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
Climate and conflict imperilling food security
HUNGER CRISIS: More than four million people in Somalia – one-quarter of the country’s population – are at risk of experiencing “crisis-level hunger” by the end of the year, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). The east African country is facing “floods that have uprooted hundreds of thousands of people” after a “historic drought” earlier in the year killed livestock and ruined crops and pastureland, Reuters reported. A WFP spokesperson told the newswire: “This bombardment of climate shocks, from drought to floods, will prolong the hunger crisis in Somalia.” Meanwhile, Palestine is facing an “agricultural crisis”, with “farmlands being burned, farmers/fishermen being attacked and inaccessibility to food and water infrastructure” amidst the ongoing war with Israel, the Times of India wrote.
WHEAT WORRIES: Imports of wheat are “on track to hit record levels” in China this year following heavy rains damaging the country’s domestic supply, Bloomberg reported. Wheat prices on the international market hit a three-year low at the end of September. The outlet noted that China’s spending spree “adds an element of uncertainty to supply chains that have become increasingly vulnerable to war and protectionist trade policies”. In a separate piece, Bloomberg explored India’s food systems, writing that “farm plots are shrinking, infrastructure remains rickety and climate change is only bringing more disruption”. Governmental policies are “rapidly becoming a threat to food security in the world’s most populous country, upping the stakes for [Narendra] Modi’s ruling party”, Bloomberg added.
TECHNO-FIXES: The UK, Somalia and COP28 hosts UAE convened a one-day Global Food Security Summit in London on Monday. Ahead of the summit, aid organisations and other groups “raised the alarm” about the meeting’s technology-focused agenda, which they alleged was “potentially sidelining key issues, such as early action to stamp out hunger, fair trade, and local control of food systems”, according to Devex. “No new financial commitments” were expected to be made at the summit, the outlet continued. During the meeting, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak announced an initiative to “bring together work on developing climate-resilient crops”, Reuters reported. The initiative will fall under the auspices of CGIAR. The UK government also released a white paper on international development, laying out its intention to “work in partnership with countries to tackle extreme poverty and climate change, rather than just providing aid money”, Reuters said.
Dust, ice, extinctions and inequality
LAND LOSS: The world is losing nearly one million square kilometres of productive agricultural lands each year due to sand and dust storms amplified by human activities, Reuters reported. According to a report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), at least one-quarter of these storms are a result of human activities, such as mining and overgrazing. Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD executive secretary, told Reuters that topsoil losses are affecting food supplies, migration and navigation, and creating security risks.
ICE MELT: Carbon Brief covered the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative’s 2023 “state of the crysophere” report. The report revealed that, if the planet were to reach 2C of warming, ice sheets and glaciers would experience “extensive, long-term [and] essentially irreversible” losses. Sustained warming of 2C could produce “potentially rapid, irreversible sea level rise from the Earth’s ice sheets” and lead polar oceans to thaw and undergo “essentially permanent corrosive ocean acidification”, Carbon Brief wrote.
SPECIES DECLINE: Nearly 2m species around the world are at risk of extinction, doubling the number previously estimated by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, according to a study reported on by the Guardian. The increased estimate is largely a result of better data availability about insect populations, the newspaper added. The study also revealed that almost one-quarter of invertebrates, which play a vital role in pollination, are at risk of extinction. Insects also provide other services to human populations, such as healthier soils and pest control, the Guardian said. A different study found that in the UK and Ireland, almost half of seabirds species have declined over the past 20 years, Discover Wildlife wrote. Some of the species that have undergone declines are the common gull and the puffins, the Irish Times added.
UNEQUAL FARMING: Women who work in the agricultural sector in Africa and Asia are more affected than men by climate risks, including droughts, floods and the reduction of crop-growing season, wrote the Indian environmental website DownToEarth. The article cited a study published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, which analysed the climate risk for women farmers from 87 countries across those two continents and Latin America. The study pointed out that women are less likely to adapt to climate change than men because of gender inequalities and unequal access to resources. Dr Els Lecoutere, the first author of the study, told Down To Earth that their research may encourage discussions over the need to finance a loss-and-damage fund at COP28 and to invest in regions where women face the most risk.
Spotlight
COP28 curtain-raiser
For many years, carbon sinks, carbon markets and land-use emissions were often the only way to talk about food and nature at UN climate COPs.
COP27 in Egypt last year changed that – and political momentum has been growing ever since.
Food – as was the case for health and other subjects without a dedicated negotiations track – got a specific reference for the first time in the COP27 cover decision, along with rivers and nature-based solutions. This political acknowledgement was reinforced by a formal decision to renew work on agriculture, food security and climate for another four years.
The United Arab Emirates presidency of COP28, which starts next week, has promised that food will be at the heart of the negotiations and, specifically, within the Global Goal on Adaptation, mandated for adoption in Dubai.
