Published

7 months ago

March 12, 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

Trump’s logging orders

IF A TREE FALLS: US president Donald Trump last week signed a pair of executive orders “to increase lumber production across national forests and other public lands”, Axios reported. The outlet explained that the first order “calls for considering new categorical exclusions” under the existing law that requires environmental reviews, while the second “promotes domestic timber production to replace imports”. The latter order dealt “a devastating blow” to forests on public lands, said Inside Climate News. The outlet added that “increasing timber production would likely target the larger, older trees that are the most critical to protect as climate change accelerates”.

QUESTIONABLE IMPACT: The Trump administration claims that increasing timber production will be “the next frontier in job creation and wildfire prevention”, USA Today reported. Timber groups and lawmakers representing rural districts were in agreement, the outlet said. It added: “But conservation groups and forestry experts say cutting down more trees doesn’t inherently reduce wildfire risk and can actually increase it.” The orders are “expected to face legal pushback”, USA Today said.

NOT SO CLEAR CUT: Despite the claims of a viral Instagram post, the executive orders do not compel the clearing of 280m acres (1.1m square kilometres) of national forest, noted a Yahoo News factcheck. The outlet added that the total area of land affected by the orders is actually 251m acres (1m km2) and that “even in the most extreme scenario, the US logging industry wouldn’t have the sawmills or workers required” to clear-cut that much forest in the next four years. It said: “But whatever the scale, environmentalists warn that expanding logging while reducing oversight will damage fragile ecosystems, threaten old-growth forests, increase pollution and even worsen wildfires.”

Tit-for-tat tariffs

FOOD FIGHT: On Monday, China began imposing tariffs on US farm products, in what the New York Times called “the latest escalation of a trade fight between the world’s two largest economies”. China’s tariffs include a 15% levy on US-raised chicken, wheat and corn, along with a 10% levy on other food products, the newspaper reported. Describing the food tariffs as “a high impact yet low-cost weapon” in the US-China trade war, Bloomberg noted that “the Asian giant remains a key export market for largely Republican states in the midwest farm belt”. Alongside the new levy, it added that China also halted all American timber purchases and soybean imports from three US firms. The Washington Post mapped where tariffs could “hit” US farmers and jobs “the hardest”.

AG INDEPENDENCE: The latest move is part of China’s “broader strategy” to strengthen its food security since Trump’s first term, reported Business Standard, tracing a timeline of the country’s initiatives “to reduce its reliance on US imports”. US farmers and experts who spoke to Time magazine said they “know from experience” that Trump’s “incipient trade war will make things tougher” for them. The outlet added that “around 80% of the money the US government took in from tariffs on Chinese imports [during Trump’s first term] went back to paying farmers” affected by retaliatory tariffs. The US-China food trade fight will give Brazilian exporters “an opportunity to take an even bigger share of the Chinese market”, Reuters reported, adding that it “could also fuel already-high food inflation in Brazil”.

UH OH, CANADA: At the same time, China “open[ed] a new front in a trade war”, announcing tariffs on over $2.6bn worth of Canadian agricultural and food products on Saturday, according to Reuters. The measures include a 100% tariff on Canadian rapeseed oil and pea imports, the newswire explained. It said that China’s tariffs on Canada are being seen as a “warning shot” and “retaliati[on] against levies Ottawa introduced in October” on China-made electric vehicles and aluminium products. Canada’s 40,000 rapeseed farmers are now “caught in the middle of political tensions far outside [their] control” amid two trade fights, the Globe and Mail reported, with China’s moves combining with the “threat of 25% tariffs on $7.7bn of exports to the US, their largest market”.

Spotlight

Mining drives ‘destruction’ in Peru’s peatlands

This week, Carbon Brief covers a new study that found that small-scale, artisanal gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon is a small but growing cause of “destruction” for the region’s carbon-rich peatlands.

Peatland loss due to small-scale gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon has released up to 0.7m tonnes of carbon – some 2.6m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) – over the past 35 years, according to new research.

