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
COP16 kicks off in Cali
COLOMBIA CALLING: Representatives from 175 countries are meeting in Cali, Colombia from 21 October to 1 November for the COP16 biodiversity summit, with “life on Earth on the agenda”, the New York Times reported. At the talks, countries will grapple with how to put the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – often described as the “Paris Agreement for nature” – into action, alongside debates on finance for developing countries and how to best share the benefits from genetic information, the newspaper said. Carbon Brief has produced an interactive grid of where each party stands on the key negotiating issues and a live tracker of the texts under negotiation. On Tuesday, Carbon Brief’s team of five journalists on the ground in Cali held an online webinar on the key issues up for discussion at the summit. A recording is available.
HIGH-LEVEL PRESENCE: Mongabay reported that around 23,000 delegates are attending COP16, with presidents or heads of state from Brazil, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Mozambique, Peru and Suriname expected to be present. (The Earth Negotiations Bulletin noted that the summit “is the largest UN biodiversity conference to date”.) The outlet added that the conference also aims to adopt a work programme for Indigenous peoples and local communities. El Espectador reported that the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) will invest $300m in the protection of important ecosystems across the region, including the Amazon, the Antarctic and Patagonia. The president of CAF, Sergio Díaz-Granados, said they will deliver a tool for identifying high-quality projects to be funded.
PLANS AND PLEDGES: A joint investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian found that 85% of countries had failed to meet a UN request to publish new pledges on how they plan to tackle biodiversity decline before COP16. Just 25 nations and the EU released new national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs) ahead of the summit. Since then, a further 10 countries have come forward with NBSAPS, including COP16 host Colombia. Colombia’s NBSAP pledges to extend protected areas from 24 to 34% of national territory and increase the bioeconomy’s contribution to national GDP from 0.8 to 3%. Carbon Brief will be updating its NBSAP tracker later this week.
Water woes
STRESSED OUT: New analysis from the US-based thinktank the World Resources Institute found that “one-quarter of the world’s crops are grown in areas where the water supply is highly stressed, highly unreliable or both”. Three staple crops that together provide more than half of the world’s calories – rice, wheat and corn – are “particularly vulnerable”, according to the analysis. It added that both rainfed and irrigated crops “face growing threats”, with the former imperilled by “erratic weather patterns” and the latter facing “increasing competition over shared water supplies”. According to the report, “demand for water to irrigate crops is projected to rise by 16% by 2050, compared to 2019”.
TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS: Covering the report, Grist wrote that water stress “stems partly from a common tendency to take water for granted and treat it like an endlessly renewable, on-demand resource”. Sam Kuzma, one of the authors of the report, told the publication: “Because we don’t put a value on water, you can irrigate and not pay much at all for the water that you’re using…That means we can be pretty reckless with how we’re growing and in what environments.” The analysis “spells trouble for global food security”, Grist wrote, noting that major agricultural exporters, including India, are among the countries most at risk of increasing water stress.
ROME DECLARATION: At the World Food Forum last week, hosted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, member states adopted the Rome Declaration on Water Scarcity in Agriculture. According to Down to Earth, “the countries committed to mobilise greater political support in terms of policies, legal and institutional frameworks, access to financing and responsible water governance”. FAO director general Dr Qu Dongyu told the plenary session: “The solutions we develop must reflect the interconnected nature of water security, agrifood systems and climate resilience.” According to the FAO press release, “by 2050, more than half the global population will live in areas at risk of water scarcity at least one month a year”.
Spotlight
‘The planet doesn’t have time to lose’
Carbon Brief’s entire food, land and nature team is on the ground in Cali, Colombia to report on the UN biodiversity talks. In this spotlight, Carbon Brief outlines what has happened so far at COP16.
Hola from Cali, where the UN biodiversity summit COP16 has kicked off this week.
Thousands of negotiators, observers, activists and journalists have descended on the city – the country’s “salsa capital” – for detailed nature discussions over the coming two weeks.
Far from the harsh lighting and long corridors of other COPs, Cali delegates are treated to mountain views in the distance and large overhead fans staving off the October heat in one of the world’s most biodiverse countries.
It has not all been smooth sailing so far, however, with packed buses transporting sweating delegates, congested roads, poor internet connections and winding security queues on the first day of the summit.
COP16 comes two years after countries signed off on a global biodiversity deal aiming to halt and reverse nature loss by the end of this decade.
Since this agreement, countries have been figuring out how to put in place these goals on a national level.
Hot topics
Negotiators are discussing a wide range of issues, including the implementation of biodiversity goals and how to scale up nature finance.
Bernadette Fischler Hooper, the head of global advocacy at WWF, told a press briefing on 21 October that resource mobilisation was hotly debated at the pre-COP16 implementation talks last week.
For example, countries are split on whether to develop a new global fund for biodiversity – to be controlled by the COP – or stick with the current fund. Negotiators are trying to break the “deadlock” on this issue over the next two weeks, she noted.
Other discussions centre around agreeing rules around digital access to genetic information, Indigenous peoples’ rights and monitoring for the Global Biodiversity Framework.
“The planet doesn’t have time to lose,” Colombian environment minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad said at the summit’s opening ceremony.
Speaking via telecast, UN chief António Guterres also urged countries to “make peace with nature” – referencing the COP16 theme.
Security fears
More than 10,000 police officers are in place across the city amid threats from a rebel group to disrupt COP16.
Speaking at a press conference on 21 October, Cali’s mayor, Alejandro Eder, said that security was the first issue tackled when the city was selected to host COP16.
Eder assured the safety of COP16 attendees, but Colombian president Gustavo Petro last week said he was “nervous” that “something bad” could happen at the start of the summit, according to Colombia’s El Heraldo newspaper.
Eder noted that COP16 was organised in “record time”, given that cities usually have two years to prepare. (Turkey withdrew as COP16 host last year after severe earthquakes killed more than 40,000 people. Cali was confirmed as the new host in February 2024.)
Elsewhere, nearly 2,000 Indigenous peoples from Colombia took to the streets of Cali on 21 October calling for nature to be respected. More protests are expected throughout the summit.
Carbon Brief’s team of five nature journalists will be closely tracking the negotiations on the ground in Cali over the next two weeks.
News and views
REEF IT AND WEEP: The mass bleaching of coral reefs worldwide since early 2023 “is now the most extensive on record”, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Reuters. Satellite data showed a “staggering 77%” of global reefs so far have “been subjected to bleaching-level heat stress…as climate change fuels record and near-record ocean temperatures across the world”, the newswire added. “We’ve eclipsed the previous record by 11.3% and…in half the amount of time,” Dr Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch, told Axios. CNN said that scientists have called for an emergency session on coral reefs at COP16 “in response to the bleaching record”.
‘NATURE-POSITIVE’: A record number of companies are expected to be at COP16, and they are “increasingly touting their ambitions to be ‘nature-positive’ alongside their net zero targets”, the Financial Times wrote. According to the newspaper, which looked at the rapid proliferation of the term “nature-positive” since COP15 in 2022, it implies “halting and reversing biodiversity loss, targeting an overall increase in nature…by 2030, relative to a 2020 baseline”. However, it adds that scientists and environmentalists are worried that states and firms “are starting to brandish the term as a buzzword” before a comprehensive and credible definition of nature-positive and its metrics exists.
GLOBAL ECOSYSTEM ATLAS: At COP16, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) launched the proof-of-concept of the Global Ecosystems Atlas, a tool for mapping and monitoring the world’s ecosystems. According to a GEO press release, the atlas provides information on ecosystem extent, condition and potential risks, drawing on inputs from high-quality maps and new maps based on field data and AI. The atlas aims to support “tracking [progress on] the Global Biodiversity Framework, develop national ecosystem maps…and inform private sector reporting on nature-related risks”, the press release added.
THE ROOF IS ON FIRE: Forest fires have intensified and become more widespread “amid global heating, particularly in the high northern latitudes such as Canada and Siberia”, researchers wrote in the Conversation. Their new study found that global carbon emissions from forest fires have grown by 60% over the past two decades, with the “largest contributions com[ing] from fires in Siberia and western North America”, the authors added. “We had to check the calculations because it’s such a big number,” lead author Dr Matthew Jones told the New York Times. Elsewhere, research covered by Carbon Brief revealed that a long-term decline in area burned globally by wildfires due to land-use change has almost entirely been offset by increases caused by warming.
DYING PLANET: Wildlife populations worldwide have “plunged” by an average of 73% in the last 50 years according to the latest Living Planet report, the Guardian reported. However, it adds that the Living Planet index is “weighted in favour of data from Africa and Latin America” and the metric has faced criticism for “potentially overestimating wildlife declines”. Vox, covering the report, wrote that it “underscores [that] we are living in a time of profound biodiversity loss” and that “calculating a single figure to encompass all of this loss isn’t easy”. At the same time, scientists not involved in the report called its metrics “misleading”, the story added. A ZSL scientist quoted by Vox said that “it’s also possible that the [Living Planet Index] actually underestimates the scale of declines”. Our World In Data published a guide to understanding the index and “what it does and doesn’t mean”.
Watch, read, listen
FOREST LOSS: Mongabay looked at how Indonesia’s plan to boost renewable energy could lead to Indigenous communities losing “huge swathes of their forests to biomass plantations”.
EYES ON SOUTH AMERICA: Analysis in the Guardian discussed how Colombia and Brazil “have the chance of a lifetime to save the Amazon” in hosting key upcoming global events.
SNAIL’S PACE: Ahead of COP16, NPR’s All Things Considered radio show spoke to wildlife biologist Dr David Sischo about what it’s like to work with Hawaii’s endangered tree snails.
COUNTING MOTHS: Sundance award-winning documentary “Nocturnes” followed ecologist Dr Mansi Mungee counting hawk moths in the lush forests of north-eastern India.
New science
- A new study found that nearly half of the proposed indicators for measuring progress on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework could involve community-based monitoring programmes. Researchers in Nature Sustainability wrote that greater involvement of citizens could “enhance local to national decision-making”.
- A 1% increase in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was linked with a 6.3% rise in malaria cases the following month, a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found. Using sub-annual data, researchers showed that deforestation increases malaria transmission, especially in areas with high amounts of forest cover.
- Increasingly dry conditions under a changing climate will pose a significant threat to frogs and other water-sensitive animals, according to new research in Nature Climate Change. Researchers combined maps of drought risk and frog and toad habitats to find that nearly 7% of frog and toad habitats will become “arid-like” by the end of the century.
In the diary
- 21 October-1 November: COP16 UN biodiversity conference | Cali, Colombia
- 25 October: Kiribati presidential election
- 4-5 November: UN Water meeting | New York
- 5 November: US election
- 11-22 November: COP29 UNFCCC climate conference | Baku, Azerbaijan
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 23 October 2024: COP16 kicks off; Water woes; Coral bleaching ‘worst ever’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 23 October 2024: COP16 kicks off; Water woes; Coral bleaching ‘worst ever’
Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group
El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.
Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.
During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.
Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.
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During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.
Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.
Heat causes health problems
Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.
Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.
The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.
At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.
In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.
All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.
Climate change to blame
Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.
Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.
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Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.
This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.
It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.
The post When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño appeared first on Climate Home News.
When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño
China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.
The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.
These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.
There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions.
China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.
The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.
Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.
Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.
What does the climate plan cover?
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.
The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.
For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.
They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.
China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.
Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.
She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.
In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.
The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.
Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.
Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.
These include:
- Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
- Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
- Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
- Strengthening climate adaptation
- Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech
What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?
The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.
The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.
The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP).
She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.
She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.
The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.
In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.
According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).
Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.
China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.
The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.
For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.
What does the plan say about global climate governance?
One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.
By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.
It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.
China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.
Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.
Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.
The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.
Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.
Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.
The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.
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The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?
About a quarter of the countries signed up to the Paris Agreement are still breaching its rules by failing to submit a new national climate plan, 18 months after the February 2025 deadline.
Forty-five nations had not submitted a plan known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC), according to the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee’s (PAICC) newly-published report of its 7-10 July 2026 meeting. One, Oman, has published it since the meeting.
Twelve countries ignored the committee’s repeated attempts to find out why they had not yet produced a climate plan, the report said. They will be invited to the committee’s next meeting, from September 1-4, so it can identify the challenges and constraints they face.
Members of the committee are divided, as they were at their last meeting, on whether to name those countries publicly and will debate the question again in September.
The PAICC does not have any power to punish governments, as building these powers into the Paris Agreement was thought to be so controversial that it could have stopped some governments from joining, experts have previously told Climate Home News.
A key requirement of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement is that governments publish a more ambitious NDC every five years, setting targets to reduce their planet-heating emissions and outlining their policies to adapt to climate change, in order to meet the accord’s goals on limiting global warming and protecting people from its effects.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in 2025.
Some medium-sized emitters
Countries without an updated NDC include Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina and the Phillippines, all of which rank among the world’s 40 largest greenhouse gas emitters. The rest of the countries are smaller, poorer nations, with many in Africa or the Caribbean.
Some nations have argued that they cannot put together an NDC – which requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy – because of exceptional circumstances. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC committee, seen by Climate Home News, says that the country’s civil war has led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement, although the US submitted a 2035 NDC under the Biden administration before Donald Trump pulled the US out of the UN climate accords.
The committee also expressed concern that the UN’s NDC registry continued to label the climate plans of countries that are no longer party to the Paris Agreement as “active”, according to its report. The US submission has since been archived.
Since the last PAICC meeting in March, ten countries have published NDCs. The committee did not name them but they include India, Algeria, Cameroon and Guyana.
The post Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline appeared first on Climate Home News.
Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline
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