Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
Key developments
Protecting the Amazon
ILLEGAL FARMING: Illegal cattle ranching is occurring in large areas of Brazil’s Arariboia territory, despite being prohibited on Indigenous lands across the country, a Mongabay investigation revealed. The investigation also found that killings of Guajajara Indigenous people inhabiting the region increased in mid-2023, coinciding with the construction of an unlicensed airstrip near the Buriticupu River. “Our research reveals a pattern of killings of indigenous Guajajara amid the expansion of cattle ranching and illegal logging in and around Arariboia,” Mongabay pointed out.
OTHER THREATS: Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands have already broken records for the number of fires this year, even before the technical start of the fire season, ABC News reported. Speaking to the press, environment minister Marina Silva attributed the fires to human activity, climate change and the prolonged effects of El Niño. At the same time, InfoAmazonia reported on research from the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA), which found that climate change has led to increasingly wetter and drier seasons in the city of Manaus, Brazil, at the confluence of the Negro and Amazon rivers. This poses a threat to the food security of riverine communities and has resulted in increased fish and dolphin deaths, the outlet said. It adds that the Amazon river recorded its lowest level since 1902 in October last year, yet it has also had “severe flooding with increasing frequency in recent years”.
AMAZON FORUM: A march by activists and Indigenous leaders from the nine countries of the Amazon region at the Pan-Amazon Social Forum (FOSPA) called for the defence of the Amazon, Inside Climate News reported. The marchers felt “disconnected” from international negotiations, such as the UN summits on climate change and biodiversity, and argued that government talks “have failed”, the article said. The four-day FOSPA meeting “is one of the few spaces for us to have our own dialogues”, said Vanuza Abacatal, the leader of the Quilombola community in Pará, Brazil. Inter Press Service added that those attending the forum agreed to continue defending Amazonian territories from deforestation and other extractive activities. A Pan-Amazonian women’s rights court was also held and revealed a systematic pattern of dispossession of territories suffered by women and their families, the article noted.
Agri climate impacts
KEY CROPS HIT: Extreme weather is delaying crop planting and impacting yields around the world, Reuters reported. “Vast swathes” of farmland in Russia, China, India and parts of the US recently experienced “extremely hot conditions and below-normal rainfall”, the outlet said. Low rainfall forecast for July and August in the “breadbasket” Black Sea region could “stunt sunflower and corn yields”, the newswire noted. Meanwhile, the Financial Times said that sales of olive oil “plunged” in parts of the Mediterranean due to “steep price rises”. The FT added: “Droughts and heatwaves exacerbated by climate change have knocked olive oil output in Spain, the world’s largest producer, as well as other major producing countries such as Italy and Greece, creating a global shortfall.”
INTENSE RAIN AND DROUGHTS: Thousands of agricultural workers are dealing with the aftermath of a “downpour that lasted a week” in El Salvador and other parts of Central America last month, the Inter Press Service reported. The region “suffers almost year after year from the onslaught of extreme rains or prolonged droughts”, the outlet said. One cattle rancher from El Salvador told the outlet that his herd declined from 150 to 40 in recent years due to heavy rainfall and other extremes. Meanwhile, the Guardian looked at the impact of drought on farmers in the Italian island of Sicily, where “the desert is encroaching” and rainfall has dropped by more than 40% since 2003.
WILTING: In India, recent extreme heat and rainfall impacted a range of crops, including flowers. Mongabay reported that flower vendors are selling less as “erratic rain and heat has led to damaged crops and produce being sold for a lesser price”. A flower seller told the outlet: “In recent years, with excessive rain on some days and regular exposure to water, the life span of flowers has reduced from two-three days to one day.” Context News reported on the “double blow” India’s intense heat has on fruit and vegetable sellers – “more of their produce is spoilt, while buyers stay at home and [are] ordering online”.
Spotlight
Denmark’s new agriculture tax
Last week, Denmark proposed plans for a world-first carbon tax on agriculture by 2030.
New Zealand recently scrapped similar plans for a so-called “burp tax” to cut livestock emissions.
In this spotlight, Carbon Brief explains this tax and what it will mean for Denmark’s climate targets. A full article on this topic will be published on Carbon Brief’s website later this week.
How will Denmark’s meat tax work?
Under the plans, landowners will pay a levy based on their emissions from livestock, fertiliser, forestry and the disturbance of carbon-rich agricultural soils, reports the Copenhagen Post.
The effective cost of the tax amounts to 120 Danish kroner (£14) per tonne of CO2 equivalent emitted from 2030, rising to 300 kroner (£34) from 2035 onwards. (As the British Agriculture Bureau explains, the actual costs are higher, but will be reduced by tax breaks.)
The proceeds “are to be pooled in a fund to support the livestock industry’s green transition for at least two years after the tax comes into effect”, says the Guardian.
The tax is just one element of a wider agreement on a “Green Denmark”. This was signed by a Green Tripartite, namely, a three-party agreement between the Danish government, the industry and agricultural sector, and conservation groups.
Danish economy minister Stephanie Lose said the agreement aims to form a “long-term basis for a historic reorganisation and transformation of Denmark’s land and of food and agricultural production”, reports Politico.
Under the agreement, Denmark will convert some agricultural lands to provide more space for nature and biodiversity. It also mandates that the country will set aside carbon-rich lowland soils, pursue afforestation and boost technologies and measures to cut emissions.
All these targets will be financed by a new Denmark’s Green Area Fund, which amounts to 40bn kroner (£4.6bn). Denmark’s government will also use EU agricultural subsidies for technology transition.
The Danish parliament still needs to approve the plan, but Reuters noted that “political experts expect a bill to pass following the broad-based consensus”.
How could this tax help Denmark meet its climate targets?
Agriculture is responsible for around a quarter of Denmark’s greenhouse gas emissions.
A “major part” of these emissions stem from livestock production, according to the country’s most recent national inventory report. The sector also accounts for more than 80% of methane and nitrous oxide emissions, the report says.
Denmark’s climate minister Lars Aagaard said in a statement that agriculture’s high emissions “cannot continue” and that a “great deal of work awaits” to implement the new agriculture measures.
The tax is expected to cut 1.8m tonnes of CO2 in 2030, Bloomberg reports. The proposals will help Denmark meet its 2030 climate goals and “take a big step closer to becoming climate neutral in 2045”, the tax minister Jeppe Bruus said in a statement.
Prof Søren Petersen, a soil microbiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, agrees that the plan “could lead to substantial reductions in agricultural emissions” if implemented correctly. He tells Carbon Brief:
“It is my impression that there is a real interest in promoting climate-smart solutions and developing solutions that achieve real reductions in emissions.”
News and views
DEFORESTATION: EU politicians are “split” after calls to delay the bloc’s upcoming ban on imported goods that can be linked back to deforested land, Reuters reported. The law requiring “companies and traders placing beef, coffee, palm oil and other products on the EU market to prove their supply chains do not contribute to the destruction of forests” is due to take effect this year, Reuters said. Last week, the European People’s Party environment spokesperson, Peter Liese, called for the law to be delayed and scaled back, describing it as a “bureaucratic monster”. Other EU political parties, including the Socialists & Democrats and the Greens, oppose a delay, Reuters said. The US recently asked the EU to postpone the law, a separate Reuters article noted, joining previous calls from Malaysia and Indonesia.
CONSERVATIONISTS’ PROTESTS: Local and international conservation organisations protested that the Republic of Congo’s Conkouati-Douli national park could be at risk after a Chinese company received an oil and gas exploration licence, according to Down to Earth. Conservationists said the exploration permit would damage the environmental health of “the country’s most biodiverse protected area”, home to endangered species such as the western lowland gorilla and forest elephant, and around 7,000 people “whose livelihoods are dependent on the forest”. They criticised that the decision came after the Congolese government signed a $50m forest protection agreement at last year’s COP28.
MARCH FOR NATURE: Thousands of people marched in London on 22 June to “urge” politicians to tackle the UK’s “wildlife crisis”, the Guardian reported. A rally held after the march heard from naturalist Chris Packham and musician Billy Bragg, the newspaper said, adding that actor Emma Thompson also called on politicians to “act now” on climate change. The Wildlife Trusts, one of the charities supporting the march, claimed that more than 60,000 people attended, urging UK political parties to “restore nature now”. The Guardian noted: “Protesters were calm but the placards they held up revealed an undercurrent of frustration and anger.” (UK voters will cast their ballots in a general election tomorrow.)
CHINESE FERTILISERS: China is imposing restrictions on fertiliser exports, especially urea and phosphates, risking a global price surge for essential crop nutrients, Bloomberg reported. The outlet noted that the Chinese government is protecting the domestic grain market due to the threat of extreme weather events impacting crop production and other challenges faced by farmers – including low grain prices and increased costs. Bloomberg added that in 2023 China was the world’s top exporter of both urea and the most used phosphate.
US OLD-GROWTH FORESTS: The US government advanced plans to “restrict logging within old-growth forests that are increasingly threatened by climate change”, the Associated Press reported. The newswire explained that there will be exceptions for tree-cutting to reduce wildfire risks. A government press release labelled the plan as “the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in history”. The proposed amendment to 128 forest land management plans would use science and Indigenous knowledge to guide conservation and restoration efforts of old-growth forests. These ecosystems offset more than 10% of US annual greenhouse gas emissions and comprise 32m acres, according to the White House.
Watch, read, listen
SAHEL PLAN: A Deutsche Welle video discussed progress on Africa’s “Great Green Wall” project, which was “designed to stop land degradation and desertification”.
RIGHTS: During pride month in June, Dialogue Earth interviewed Aurélien Guilabert, a Mexico City-based activist focused on “both LGBTQ+ rights and environmental protection”.
RISING TIDES: The New York Times spoke to scientists and officials in the Maldives to understand how low-lying tropical islands have not yet been lost to rising sea levels and how “some have even grown”.
GROUNDWATER PROBLEM: Under the Surface explores the decline of EU underground freshwater in this interactive piece.
New science
Frontiers in Science
Protecting just 1.2% of the world’s land could save the most rare and threatened species from extinction, a study found. The researchers compared data identifying areas with rare and endangered species with current protected area maps to identify unprotected lands. They found that 16,825 of these unprotected sites around the world should be “prioritised for conservation action over the next five years as part of a broader strategy to expand the global protected area network”. They estimated that it would cost $29-46bn annually over the next five years to conserve these “last unprotected sites harbouring rare, range-restricted and threatened species”.
Ecological disturbance alters the adaptive benefits of social ties
Science
Monkeys became less aggressive and more tolerant towards each other after an intense hurricane in Puerto Rico, according to new research. Hurricane Maria hit the north-eastern Caribbean in 2017, killing almost 3,000 people in Puerto Rico. The hurricane also led to “persistent deforestation”, which reduced shade cover and increased animal “exposure to intense heat”, the study said. The researchers looked at a decade of data on rhesus macaques, a species of monkey, on a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico before and after the hurricane to assess any social behaviour changes. They found that the monkeys showed “persistently increased tolerance and decreased aggression toward other monkeys, facilitating access to scarce shade critical for thermoregulation”.