The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, used satellite imagery to determine where “artisanal” mining had driven deforestation in the Madre de Dios river plain.

The researchers found that while only 5% of the mined area overlapped with known peatlands, 55% of this peatland loss occurred within just the past two years.

They warned that mining in Peru’s peatlands is “happening at a scale sufficiently large to threaten the future existence of peatland on the Madre de Dios landscape”.

Mining-driven deforestation

Peatlands are carbon-rich, water-logged ecosystems that form slowly over time as plant matter dies and partially decomposes.

Although they make up only 3% of the Earth’s land surface, peatlands are estimated to contain 600bn tonnes of carbon – more than is stored in all of the world’s forests combined.

Despite their importance as carbon stores, peatlands are underprotected compared to other “high-value” ecosystems, such as tropical forests. A recent study found that just 17% of peatlands are protected globally.

Artisanal gold mining – referring to mining done informally and with basic tools – is one of the main drivers of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon in recent decades. It is highly concentrated around the Madre de Dios river, which cuts through the south-eastern part of the country.

To understand the impact of this type of mining, the researchers used 35 years of data from NASA’s Landsat satellite to monitor changes in the region around the Madre de Dios river known as its alluvial plain. They then used an algorithm to differentiate deforestation that was caused by artisanal mining from deforestation due to other factors.

The researchers identified 11,356 hectares of mining in the alluvial plain, two-thirds of which was concentrated in a 50-kilometre stretch of river.

Peatland loss

The researchers then overlaid the identified mining sites with maps of the Madre de Dios peatland complex.

They identified more than 550 hectares of peatland that had been lost to artisanal mining between 1985 and 2023. They estimated that this “destruction” released between 0.2m and 0.7m tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, resulting in emissions of up to 2.6MtCO2.

Moreover, mining in peatland areas has increased twice as quickly as the average rate of increase across the plain as a whole over the past five years. More than 10,000 hectares of peatland, containing between 3.5 and 14.5m tonnes of carbon, are at “imminent risk”, the authors warn.

Dr John Householder, a researcher at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and an author of the study, said in a statement:

“Even within a human generation, it is quite possible that large peat deposits can disappear from the landscape, before science has had a chance to describe them. For those peat deposits that are already known, these research findings are a wakeup call to protect them.”

News and views

IWATE ABLAZE: Japan was faced with its “worst wildfire in half a century” in early March, Agence France-Presse reported. The fire, which broke out in the Iwate prefecture on the country’s Pacific coast, “engulfed around 2,600 hectares” and “left one dead”, the newswire said. The Japan Times noted that “unusually dry weather, strong winds and the city’s terrain have made the situation worse than usual”. Dr Akira Kato, a forestry professor at Japan’s Chiba University, told the outlet: “There is a big misconception that fires don’t occur in humid climates, but this is actually not true, and forest fires can occur anywhere in the world.”

EXTINCTION LITIGATION: Australia’s environment minister, Tanya Pilbersek, is being sued by conservation non-profit the Wilderness Society for failing in “her promise to halt Australia’s ongoing extinction crisis”, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The case does not mention Pilbersek by name but alleges “successive environment ministers are to blame” for failing to “implement plans to save endangered animals”, the newspaper said. Pilbersek, it added, has responded by saying “she had made double the number of [nature] recovery plans than her predecessor”. Separately, ABC News reported that Tasmania’s salmon industry is being hit by mass die-offs due to bacterial disease, with “chunks” of thousands of dead salmon washing up ashore.

ARMY OF ME: After the “worst drought in decades”, Context News reported that Zimbabwe’s maize farmers are now battling an infestation of the fall armyworm. The pests are “[n]ative to the Americas” but have “spread across almost all of sub-Saharan Africa” in just two years, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The outlet quotes Patrice Talla of the FAO saying: “Climate change has contributed to outbreaks of migratory pests beyond their regions of origin, notably the fall armyworm.” According to the story, the armyworm “reduces maize yields by up to 73% and inflicts annual economic losses valued at $9.4bn in Africa alone”, its “crop-munching” impacts also affecting Malawi, Zambia, Togo, Benin and Swaziland.