At the Global Food Security Summit in London this week, UAE’s climate minister and COP28 food systems lead Mariam Almheiri urged world leaders to sign on to the “Emirates declaration on resilient food systems, sustainable agriculture and climate action”, which rallies states to “align their food systems” with their climate pledges. The declaration, as Politico reported, “barely acknowledges that food production and consumption patterns are a major driver of climate change”. Two-thirds of what the UAE is calling a “1.5C aligned menu” for COP28 delegates will be vegan and vegetarian for the first time in COP history, according to ProVeg.
But in an El Niño year with skyrocketing food prices, burning forests, choked supply chains, farmers grappling with the costs of war and green trade measures with no climate finance forthcoming, countries are keen that agriculture and ecosystems are recognised in COP outcomes in a more significant, lasting way than just workshops or a token thematic day.
One of the highlights of COP28 is the global stocktake, a five-yearly Paris Agreement “report card” on how the world has done so far, what actions have worked and what is needed to address the many yawning gaps.
Developing countries are keen that the stocktake also serves as a record of what has not worked: a recognition of mounting losses, risks and the costs of climate inaction.
For instance, Latin American countries and Nepal have called for recognising ecosystems – specifically, rainforests and mountains – at “tipping-point risk”. For developed countries such as New Zealand and Canada, phasing out agricultural subsidies, halting deforestation by 2030, and developing “innovative” finance for nature-based solutions are vital concerns. Meanwhile, the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), US and Canada want to see international carbon markets operationalised, as nations are set to approve rules.
But the stocktake is not just a wishlist. It has to inform the next round of climate pledges, with current pledges both inadequate and, some say, over-reliant on land.
For instance, a new Land Gap report, produced by a range of NGOs and academics, estimates that countries have proposed about 1bn hectares of land for land-based carbon removal in their climate mitigation pledges, with large emitters such as the US and Saudi Arabia relying the most on land to reach net-zero.
Meanwhile, Indigenous leaders have called for Europe’s lawmakers to vote to protect 80% of the Amazon by 2025 as part of their official COP28 position, pointing to a “cascade” of tipping points. “How much more do we have to wait until the global north prioritises the protection of the largest forest on Earth?” said Fany Kuiru, general coordinator of the Coordinating Body of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA). “Today, it is our home burning, but yours will be next.”
To Teresa Anderson, global climate justice lead at Action Aid, it remains to be seen if the COP28 presidency’s menu of food systems initiatives is more than just a “random buffet of high-tech nothingburgers with a climate dressing, possibly sitting queasily alongside a couple of agroecological tidbits.” She told Carbon Brief:
“At best, this could help put industrial agriculture in the climate hotseat. At worst, it could act as a cynical effort to distract from the urgently-needed conversations about fossil fuels.”
News and views
GLIMMER OF HOPE: The Colombian government announced a new biodiversity fund to finance initiatives for climate action, biodiversity and ecosystem conservation and protection of vulnerable populations. According to the government, the resources will come from a national carbon tax, Colombia’s general budget and donations, among other sources of funding. The minister of environment, Susana Muhammad, said the country foresees the fund reaching nearly $1bn by 2026, Reuters reported. Muhammad described the fund as “a fundamental tool for environmental management and change throughout the country” and said the government expects to start off the delivery of resources by the end of this year. A trust will monitor the effective distribution of resources, the newswire wrote, adding that environmental initiatives can be funded more than once.
NATURE VOTE: EU negotiators “finally clinched a political deal” on an embattled nature restoration law proposal, edging one step closer to the finish line, Politico reported. The adapted proposal agreed on 9 November gave “major concessions to the centre-right European People’s Party” which has “led a tough campaign” against the bill, the outlet said. The proposed law, covered in previous editions of Cropped, aims to restore and recover damaged ecosystems in the EU. It was “very painful” to see some key targets weakened, said Jutta Paulus, a green European politician, but she added: “I think we can be content with what we got.” The bill must still be formally adopted by the European parliament and council over the coming months before it can take effect.
MARINE PROSPECTING AREAS? :The UK government “has been accused of putting its quest for new North Sea oil and gas ahead of safeguarding Britain’s wildlife”, after one-quarter of new exploration licenses were found to overlap with Marine Protected Areas, the i newspaper reported. The story was based on analysis by Unearthed which found that 17 of 64 blocks “sit wholly or partly within” a protected area. Environmental groups described the Rishi Sunak government’s trade-off as “morally obscene” and pointed to impacts on species from whales to corals to fish spawning grounds. A Shell spokesperson quoted by the i newspaper said that “many oil and gas platforms already producing in the North Sea are in Marine Protected Areas”.