Threat of low-frequency high-intensity floods to global cropland and crop yields
Nature Sustainability
New research highlighted the “urgency” of protecting cropland in “neglected” areas that experience low-frequency, but high-impact floods. Using satellite imagery and data for 3,427 flood events around the world over 2000-21, the researchers found that flooding affected a larger proportion of cropland area in low-frequency flood areas (4.7%) compared to high-frequency flood areas (1.2%). In addition, the study found that the average losses of wheat and rice were greater in low-frequency flood areas, owing to “the higher precipitation anomalies, soil moisture anomalies and greater crop flooding during their growing seasons”.
In the diary
- 4 July: UK general election
- 1-5 July: Fifth Global Dialogue on Sustainable Ocean Development | Bali, Indonesia
- 15 July-2 August: Second part of the 29th Session of the International Seabed Authority Assembly and Council | Kingston, Jamaica
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
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 3 July 2024: Brazil wetlands blaze; Denmark agri carbon tax; Heat and drought hit crops appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 3 July 2024: Brazil wetlands blaze; Denmark agri carbon tax; Heat and drought hit crops
The launch of the Africa Energy Bank (AEB) has been put back yet again, raising doubts about the institution’s future ability to finance fossil fuel projects – its main objective – as global lenders retreat from such investments over climate concerns, experts told Climate Home News.
The bank, which had been billed to launch in September after a series of delays, is now scheduled to begin operations in November, according to the head of the African Energy Chamber, an advocacy body for the continent’s oil and gas sector.
Even as the world aims to transition away from fossil fuels, many African leaders have made clear they want to continue exploring and extracting the continent’s large oil and gas deposits – estimated at around 125 billion barrels of crude and over 600 trillion cubic feet of gas – to boost economic development.
As a group, Africa sided with a number of powerful oil-and-gas producing nations in blocking progress on negotiations to craft a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels at last year’s UN COP30 climate talks, although some countries did individually support the proposal.
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Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
Plans to build Africa’s second largest oil refinery in ecologically sensitive region criticised as “environmental recklessness” -
Tanzania pushed African nations to oppose fossil fuel transition at COP30
While chairing the African group at the summit, the gas-dependent nation advised the continent’s ministers to block language on transitioning away from fossil fuels
Meanwhile, major projects under development across the continent – including the 1,443-km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and Dangote’s 700,000-barrel-per-day Kenyan refinery – show that African governments see oil and gas as playing a significant role in meeting their energy and economic needs for many years to come.
In 2022, at a gathering of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) in oil-rich Angola, ministers from its member states adopted a resolution to create the Africa Energy Bank to finance projects for the production, use and trade of oil, gas and broader energy sources.
African control over energy resources
An article on the APPO website explains that the bank was conceived as a way to overcome “disenchantment” with fossil fuels among “the international community” which it said had crystallised around the “energy transition” concept.
“If Western countries, after having long taken advantage of the energy sources they now revile to develop, can afford the luxury of abandoning them, this is not the case in Africa,” it adds, noting that many of the continent’s economies are still largely dependent on oil and gas revenues.
A separate web page about the bank, also hosted on APPO’s website, says its objectives include financing the exploration, production and refining of oil and gas, as well as supporting member states in transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources “while ensuring energy security”.
Said Addi, a former executive with Shell and energy commodities trading house Gunvor, said the new bank was judged necessary because financing for hydrocarbons from many traditional international lenders has become constrained.
In trying to fill this financing gap, Africa is not simply setting up another fund to support oil and gas, he added. “It is also an attempt to give African countries greater control over how their energy resources and infrastructure are financed,” he explained.
Nigeria to host the AEB
The energy bank – a joint initiative of APPO and the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) – has so far suffered several delays and is almost two years behind schedule. The initial plan was to start operations in January 2025, with Nigeria as the host country, but the bank’s opening was delayed to June of that year to allow Nigeria time to finalise the construction of the bank’s headquarters in Abuja.
After the government announced the completion of the offices in late November 2025, a new launch date was set for January 2026, which was moved back to April, June and then September. Now it has shifted again to November, raising concerns that the institution may be losing momentum.