SUDANESE BREW: Excelsea coffee – discovered in South Sudan nearly a century ago – is drawing international interest “amid a global coffee crisis caused mainly by climate change”, the Associated Press reported. The coffee variety currently accounts for “less than 1% of the global market” but production trials by agroforestry company Equatoria Teak indicate that it can “thrive in extreme conditions, such as drought and heat, where other coffees cannot”, according to the newswire. While the beans “represent a chance at a better future” for the country, farmer Elia Box – who lost half his coffee crop to fire in early February – told AP that long-term crops, such as coffee, need stability: “Coffee needs peace.”

ESTATE SALE: A “mystery donor” made a record land purchase in the Scottish Highlands on behalf of the Scottish Wildlife Trust – “the largest donation in the trust’s 60-year history”, according to the Times. It quoted the charity saying that by securing the 7,618-hectare Inverbroom Estate, it could “significantly enhance its efforts to protect and restore wildlife at scale across Scotland”. Furthermore, the newspaper noted that “the trust has made a commitment to the donor that none of the work at Inverbroom would be funded through the sale of carbon credits”.

ILLEGALLY FELLED: According to a new report covered by Mongabay, nearly all of the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in the past year was illegal. It said Brazilian non-profit Center of Life Institute (ICV) found that 91% of deforestation in the Amazon and 51% in the tropical savanna of the Cerrado lacked authorisation between August 2023 and July 2024. The outlet noted that under Brazilian law, landowners with a government-issued permit can clear up to 20% and 80% of the vegetation on their property in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado, respectively. However, it added that the ICV researchers found that much of the deforestation captured by Brazil’s national space agency “wasn’t registered in official databases” for deforestation permits. Separately, BBC News reported that a new highway being built for the COP30 UN climate talks in Belém is “cutting through tens of thousands of acres” of protected Amazon rainforest.

Watch, read, listen

FOREST FOR THE TREES: Dialogue Earth explained how extreme heat is affecting China’s trees – and magnifying other threats to the plants.

IN BLOOM: An in-depth piece in the New York Times covered how a warming ocean is “throwing plankton into disarray”, putting the entire marine food web at risk.

RADICAL INTELLIGENCE: A Noema long read looked at how studying intelligence as a biological property across species can “open up a world of commonalities” across all life.

EXTRACTIVE INVESTORS: The Guardian examined the investor-state lawsuit levelled against Greenland that is seeking to reverse its uranium mining ban.

New science

Research published in PLOS Climate found that smallholder farmers in north-eastern Madagascar reported that they perceived increased temperature and decreased rainfall over the past five years. However, despite reporting concerns over their ability to feed their families in the future, only 21% of the 479 farmers surveyed reported changing their farming practices.
Tropical forests in the Americas are changing certain functional traits, such as wood density, in response to warming temperatures – “but at a rate that is fundamentally insufficient to track climate change”, a new study published in Science found. Researchers used data from 415 forest plots over 1980-2021, along with temperature data, to determine how forest composition was changing in response to warming.
A new review in Environmental Research Letters scanned nearly 10,000 scientific papers to identify the impacts of trees outside of forests on human well-being in South Asia. While most of the literature reported an increase in economic and material well-being, negative outcomes documented included a loss of agency, political voice and social equity – “in particular with afforestation and monoculture plantation projects”.

