastructure and decimated the public’s trust in key federal agencies”, the Washington Post reported.
INDIGENOUS INDONESIANS: Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto must prioritise ratifying the country’s Indigenous Peoples bill, two Indigenous-rights activists argued in China Dialogue. The bill was first proposed in 2009, but president Joko Widodo failed to ratify it despite “repeated promises to do so”, the writers noted, adding: “Prabowo’s new government appears set to continue expanding Indonesia’s domestic resource-processing capabilities…signal[ling] the continued, unjust plunder of Indigenous territory.” Indonesia is home to around 22 million Indigenous people and more than 2,500 Indigenous communities. They face “deforestation, agricultural crises, marginalisation and discrimination and the usurpation of customary rights”, as well as voter disenfranchisement, the activists said.
NEW BIODIVERSITY CHIEF: BusinessGreen reported that German diplomat and environmental-policy expert Astrid Schomaker has been appointed the next executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN body that oversees negotiations on biodiversity loss. According to the publication, Schomaker has spent the last seven years overseeing environmental diplomacy and global sustainable development at the European Commission. She replaces the acting executive secretary, British CBD veteran Dr David Cooper. Carbon Brief published an in-depth interview with the last permanent executive secretary, Tanzanian lawyer and diplomat Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, in 2022.
WHALE OF A TIME: Māori king Tuheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII and other Indigenous leaders in the Pacific have “urged the legal recognition of whales as persons with inherent rights”, according to the Pacific Islands News Association. The leaders are endorsing the He Whakaputanga Moana, or the Declaration for the Ocean, which “outlines a comprehensive plan” for protecting whales from “unsustainable practices, pollution and climate change”, the outlet explained. It will do so through establishing protected areas and integrating Indigenous knowledge with other science. Travel Tou Ariki, a high chief from the Cook Islands, said: “Whales play a vital role in the health of our entire ocean ecosystem…We must act with urgency to protect these magnificent creatures before it’s too late.”
BIG MEAT COP: Lobbyists from the world’s largest meat companies have celebrated a “positive outcome” from the last global climate summit, COP28, according to a DeSmog investigation. Speaking on a virtual panel organised by the trade outlet FeedStuffs, three representatives for US livestock firms said they were left “excited” and “enthusiastic” for their industry’s prospects after the summit, which saw countries commit to a series of voluntary pledges for tackling agricultural emissions without addressing meat consumption. Constance Cullman, the president of the US lobby group the Animal Feed Industry Association (AFIA) said COP28 left her organisation with “a far more positive outcome than we had anticipated”, according to DeSmog.
STANDING TOGETHER: Advocacy groups in Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Kenya, Liberia and Mexico have launched a new initiative to protect environmental defenders, Liberia’s Daily Observer reported. The initiative will provide “partnerships, financial support and training” for civil-society organisations to protect them against the risks that environmental defenders face, such as threats, violence and smear campaigns, the newspaper said. Three environmental defenders were recently killed during protests in Kinjor, Liberia.
Watch, read, listen
WASTED WETLANDS: An investigation by Ireland’s Noteworthy found that the planting of non-native trees on peatlands could put some of the country’s “cleanest” rivers and streams at risk.
SALINE INHABITANTS: Hakai Magazine wrote about how Utah’s shrinking Great Salt Lake is imperilling the strange creatures found in its waters.
TREE SMUGGLING: A four-part investigation by the Africa Report, in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network, examined timber trafficking from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH: A feature in High Country News explored how drones can be used in service of conservation of predators in the Rocky Mountains.
New science
Threat of mining to African great apes
Science Advances
Up to one-third of Africa’s great apes face risks from mining projects, new research found. The study looked at the overlap between industrial mining projects and great ape distribution in 15 African countries, excluding the Democratic Republic of the Congo due to a lack of available data. The research found that industrial mining projects overlap with the habitat of nearly 180,000 apes. It also found that the overlap was largest in west African nations, including Senegal and Sierra Leone. In the paper, the authors noted that the “rapid growth of clean energy technologies is driving a rising demand for critical minerals”, which are increasingly being mined in Africa.
