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
High Seas Treaty milestone
OCEAN PROTECTION: The High Seas Treaty, which aims to “protect the world’s oceans and reverse damage to marine life”, will take effect next January after reaching a key milestone, BBC News reported. Morocco brought the global agreement, which was approved in 2023, to the threshold of 60 ratifications required for it to take effect. The broadcaster said: “Environmentalists heralded the milestone as a ‘monumental achievement’ and evidence that countries can work together for environmental protection.” UN chief António Guterres described it as a “lifeline for the ocean and humanity”, according to Al Jazeera.
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CLIMATE WEEK: Meanwhile, Chile and the UK joined a number of countries who have “committed to promoting ocean-based actions” in their respective national climate plans, Inside Climate News reported. Speaking at a New York Climate Week event, officials said they are considering many steps including phasing out offshore oil and gas drilling, decarbonising shipping and committing to marine ecosystem conservation. According to another Inside Climate News story, many Climate Week events are “centred around” regenerative agriculture – a method of farming that prioritises soil quality and ecosystem biodiversity. The term is now a “ubiquitous buzzword…increasingly deployed on marketing labels”, the outlet said.
OVERFISHING: Elsewhere, a “long-wrought” global agreement “aimed at reducing overfishing” took effect earlier this month, the Associated Press reported. The World Trade Organization agreement on fisheries subsidies entered into force after it was adopted by 112 countries. The AP noted that the agreement “will require countries to limit some of the $22bn in subsidies worldwide that encourage practices by fleets that deplete fish stocks and will create a ‘fish fund’ that can help developing countries implement it”. An article in the Conversation said the agreement is a “major milestone, but it’s only the beginning”.
‘Erratic’ water cycle
DELUGE TO DROUGHT: Almost two-thirds of the world’s rivers did not experience “normal” conditions in 2024, dealing with either too much or too little water, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s state of global water resources report. In its coverage, Al Jazeera said that “climate change is making the Earth’s water cycle increasingly erratic”. The report, the outlet noted, said that 2024 was the sixth year in a row with a “clear imbalance” in river basins. It was also the third consecutive year of widespread ice loss in every glacier region, the report said.
WATER IMPACTS: The report said that floods hindered agriculture in many regions in 2024, including impacting wheat harvests in Afghanistan and sweeping away almost 130,000 cows in west and central Africa. CNN’s coverage said the findings highlight “big trouble for economies and societies” dealing with the impacts of a less-predictable water cycle.. Last year was the hottest on record, with many regions “grappl[ing] with a dearth of water”, the outlet noted. Other regions, however, experienced “more floods than in other years”, a lead author on the report, Prof Stefan Uhlenbrook, told CNN. He added that some of these floods caused billions of dollars in damage.
FLOOD AFTERMATH: Meanwhile, major floods in Pakistan’s Punjab province have “wreaked havoc” on agriculture, impacting more than half a million hectares of farming land, according to the Nation. The Pakistani newspaper reported that the floods, covered in last month’s Cropped, “devastat[ed]” crops including cotton, rice, sugarcane and maize. Around 6% of Punjab’s farmland was damaged by recent floods, the newspaper said. Reuters reported that at least 220,000 hectares of rice fields flooded from the deluge between August and September. In India’s Punjab state, farmers are also dealing with the impacts of the “worst floods in four decades”, Al Jazeera said.
News and views
CASH FOR NATURE: The UK spent a record £800m on “nature protection and restoration” as part of climate aid spending last year, according to government figures obtained by Carbon Brief. The figures suggested that the country is on track to achieve its five-year pledge to provide £3bn in nature-related funds for developing countries by 2026. Meanwhile, a report from Wildlife and Countryside Link found that 38% of UK waters are in protected areas, but just 6% of land is – “far short” of the target to protect 30% of the country’s land and sea by 2030, the report said.
DEFORESTATION DELAYS: The European Commission has proposed a further one-year delay to the implementation of its anti-deforestation law, Reuters reported. The law, which is currently due to take effect this December, was already postponed by one year in late 2024. Reuters said that the commission cited concerns about IT systems. The outlet noted that both the European parliament and a majority of EU member states “must approve the delay”.
GROWING FOOD: This year looks set to see record-high production of corn, wheat, soya beans and rice, according to analysis by data scientist Dr Hannah Ritchie on her Substack, Sustainability by numbers. Looking at agricultural projections from the US Department of Agriculture, Ritchie noted that decades of steady production increases in most crops, “with the exception of sorghum and millet”, are expected to continue. Elsewhere, Australia’s ABC News reported on a new climate risk assessment that identified future farming impacts, including “shifting growing seasons…and damage to crops and livestock from extreme heat”.
VIOLENCE CONTINUES: A new Global Witness report found that 146 land and environmental defenders were killed or disappeared worldwide in 2024, Dialogue Earth reported. About 82% of those cases occurred in Latin America. Although last year had fewer murders compared to 2023, an author told the outlet that “criminalisation and other types of non-lethal attacks are on the rise”. Folha de São Paulo noted that Colombia topped the world ranking for the third consecutive year with 48 killings. The newspaper added that Indigenous peoples were victims of one-third of the attacks.