Former Shell executive Addi said that if the capital is eventually paid in, the bank becomes operational and its first projects are commercially credible, then the delays will be regarded as normal teething troubles in setting up a multilateral institution. But, he added, scepticism will be justified if it continues to stall.
Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls
Baron Lamarré, an oil and gas expert and former Petronas oil trader, said that missing “three deadlines in a row is not normal”, and warned that if the timeline slips again, “the story flips from ‘ambitious institution finding its footing’ to ‘good idea that lost momentum before it found any’.”
The Nigerian government, APPO and Afreximbank did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
The funding challenge
The Africa Energy Bank is targeting base capital of $5 billion, with plans to scale up to $120 billion within five years by mobilising private-sector funds. However, it is expected to start operations with initial seed capital of $500 million.
The funding plan is to have the 18 member countries of the APPO contribute $83 million each to the bank as equity for a combined $1.5 billion. Afreximbank, other non-APPO African countries and investors outside the continent are expected to provide the remaining $3.5 billion.
But even the initial $500 million has not been easy to mobilise. In May, APPO Secretary-General Farid Ghezali called on members to deliver on their pledges towards the startup goal before the end of June. But the delays suggest this may not have been met, with experts saying Africa may be finding it difficult to self-fund its oil and gas projects in the absence of international capital.
Lamarré said every extension of the deadline points to the fact that “raising fossil fuel capital in Africa without the majors and their financing networks is brutally hard”.
Why the global electrification agenda misses the point on Africa’s energy crisis
Since 2020, Western lenders, export credit agencies and insurers have been in steady retreat from African hydrocarbons, he said, while oil majors are divesting their African assets, handing over fields to smaller local operators whose credit ratings are not high enough to borrow cheaply.
Even capital from China and the Gulf, which has partially filled the gap, cannot match the volume, tenor or pricing that Western investors once offered, Lamarré argued.
“If mobilising the first $500 million of seed capital [for the AEB] has taken this long, that’s the clearest signal yet of how steep the climb to $120 billion looks,” he said, noting that the continent’s energy financing gap is as large as $30 billion-$45 billion per year.
Africa’s investment landscape, meanwhile, has been shifting. While foreign direct investment dropped from a 2024 peak, inflows remained roughly one-third above the continent’s long-term average in 2025, according to the 2026 World Investment Report from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). They are concentrated in a few sectors including critical minerals needed for renewable energy technologies, battery manufacturing and advanced industrial production.
At the same time, data on global energy investment from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that fossil fuel investment in Africa has declined over the last decade.
“Trojan horse” for fossil fuels
While the Africa Energy Bank struggles to get off the ground, climate campaigners have criticised its primary aim of financing oil and gas on the continent at a time when the world is starting to move away from high-carbon fuels to cleaner alternatives.
Bhekumuzi Dean Bhebhe, founder of Africa Change Lab, described the bank as a “Trojan horse”, arguing that its focus on fossil fuel financing runs counter to the global energy transition and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 goals of sustainable development and inclusive growth.
The energy bank, he warned, “risks locking Africa into a new cycle of debt, dependency and fossil fuel entrenchment”, adding that its financing blueprint does not pave the way for a climate-resilient future. “In truth, it is to deepen the same extractive, carbon-heavy pathways that the continent should be moving away from,” he added.
Ugandan farmers use British court to try to stop East Africa oil pipeline
Kenya-based climate and energy expert Joab Okanda said the AEB’s plan to finance oil and gas is “a misplaced priority” and it should instead back clean energy in line with the policies of some of Africa’s major export markets like Europe.
In addition, the new bank could struggle to mobilise enough resources to advance large-scale oil and gas projects, he added, noting that its proposed $5-billion initial capital is equivalent to the cost of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline alone.
The AEB’s aim of backing more fossil fuels should be flipped “to support countries that are oil-dependent to start working on their transition plans”, Okanda said.
The post Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes appeared first on Climate Home News.
Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes