Published

11 months ago

March 26, 2025

Alice Rush

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

Forest and biodiversity funds

TRANSFORMING FOREST FINANCE: A Forest Declaration Assessment report revealed that global forest finance is “not only falling short, but actively fuelling deforestation”, said Down to Earth. According to the report, for every dollar allocated to forest protection, six dollars go to activities driving deforestation. In 2023 alone, private financial institutions invested $6.1tn in sectors linked to deforestation, while governments spent $500bn in subsidies harmful to nature. Relatedly, several organisations launched a call to action for forest protection. It listed the priority actions for governments in 2025, which include enhancing ambition in forest goals, promoting deforestation-free trade, scaling up forest finance and securing land rights of forest communities.

NEW CONTRIBUTIONS: Brazil’s planned $125bn “Tropical Forests Forever Facility” is on track to be launched at COP30 this year, the Straits Times reported. The outlet said that several countries, including Germany, France and the United Arab Emirates, have expressed interest in contributing to the fund. Brazilian outlet ((o))eco said that the fund “would pay countries for each hectare of rainforest maintained or restored”. Meanwhile, Ireland announced its first donation, of $16m, to Brazil’s Amazon Fund, according to Reuters. The fund, which is already supported by seven other countries, seeks to halt deforestation and boost sustainable development in the Amazon rainforest.

SHORT SCOPE: The Kunming Biodiversity Fund is only supporting six projects of $1.2m, according to the UN Development Programme, cited by Dialogue Earth. The fund was launched by China at the first part of the COP15 biodiversity summit in 2021. The outlet noted that China’s $207m pledge is the only contribution to the fund so far. The fund approved its first nine projects at COP16 last year, with six of them currently underway. Elsewhere, carbon credit registry Verra suspended the activities of four auditors that “overlooked integrity problems” with methane-cutting rice offset projects in China, Climate Home News reported.

England’s new national forest

INTO THE WOODS: BBC News reported that 20m trees will be planted to create England’s first new national forest in three decades. The “Western Forest” will be composed of new and existing woodlands in the south-west of the country, the outlet said. It will be the first of three new national forests to help meet woodland goals, according to the UK government. The 20m trees will be planted over the “coming decades”, the Times noted, and will be spread across farmlands and urban areas. Meanwhile, a new government-led group of major landowners in England met to discuss ways to cooperate on nature restoration goals, Business Green said.

BUDGET WOES: Farming representatives “reacted with fury” after the UK government closed England’s sustainable farming incentive subsidy scheme to new applicants until next year, the Times reported. The newspaper said: “Labour promised £5bn in nature-friendly farming subsidies over this year and the next financial year, but has burnt through the budget already.” The 37,000 existing agreements will still be honoured, the newspaper said. Gavin Lane from the Country Land and Business Association described it as a “disaster for nature recovery”. A “reformed” version of the scheme will be announced this summer, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement.

PESTICIDE CUTS: Meanwhile, the UK government announced plans to cut pesticide use on farms by 10% by 2030 to help “protect bees and other pollinators”, according to the Guardian. The plan, which the newspaper said had been delayed since 2018, included penalties for irresponsible pesticide use. A spokesperson for Pesticide Collaboration, a group of health and environmental organisations, academics, farmers and others, said they were “thrilled” with the plan. The group told the Guardian that they were pleased that it “takes into account both how much of a pesticide is used and how toxic it is”, but added that they had hoped for a higher target.

HABITAT CHANGES: Elsewhere, proposed changes to the UK’s planning system “sparked job security fears among thousands of ecologists”, the Financial Times said. The newspaper explained: “The proposed measures will significantly reduce the number of protected species surveys required for development to be approved, as part of a government drive to speed up delivery of big infrastructure projects”. Ecologists who complete these surveys are concerned about the impacts for their work, according to the FT. The proposed reforms survived their “first Commons test” this week, the Independent said, while the Guardian reported that UK nature charities called on ministers to “urgently strengthen environmental protections in new planning laws”.

Spotlight

Third of US birds should be prioritised for conservation

This week, Carbon Brief looks at the 2025 US State of the Birds report, which assesses the health of bird populations in the country.

Cerulean warbler, a migratory songbird, perched on a branch. Credit: Cerulean Warbler by Justin Lawson; Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library.

Nearly a third of all bird species in the US face a decline in their populations or other threats, such as habitat loss, a new report concluded.