FORCED FISHING: The UK National Health Service and supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose are sourcing seafood from “companies exploiting forced labour by minority Uyghurs”, DeSmog reported, with calls for the UK to “impose import controls on China”. The four-year-long Outlaw Ocean investigation has “sparked a wave of responses”, including “prompt[ing] a congressional hearing” in the US. A Canadian seafood company cut ties with tainted suppliers, the Globe and Mail reported. Separately, a Guardian investigation found that BP, Spotify and WWF were among companies that bought carbon credits from a South Pole biomass power project in Xinjiang “at risk of being implicated in potential Uyghur forced labour”. While South Pole told the paper it halted credit sales from the project in 2021, companies that bought the credits said “they were not alerted”.
EVICTED COMMUNITIES: The Kenyan government is evicting members of the Indigenous Ogiek community from their ancestral lands in order to make room for carbon-offsetting projects, BBC News reported. Members of the Ogiek community are hunter-gatherers in the country’s biggest forest, the Mau Forest. One of the community’s leaders told the outlet that the government had destroyed their houses and properties. The evictions were conducted even though the Ogiek community gained legal recognition to own and keep their lands in 2017, reported Mongabay. Kenya’s forest service said that the government is fighting illegal farming and housing in the forest.
ARGENTINIAN ELECTION: Although the newly elected far-right Argentinian president, Javier Milei, raised “general ideas” around renewable energy during the campaign, he is a climate sceptic and has brought forth few environmental proposals, Chequeado wrote. In fact, Milei has said that he wants to eliminate the country’s main science agency and the ministries of health, science and the environment, a situation considered by Argentinian researchers as “extremely worrying”, Nature reported. Milei and vice-president-elect Victoria Villarruel propose to call off withholding taxes on wheat, corn and soybeans, Agrofy News reported. The news website added that the government plans to work on a biofuel law, eliminate import and export regulations and advance measures focused on the traceability of commodities’ environmental footprints.
Watch, read, listen
‘NITROGEN WARS’: A Guardian long-read looked at the rise of the Dutch farmers’ revolt, which, it wrote, “may well determine the outcome of [this week’s] general election”.
SHORT STRAW: The Atlantic spoke to scientists who said that even if all plastic pollution were to stop tomorrow, “it would be at least a quarter of a millennium” before the world could see a plastic-free sea turtle.
WOOD FOR TREES: A new investigation by the Mekong Eye examined how Vietnam is clearing native forests for wood pellets to help Japan and South Korea reach their net-zero targets.
OLIVE BRANCH: An essay in Atmos looked at olive trees, which are “vital to life in Palestine”, and argued that the roots of the conflict need peace to be addressed.
New science
Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential
Nature
A new study found that the amount of carbon being stored in forests is “markedly under the natural potential” of those ecosystems. Researchers used field and satellite data to analyse the gap between current and potential carbon storage, finding that forests could hold more than 200bn tonnes of carbon more than they currently do. More than 60% of this potential occurs in still-standing forests, they found, meaning that restoration could increase carbon storage in those areas. The authors concluded: “Although forests cannot be a substitute for emissions reductions, our results support the idea that the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of diverse forests offer valuable contributions to meeting global climate and biodiversity targets.”
Increased extreme humid heat hazard faced by agricultural workers
Environmental Research Communications
Labourers on rice and maize croplands are the agricultural workers most exposed to dangerous humid heat, new research found. Researchers quantified the number of extreme humid heat days that took place throughout the planting and harvesting seasons of 12 crops, by using temperature data, agricultural calendars and cropland areas data. They found that south-east Asia, equatorial South America, the Indo-Gangetic Basin, coastal Mexico and the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea faced the most frequent humid heat extremes, with certain areas exceeding 60 extreme humid heat days per year. The authors suggested that their results could encourage the creation of policies and efforts to protect vulnerable populations.
Low-intensity fires mitigate the risk of high-intensity wildfires in California’s forests
Science Advances
A new study found that low-intensity wildfires “substantially reduce the risk” of future, higher-intensity ones in California. Researchers analysed 20 years of satellite data related to fire activity across 124,000 hectares of California’s forests. They found that some forests’ fire risks were reduced by nearly two-thirds and these protective effects lasted for at least six years. They concluded that their findings “support a policy transition from fire suppression to restoration, through increased use of prescribed fire, cultural burning and managed wildfire”, adding that the state should aim to return to a “pre-suppression and precolonial fire regime”.
In the diary
- 22 November: Netherlands general election
- 22-24 November: CBD workshop to develop a road map for supporting ecosystem restoration under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework | Rome
- 23-27 November: CBD legal expert workshop to review methods for describing significant marine areas | Oslo
- 29 November: CBD first session on the global partnership to support 30×30 | Online
- 30 November-12 December: UNFCCC COP28 | Dubai
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 22 November 2023: COP28 curtain-raiser; Food security fear; Dust, bugs and ice appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 22 November 2023: COP28 curtain-raiser; Food security fear; Dust, bugs and ice
Climate Change
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
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.
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
-
IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
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SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
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