In the diary

17-18 March: First part of the 30th annual session of the International Seabed Authority | Kingston, Jamaica
21 March: International Day of Forests
22 March: World Water Day
29 March: Global Day of the Landless

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 12 March 2025: Trump and timber; Food fights; Peru’s peatlands appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 12 March 2025: Trump and timber; Food fights; Peru’s peatlands

Greenhouse Gases

DeBriefed 10 October 2025: Renewables power past coal; Legacy of UK’s Climate Change Act; Fukushima’s solar future

Published

5 days ago

October 10, 2025

Alice Rush

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

This week

Renewables overtake coal

‘HISTORIC FIRST’: Renewables have overtaken coal to become the world’s leading source of electricity for the first six months of this year in a “historic first”, BBC News said. The analysis, from the thinktank Ember, found the world generated “almost a third” more solar power in the first half of the year, compared with the same period in 2024, while wind power grew by “just over 7%,” reported the Guardian.

HEAVY LIFTING: According to the report, China and India were “largely responsible for the surge in renewables”, while the US and Europe “relied more heavily on fossil fuels,” the Guardian wrote. China built more renewables than every other country combined in the first half of this year, the newspaper added.

CONTINENTAL SHIFTS: A second report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted a “surge” in global wind and solar capacity by 2030, but shaved 5% off its previous forecast, the Financial Times said. The IEA revealed that India is set to become the second-largest growth market for renewables after China, “with capacity expected to increase 2.5 times by 2030”, Down to Earth reported. The IEA also upped its forecast for renewables in the Middle East and north Africa by 23%, “helped by Saudi Arabia rolling out wind turbines and solar panels”, but halved the outlook for the US, the FT noted.

Around the world

EV BOOM: Sales of electric and hybrid cars made up “more than half” of all new car registrations in the UK last month, a new record, according to data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers, reported BBC News.
BANKING COLLAPSE: A global banking alliance launched by the UN to get banks to slash the carbon footprint of their loans and investments and help drive the transition to a net-zero economy by 2050 has collapsed after four years, Agence France-Press reported.
CUTS, CUTS, CUTS: The Trump administration plans to cut nearly $24bn in funding for more than 600 climate projects across the US, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
PEOPLE POWER: A farmer, a prison guard and a teacher were among those from the Dutch-Caribbean island Bonaire who appeared at the Hague on Tuesday to “accuse the Netherlands of not doing enough to protect them from the effects of climate change”, Politico reported.

400,000

The number of annual service days logged by the US National Guard responding to hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters over the past decade, according to a Pentagon report to Congress, Inside Climate News reported.

Latest climate research

Politicians in the UK “overwhelmingly overestimate the time period humanity has left to bend the temperature curve”, according to a survey of 100 MPs | Nature Communications Earth and Environment
Fire-driven degradation of the Amazon last year released nearly 800m tonnes of CO2 equivalent, surpassing emissions from deforestation and marking the “worst Amazon forest disturbance in over two decades” | Biogeosciences
Some 43% of the 200 most damaging wildfires recorded over 1980-2023 occurred in the last decade | Science

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

Captured

The UK’s Climate Change Act, landmark legislation that guides the nation’s response to climate change, is increasingly coming under attack from anti-net-zero right-leaning politicians. In a factcheck published this week, Carbon Brief explained how the UK’s Climate Change Act was among the first comprehensive national climate laws in the world and the first to include legally binding emissions targets. In total, 69 countries have now passed “framework” climate laws similar to the UK’s Climate Change Act, with laws in New Zealand, Canada and Nigeria among those explicitly based on the UK model. This is up from just four when the act was legislated in 2008. Of these, 14 are explicitly titled the “Climate Change Act”.

Spotlight

Fukushima’s solar future

This week, Carbon Brief examines how Fukushima helped to recover from nuclear disaster by building solar farms on contaminated farmland.

On 11 March 2011, an earthquake off the pacific coast of Japan caused 15m-tall waves to crash into the eastern region of Tōhoku, killing 19,500 people and injuring a further 6,000.

In the aftermath, flooding at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant caused cooling systems to fail, leaching radioactive contaminants into the soil and leading to a major nuclear incident.

Some 1,200km2 around the site was restricted and up to 100,000 people were evacuated – in some cases forever.

In the years following, Japan entered a fraught debate about nuclear energy.

In 2010, nuclear power provided 25% of Japan’s electricity, but, in the years following the disaster, its 54 nuclear reactors were taken offline.

Successive governments have fought over reintroducing nuclear power. Today, some 14 reactors are back online, 27 have been permanently closed and another 19 remain suspended. (Japan’s newly-elected prime minister Sanae Takaichi has promised to make nuclear central to her energy strategy.)

Against this backdrop, Fukushima – a prefecture home to 1.8 million people – has emerged as a surprise leader in the renewables race.

In 2014, the Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute (FREA) opened with the twin goals of promoting research and development into renewable energy, while “making a contribution to industrial clusters and reconstruction”.

That same year, the prefecture declared a target of 100% renewable power by 2040.

Contaminated land

“A lot of these communities, I know, were looking for ways to revitalise their economy,” said Dr Jennifer Sklarew, assistant professor of energy and sustainability at George Mason University and author of “Building Resilient Energy Systems: Lessons from Japan”.

Once evacuation orders were lifted, however, residents in many parts of Fukushima were faced with a dilemma, explained Skarlew:

“Since that area was largely agricultural, and the agriculture was facing challenges due to stigma, and also due to the soil being removed [as part of the decontamination efforts], they had to find something else.”

One solution came in the form of rent, paid to farmers by companies, to use their land as solar farms.

Michiyo Miyamoto, energy finance specialist at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told Carbon Brief:

“The [Fukushima] prefecture mapped suitable sites early and conducted systematic consultations with residents and agricultural groups before projects were proposed. This upfront process reduced land-use conflicts, shortened permitting timelines and gave developers clarity.”

As a result, large-scale solar capacity in Fukushima increased to more than 1,300 megawatts (MW) from 2012 to 2023, according to Miyamoto. Moreover, installed renewable capacity now exceeds local demand, meaning the region can run entirely on clean power when conditions are favourable, Miyamoto said.

Today, aerial pictures of Fukushima reveal how solar panels have proliferated on farmland that was contaminated in the nuclear disaster.

View of Shinchi town, Fukushima in 2011 (top) and 2016 (bottom). Credit: Newscom/Alamy Stock Photo

Charging on

Last year, 60% of Fukushima’s electricity was met by renewables, up from 22% in 2011. (The country as a whole still lags behind at 27%.)

And that is set to grow after Japan’s largest onshore windfarm started operations earlier this year in Abukuma, Fukushima, with a capacity of 147MW.

The growth of solar and wind means that Fukushima is already “ahead of schedule” for its 2040 target of 100% renewable power, said Miyamoto:

“The result is a credible pathway from recovery to leadership, with policy, infrastructure and targets working in concert.”

Watch, read, listen

OVERSHOOT: The Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, in partnership with Planet B Productions, has released a four-part podcast series exploring what will happen if global warming exceeds 1.5C.

DRONE WARFARE: On Substack, veteran climate campaigner and author Bill McKibben considered the resilience of solar power amid modern warfare.

CLIMATE AND EMPIRE: For Black history month, the Energy Revolution podcast looked at how “race and the legacies of empire continue to impact the energy transition”.

Coming up

12 October: presidential elections, Cameroon
13-14 October: Pre-COP, Brasilia, Brazil
13-18 October: World Bank Group/IMF annual meetings, Washington DC
14-17 October: 2nd extraordinary session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee at the International Maritime Organisation, London
15-16 October: Circle of Finance Ministers report

Pick of the jobs

Buckinghamshire Council, principal climate change officer | Salary: £49,354-£51,759. Location: Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
Sustainable NI, sustainable business lead | Salary: £60,000. Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Dialogue Earth, South Asia managing editor | Salary: £1,875 per month. Location: South Asia

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 10 October 2025: Renewables power past coal; Legacy of UK’s Climate Change Act; Fukushima’s solar future appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 10 October 2025: Renewables power past coal; Legacy of UK’s Climate Change Act; Fukushima’s solar future

Greenhouse Gases

Guest post: How Caribbean states are shifting climate legislation

Published

5 days ago

October 10, 2025

Alice Rush

The Caribbean region is among the most vulnerable to climate change, despite historically contributing less than half of one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Rising sea levels, extreme heat and more frequent and intense storms – such as the 2024 Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall in Grenada – pose urgent and growing threats to the small island states, coastal nations and overseas territories that comprise the Caribbean region.

With global progress to address climate change still too slow, Caribbean countries are taking matters into their own hands by enacting more robust legislation to help protect against climate risks.

In a new study published in the Carbon and Climate Law Review, we identified 78 climate laws and legally binding decrees across 16 Caribbean states, as well as two constitutional references to climate change and a growing recognition of the right to a healthy environment.

Our analysis suggests that, together, these developments are not only enhancing resilience, but also positioning Caribbean states as influential actors in the global climate arena.

Caribbean climate laws on the rise

Climate governance in the Caribbean has expanded significantly in recent years. In the past decade, countries such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic have embedded climate obligations and programmatic guidelines into their national constitutions.

At the same time, legislative recognition of the human right to a healthy environment is gaining momentum across the region. Six Caribbean nations now affirm the right in their constitutions, while 15 have recognised it through international instruments, such as the UN Council, UN Assembly and the Escazu Agreement, as shown in the figure below.

Map of the Caribbean sea showing Sixteen Caribbean nations have formally recognised the right to a healthy environment — Illustration of Caribbean states that recognise the right to a healthy environment at the domestic and/or international level. Source: Heredia Ligorria, Schulte and Tigre (2025). Graphic: Carbon Brief.

More recently, there has been a notable rise in targeted, sector-specific climate frameworks that go beyond broader environmental statutes.

Saint Lucia stands out as the only country with a climate framework law, or a comprehensive national law that outlines long-term climate strategies across multiple domains. Meanwhile, several other Caribbean governments have adopted climate-specific laws that focus on individual sectors, such as energy, migration and disaster management.

According to our analysis, more than a quarter of climate-relevant legislation in the region – comprising 21 laws and legally binding decrees – now has an explicit focus on climate change, as illustrated in the chart below.

Our research suggests that this represents an ongoing shift in legislative focus, reflecting changes in how climate legislation is being structured in one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions.

Chart showing the breakdown of climate legislation in the Caribbean region — Distribution of climate legislation in the Caribbean, showing the share of climate-specific and climate-related laws among those reported. Source: CCLW, ECOLex, FAOLex, Observatory on Climate Change and Just Transition.

Caribbean nations are also advancing legal reforms to structure and institutionalise climate finance and market mechanisms directly into domestic law, aligned with Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement.

For example, the Bahamas has introduced provisions for carbon credit trading, while Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and Grenada have established national climate financing mechanisms to support mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Some states, including Belize and Saint Kitts and Nevis, have incorporated regional bodies such as the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre – the climate arm of the intergovernmental Caribbean community organisation CARICOM – into national frameworks. This indicates an increasing alignment between regional cooperation and domestic law.

In addition to the influx of regulations specifically addressing climate change, Caribbean nations are also legislating broader environmental issues, which, in turn, could provide increased resilience from climate impacts and risks, as shown in the graph above.

Key trends in these types of climate-related laws include the expansion of disaster risk management governance, which addresses national preparedness for climate-induced weather events or related catastrophes. Likewise, energy law is an increasingly prominent focus, with countries including Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines integrating renewable energy and energy efficiency goals into national climate governance.

More broadly, many Caribbean nations have adopted wide-ranging and comprehensive environmental laws, many of which were developed in alignment with existing climate commitments. In combination, these legal developments reflect a dynamic and evolving climate governance landscape across the region.

