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
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
Climate Change
A Data Center Could Be Coming to an Upstate New York Town, and Residents Are Speaking Out
The town board in Lansing is considering a temporary ban on large-scale development that could delay construction.
Residents in an upstate New York community are trying to prevent construction of a planned data center by approving a year-long ban on large-scale development.
A Data Center Could Be Coming to an Upstate New York Town, and Residents Are Speaking Out
Bill Gates’ foundation has promised to invest $1.4 billion over four years to help smallholder farmers adapt to the worsening effects of climate change – a commitment that comes just a week after a new memo from the tech billionaire drew sharp criticism from the climate community.
The funding from the Gates Foundation will help expand access for farmers across sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia to innovations that strengthen rural livelihoods and food systems, it said in a statement. These include mobile apps offering tailored weather information for planting decisions, drought and heat-resistant crops and livestock, and efforts to restore degraded land.
The pledge announced on Friday builds on a previous $1.4-billion commitment announced three years ago at COP27 that, the foundation says, is already helping “millions” of farmers.
“Smallholder farmers are feeding their communities under the toughest conditions imaginable,” said Bill Gates, who chairs the foundation. “We’re supporting their ingenuity with the tools and resources to help them thrive – because investing in their resilience is one of the smartest, most impactful things we can do for people and the planet.”
Shift from focus on “near-term” emission goals
The investment supports Bill Gates’ vision of “prioritizing climate investments for maximum human impact”, as the Microsoft co-founder outlined in a 17-page memo he published last week, according to the foundation.
In his missive, Gates acknowledged that climate change is “a very important problem”, but called for a “strategic pivot” away from focusing too much on “near-term emission goals” – something that, he argued, is diverting funds away from efforts to eradicate poverty.
“Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries,” he wrote.
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The memo has drawn ire from many climate scientists who, while agreeing with some of Gates’ central observations, have condemned his overall framing.
Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, said the world has ample resources to both reduce planet-heating emissions and help people adapt to climate change – if the political will exists.
“We don’t necessarily live in a zero-sum world,” he said in a webinar organised by Covering Climate Now, which supports media coverage of climate change. “It’s a policy problem, not a resource problem”.
Hausfather added that when climate finance is directed toward helping the world’s poorest countries curb their emissions, it might be better spent on adaptation or disease eradication instead. “But that’s not the fundamental thing standing in the way of solving climate change,” he said. “That is emissions mostly coming from the rich countries.”
“Straw man” argument criticised
Experts have also expressed frustration over Gates’ perceived “black-and-white” approach to climate impacts, which has been seized upon by notable climate deniers.
In his memo, the billionaire wrote that “although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise”.
Picking up on Gates’ words – and misrepresenting them – US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue.”
Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said Gates’ framing relied on a “straw man” argument.
“I’ve not seen a single scientific paper that ever posited the human race will become extinct due to climate change,” she said. But Gates “is speaking about it as if scientists are saying that,” she added. “What we are saying is that suffering increases with each tenth of a degree of warming.”
The post After climate memo row, Gates gives $1.4bn to help farmers cope with a hotter world appeared first on Climate Home News.
After climate memo row, Gates gives $1.4bn to help farmers cope with a hotter world
To many people, Brazil conjures up images of the endless Amazon River, lush tropical rainforest and breathtaking wildlife. In a country of its size, this picture can remain true while also containing a more complex and changing set of realities.
For example, climate change, high water demand and human activity are also leading to increased desert-like conditions. One recent study found that in the past 30 years, there has been a 30% expansion in dryland habitat across Brazil. One of the most affected areas includes the state of Pará, a major part of the Amazon rainforest and home to Belém, which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit.
Water shortages
Brazil’s northeast region is particularly noted for its semi-arid landscape and water scarcity.
Pernambuco, a small state by Brazilian standards, extends from the eastern Atlantic coast into the region’s interior for around 450 miles. Water availability is a constant concern for many communities across the state, especially family farms which are significant contributors to the regional economy.
“One of the main problems people are facing here is the growing frequency of droughts and the irregularity of rainfall. As a result, producing food has become extremely difficult,” said Carlos Magno, a coordinator at Centro Sabiá, a non-profit organisation in the area.