The 2025 State of the Birds report, published by a coalition of conservation organisations under the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, used bird population data over 1970-2022 to identify the avian species most at risk.

The “at-risk” species were those with low population numbers or declining populations, as well as those facing external threats.

These species – 229 in all – “should be prioritised in conservation planning to protect existing populations and build toward population recovery”, the report said.

Conservation concerns

Of the birds studied, 112 species are of “high concern” for conservation.

These species have faced “steep” population losses and have lost at least half of their populations in the last 50 years. They include the whooping crane, chimney swift and California condor. The report termed these species “tipping point species” and called for increased scientific research to determine the drivers of their declines, as well as “immediate help through voluntary and proactive conservation action”.

Another 117 bird species are of “moderate concern”, meaning they have small or declining populations, but have not faced such steep declines as the higher-risk species. This category also includes common birds that have “experienced large losses”, such as sparrows and blackbirds.

The remaining 489 bird species are of “low concern” for conservation, although the report noted that half of these have also experienced long-term declines in population, but “fall short of the thresholds for priority conservation planning”.

Threatened species

The report also looked at the changes in the population of species from different ecosystems.

The chart below shows the population change, since 1970, for eight types of birds classified in the report.

Population trend of eight groups of birds, since 1970. Source: State of the Birds report (2025).

Notably, grassland birds have seen the largest overall declines, losing around 43% of their total population since 1970 and with several species reaching the “tipping point” described in the report. US grasslands are “in collapse”, the report noted, due to expanding agriculture, drought and invasive alien species.

Aridland birds have also lost more than 40% of their population since 1970, the report said. About a quarter of the 31 aridland species analysed, including the scaled quail and rufous-crowned sparrow, are in the “high concern” category. Shorebirds have the largest number of species listed as high concern. The report noted that the largest declines of these species are registered in migratory staging sites along the Atlantic coastline.

By contrast, ducks and waterbirds are the best-placed groups, with 24% and 16% increases in their populations, respectively. The abundance of duck populations coincides with policies aimed at conserving their wetland habitats and other conservation programmes.

Nonetheless, individual species within these groups have also seen declines in population, the report said. Additionally, while their numbers have still improved since 1970, duck populations have dropped steeply over the past decade.

The document also listed various benefits provided by birds. Nearly 100 million people in the US are birdwatchers, a hobby that contributes to the mental well-being of people with depression and reduces symptoms of stress and anxiety. Moreover, birding yields $108bn annually in trips and equipment and generates 1.4m jobs.

The report concluded:

“Restoring bird populations and addressing causes of their declines benefits millions of Americans.”

News and views

COP ‘CONTRADICTION’: Earlier this month, BBC News reported on the building of a new highway “to ease traffic to” COP30 host city Belém that would run through “thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest”. The Brazilian newspaper O Globo quoted scientists who said the 13km road is a “contradiction in the governor’s environmental discourse”. In response, the Brazilian government clarified that the highway is not “part of the 33 infrastructure projects planned for COP30” and said that the initial framing “misinforms readers by misleadingly suggesting a connection between the construction project and the federal government’s actions” preparing for COP30.

US AG CUTS: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) cut two programmes that paid farmers $1bn to provide food to schools and food banks for low-income families, the New York Times reported. It added that the agriculture secretary has “broad discretion” to use the funding “for purposes aligned with the administration’s aims”. A smallholder farmer from Missouri told the newspaper that her production had doubled thanks to those programmes, but now she is concerned about how she will make payments on her debts. The Washington Post reported that the USDA also cancelled an additional $500m in deliveries to food banks.

NATURE DEALS: Colombia rejected a number of debt-for-nature swap offers due to “fears” about the impact they could have on the country’s credit rating, Bloomberg reported. Susana Muhamad, who resigned as Colombia’s environment minister in February, told the outlet that these swaps could “send the wrong message to the markets and make our financial situation worse”. This is also the government’s current stance, a spokesperson for the environment ministry told Bloomberg. (See Carbon Brief’s Q&A for more on these financial agreements, where a developing country’s debt is effectively exchanged for investment in conversation.)

PAYOUT PUSHBACK: Context News reported that farmers in India’s most vulnerable districts can pay higher crop insurance premiums, but receive lower payouts, than farmers in less vulnerable areas. The outlet cited a thinktank report saying that this “undermines the purpose” of India’s government-run crop-insurance scheme, which is the world’s largest. The report, from the Centre for Science and Environment, found that farmers living in “climate-vulnerable districts” faced higher premiums, lower levels of insurance cover and smaller payouts than farmers in lower-risk areas, Context News said.