SUSTAINABLE COCOA: Increasing the cover of trees providing shade for cocoa plantations to 30% could sequester 307m tonnes of CO2-equivalent in west Africa, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief. That figure is enough to counterbalance current cocoa-related emissions in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the study notes.
COP30 INCOMING: The Brazilian government opened a funding programme worth R$12bn (£1.7bn) for “rural producers and cooperatives affected by climate events” between June 2020 and 2025, ((o))eco reported. Low rainfall in 2023 and 2024 “harmed agricultural production, especially soya beans”, the outlet noted. Elsewhere, InfoAmazonia found that deforestation and agricultural expansion means that only seven countries in the world emit more carbon than the Brazilian Amazon. Bloomberg reported that the “top US diplomat” in Brazil is due to visit COP30 host city Belém this week to discuss “deforestation and organised crime in the region”.
BIG MEAT IS WATCHING: An organisation funded by the US meat and dairy industry has “engaged in intrusive surveillance of animal rights groups”, according to DeSmog. The outlet found that the Animal Agriculture Alliance created a database of 2,400 people “linked to animal welfare and environmental groups” and “shared information with livestock companies about the romantic partners and even biological ties” of people in these groups. The organisation told DeSmog: “The Alliance shares relevant information and resources that are helpful to the food community, but does not seek to influence or direct the actions of any organisation or law enforcement.”
Spotlight
Family food at COP30
This week, Carbon Brief’s food, land and nature reporter, Yanine Quiroz, covers an initiative to serve food from the rainforest at the upcoming COP30 in November in Belém, Brazil.
Quiroz attended a press trip to Belém in September, organised by the Nature Conservancy Brazil, the Climate and Society Institute and Nature4Climate.
On the table sit bowls of cocoa, açaí, jatobá, chicory, Vitória-régia jelly and other foods typical of the Brazilian Amazon.
These foods are just a handful of the many grown in Pará by family farmers, quilombola communities, women and young people, who make up the Bragantina Network.
This network, supported by the civil-society organisation Regenera Institute and philanthropic organisation Climate and Society Institute (iCS), has pushed for a commitment from Brazil that 30% of the food served at COP30 will be sourced from family farming, agroecology and Indigenous peoples.
That would inject at least $3.3m Brazilian reals (£463,000) into family farming in Pará, according to Mauricio Alcântara, co-founder of Regenera Institute. He told Carbon Brief:
“I think this is a great achievement for family farmers.”
Alcântara said that at climate COPs, food is often “very poor and disconnected from the local culture”. The Belém summit aims to showcase the great crop diversity of Brazil’s Amazon and the sustainable practices supported by the federal government, he added.
A history of resistance
A 2024 report from Escholas Institute found that 80% of the food that reaches Belém comes from other states in Brazil, even though Pará is located in the “most biodiverse biome in the world”, Alcântara said.
That is why the Bragantina Network helps agroecological producers in Pará gain access to markets through promoting public policies. One such example is the National School Feeding Programme, which feeds 45 million children on a daily basis, Pedro Zanetti, a specialist in land-use transition, food systems and bioeconomy at iCS, told the press.
The Bragantina Network emerged in the 1990s as a movement aimed at rescuing native Amazonian seeds and products, such as cassava and manioc, that had largely disappeared from agricultural practices and diets, Maria de Nazaré Ghirardi, a family farmer and technical advisor for the Bragantina Network, said.
In Pará, there are 80 cooperatives that employ 8,000 families of farmers, according to a mapping analysis done by Regenera Institute, Frontiers of Development Institute and iCS.
Alcântara told the press:
“When we talk about the COP, in addition to generating income for many producers, it is also about showing that this food has a history. A history of climate action, community resilience, women’s empowerment and traditional communities.”
He also said that after COP30, the Bragantina Network will seek the building of public infrastructure to store the foods produced by family farms to supply the metropolitan region of Pará through public policies and the private market.
Watch, read, listen
‘GOLD RUSH’: A Mongabay video looked at the impact of gold mining on local communities, water quality and forests in the Republic of the Congo.
INDIA ISLAND ISSUES: Time reported on how India’s biodiverse Great Nicobar island is threatened by “mega” development projects put forward by the government.
NEW BLEND: The New York Times examined whether hybrid grape varieties can “solve the climate change dilemma for winemakers”.
AGRI IMPACTS: Journalist Michael Grunwald discussed his new book, “We are eating the Earth: The race to fix our food system” on US late-night talk programme, the Daily Show.