Proactive vs reactive approaches

Despite general alignment with these broader regional trends, our research reveals distinct developmental pathways shaping domestic climate regulation.

In the eastern Caribbean, for example, we saw both proactive, long-term planning strategies and reactive, post-disaster reforms.

Saint Lucia’s multifaceted approach to climate resilience evolved steadily over the course of more than a decade. During this time, the country developed numerous adaptation plans, strengthened cross-sectoral coordination and engaged in institutional climate reforms in areas such as energy, tourism, finance and development.

More recently, the passage of Saint Lucia’s Climate Change Act in 2024 marked a milestone in climate governance, by giving legal force to the country’s obligations under the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement – making Saint Lucia one of the few small island states to incorporate global climate commitments into domestic law.

Our research indicates that this strategy has not only positioned the country as a more climate-resilient nation, but also solidified its access to international climate financing.

In contrast, Dominica’s efforts evolved more rapidly in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, which destroyed over 200% of the country’s GDP. The storm’s impacts were felt across the country and hit particularly hard for the Kalinago people – the Caribbean’s last Indigenous community – highlighting the role of socioeconomic disparities in shaping climate vulnerability and resilience.

In response, the government passed the Climate Resilience Act, creating the temporary Climate Resilience Execution Agency for Dominica (CREAD).

Beyond establishing an exclusively climate-focused institution, the act aimed to embed resilience into governance by mandating the participation of vulnerable communities – including Indigenous peoples, women, older people and people with disabilities – in shaping and monitoring climate resilience projects.

Damaged homes from hurricane Maria in 2017, Dominica. Credit: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo

As noted in a recent statement by the UN special rapporteur on Climate Change, Dr Elisa Morgera, these frameworks underscore the government’s ambition to become the world’s first “climate-resilient nation.”

Although challenges persist, Dominica’s efforts demonstrate how post-disaster urgency can drive institutional change, including the integration of rights and resilience into climate governance.

Uneven progress and structural gaps

Despite significant progress, our research shows that several key opportunities for climate governance across the Caribbean continue to exist, which could enable improvements in both resilience and long-term ambition.

The region’s legal landscape remains somewhat heterogeneous. While Saint Lucia has enacted a comprehensive climate framework law, the rest of the region lacks similar blanket legislation. This includes some states that entirely lack climate-specific laws, instead relying on related laws and frameworks to regulate and respond to climate-related risks.

Other nations have yet to adopt explicit disaster-risk management frameworks, leaving Caribbean populations vulnerable before, during and after climate emergencies. Most have yet to enshrine the right to a healthy environment at the national level.

Our research suggests that outdated legal frameworks are further limiting progress in addressing current climate risks. Because many of the longer-standing environmental laws in the region were adopted well before climate policy became a mainstream concern, some fail to address the nature, frequency and intensity of modern climate challenges, such as sea-level rise, tropical storms, wildfires, floods, droughts and other impacts.

More broadly, many Caribbean climate laws include limited integration of gender equity, Indigenous rights and social justice. As Caribbean nations such as Grenada and the Dominican Republic begin to link climate resilience with these issues, the region has an opportunity to lead by example.

Ultimately, capacity and resource constraints persist as significant barriers to implementation and adaptation.

The Caribbean region faces debt that exacerbates ongoing development challenges, a burden made heavier by the repeated economic shocks of climate-related disasters. Along with regional debt-for-resilience schemes, increased funding from high-emitting countries to support adaptation measures in climate-vulnerable nations – as endorsed under the Paris Agreement – is likely to be critical to ensuring the region’s climate laws can be executed effectively.

Global implications of Caribbean climate law

Our research suggests that Caribbean countries are outpacing other regions in terms of the scope and ambition of their climate laws. This legislation has the potential to serve as a model for climate-vulnerable nations worldwide.

Continuing efforts in the region show that legal frameworks in the field can not only drive resilience, embed rights and strengthen claims to international finance, but also highlight how regional cooperation and diplomacy can enhance global influence.

These findings demonstrate that innovation in climate law need not wait for action from major emitters, but can instead be led by those on the front lines of climate change.

The post Guest post: How Caribbean states are shifting climate legislation appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Guest post: How Caribbean states are shifting climate legislation

Greenhouse Gases

IEA: Renewables have cut fossil-fuel imports for more than 100 countries

Published

6 days ago

October 9, 2025

Alice Rush

More than 100 countries have cut their dependence on fossil-fuel imports and saved hundreds of billions of dollars by continuing to invest in renewables, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

It says nations such as the UK, Germany and Chile have reduced their need for imported coal and gas by around a third since 2010, mainly by building wind and solar power.

Denmark has cut its reliance on fossil-fuel imports by nearly half over the same period.

Renewable expansion allowed these nations to collectively avoid importing 700m tonnes of coal and 400bn cubic metres of gas in 2023, equivalent to around 10% of global consumption.

In doing so, the fuel-importing countries saved more than $1.3tn between 2010 and 2023 that would otherwise have been spent on fossil fuels from overseas.

Reduced reliance

The IEA’s Renewables 2025 report quantifies the benefits of renewable-energy deployment for electricity systems in fossil fuel-importing nations.

It compares recent trends in renewable expansion to an alternative “low renewable-energy source” scenario, in which this growth did not take place.

In this counterfactual, fuel-importing countries stopped building wind, solar and other non-hydropower renewable-energy projects after 2010.

In reality, the world added around 2,500 gigawatts (GW) of such projects between 2010 and 2023, according to the IEA, more than the combined electricity generating capacity of the EU and US in 2023, from all sources. Roughly 80% of this new renewable capacity was built in nations that rely on coal and gas imports to generate electricity.

The chart below shows how 31 of these countries have substantially cut their dependence on imported fossil fuels over the 13-year period, as a result of expanding their wind, solar and other renewable energy supplies. All of these countries are net importers of coal and gas.

Chart showing that many countries have significantly cut their reliance on fossil-fuel imports by building renewables — Share of national electricity supplies that depend on imported fossil fuels in 2023, actual (left) and in the IEA’s “low renewable-energy source” scenario (right), in 31 countries that are net importers of coal and gas. Source: IEA.

In total, the IEA identified 107 countries that had reduced their dependence on fossil fuel imports for electricity generation, to some extent due to the deployment of renewables other than hydropower.

Of these, 38 had cut their reliance on electricity from imported coal and gas by more than 10 percentage points and eight had seen that share drop by more than 30 percentage points.

Security and resilience

The IEA stresses that renewables “inherently strengthen energy supply security”, because they generate electricity domestically, while also “improving…economic resilience” in fossil-fuel importer countries.

This is particularly true for countries with low or dwindling domestic energy resources.

The agency cites the energy crisis exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which exposed EU importers to spiralling fossil-fuel prices.

Bulgaria, Romania and Finland – which have historically depended on Russian gas for electricity generation – have all brought their import reliance close to zero in recent years by building renewables.

In the UK, where there has been mounting opposition to renewables from right-wing political parties, the IEA says reliance on electricity generated with imported fossil fuels has dropped from 45% to under 25% in a decade, thanks primarily to the growth of wind and solar power.

Without these technologies, the UK would now be needing to import fossil fuels to supply nearly 60% of its electricity, the IEA says.

Other major economies, notably China and the EU, would also have had to rely on a growing share of coal and gas from overseas, if they had not expanded renewables.

As well as increasing the need for fossil-fuel imports from other countries, switching renewables for fossil fuels would require significantly higher energy usage “due to [fossil fuels’] lower conversion efficiencies”, the IEA notes. Each gigawatt-hour (GWh) of renewable power produced has avoided the need for 2-3GWh of fossil fuels, it explains.

Finally, the IEA points out that spending on renewables rather than imported fossil fuels keeps more investment in domestic economies and supports local jobs.