The asymmetric impacts of international agricultural trade on water use scarcity, inequality and inequity
Nature Water
A new study found that the water “embedded” in agricultural trading “disproportionately benefits the rich and widens both the water scarcity and inequity gap between the poor and the rich”. Researchers used a global model of crop water requirements to simulate the amount of water used for irrigation for 26 different crops, then analysed how international trade affects water scarcity and inequity in eight countries. They found that the poorest people in developing countries “suffer[ed] from both increased water scarcity and inequity”, but poor populations in developed countries were more likely to benefit. They also identified the trade of staple crops as “the major driving factor” affecting these in most countries, due to the large volumes of staple crops traded.
Significant shifts in latitudinal optima of North American birds
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The optimal location for North American birds has shifted northward by an average rate of 1.5km each year in response to climate change, a new study found, representing a total distance moved of 82.5km over the past 55 years. The research uses modelling to estimate the “latitudinal optima” of 209 American bird species, drawing on bird population abundance data over the past half-century. It found that one-third of the species studied showed a “significant shift of their optimum” over the study period, with birds in western North America experiencing the biggest shifts. The results “directly implicate climate-induced increases in temperature as the primary driver” of bird abundance shifts, the researchers said.
In the diary
- 10-12 April: 2024 Ocean Decade conference | Barcelona
- 16-19 April: Scoping meeting for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on cities | Riga
- 19 April: Start of India’s general election
- 23-29 April: Fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment | Ottawa
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 10 April 2024: ‘Ghost roads’ deforestation; Record wildfires; Southern Africa drought appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 10 April 2024: ‘Ghost roads’ deforestation; Record wildfires; Southern Africa drought
Solar power generation in the UK reached a new record over the summer of 2026, as temperatures across the nation soared, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Collectively over June, July and August, solar farms and rooftops generated 8.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in the UK*, as shown in the chart below.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Chris Hewett, chief executive of trade association Solar Energy UK welcomed the new record, adding that it was driven by “clear skies and continued growth in deployment”.
This surge in generation took place amid the hottest summer on record in the UK, with five heatwaves between May and August.
Summer 2026 was the sixth sunniest on record, with more than 620 hours of sunshine, according to the Met Office. England and Wales – which experienced the most extreme heat – saw their second-sunniest summers on record.
June 2026 was the hottest June in England since records began in 1884, according to Met Office data, while Wales and the UK as a whole experienced their second-warmest June.
It was the driest July for England and Wales since records began in 1836, with some parts of London seeing no rain at all in the month, while Wisley in Surrey had no rain for 62 days.
In England, temperatures peaked at 38.1C at Kew Gardens in London on 13 August.
According to the Met Office, this summer’s record mean temperature was made 130 times more likely by climate change.
Amid these hot and sunny months, solar power generation increased 23% from the same period in 2025. This is double the level of solar generation over the summer of 2021, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
While solar panels can be affected by periods of extreme heat, the longer hours of daylight and higher levels of irradiation over the summer more than offset any efficiency losses.
June, July and August all saw solar set new monthly records for solar generation – July saw the highest solar generation in a calendar month ever, with 3.3TWh meeting 15% of overall electricity demand for the month.
As of the end of August, the total UK solar generation in 2026 stood at 17TWh – 13% higher than the same point in 2025.
The number of solar farms and rooftop installations has grown substantially in recent years, helping to boost generation. Domestic rooftop solar accounts for around 29% of total capacity.
In 2025, the UK’s solar capacity reached 21 gigawatts (GW) by the third quarter of the year, according to UK government figures. This is a jump of 3GW, or 18%, year-on-year, as Carbon Brief reported in January.
(Capacity is the maximum output possible from an electricity generation, whereas generation is what was produced over a certain time period, such as a day, month or year.)
According to the University of Sheffield, the installed solar capacity is now nearly 24GW.
This includes nearly 172,000 solar installations that have been fitted across the UK since the start of 2026, according to recent government figures. In July alone, more than 19,800 rooftop solar panels were installed – the equivalent of one installation every two minutes.
In total, nearly 1.7m households in the UK now have solar panels installed.
Over 26 heatwave days this summer – periods of at least three days when temperatures exceed the Met Office’s county-level heatwave temperature threshold – UK households with rooftop solar panels avoided an estimated £86.7m in electricity costs, according to analysis by Utility Bidder.
Talking about the surge in solar generation this summer, Hewett says:
“[It] not only kept bills down for people with solar and batteries in their homes, but helped keep overall power prices much lower than they would have been if Britain had been relying on more gas generation during the day”.