‘FRAGILE’ MOUNTAINS: “Unprecedented changes” to mountains and glaciers threaten fresh water access for more than two billion people, according to a UN report covered by Carbon Brief. Mountains and glaciers are becoming “increasingly vulnerable” to climate change and unsustainable human activities, the report said. This is having a wide range of impacts on agriculture, local ecosystems and other aspects of life. One expert told Carbon Brief that glacier loss is already causing “loss of life, loss of livelihood and, most importantly of all, the loss of a place that many communities have called home for generations”.

‘METHANE MESS’: Major supermarkets are not reporting on their methane emissions or setting targets to reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas, according to a new report. The analysis, published by environmental campaign groups the Changing Markets Foundation and Mighty Earth, said that there is a “disconnect between retailers’ climate promises and action”. The report analysed climate reports and other data from 20 “top-grossing” food retailers in the US and Europe to assess their progress on mitigating methane emissions. It identified a “significant lack of action” to address methane emissions, with US retailers performing “especially badly”.

Watch, read, listen

REN-EWE-ABLE?: Ambrook Research explored whether grazing sheep under solar panels “count[s] as clean energy”.

OFF THE MENU: A Climate Home News comment article by a former Colombian negotiator argued that food systems have been “sidelined” in the agenda for the COP30 climate summit.

IN DANGER AGAIN: Euractiv covered the increase in wolf hunting in the EU, against a backdrop of “manipulated numbers” and lax regulations.
MARINE LIFE: A “sustainable blue economy” is needed to protect the ocean from “surging” threats, including overfishing and climate change, researchers wrote in Dialogue Earth.

New science

A Nature Communications study found that three-quarters of species’ ranges in border areas between countries are not under protection. The findings, based on analysis of the distributional ranges of almost 20,000 land-based species, show the “urgent” need for cross-border cooperation to meet global biodiversity goals, the researchers wrote.
Grass-fed beef in the US is generally more carbon-intensive than industrially produced beef, according to a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research found that the emissions per kilogram of protein in “even the most efficient” grass-fed beef are 10-25% higher than industrial beef – and as much as 40 times higher than plant protein and other animal alternatives.
Nearly 30% of forest loss in 15 tropical countries over 2001-20 occurred within one kilometre of a road, a Communications Earth and Environment study found. The researchers used datasets of roads and forest loss to produce high-resolution maps of deforestation, highlighting the “urgent need” to protect and restore forests along tropical roads.

In the diary

24-28 March: 20th session of the UN FAO commission on genetic resources for food and agriculture | Rome
30 March: International day of zero waste
2-3 April: 41st UN-Water meeting | Rome

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 26 March 2025: US birds in peril; UK ecologists ‘job fears’; Finance ‘fuelling’ deforestation appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 26 March 2025: US birds in peril; UK ecologists ‘job fears’; Finance ‘fuelling’ deforestation

Greenhouse Gases

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Published

1 day ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

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.

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Greenhouse Gases

Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding

Published

2 days ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

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.

Map of England showing that Richard Tice's Boston and Skegness constituency is set to receive at least £55m for flood defences between 2024 and 2026 — Flood-defence spending on new and replacement schemes in England in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The government notes that, as Environment Agency accounts have not been finalised and approved, the investment data is “provisional and subject to change”. Some schemes cover multiple constituencies and are not included on the map. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

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.

Chart showing that Conservative, Reform and Liberal Democrat constituencies are the top recipients of flood defence spending — Top 10 English constituencies by FCERM funding in 2024-25 and 2025-26. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

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

Greenhouse Gases

Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate

Published

3 days ago

February 25, 2026

Alice Rush

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

Food inflation on the rise

DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.

Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “Cropped” email newsletter. A fortnightly digest of food, land and nature news and views. Sent to your inbox every other Wednesday.

NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.

‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.

El Niño looms

NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”

WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”

CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.

News and views

DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.

Spotlight

Nature talks inch forward

This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.

The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.

The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.

The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.

Money talks

Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.

Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.

Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.

Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).

Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:

“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”

Monitoring and reporting

Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.

Parties do so through the submission of national reports.

Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.

A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.

Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:

“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”

Watch, read, listen

NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.

COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.

HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.

‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.

New science

Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food