“We’re also experiencing stronger heatwaves, which have been causing the death of many trees and affecting the local environment even more,” Magno added.
He went on to describe how family farming in the region is almost entirely dependent on rain to grow food. There are no irrigation systems or wells to support communities so when the rains fail, it means less food on the table.
Addressing these concerns is a key objective of an ongoing project supported by the Adaptation Fund’s Climate Innovation Accelerator (AFCIA), administered by the UN Development Programme and carried out by Centro Sabiá.
Transforming lives
Centro Sabiá has an intimate knowledge of how family farming operates in the region. It spent time consulting with communities to better understand their concerns, and hearing their ideas on how to combat water scarcity.
The project is implementing simple, yet affordable, climate solutions which are improving the livelihoods of local people. One intervention being explored is to recycle wastewater to help with the growth of new agroforestry plots. The water – taken from washing or cleaning – is filtered and then redirected for use on plots that combine crop farming with tree planting. The technique is designed to improve soil health, cut pollution and improve biodiversity.
“The water that used to pollute the soil now nourishes crops and trees,” added Magno. “When people realise that their available water is limited, but they can reuse it to grow food, it changes everything.”
On the project, 130 families, totalling over 31,000 people, introduced greywater reuse across 30 new agroforestry plots. The systems are low-cost and simple to implement within a farm’s existing infrastructure. They can be used for years with the initial access to technical support, and, as a result, are now treating millions of litres of water each year.
The impacts in Pernambuco have been immediate. Each family is estimated to be saving US$350 a year on water, and earning over US$300 a month from selling agroforestry products.
Making farming greener
Agroforestry has been identified as a sustainable alternative to industrial farming.
According to some scientists, the Amazon rainforest is able to recycle up to 5 litres of water per square metre a day. By contrast, land used for pasture is only able to recycle 1.5 litres. This helps to explain why some previously biodiverse areas that have been converted for cattle ranching and farming are now becoming drier.
Agroforestry seeks to redress the balance by including trees in the agricultural process, bringing more moisture – and carbon – back into the soil. The response to these techniques from people across Pernambuco has so far been overwhelmingly positive.
“Nature is doing really well for us,” reported Cilene, a local participant in the project. In a recent interview with the Adaptation Fund, she explained how in the past, “we bought things with pesticides. Now with this project we are learning to have better, healthier food.”
“Compared to how we were living before, we see better results and sustainable benefits,” she added.
Francisca Ferraz de Aquino Silva, a farmer in Calumbi, agrees. “This project was a real turning point in my life,” she said.
“After the technology arrived, I realised it was possible to make better use of water, without waste, and to produce food while improving the soil. It was a new opportunity in my life,” she told Centro Sabiá.
“Agroforestry reduces the need for heavy labour. You work without much effort, it brings economic return, and nature works in your favour…I saw that it was possible to live in semi-arid conditions with dignity and prosperity – planting biodiversity and working with agroforestry systems,” she added.
What this means for COP30
As heads of state discuss the state of the planet in Belém, they only need look around at the surrounding rainforest to see how vital a role it plays.
Human development and extreme weather are putting significant pressure on nature and people’s livelihoods. If these drier conditions persist, the rainforest could be turned into savannah, which some scientists believe will create further dry weather and drought.
But the lessons from Belém’s southerly neighbour over in Pernambuco could provide an answer.
“Policymakers and delegates attending COP30 have a lot to learn from the project,” commented Magno. “It was built with civil society. It was carried out with the contribution of organisations and people who work every day with local communities.”
“By the end of the [climate] conference, the decisions and commitments must truly guarantee that adaptation resources reach the communities that are struggling every day to adapt to climate change,” he continued.
“It is crucial for funds from international climate agreements and adaptation policies to reach the local level, where they are needed the most.”
Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK
The post COP30: Brazil is drying up despite its rich natural resources appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP30: Brazil is drying up despite its rich natural resources
A Data Center Could Be Coming to an Upstate New York Town, and Residents Are Speaking Out
After climate memo row, Gates gives $1.4bn to help farmers cope with a hotter world
COP30: Brazil is drying up despite its rich natural resources
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