Despite the record generation, no new half-hourly solar power output record was set in the summer of 2026. This still stands at 15.2 megawatts (MW) on 23 April 2026.
* This article refers to the UK throughout, but strictly relates to the island of Great Britain, made up of England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is part of the separate, all-Ireland electricity system.
related
Factcheck: 10 flaws in the Conservative report on ‘cheap power’
Q&A: What is ‘long-duration energy storage’ – and why does the UK need it?
Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ for renewables mean for climate change?
Analysis: Wind and solar power overtake fossil fuels in Germany for first time ever
The post Analysis: UK solar power hits record high over summer 2026 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Farmers around Europe are dealing with the aftermath of a summer of extreme heat, drought and wildfires that were exacerbated by climate change.
Human-caused climate change is increasing the severity and likelihood of many extreme weather events around the world, which is increasing volatility for food producers.
This summer resulted in, for example, shrunken potatoes in the Netherlands, reduced carrot harvests in France, dried-up rice fields in Italy and scorched olive groves in parts of the Mediterranean region.
Global food prices are currently at their highest level since early 2023 due to “heatwaves and energy price dynamics”, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Other factors such as blocked fertiliser supplies in the Strait of Hormuz and high fuel costs have also played a role in this year’s agricultural outputs.
In the six charts below, Carbon Brief provides a snapshot of the impact this summer’s extremes are considered to have had on crop production and yields across Europe.
1. Most EU countries expect to see declines in cereal production this year
2. Most countries are recording reduced crop yields
3. Around €2bn worth of cereal losses after June heatwave
4. UK yields of wheat, barley and oats are all due to drop in 2026
5. Maize production in France is due to hit a four-decade low
1. Most EU countries expect to see declines in cereal production this year
France, in particular, will see heavy losses in the amount of cereals – such as wheat, barley and oats – it produces this year, according to European Commission data.
French cereal production is expected to drop by almost 8 megatonnes (Mt) in 2026, compared to 2025.
The chart above shows that most European countries, aside from Bulgaria, will also see production losses this year.
Germany is due to see the second-largest losses in production, dropping by almost 4Mt compared to 2025.
Prof Til Feike, a cropping systems expert at the Julius Kühn-Institut, says many areas in Germany and Austria, as with other parts of Europe, have been “hit hard by a long-lasting dry period in combination with record-high heatwaves”.
This has resulted in dry grassland for animals and lower yields of maize, which is a “key fodder crop” for livestock. He tells Carbon Brief:
“In the long run, farming must adapt better to more extreme weather conditions, not only heat and drought, but also prolonged wet periods. So, there is no one-fits-all solution for climate change adaptation.”
2. Most countries are recording reduced crop yields
Heat and a lack of water have “substantially worsened” crop expectations this summer in western and most of central Europe, according to a recent bulletin from the EU Joint Research Centre.
Yields are expected to be “significantly reduced”, with local crop failures “likely” in areas such as France, southern Germany, northern and central Italy, and Hungary, it added.
The chart below shows that yields of cereal grains – which, here, refers to the tonnes of a grain grown per hectare of land – are expected to fall in most EU countries in 2026.
Slovakia, Austria and Hungary are expected to see the largest declines in cereal yields, reducing by more than one tonne per hectare in 2026 compared to 2025.
The recent EU bulletin noted that irrigated crops performed well in Portugal this summer – the country with the largest yield increases. Other crops relying on rainfall showed growing signs of heat stress, it added.
3. Around €2bn worth of cereal losses after June heatwave
The record heatwave that hit many parts of Europe in June contributed to an estimated €2-2.3bn in cumulative grain production losses, as shown in the chart below.
The intense June heat in western Europe would have been “virtually impossible” just 50 years ago, according to a rapid climate attribution study. It was the region’s hottest June on record.
The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank analysed June and July 2026 grain forecasts from Coceral, a European grain traders association.
ECIU estimated lost supply by multiplying the change in tonnes of grains between these two months by prices for harvest delivery in 28 European countries.
Major grain producers France, Germany, Hungary and Spain accounted for 86% of the lost revenue, according to the ECIU.
Extreme heat is also expected to have a wider economic impact across the continent. Analysis from Triodos Bank found that this summer’s extreme weather could reduce the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) by around 1% this year, or around €180bn.
4. UK yields of wheat, barley and oats are all due to drop in 2026
If current trends continue, the average yields for cereals and oilseeds will result in the UK’s worst harvest since detailed records began in 1984, according to ECIU.
Barley yields could fall by 15%, oats by 14% and wheat yields by 6% year-on-year, according to 2026 harvest surveys from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, a non-departmental public body that provides agricultural data to the UK government.
ECIU said that, even if the situation improves, this year is still expected to be one of the five worst harvests on record. This means that four of the five worst harvests in the UK have occurred in the past decade.
Consumers will likely see higher prices and/or smaller vegetables in supermarkets as a result, Tim O’Malley, chairman of UK company Nationwide Produce, told BBC News in August.
Other crops, such as berries, have grown successfully in the extreme heat. But the Guardian noted fears this could dip later this year “as plants become exhausted from heavy cropping during the heatwave”.
5. Maize production in France is due to hit a four-decade low
France has been acutely affected by this summer’s extreme weather, with more than 7,300 excess deaths during heatwaves and a record number of weather stations recording temperatures of above 40C.
The country is the EU’s largest agricultural producer, but heat, drought and wildfires have affected many crops.
The chart below shows that maize production is set to drop by more than one-third (35%) year-on-year.
This could result in France’s lowest maize production since 1980, according to data from Agreste, the country’s agriculture ministry’s statistics service.
Due to the heat, “record-early” grape harvests have also been recorded in various parts of the nation since mid-July, reported Le Monde. In some cases, this means “smaller, less juicy grapes, which will yield less wine”, explained the newspaper.
6. Declines in EU grains since 2025
Overall in the EU, data and projections indicate declines in the output of cereal grains this year.
Cereal production is set to fall by 9% compared to 2025, according to the European Commission.
Just one year in the past decade – 2024 – recorded lower production levels.
Maize production is set to be particularly affected, with projections indicating a 13% drop, to 52Mt – the lowest level in the EU since 2007.
The post How this summer’s heat and drought impacted crops in Europe – in six charts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
How this summer’s heat and drought impacted crops in Europe – in six charts
The vast majority of Australians and all mainstream nature protection groups—including Greenpeace—agree that Australia should end native forest logging, and that governments should create vast new national parks to protect and manage some of our most magnificent remaining forests. But there is significant disagreement about how this transition should come about and now a decision is coming up before the Australian Parliament.
On 15 September the Australian Senate is due to vote on a motion about a new carbon credit method for forest protection—the “Improved Native Forest Management” (INFM) Method. Lifelong forest protection champions and people of good will and intentions find themselves on opposing sides of this debate. That’s okay–people of good faith can have legitimate differences of view, and this should be honoured in our democracy.
The NSW government has promised to create the Great Koala National Park on the Mid North Coast of the state. The government has also said that the final creation of the park is dependent on the successful registration of a carbon project under the Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) Method. The creation of the park will effectively mean an end to native forest logging in the region.
Native forest logging is not something on which Greenpeace has actively campaigned on in Australia for some decades, but we are making our position clear on this issue now, because it is a matter of significant public note that falls clearly within our environmental mission remit.
After careful consideration, Greenpeace believes this method should not be voted down by the Senate, and we call on Senators of all parties to vote against the disallowance motion.
To be abundantly clear, Greenpeace holds longstanding opposition to the carbon credit system, but in these circumstances we cannot in good conscience conflate that position with de facto opposition to the creation of massive new national parks. Although it is uncomfortable to do so, our position here is to recognise that suboptimal architecture can still be turned to good ends. We genuinely rejoice in the imminent possibility of new national parks, including the Great Koala National Park in NSW which so many community members and scientists have tenaciously argued for, over very many years, and which are so desperately needed for the forests and the wildlife which inhabits them.
In reaching our view, we also take strong notice of the opinion of the INFM among leading forest scientists, including leading forest ecologist Professor David Lindenmayer who supports the INFM as do a range of other experts. We have also taken special note of the position of the peak body for nature in New South Wales, the NSW Nature Conservation Council, and of local forest activist conservation groups, who support the INFM not being voted down in the Senate.
The politically fraught nature of forest protection
The fight to save Australia’s magnificent native forests from logging has been a decades-long battle. It has reshaped both the ecological and political landscape of the nation as vast forests have been levelled or–thankfully–sometimes saved, and political parties and leaders have risen and fallen on the back of moves to ruin or protect them.
It is no surprise then that the latest chapter in Australian forest protection has become politically fraught.
In 2024 Western Australia and Victoria officially ended native forest logging on the back of both overwhelming public pressure to do so combined with the clearly unviable financial state of the industry. This forest protection has not been bullet proof—some areas still being targeted under the guise of fire management and “salvage logging”–and other drivers of deforestation including for bauxite mining–remain a significant problem. Nonetheless, these announcements were still a very significant leap forward for forest conservation and to the credit of the advocates, communities, and scientists who fought for these outcomes–and the governments who made the decisions.
But native forests continue to fall to logging in Tasmania, New South Wales and to an extent in Queensland. So the political battle has now concentrated mostly on these states, with a renewed push by communities and environment groups to finally end native forest logging once and for all, including via the creation of large new national parks for the benefit of the whole community and for nature to flourish.
Protection with or without carbon markets?
In New South Wales, thanks to the extraordinary effort and vision of forest advocates and ecologists, proposals have been drawn up for two large national parks to protect forests currently targeted for logging and link them up with already protected areas—the Great Koala National Park in the north and the Great Southern Forest National Park in the south.
The creation of national parks requires resources. In the step up phase, the provision of public funding enables workers and communities to be supported to exit the logging industry. Significant funding is then required on a permanent basis to manage the National Parks that are created, including crucially to carefully manage fire to support forest health and regeneration, particularly as global warming continues to raise the risk of repeated catastrophic bushfires.
Along with many others, Greenpeace has a long held and strong view that nature should be protected for its own sake (rather than having to justify a monetary benefit) and that this funding should be provided by governments as a public good. Many forests and extraordinary places across Australia have been protected on this very basis for decades. Public funds for the shared good of nature protection for all Australians. Yet it is also the case that far too little public money is spent on taking care of nature.
Australians are not only justifiably proud of and love our natural heritage–our iconic wildlife and fantastic wild places–we also depend on the web of life for our own flourishing. And yet significantly less than 1% of all public money in Australia is spent on taking care of nature across our magnificent continent. It is inadequate to do what is needed in the face of the extinction crisis and the severe climate damage caused by global warming.
So, it is on the question of sources of revenue where fierce disagreement has emerged amongst forest champions. As noted above, the position taken by the New South Wales Government is that the creation of the Great Koala National Park hinges on raising the necessary funds by selling carbon credits to companies as an offset to the greenhouse gas emissions they are producing (recognising the value of carbon stored in forests). For this reason, whether the Great Southern National Park proposal progresses or not is also likely to depend on the ability to create carbon credits from it.
Some advocates are understandably steadfastly opposed and outraged that the creation of a National Park would rely on carbon credits to be established, while others see this a reluctantly pragmatic yet effective pathway to a rapid end to native forest logging, not just in New South Wales but also in Tasmania and elsewhere. People of good will can disagree–and on this, they do.
We also recognise that it is a difficult debate to have in the public realm–because those not across the debates over policy and principle will be fairly inclined to bewilderment that anyone who cares about nature could possibly oppose the creation of new national parks on what might seem like quite arcane grounds.
Australia’s troubled and troubling carbon market
Like forest protection, curbing Australia’s climate pollution has been another politically vexed problem for decades. Climate policies have come and gone, taking political leaders with them.
In 2011 the Carbon Farming Initiative was established by the Gillard Labor government and supported by the Greens (then led by Bob Brown and Christine Milne). This set up a system whereby farmers and Indigenous communities could generate carbon credits to better manage forests (including with better fire management) to receive funding from the Federal Government or corporations as a means of storing or reducing carbon emissions on the land, while also (ostensibly) protecting nature and creating regional jobs.
This scheme then morphed into the Abbott Coalition government’s Emissions Reduction Fund and Safeguard Mechanism in 2014. This policy was cynical in nature, designed to do virtually nothing given Tony Abbott’s aggressive rejection of the need for greenhouse gas emission reduction, essentially expanding a voluntary market where carbon polluters could buy carbon credits to offset their emissions. There was very little obligation for polluters to actually reduce emissions at site or be forced to buy carbon credits at all.
Then, in 2023 the Albanese government reformed the Safeguard Mechanism, setting stricter emission baselines for polluters and forcing many to buy carbon credits to offset their emissions.
The problem is this latest reform of the Safeguard Mechanism has not worked. This is partly due to the emission baselines being set too low but also because many polluters have simply been buying up carbon credits rather than attempting to actually reduce their emissions.
Furthermore, the very concept of carbon credits is highly problematic. Unlike fossil fuels found in their natural state, carbon and greenhouse gases stored in forests and the land are more volatile and exposed to rapidly being released to the atmosphere from fires, disease, floods and other natural or global heating-driven events. Greenpeace holds a longstanding position of deep scepticism about the efficacy of carbon credits. That has not changed.
In practice most of the existing carbon credit methods have been under sustained criticism from experts and scientists with deep knowledge of the system, arguing that currently, most projects are receiving credits for little or no actual storing of carbon in the land.
So when advocates for forest protection and climate action raise concerns about protecting forests via carbon credits, it’s clear why.
The INFM method
Chief public critic and whistleblower of the historic carbon credit system in Australia, Professor Andrew Macintosh, has been the lead architect behind the creation of the Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) which has been developed in partnership with the New South Wales Government. This is because despite having been a critic of the carbon credit system as it was operating, Professor Macintosh is not against carbon credits per se, but rather a poorly designed and executed system.
Regardless of what one thinks of the morality or efficacy of the method; the fiscal truth is that the INFM would create a new means for state governments to generate significant revenue by ending native forest logging in key areas and protecting and managing the forests.
Professor Macintosh and other supporters of the method argue that unlike other carbon credit methods, the INFM is of the highest integrity possible. That’s because the carbon that is credited is conservative, accounting for approximately 1/10th of potential carbon stored, a regional cap prevents logging simply commencing elsewhere, and significant financial penalties apply for non delivery of credits. If all the forests threatened by logging were protected by this method that would represent about 5% of carbon credits in the system. Significantly, the New South Wales Government has also pledged that no carbon credits from the Great Koala National Park would be sold to fossil fuel companies.
Leading ecologist and staunch forest advocate Professor David Lindenmayer also supports the method. Other prominent ecologists Professor Brendan Mackey, Dr Don Butler and Dr Heather Keith also provided input into the method.
Key environmental groups in New South Wales such as the North East Forest Alliance and South East Forest Alliance as well as the Nature Conservation Council of NSW (which is the peak body for nature in NSW) strongly support the INFM and see it as key to creating large forest National Parks in the state and effectively ending native forest logging.
The logging industry is vehemently opposed to the method because they are rightly worried it will shut down what remains of this industry. They are supported by One Nation and the Nationals, both of which have pledged to vote against the method down when it comes to a vote in the Senate on September 15th.
The opponents to forest protection are also joined in the against camp by some climate and forest advocates, including the Australia Institute and Wilderness Australia, who are strongly against carbon credits overall, in particular relying on them to protect forests and are concerned at the potential for perverse outcomes in the context of the broader need to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The Greenpeace Position
Greenpeace opposes carbon credits and accepts the analysis that the Safeguard Mechanism is failing. The creation of new forest National Parks should not be contingent on the commodification of nature and the sale of carbon credits. Nature should be protected for nature’s sake. Much more public funding should be available for the protection of nature. Our position will not change on the intrinsic value of ecology. Our mission is to secure an earth capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity.
However, we cannot in good conscience de facto oppose the creation of a massive new national park in these circumstances—especially when Australia’s leading forest ecologists, the foremost critic of carbon credits, and the grassroots forests activists from the jurisdiction in question support the outcome of moving ahead with the INFM to secure massive new national parks.
For that reason, in our view is that in these circumstances the Senate should not vote down the INFM method.
Further, fossil fuel companies should not have access to the INFM credits. The existing sham carbon credit methods should be urgently taken out of the system. The fight for more public funding for the protection of nature must go on until common sense prevails. And the Safeguard Mechanism should be substantially overhauled to significantly constrain the use of carbon credits more broadly and force polluters to rapidly reduce emissions on site. We believe that this is the fight which forest and climate advocates should be focussed on, together.
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