We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
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Key developments
Deforestation dropping, but not fast enough
LOSING FOREST: The world lost almost 11m hectares of forest each year over the past decade – an area almost the same size as Iceland, the UN Global Forest Resources Assessment found. The overall rate of deforestation slowed over 2015-25 – compared to annual losses of 13.6m hectares over 2000-15 and 17.6m hectares over 1990-2000. [Carbon Brief will publish an article later this week detailing more key findings.] Elsewhere, a different UN report found that annual spending on forests must more than triple to $300bn by 2030 to meet climate and nature goals.
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POOR PROGRESS: At the same time, a third report found that more than 8m hectares of forest was destroyed in 2024 – which is 63% above the trajectory needed to put an end to deforestation by 2030. The Forest Declaration Assessment report said that countries are off track to meet a pledge from more than 100 countries to halt and reverse global deforestation by 2030. It noted that agriculture caused 86% of global deforestation in the past decade. In its coverage of the report, Climate Home News noted that experts said the findings were a “wake-up call” ahead of COP30 in the Amazon.
FOREST FINANCE: An investigation from Global Witness found that banks and asset managers around the world generated $26bn from “financing deforesting companies” through investments, loans and other financial services between 2016 and 2024. US financial institutions earned the biggest gains, it said. Elsewhere, the EU “u-turn[ed]” on plans to delay its anti-deforestation law until 2026, instead suggesting tweaks to allow more time for compliance, according to Politico. Separately, an NGO report found that timber imports from companies operating in the EU “can be traced to logging on Indonesia’s Borneo island”, Agence France-Presse said.
Nature congress
EXTINCTION RISK: A new global assessment published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that more than 60% of the world’s bird species are in decline, the Guardian reported. In 2016, the equivalent figure was 44%. The outlet underscored that deforestation, largely bolstered by the expansion of agriculture and human development, is the main cause of falling populations. The Washington Post added that Arctic mammals, such as seals, whales and polar bears, are also “increasingly threatened by extinction” due to pressures from climate change.
SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT: The IUCN report also showed some “bright spot[s]”, as is the case with green sea turtles, which “have recovered substantially thanks to decades of conservation efforts”, explained the Washington Post. A scientist leading the sea turtle assessment told the New York Times that the rebound “comes down to reducing threats”. As another example of species recovery, the outlet pointed to the island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean, where two bird species on the brink of extinction are now listed as species of least concern, thanks to restoration work carried out by conservationists.
BIODIVERSITY CONGRESS: The report was published against the backdrop of this year’s IUCN congress on biodiversity conservation, which saw members adopt a 20-year strategic vision that boosts human rights and social justice alongside conservation, according to the IUCN. EFE Verde reported on the congress, where there was a call to action for countries to speed up the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and to ensure that 30% of the planet is protected by 2030. However, new analysis from Carbon Brief showed that just 28% of countries have submitted their plans for biodiversity conservation to the UN a year after the deadline.
News and views
WILDFIRE WATCH: The annual “state of wildfires” report found that extreme wildfires released more than 8bn tonnes of CO2 during the March 2024-February 2025 global fire season. The report, published by an international team of scientists and covered by Carbon Brief, showed that wildfires covered at least 3.7m square kilometres – an area larger than India – and exposed more than 100 million people around the world to these extremes.
BIOFUEL BOOST: At COP30, Brazil is expected to ask countries to quadruple their use of “sustainable fuels” over the next decade, including biofuels, biogas and hydrogen, as reported by the Guardian. A leaked document seen by the outlet revealed that Brazil argues biofuels will displace fossil fuels. However, biofuels – which are fuels derived from organic matter – are considered controversial by environmental experts, due to their potential to increase deforestation and promote monocultures, the outlet added. Separately, a new Carbon Brief Q&A explored how countries are using biofuels to meet their climate targets.
AGRIBUSINESS MOVE: Brazil’s agribusiness – the largest emitting-sector in the country and a major driver of deforestation – plans to present the country as a leader in sustainable agriculture at the upcoming COP30, Bloomberg reported. The farm lobby faces international pressure from policies such as the EU law that requires Brazil to ensure that its crop exports are free from deforestation, the outlet said.
LONG LIVE THE WHALES: A “historic lawsuit” to protect whales in the Gulf of California has been accepted for a hearing by two district courts in Mexico, Animal Político reported. The suit aims to declare the area a “critical habitat” and rule that previously granted permits for shipping liquefied natural gas through the gulf are unconstitutional. El País also covered the news and added that a coalition of civil-society organisations is advocating for the recognition of whales as “subjects of rights”.
LARGE EMISSIONS: In 2023, 45 major meat and dairy companies emitted more than 1bn tonnes of greenhouse gases, comparable to the emissions of top fossil-fuel producers, according to a new report by civil society organisations. The report found that the top five highest-emitting firms – JBS, Marfrig, Tyson, Minerva and Cargill – were responsible for 480m tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions. The 45 firms’ methane emissions exceeded those from the EU and UK, it added. Elsewhere, Nestle withdrew from a global alliance of dairy producers for reducing methane emissions, without providing a reason, Reuters reported.
PRICE HIKE: Over the past year, extreme weather has driven up prices by 16% for five products – butter, beef, milk, coffee and chocolate – together responsible for 40% of food inflation over that time, according to research covered by the Daily Mail. The outlet said that “alternating periods of drought, extreme heat and heavy rainfall are affecting farmers” globally. The Financial Times also covered the report, writing that its “findings challenge the narrative promoted by industry groups that have linked high grocery bills to domestic policies”.
Spotlight
Researching climate impacts on Thai tree seeds
This week, Carbon Brief details how Kew Gardens researchers are studying the effects of extreme heat and drought on trees in Thailand.
Forests in Thailand, as in many other parts of the world, are feeling the effects of climate change – from the country’s mountain peaks in the north to its mangroves on the southern coast.
Scientists at Kew Gardens are assessing how certain tree species react to high temperatures and drought to help inform efforts in re-planting degraded forests across the country.
The is one of several projects from Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, which this week marks its 25th anniversary. It is the world’s largest collection of wild plant seeds, holding almost 2.5bn seeds from 40,000 different species.
Incubating seeds
For the Thailand project, researchers collected 60,000 seeds from three tree species growing across the country. They focused on tree types which benefit local people, such as the Sapindus rarak, whose seed can be used as a washing detergent.
The scientists sought seeds from areas with “different climates and altitudes” – ranging from the country’s highest mountain, Doi Inthanon, to its lowlands – to try to find out which areas yield resilient seeds, Dr Jan Sala, a researcher at the seed bank, told Carbon Brief.
The Kew team is collaborating on the project with the Forest Reforestation Research Unit (Forru), a research team at Chiang Mai University in Thailand that restores degraded forests.
The researchers are still analysing their data and hope to publish the findings next year, but Sala said initial observations show some “interesting” differences in how the thousands of tree seeds respond to warming and drought. He told Carbon Brief:
“We cannot say this for sure because we have not finished the analysis, but hopefully we identify a couple of populations…that are resilient to climate change.”
To study this, they put each of the thousands of seeds into incubators and subjected them to temperatures ranging from 5C to 50C across different periods of time. They wanted to see how the seeds germinate under various conditions and identify “whether a population or species reacts differently to temperature rising”, Sala says.
Building resilient forests
Dr Inna Birchenko, a research associate at the Millennium Seed Bank who was also involved in the project, told Carbon Brief that the Thailand study findings can help to ensure that restored forest plots have the “best chance for long-term survival”.
She noted that resilient forests “contribute to decarbonisation by locking carbon in the trunks, as opposed to just being a wasteland or being an agricultural land”.
Sala said the researchers hope to not only help Forru decide which seeds to use in different restoration projects, but also provide more information to “all practitioners across Thailand”.
Birchenko noted that while temperate trees are generally well-researched, tropical species are “so understudied”. She told Carbon Brief:
“Every day, I’m trying to find extra information about the genetics of this or that species, and there is absolutely nothing…So we are hoping that this potentially snowballs into more effort into this area.”
Watch, read, listen
FLYING HIGH: A Guardian article visualised how bird migration around the world is being reshaped by “new threats”, including climate change.
ON THE MOVE: Yale Environment 360 explored how US border-wall construction is “creating a roadblock” to the return of jaguars in the country’s south-west as Mexico’s populations recover.
OVERFISHING ISSUES: An article in Vox looked at how nature conservation projects in Madagascar could be reshaped to prevent them “mak[ing] it harder for desperately poor people to make a living”.
VALUABLE VOCABULARY: An Atmos video addressed a study on how the English language is losing nature-related words, undermining people’s connection to nature.
New science
- China’s demand for Brazilian soya beans – used as animal feed – is driving agricultural expansion and deforestation in Brazil, with nearly 18m hectares of land in the South American country used to grow soya for export to China | Nature Food
- A review of climate adaptation practices among vegetable farmers in Africa found that most solutions focused on addressing drought, flooding and rainfall, primarily through technological solutions | Communications Earth and Environment
- Aboveground vegetation in Australian humid tropical forests has become a carbon source due to extreme temperatures and other climate anomalies, leading to higher rates of tree mortality and losses in biomass | Nature
In the diary
- 20-30 October: UN Convention on Biological Diversity subsidiary body meetings | Panama City
- 22-25 October: 43rd session of the European Forestry Commission | Istanbul, Turkey
- 26 October:Argentina legislative election
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 October 2025: Global forest loss dips; Bird species in peril; Climate impact on Thai trees appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported