Published

1 year ago

December 26, 2024

Alice Rush

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

Food systems on the menu at COP29

MITIGATING METHANE: Yesterday was “food, agriculture and water day” at COP29, with a number of new initiatives and updates to existing initiatives announced. Down to Earth reported that more than 30 countries had endorsed the COP29 Declaration on Reducing Methane from Organic Waste, which includes a commitment to including sectoral targets in countries’ climate pledges. It added that the European Commission “welcomed the declaration, but did not endorse the pledge” due to a lack of time to consult with all member states.

PEACE AND HARMONIYA: The COP29 presidency also announced the Baku Harmoniya Climate Initiative for Farmers on Tuesday, in partnership with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The Harmoniya initiative has three stated priorities: creating a “streamlined knowledge hub” for improving collaboration and knowledge-sharing; making investment in food systems more attractive to both public and private investors; and empowering women and youth farmers to adapt to climate change. The declaration said: “Given the multitude of initiatives, there is a need for coherence, alignment and sharing of lessons learned to deliver greater impact.” No new commitments or funding accompanied Harmoniya’s release.

CHAMPIONING CHANGE: Food day also delivered an update on one of the key food-systems announcements from last year’s summit, the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF) – a group of six countries that had committed to taking stronger action on transforming food systems. During the summit, the ACF released a “progress snapshot” highlighting actions and policies each country had taken towards the priority action areas defined by the ACF. Tanzania confirmed its intention to join the coalition, the Guardian said. Vietnam also reportedly expressed their interest in joining.

AIM FOR THE SKY: Devex reported that the Agriculture Innovation Mechanism for Scale (AIM for Scale) initiative “has introduced its first package of investments”, which amounts to $1bn to strengthen weather forecasting for farmers. This “includes both new and existing investments from a consortium of global partners”, such as the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development and NASA. According to Emirates News Agency, investments in “climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation” through the wider AIM for Climate initiative total $29.2bn to date. DeSmog previously reported concerns that the solutions pushed by AIM for Climate “are not the kinds of technology that will benefit small-scale farmers in Africa”.

‘Big ag’ in Baku

COP LOBBYING: Hundreds of “lobbyists for industrial farming” attended COP29, analysis from DeSmog and the Guardian found, with more than 200 delegates from agriculture companies and trade groups at the talks. Nearly 40% travelled with delegations of countries, such as Brazil, “giving them privileged access to diplomatic negotiations”, the Guardian noted. The number of industrial agriculture attendees dropped from “record highs” of 340 at last year’s summit, the newspaper said. They represent “some of the world’s largest agribusiness companies, including the Brazilian meatpacker JBS, the animal pharmaceuticals company Elanco and the food giant PepsiCo”, the Guardian said. DeSmog and the Guardian also revealed that a “record” 1,261 business and industry delegates registered to attend last month’s COP16 biodiversity summit.

OFFSET ADVICE: The UK released new guidelines for voluntary carbon and nature markets in Baku, BusinessGreen reported. These aim to give “clearer guidelines to companies involved in the purchase, sale and development of carbon offsets and nature credits”, the outlet said. One of the guidelines advises that credits should “complement” emissions-cutting and other climate action, not replace them. These represent a “vote of confidence in a largely experimental financial product that’s intended to protect biodiversity”, Bloomberg said. (Read Carbon Brief’s Q&A on biodiversity offsets.) Meanwhile, Brazil’s Congress signed off on a bill setting rules for a national carbon market, according to Reuters.

FARMER FUNDS: New analysis released during COP29 found that 14% of global public climate finance for agriculture and land use went to activities relevant to small-scale farmers in 2021-22. This is a small portion given that these farmers produce 70-80% of the food eaten in Africa and Asia, according to advisory company Climate Focus, which completed the analysis. Covering the report, Bloomberg spoke to Esther Penunia, secretary general of the Asian Farmers Association, who said: “[Climate change is] affecting our crops, our yields and therefore our incomes.” The Associated Press spoke to Penunia and others about climate finance for small farmers. Elsewhere, a policy paper found that “regenerative farming” has “shown promising results” in Africa and India, First Post said.

Spotlight

The ups and downs of Brazil’s new climate pledge

Brazil released its new climate pledge at COP29 last week, committing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 59-67% by 2035. Here, Carbon Brief speaks to two Brazilian experts about the implications of the new nationally determined contribution (NDC).

Dr Ane Alencar is the director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute. Claudio Angelo is the coordinator of international policy at Observatório do Clima, a Brazilian network of civil-society organisations. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

For more on Brazil’s NDC, see Carbon Brief’s just-published article on the five key takeaways.

