Published

9 months ago

September 17, 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

Amazon summit leaves observers ‘frustrated’

MISSING THE TARGET: The fifth summit of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) took place last Friday, with the release of the Bogotá Declaration coming the next day, Agência Brasil reported. The meeting was a “platform to update the commitments of the countries” that share the Amazon rainforest, the outlet said. The declaration “emphasised the urgency of coordinated action against deforestation and biodiversity loss”, but there was an “absence of clearer targets”, which “frustrated” observers and civil-society groups. Agência Brasil also said that the “issue of energy transition and fossil-fuel exploration” was divisive at the summit.

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INDIGENOUS INCLUSION: Ahead of the meeting, Indigenous groups were “demanding that oil be left underground…[and] that the Amazon be declared the world’s first no-go zone for fossil-fuel exploration and exploitation”, EFE Verde reported. According to Stand.earth, the summit “strengthen[ed] Indigenous participation” despite “fail[ing]” to meet the fossil-fuel demands. The summit resulted in the creation of the Amazonian Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (MAPI), which Stand.earth explained “establishes a co-governance structure” for ACTO where each country is represented by both a government and an Indigenous delegate.

FUND THE FACILITY: Another element of the Bogotá Declaration was a pledge to support the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), Climate Home News reported. The outlet added that the declaration “invites” countries to “announce substantial contributions” in order to “guarantee the fund’s quick activation”. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said: “We’re fed up with promises…I want to see who’s going to put up the money to keep the forest standing.” Meanwhile, ((o))eco reported that Brazil saw an 84% increase in international climate finance from 2019-20 to 2021-22, but forests received just 2%.

Wildfires continue to burn

NEW EU RECORD: Wildfires have ravaged more than 1m hectares in the EU in 2025, the largest area since records began in 2006, according to an analysis by Agence France-Presse. The news agency analysed data from the European Forest Fire Information System and found that Spain, Cyprus, Germany and Slovakia have been the hardest hit over the past two decades. Additionally, satellites revealed that wildfires across the Iberian peninsula released 13m tonnes of carbon dioxide this year – six times larger than 2022 levels, El Periódico reported.

HARDEST HIT: Six firefighters died while combatting “devastating wildfires exacerbated by an enduring heatwave” in Spain and Portugal, according to France24. More than 343,000 hectares were “ravage[d]” this year in Spain, setting a new national record, the outlet said. Scientists identified the primary cause of the fires in both countries as an “overabundance of flammable vegetation on abandoned land and authorities’ failure to take preventive measures,” which prompted Spain’s environmental prosecutor to initiate an “investigation into the lack of prevention plans”, Politico added.

US FIRES: Wildfires in California and Oregon led to the evacuation of thousands of homes, the Associated Press reported. In Oregon, the fire began Thursday and “grew quickly amid hot, gusty conditions”, the newswire said. A “sweltering” heatwave has hospitalised people in the western US, it added. Mongabay covered the “scientific standoff” surrounding the “active management” of forests, which consists of using controlled burning and thinning of forests to promote regeneration and resilience. It added that forest managers are “grappl[ing] with the growing effects of climate change”.

News and views

PRIVATE SECTOR CALL: Nature loss will reduce UK GDP by 5% without a “greater effort” from the private sector to halt the decline, the Guardian said. A report from the Green Finance Institute and WWF said that companies in many sectors can receive economic returns from investment in nature. The outlet noted that some businesses “are failing to reform or are unaware of the impact of their actions on nature and the climate”. The report listed suggestions for companies to take action on nature decline.

SOLAR SLOWDOWN: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it will “heighten scrutiny of some solar and wind projects” on farmland across the country, reported Reuters. The agency said it will stop funding larger renewable energy facilities and will not allow the use of foreign-made solar panels. Inside Climate News said the agency had expressed concern about the possible expansion of wind and solar facilities on productive farmland. However, the outlet cited a 2024 USDA analysis finding that renewables occupy 0.05% of the 897m acres of pasture and cropland in the country.

FISHERY REFORM: Ghanaian president John Dramani Mahama signed a “sweeping” fisheries and aquaculture reform act into law last week that the government believes will “ensure sustainability…and better protection for the country’s fishing communities”, according to Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. One provision in the bill is an expansion of the country’s inshore exclusion zone, which prevents industrial trawling ships from encroaching on artisanal fishing grounds. News Ghana reported that the law is “designed to address EU trade sanctions”, which threaten the country’s $425m annual seafood exports.

POLARISED POLICY: A new forest land policy in the Philippines has been touted by officials as a “major shift in forest governance”, but has been questioned by civil society organisations, Mongabay reported. Under the policy, farmers are able to carry out multiple different land uses – including reforestation, ecotourism, conservation and commercial use – in designated forest areas. The secretary of the Philippines’s environment department said the reform is an attempt to “unlock the economic potential” of the country’s forests and scale up sustainable investment. The outlet said that environmental groups warned of the policy resulting in forest degradation, the displacement of Indigenous peoples and greenwashing.

PARAGUAYAN PLANTATIONS: Apple purchased carbon credits associated with the use of agrochemicals harmful to communities on eucalyptus plantations in Paraguay, a joint investigation for Consenso and Climate Tracker revealed. The investigation used documents, field visits and satellite images to show that the forestry company selling these carbon credits does not “comply with agrochemical regulations”. It added that eucalyptus monocultures cover more than 300,000 hectares in Paraguay. Residents have pointed out the risks of wildfire due to “persistent drought” conditions in the country over the past five years. Apple had not responded to the allegations at the time of the investigation’s publication.

Spotlight

Extreme heat could triple lost work hours by century’s end

This week, Carbon Brief covers a new UN-backed report that examines the impacts of climate change on labour productivity and health.

Manual labourers, such as farmworkers and fisherfolk, are “already” being impacted by rising temperatures, according to two UN agencies.

A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) examined the effects of climate change on heat stress in the workplace and offered technical guidance for employers, workers and policymakers.

The report called occupational heat stress a “global societal challenge”.

It also noted that both the direct and indirect impacts of environmental heat stress will worsen and spread geographically as the world continues to warm.

In a press conference prior to the release of the report, Dr Rüdiger Krech, interim director of the WHO’s environment, climate change and migration programme, said the report offered the “most comprehensive evidence yet on how rising temperatures are harming workers”.

‘Adverse consequences’

In 1969, the WHO published a technical report on the potential health threats of working under environmental heat stress. The report concluded that “knowledge relating to occupational heat exposures is inadequate in many respects”. It recommended several priorities for further research.

The new report updated the 1969 report with decades’ worth of research showing that workplace heat stress “directly threatens workers’ ability to live healthy and productive lives and leads subsequently to worsening poverty and socioeconomic inequality”.

It found that around half of the global population currently experiences “adverse consequences of high environmental temperatures”. Agricultural work is “often regarded as [one of] the highest-risk occupations” for work-related heat illness, it said.

Farmworkers typically work with little or no shade during the hottest hours of the day. Some groups of agricultural workers – such as those who manually spray pesticides or other agrochemicals – face added risk of heat stress due to the protective gear that they must wear.

The report warned that, while several early warning systems are in place to protect people during heatwaves, these systems may not be adequate to protect workers, who differ in their exposure to heat and their ability to adapt.

Raising the risk

The new report also examined the changing risks of occupational heat exposure in the context of climate change.

Citing the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it noted that each additional 0.5C of warming “significantly raises the risk of longer and more severe heatwaves”. The largest relative shifts will take place in the temperate mid-latitudes, but the frequency of dangerous events will also increase in the tropics, which have the “greatest workplace heat stress problems at present”.

Under the emissions scenario that aligns with current national climate policies, the worst-affected countries will face annual work hour losses of up to 11% by the end of the century – up from 2-4% today, the report said.

Previous research has found that 3C of warming could reduce global labour capacity by up to 50%, driving up food prices and requiring higher levels of agricultural employment to make up the shortfall.

Krech told the press conference:

“Protecting workers from extreme heat is not only a health priority, it is essential to building resilient, equal and sustainable societies in a warming world.”

Watch, read, listen

ACCESS ISSUES: Civil Eats covered a group in northern California that works to bridge the gap between emergency-relief organisations and local food-systems workers during emergencies.

DELVING INTO THE DEPTHS: NPR Shortwave addressed the importance of mapping the entire seafloor for “improving human life”, from tsunami alerts through to renewable energy.

CONSEQUENCES IN CALIFORNIA: A California state legislator and the president of the California Farm Bureau wrote in the New York Times how immigration raids on farmworkers increase food waste and drive up prices.
‘MESSY GARDENS’: A CBC News video explored how having a “messy garden” can bring benefits for biodiversity and contribute to mitigating climate change.

New science

A study published in One Earth found that the “planetary boundary” of ecosystem integrity may have already been breached on up to 60% of the Earth’s land surface. Researchers modelled ecological disruption and found that 38% of the Earth is “already at high risk of degradation”.
Research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that if global temperatures rise 2.3C above pre-industrial temperatures, soil bacterial and fungal diversity would be reduced by 16 and 19%, respectively. It also found that soil organic carbon would drop by 18% under that level of warming.
Eating a diet of biodiverse, plant-based foods can have “modest benefits” for both sufficient nutrition and environmental health, according to new research published in Nature Food. The study found that diversity of animal-sourced foods was inversely associated with both greenhouse gas emissions and land use.

In the diary

18-29 August: Second session of the preparatory commission for the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction | New York
31 August-5 September: Africa Food Systems Summit | Dakar, Senegal
2-5 September: Subregional dialogue on biodiversity monitoring and reporting | Bangkok, Thailand
14-18 September: International Mountain Conference | Innsbruck, Austria

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 27 August 2025: ‘Frustrating’ Amazon summit; Workplace heat hazards; Record European wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 27 August 2025: ‘Frustrating’ Amazon summit; Workplace heat hazards; Record European wildfires

Climate Change

UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts

Published

8 hours ago

June 23, 2026

Alice Rush

The head of the United Nations has launched an initiative aimed at holding artificial intelligence companies accountable for their exploding environmental impacts, including their carbon emissions, the amount of water and land used for data centres, and the energy they consume.

During a speech at London Climate Action Week on Tuesday, António Guterres noted that AI can accelerate climate solutions, among other key challenges, and said its potential must be harnessed.

“But AI is also hungry for land, water and power,” he emphasised, adding that the data centres needed to run AI models already consume more electricity than most countries.

The UN Secretary-General repeated a call he first made in July 2025 for all big AI companies to commit to power every data centre with renewable energy by 2030.

Some tech firms have announced they are sourcing or building out clean energy to run their hubs, but growing power demand is also contributing to gas-fired generation in the US, according to data from Global Energy Monitor.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that data centres are set to more than double the emissions from the electricity they use between 2024 and 2030 in a high-growth scenario. But AI’s use could lead to far larger reductions in the energy sector through efficiency gains if adopted widely.

Jun 23, 2026

Energy

UN chief says fossil fuel industry must cut methane for warming “relief”

The UN Secretary-General urges drastic reductions in methane emissions, starting with the energy sector, to limit an expected overshoot of global warming beyond 1.5C

Read more
Jun 22, 2026

Comment

China’s coal-chemicals boom risks repeating the mistakes of the past

By reviving the problematic industry in the name of energy security, China runs the risk of higher emissions, stranded assets and setting back its ambitions as a clean energy leader

Read more
Jun 19, 2026

Oceans

Mombasa ocean summit drives progress on marine protection, but threats persist

At the 11th Our Ocean conference in Kenya, its founder John Kerry says the ocean must become central to climate solutions and needs to be looked after

Read more

‘No more hidden costs’

Proposing the new “AI Environmental Transparency Initiative” on Tuesday, Guterres also urged big AI firms companies to measure and publicly disclose the full environmental impact of their systems, including their carbon, water, and land footprints.

“No more hidden costs. No more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it. It is time to come clean,” he said in a major speech on responding to the world’s twin climate and energy crises. “If AI is to help build a better future, it must be honest about what it costs us now.”

A report issued earlier this month by the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health noted that most current assessments of AI’s environmental cost focus on carbon emissions from training models. But, it added, this misses a substantial part of the picture.

Every kilowatt-hour of electricity for AI also carries a water footprint, from cooling and generation, and a land footprint, from infrastructure and supply chains, it said.

Explainer: Will AI data centres make or break the energy transition?

The report estimated that AI data centres globally could consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity annually by 2030 – more power than all but five countries and roughly twice France’s 2025 consumption.

Offsetting this carbon footprint by 2030 would require growing some 6.7 billion trees over 10 years, it calculated. Producing power for the data centres would consume water equal to the basic needs of 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa for a year and take up land of more than 14,500 square kilometers, roughly twice the Jakarta metropolitan area.

The European Union said earlier this month it will develop minimum energy-efficiency standards for both new and existing data centres, with a “needs assessment” due by 2027, Reuters reported. It’s also planning ⁠a sustainability label for data centres, covering criteria including water use and clean energy supply – but that has been delayed.

US community push-back

Asked after his speech what the response had been, the UN chief said “we’ll see”, without giving more details.

But, he argued that, in his view, the push for transparency “is perfectly reasonable and even positive for the AI industry, because eventually some people will say that they consume much more than they really do”. “I think the truth is essential,” he added.

Concerns about the environmental impacts of AI and the infrastructure needed to run the technology have led to growing opposition in some communities, especially in the US.

This month, Monterey Park in Los Angeles County was the first city in the United States to enact a citywide prohibition on data centres through a voter-approved ballot measure. The developers behind a proposed centre in the area had already pulled the project in April amid an increasingly hostile local environment and regulatory uncertainty.

The vote that stopped a data center: US communities query resource-hungry AI

According to nonprofit Data Center Watch, around $64 billion-worth of data centre projects nationwide were delayed or blocked between May 2024 and March 2025 as communities pushed back against them.

Industry lobby groups argue that data centres can provide economic benefits in their host communities. According to the US-based Data Center Coalition, which represents big operators and developers, data centres generate tax revenue, support construction and technical jobs, and provide infrastructure needed for cloud computing, scientific research and AI development.

The industry has also challenged claims that data centers necessarily raise electricity costs for households.

Force for good?

The UN chief said benefits can be few in the places that are home to the data centre, while “communities are often left in the dark about the environmental impact of the infrastructure rising around them”.

Guterres said companies have an “obligation” to be clear and open about the services they are offering but also the level of resources they require.

“Transparency is essential for the decisions that communities must make – and transparency is essential even for the future of artificial intelligence, and to make sure that artificial intelligence is essentially a force for good,” he told an audience of climate professionals in London

A senior UN official told journalists ahead of Tuesday’s announcement that the AI industry has started to talk about and disclose some of their impacts, but those efforts are not yet comprehensive enough.

The hope is that the new initiative will “encourage the industry to come together and take further action on it”, the official said.

The post UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts appeared first on Climate Home News.

UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts

Climate Change

Prof Philippe Ciais: The world’s most highly cited climate scientist

Published

11 hours ago

June 23, 2026

Alice Rush

Phillipe Ciais has spent almost four decades researching the planet’s carbon cycle – and the ways in which humans have been impacting its balance.

Based at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) on the outskirts of Paris, Ciais (pronounced “see-es”) has been listed as an author on more than 1,300 peer-reviewed studies.

In fact, analysis of Carbon Brief’s Cosmos database reveals that – by some distance – he is the most highly cited climate scientist in the world.

In a wide-ranging interview, he discusses:

The post Prof Philippe Ciais: The world’s most highly cited climate scientist appeared first on Carbon Brief.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/prof-philippe-ciais-the-worlds-most-highly-cited-climate-scientist/

Climate Change

Cited 23 June 2026: Project Cosmos launch | Science ‘under attack’ at Bonn | Emissions inequality

Published

12 hours ago

June 23, 2026

Alice Rush

Welcome to Cited, your essential guide to new climate research.

In the news

SCIENCE ‘UNDER ATTACK’: Climate Home News reported that “dozens” of countries called out “coordinated attacks” aimed at “undermining the role of climate science” at UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, last week. According to the outlet, the countries said that UN decision-making had to remain based on the “best available science”, including the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One negotiator said that India and Saudi Arabia “opposed calls in draft texts to encourage scientific work on scenarios that would minimise the magnitude and duration of any overshoot of 1.5C”, the article noted. For more, read Carbon Brief’s summary of the negotiations.

REPORT OPPOSITION: “Oil industry allies” in the US are targeting a report on extreme weather attribution, due to be published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, according to Politico. The outlet reported that the “heightened scrutiny – which involves a secretive opposition research group scouring scientists’ emails – has prompted two people to leave the 15-person panel tasked with producing the report”. Separately, the Guardian reported that the Trump administration has “reversed its decision” to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $368m deep-sea observation system.

SUPER EL NIÑO: BBC News reported that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Niño had “officially begun”. Forecasts suggest the event could be among the “strongest ever recorded”, it added. Meanwhile, a “vigorous debate” is taking place about whether climate change is making the El Niño phenomenon more intense, according to the New York Times. The outlet explained that some scientists see the run of “comparatively strong” El Niño events in recent decades as an indication that “climate change is supercharging El Niño”. However, it added that “others say there is no clear evidence to support that theory”.

Research picks

Water

Global sea level rise has nearly tripled the number of days since the 1970s when coastal water levels have surpassed average tide gauge readings | Science Advances
As the Arctic warms, increased iceberg activity could “reshape” deep-sea habitats and “elevate” navigational hazards as maritime traffic expands | Nature
Sea level rise has quadrupled the frequency of extreme coastal sea-level events since the year 1900 | Nature Climate Change

Inequality

The top 10% of consumers are responsible for $1.7-5.7tn of environmental damage each year, surpassing international climate and biodiversity financing gaps | Communications Sustainability
Calculating an individual’s emissions based on their asset ownership suggests that wealthier people are responsible for an even higher share of global greenhouse gas emissions than indicated by past studies | Nature Climate Change
A plan that places equity at the “centre” of climate adaptation efforts in cities is needed to address the “stark disparities” between “affluent” and “disadvantaged” urban communities’ ability to prepare for extreme heat | PLOS Climate

Extremes

In the western US, 42% of burned area over 2001-24 occurred during, and immediately following, heatwaves | Science Advances
“Hot-to-wet” whiplash events have become more frequent across Australia over the past century, with south-eastern Australia emerging as a hotspot | Journal of Climate
Rapid urbanisation, combined with more intense rainfall from tropical cyclones, have increased people’s exposure to “extreme” rainfall from tropical cyclones across China | Journal of Hydrometeorology

Captured

Chart showing that population growth and a warming world have driven up the number of people exposed to extreme heat since the 1970s

One billion additional people face at least one day of “extreme heat stress” every year compared to the 1970s, according to research published in Nature Climate Change.

The chart shows changes in “strong” (top), “very strong” (middle) and “extreme” (bottom) heat stress, defined as a “universal thermal climate index” above 32C, 38C and 46C, respectively. The grey bar shows the percentage of the global population exposed to at least one, 30 or 90 days of heat stress in 1970. The light and dark blue bars show the number of additional people experiencing heat stress over 2015-24 due to population growth and rising global temperatures, respectively.

10%

Equivalent damage to the UK’s GDP caused by climate change if global warming reaches 4C by 2100, according to new research in Nature Climate Change. The study estimates a range of 2-20%.

Spotlight

Introducing: Project Cosmos

Carbon Brief explains how it built a major new database of climate science research and unveils a new ranking of the 500 most highly cited publications, authors and institutions in climate science.

This week, Carbon Brief launched Project Cosmos – the world’s largest and most complete database of climate change research.

The database features more than 1.8m academic papers, books and reports, capturing the vast body of human knowledge about climate change that has accumulated over more than a century of academic study.

The climate science “universe” is based on reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are recognised as the world’s most authoritative summaries of the latest climate science.

Since its first report was published in 1990, humanity’s knowledge about human-caused climate change has ballooned. The IPCC has published six sets of reports in total – each one longer than the last.

In total, IPCC reports reference more than 100,000 other papers, books and reports. This is the core of our climate science universe. Carbon Brief then built on this core, by looking at four other sources of data. Read more about how the Cosmos database was created here.

Every single publication in the Cosmos database is linked to at least one other through references. Visualising these links reveals a “galaxy” of references. In the image above, each colour and cluster reveals different topics and densities of research. Explore the galaxy in an interactive map here.

Cosmos 500

As part of an initial wave of preliminary analysis to demonstrate the scope of the Project Cosmos database, Carbon Brief has ranked the 500 most highly cited publications, authors and institutions in the database.

The most highly cited climate scientist is Prof Philippe Ciais, who has spent almost four decades researching the planet’s carbon cycle – and the ways in which humans have been impacting its balance. Carbon Brief recently interviewed Ciais in Paris.

The US tops the tables for the most highly-cited authors and institutions. Almost half of the 500 most highly-cited authors are from US institutions. This raises particular concerns for the future of climate science, as American climate scientists and institutions are coming under attack under the Trump administration.

Experts from global south countries account for only 4% of all authors in the Cosmos 500. China stands out as the most highly-cited global south country. Meanwhile, only 10% of authors in the Cosmos 500 are women.

There are many possibilities for future avenues of research using the Cosmos database. Over time, the database could be used to reveal, for example, how interest in different areas of climate science has changed over time, plus identify potential knowledge gaps and, thus, opportunities for future research.

Carbon Brief invites researchers – including academics, journalists and analysts – to submit their own proposals for co-authored studies, literature reviews and analytical projects.

Preprints to watch

Carbon Brief’s pick of new papers still going through peer review

Regional reductions in aerosol emissions can “temporarily amplify” the likelihood of record-breaking heat events | Environmental Research: Climate
Analysis of Reddit posts suggests the Fridays for Future movement has created “wider awareness” of global warming by drawing attention to climate change and “climate actions” | npj climate action
Periods of simultaneous low wind and solar power generation, known as “renewable energy droughts”, will “intensify progressively” as the planet warms | Nature portfolio

Noticeboard

28-30 June: Seventh global conference on climate and sustainable development goal synergies, Bangkok, Thailand
29 June-1 July: Exeter climate conference, Exeter, UK
29 June-1 July: National Academy of Sciences hybrid workshop on seabed critical mineral resources, Irvine, US
30 June: Submission deadline for abstracts for MedCLIVAR conference, scheduled for 21-25 September in Limassol, Cyprus
30 June: Application deadline for postdoctoral position in ice-ocean interactions at the Physics Laboratory of Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon | Salary: €3,071-4,714 per month. Location: Lyon, France
30 June: Submissions open for abstracts for the pan-African conference on environment, climate change and health, scheduled for 21-24 October in Nairobi, Kenya
8 July: Application deadline for position as research officer in climate science and law at the Grantham Research Institute | Salary: £43,277-51,714. Location: London, UK
10 July: Application deadline for position as associate or senior editor at Nature Water | Salary: Unknown. Location: Shanghai, Beijing or Milan