New science
- India’s government-incentivised “zero-budget natural farming” programme more than doubled farmers’ profits, improved “bird biodiversity outcomes” and maintained similar crop yields | Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Annual CO2 emissions from forest and shrub fires in China decreased over 2001-22, but increased for cropland fires, especially in the country’s north-east | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
- Watching documentaries can increase public interest in plant-based diets in the US, according to an analysis of search queries linked to six documentaries and consumption data | Nature Food
In the diary
- 24 September: UN special high-level event on climate action | New York
- 26 September: World maritime day
- 29 September: International day of awareness of food loss and waste
- 30 September-1 October: 42nd UN-Water Meeting | Geneva, Switzerland
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 24 September 2025: High Seas Treaty milestone; ‘Erratic’ water cycle; Family food at COP30 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 24 September 2025: High Seas Treaty milestone; ‘Erratic’ water cycle; Family food at COP30
Half of nations have met a UN deadline to report on how they are tackling nature loss within their borders, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
This includes 11 of the 17 “megadiverse nations”, countries that account for 70% of Earth’s biodiversity.
It also includes all of the G7 nations apart from the US, which is not part of the world’s nature treaty.
All 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty were due to submit their seventh “national reports” by 28 February, of which 98 have done so.
Their submissions are supposed to provide key information for an upcoming global report on actions to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, in addition to a global review of progress due to be conducted by countries at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia in October this year.
At biodiversity talks in Rome in February, UN officials said that national reports submitted late will not be included in the global report due to a lack of time, but could still be considered in the global review.
Tracking nature action
In 2022, nations signed a landmark deal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, known as the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF).
In an effort to make sure countries take action at the domestic level, the GBF included an “implementation schedule”, involving the publishing of new national plans in 2024 and new national reports in 2026.
The two sets of documents were to inform both a global report and a global review, to be conducted by countries at COP17 in Armenia later this year. (This schedule mirrors the one set out for tackling climate change under the Paris Agreement.)
The deadline for nations’ seventh national reports, which contain information on their progress towards meeting the 23 targets of the GBF based on a set of key indicators, was 28 February 2026.
According to Carbon Brief’s analysis of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s online reporting platform, 98 out of the 196 countries that are part of the nature convention (50%) submitted on time.
The map below shows countries that submitted their seventh national reports by the UN’s deadline.
This includes 11 of the 17 “megadiverse nations” that account for 70% of Earth’s biodiversity.
The megadiverse nations to meet the deadline were India, Venezuela, Indonesia, Madagascar, Peru, Malaysia, South Africa, Colombia, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Australia.
It also includes all of the G7 nations (France, Germany, the UK, Japan, Italy and Canada), excluding the US, which has never ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The UK’s seventh national report shows that it is currently on track to meet just three of the GBF’s 23 targets.
This is according to a LinkedIn post from Dr David Cooper, former executive secretary of the CBD and current chair of the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee, which coordinated the UK’s seventh national report,
The report shows the UK is not on track to meet one of the headline targets of the GBF, which is to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030.
It reports that the proportion of land protected for nature is 7% in England, 18% in Scotland and 9% in Northern Ireland. (The figure is not given for Wales.)
National plans
In addition to the national reports, the upcoming global report and review will draw on countries’ national plans.
Countries were meant to have submitted their new national plans, known as “national biodiversity strategies and action plans” (NBSAPs), by the start of COP16 in October 2024.
A joint investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian found that only 15% of member countries met that deadline.
Since then, the percentage of countries that have submitted a new NBSAP has risen to 39%.
According to the GBF and its underlying documents, countries that were “not in a position” to meet the deadline to submit NBSAPs ahead of COP16 were requested to instead submit national targets. These submissions simply list biodiversity targets that countries will aim for, without an accompanying plan for how they will be achieved.
As of 2 March, 78% of nations had submitted national targets.
At biodiversity talks in Rome in February, UN officials said that national reports submitted late will not be included in the global report due to a lack of time, but could still be considered in the global review.
Funding ‘delays’
At the Rome talks, some countries raised that they had faced “difficulties in submitting [their national reports] on time”, according to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin.
Speaking on behalf of “many” countries, Fiji said that there had been “technical and financial constraints faced by parties” in the preparation of their seventh national reports.
In a statement to Carbon Brief, a spokesperson for the Global Environment Facility, the body in charge of providing financial and technical assistance to countries for the preparation of their national reports, said “delays in fund disbursement have occurred in some cases”, adding:
“In 2023, the GEF council approved support for the development of NBSAPs and the seventh national reports for all 139 eligible countries that requested assistance. This includes national grants of up to $450,000 per country and $6m in global technical assistance delivered through the UN Development Programme and UN Environment Programme.
“As of the end of January 2026, all 139 participating countries had benefited from technical assistance and 93% had accessed their national grants, with 11 countries yet to receive their funds. Delays in fund disbursement have occurred in some cases, compounded by procurement challenges and limited availability of technical expertise.”
The spokesperson added that the fund will “continue to engage closely with agencies and countries to support timely completion of NBSAPs and the seventh national reports”.
The post Analysis: Half of nations meet UN deadline for nature-loss reporting appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Half of nations meet UN deadline for nature-loss reporting
Greenhouse Gases
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.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
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.
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.
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
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