Carbon Brief: What is your opinion on Brazil’s new NDC?

Ane Alencar: Even with all the difficulties we have in Brazil, there is a commitment of the government to actually move forward and be more ambitious [on climate change]. I think they did that…even though I think it could be a little bit more. But I think this is an important step.

Claudio Angelo: Policy-wise, it’s a pretty good NDC…We can say that the NDC reflects a shift of gear for Brazil and that’s important. But, again, we’re talking about policies. We’re not talking about the target. And the target of the NDC is very weak. You can’t say it is 1.5-aligned…There are things Brazil is already doing, such as tackling deforestation in the Amazon…So, I would say [the] direction of travel is right, but the speed is totally wrong.

CB: How does the NDC compare to previous pledges made by the Brazilian government?

CA: If you look at what Brazil has already committed to doing – for instance, zero deforestation, the methane pledge, [which is a] 30% reduction in methane, just the sheer pace of increase of renewable energies in the energy mix…There’s a new sustainable fuels legislation that was just passed this year. If you put all those things together, Brazil could aim much higher than the current limits…We’re hoping to get an increased ambition ahead of COP30. I think there’s [a] margin for that in the NDC. We will certainly push for [the new NDC] to be the ambition floor, not the ambition ceiling.

CB: Are the NDC promises to combat deforestation strong enough?

AA: The government has done a very good job in the past to reach that important reduction of deforestation…However, we do have to deal with the fact that there are people who still can deforest legally. And what would be the incentives for these people to not deforest? The incentives that exist today seem not to be enough.

CB: Are pledges to boost “sustainable agriculture” sufficient to meet climate goals?

AA: I think the agriculture sector is one that can provide lots of contribution, by improving their practices, investing in technologies to reduce the cattle contributions and also with soil management…If the Brazilian agriculture sector really goes in the direction of sustainability, then I think it’s possible to actually fulfil the NDC targets.

News and views

G20 TALKS: At the G20 summit, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, presented a new “alliance” to tackle poverty and hunger, Al Jazeera reported. It added that 81 countries signed the initiative. Before the summit, Joe Biden became the first US president to visit the Amazon rainforest, the Associated Press reported. In his speech, he said that the incoming administration of president-elect Donald Trump would not be able to halt his country’s progress on clean energy, the newswire added. Meanwhile, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, proposed allocating 1% of military expenditure to fund a global reforestation programme, which could free up $24bn annually to support 6m farmers to plant 15m hectares of trees.

‘GROUNDBREAKING’ DISCOVERY: The world’s largest coral, measuring more than 34 metres wide and 32 metres long, was discovered by a team of scientists in the Solomon Islands, Pasifika Environews reported. The outlet dubbed the discovery “groundbreaking” and noted that the coral structure is between 300 and 500 years old. It quoted Enric Sala, executive director of National Geographic’s Pristine Seas project, who stressed the urgency “for rich countries to invest significantly in reducing carbon emissions to combat threats like ocean warming and acidification” as negotiations at COP29 continue. Elsewhere, a “graveyard of corals” was found off an island on the Great Barrier Reef after months of extreme weather, the Guardian said.

AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT: Air pollution in Delhi “hit 50 times the safe limit” this week, due in part to “farmers burn]ing] crop residue in agricultural areas”, according to the Associated Press. In response, the government has started enacting strict control measures, including banning most trucks from entering the city and moving school classes online. According to the Times of India, more than 1,250 agricultural fires were recorded in the state of Punjab on Monday, “the highest single-day tally of the season”. Delhi’s environment minister, Gopal Rai, said “the time has come for artificial rain to remove this smog cover and provide relief to the people”.

FARMER FURY: Thousands of farmers “descended” on Westminster in London to “protest a tax hike they say will deal a ‘hammer blow’ to struggling family farms”, the Associated Press reported. The UK government recently announced plans to get rid of a tax break that would introduce a 20% inheritance tax for farms worth more than £1m from 2026. (BBC News factchecked how many farms this might affect.) “Everyone’s mad” at this change, the co-organiser of the protest, Olly Harrison, told AP, adding that many “want to take to the streets and block roads and go full French”. (Farmers held a so-called “siege of Paris” earlier this year amid widespread EU farmer protests.) In ongoing farmer protests across the Channel, French farmers and their tractors blocked roads around the country to protest a trade deal between the EU and Mercosur countries in South America, according to Le Monde.

PUSHBACK: European lawmakers voted to “water down” and delay the EU’s anti-deforestation law, Reuters reported. The European Commission recently proposed a one-year delay for the law, which was due to take effect this December. This delay was backed by the European parliament in a 14 November vote, the newswire said, adding that politicians also voted to “add a new ‘no risk’ category of countries with far lighter controls”. This would “severely weaken” the law, BirdLife said in a statement, “making it inadequate to address global deforestation”. Elsewhere, BBC News said that Denmark signed off on the finer details of its world-first tax on farming emissions. (See Carbon Brief’s Q&A on the Danish plan.)

HIDDEN COSTS: Agrifood systems contain “hidden costs” – such as unaccounted for impacts on health and the environment – totalling around $12tn annually, the latest State of Food and Agriculture report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization found. More than 70% of the costs stem from unhealthy dietary patterns and are linked to non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes. The hidden environmental costs outlined in the report included emissions of greenhouse gases, nitrogen run-off and water pollution.

Watch, read, listen

GOING GREEN: Yale Environment 360 explored Brazil’s “bioeconomy”, which the country’s president hopes can act as a guide for other governments.

KITTENS CORRIDORS: A Mongabay podcast addressed why biological corridors are important for feline species in Latin America, such as puma, ocelot and jaguar.

PROMPTING TRANSITION: An NBC video showed how a nonprofit organisation helps farmers in North Carolina transition from traditional livestock to sustainable agriculture.

GO FISH: Scientists thought the Mekong giant salmon carp was extinct. But one scientist kept looking – and recently published evidence of its survival, the New York Times reported.

New science

New research in Ecological Economics found that climate change-induced migration of Nigerian herders seeking new grazing sites is a “key driver” of conflict between the herders and farmers. However, the study added, respondents who understood climate as the driving factor behind the migration were more likely to support policies that integrated herders into their community.
In the 2019-20 Australian “megafires”, plants and animals were worst affected in areas that were frequently burned or had recently burned in the past, according to a new Nature study. The “unprecedented” fires had a small, but overall negative impact on the abundance and occurrence of species, the researchers found.
Reduced deforestation brings health benefits to Amazon populations, according to new research in Communications Earth and Environment. The study found that reduced deforestation pressure lowers the incidence of forest fires, lowering particulate matter concentrations and decreasing respiratory health problems for local communities.

In the diary

28 November: [Lecture] Towards a liveable planet: land, energy and food system transitions | Oxford, UK and Online
25 November-1 December: 5th session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution | Busan, South Korea
5 December: World Soil Day
2-13 December: COP16 of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification | Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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 20 November 2024: Food at COP29; ‘Big ag’ in Baku; Brazil’s new climate pledge appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 20 November 2024: Food at COP29; ‘Big ag’ in Baku; Brazil’s new climate pledge

Greenhouse Gases

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Published

1 day ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

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

This week

Absolute State of the Union

‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.

COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.

OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.

SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.

Around the world

RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.

$467 billion

The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.

Latest climate research

Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action

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

Captured

The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.

Spotlight

Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?

This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.

Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.

Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.

Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:

“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”

Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.

Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:

“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”

Conservative gear shift

For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.

Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.

Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.

Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.

Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:

“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”

Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)

Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:

“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”

But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:

“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”

UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Global ‘greenlash’?

All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.

At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.

Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.

She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.

Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:

“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”

Watch, read, listen

TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.

RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.

Coming up

2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
3 March: UK spring statement
4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
5 March: Nepal elections

Pick of the jobs

The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Greenhouse Gases

Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding

Published

1 day ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.

This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.

Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.

The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.

As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.

Flood defences

Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.

This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.

There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.

However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.

The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.

The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.

Map of England showing that Richard Tice's Boston and Skegness constituency is set to receive at least £55m for flood defences between 2024 and 2026 — Flood-defence spending on new and replacement schemes in England in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The government notes that, as Environment Agency accounts have not been finalised and approved, the investment data is “provisional and subject to change”. Some schemes cover multiple constituencies and are not included on the map. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.

Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.

He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.

Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.

Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.

Chart showing that Conservative, Reform and Liberal Democrat constituencies are the top recipients of flood defence spending — Top 10 English constituencies by FCERM funding in 2024-25 and 2025-26. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.

Reform funding

While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.

Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.

Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.

Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.

Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:

“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”

While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.

The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding

Greenhouse Gases

Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate

Published

3 days ago

February 25, 2026

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

Food inflation on the rise

DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.

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.

NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.

‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.

El Niño looms

NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”

WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”

CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.

News and views

DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.

Spotlight

Nature talks inch forward

This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.

The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.

The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.

The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.

Money talks

Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.

Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.

Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.

Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).

Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:

“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”

Monitoring and reporting

Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.

Parties do so through the submission of national reports.

Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.

A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.

Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:

“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”

Watch, read, listen

NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.

COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.

HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.

‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.

New science

Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food