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 updates

RECORD-LOW LOSS: Amazon deforestation rates have fallen to their lowest level since 2019, according to a report covered by Agence France-Presse. The newswire called the figures “good news” for president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but said the rate of deforestation is still “breathtaking”, with five trees felled every second, on average. Separately, a report from Rainforest Foundation Norway found that the “currently anticipated growth in Brazilian beef production may lead to deforestation of ~57,000km2 in the Amazon by 2034”.

ROAD AND RAIL: The Brazilian government will invest $75m into a new highway “cutting through the Amazon rainforest”, reported Deutsche-Welle. The Associated Press said the administration also announced an environmental protection plan to “safeguard the forest from potential impacts from the highway”, but added that environmentalists still fear the move “could speed up Amazon deforestation”. Separately, Inside Climate News reported on a Brazilian supreme court ruling that has brought a 965km railway through the Amazon “one step closer to reality”.

BANNED IMAGES: Mongabay reported that “Brazil’s Congress has passed a bill prohibiting environmental agencies from using satellite images to restrict the commercial use of illegally deforested lands”. According to the outlet, supporters say that “satellite-only enforcement infringes upon farmers’ right to a fair defense”, while critics argue that the bill will “weaken environmental protection” and “create unsafe conditions” for Brazil’s federal environmental police. Separately, the Brazilian government has committed more than $600m (£446m) to “foster ecological investment in the Amazon region”, according to the Associated Press.

El Niño forecast and extreme heat

‘SUPER’ STRESSED: The predicted “super” El Niño event would add stress to an “already dysfunctional and fragile global food system”, wrote the University of Sussex’s Prof Benjamin Selwyn in a commentary in the Conversation. He added that “El Niño alters rainfall, shifts jet streams and raises global temperatures”, all of which could damage harvests this summer. Reuters noted that the forecast for the phenomenon is “particularly worrying”, due to the predicted strength of the event and the contribution of climate change.

HEAT BURDEN: “Scorching temperatures” in India have “disrupted daily life across several northern states”, said the Washington Post. The outlet added: “Some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heatwave grips large parts of India.” The heatwave is also affecting Nepal, as high temperatures have “added burdens to public health, education, agriculture, livestock, environment, employment and public infrastructure”, reported Nepal News.

‘MIND-BOGGLING’ HEAT: Meanwhile, a “heat dome” over western Europe broke UK temperature records for the month of May. Carbon Brief summarised how the “mind-boggling” heatwave was covered in both national and international press. Agence France-Presse wrote that parts of Italy approved rules limiting work in conditions “with prolonged exposure in the sun” during the hottest part of the day. The newswire added: “Farmers reported accelerated harvests as temperatures went beyond 30C across the region.”

News and views

• SNAKEBITE DANGER: “The risk of snakebites is increasing across the world as reptiles shift their habitats to cope with rising temperatures and growing human pressures,” according to new research covered in the Guardian. It added that human-snake interactions are “forecast to become more pronounced”.
• RICE RISK: “Several parts” of China are experiencing heavy rains early this year, “raising risks for agriculture and disaster management”, wrote Bloomberg. This includes “key grain-producing provinces”, as well as areas that grow rice, vegetables and fruit, added the outlet.
• DATA DROUGHT: Chile’s Quilicura wetland, just north of Santiago, is drying up as “datacentres have drained water from drought-stricken wetlands, consuming billions of litres annually”, said the Guardian. It noted that the area is home to Latin America’s “largest concentration of datacentres”. 
• ACCOUNTING TRICK: A group of scientists have called on the Irish government to reject a proposal that would allow the livestock to use a metric called GWP* to measure methane emissions, reported Inside Climate News. According to the outlet, they warned that this “accounting trick” would “downplay” the industry’s emissions. (See Carbon Brief’s explainer on GWP* for more information.)

Spotlight

Three key findings on the state of carbon dioxide removal

This week, Carbon Brief unpacks three key findings from the third edition of the “state of carbon dioxide removal” report.

Global carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will need to increase fourfold by 2050 if the world is to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, said a new report.

Nearly all pathways to meeting the Paris Agreement’s highest ambition of keeping global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in 2100 involve CDR techniques – ranging from tree-planting to sucking CO2 from air with machines.

This is in addition to steep and immediate emissions cuts.

Scientists expect carbon emissions to push warming beyond 1.5C in the decade ahead, meaning that the target can only be achieved via large-scale CDR.

Here, Carbon Brief pulled out three key findings from the third state of CDR report.

‘Novel’ CDR is small, but growing

The report said that, at present, “99.9%” of existing CDR is conventional, land-based techniques, such as tree-planting and ecosystem restoration.

The world currently removes 2.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) per year, equivalent to around 5% of gross global CO2 emissions.

The largest contributors to removing CO2 from the atmosphere are China, the US, the EU, Brazil and Russia, largely through tree-planting (afforestation) and forest restoration (reforestation).

“Novel” CDR, such as biochar and direct air capture, currently removes just 2m tonnes of CO2 annually at present, according to the report.

These methods have been growing at a rate of 40% per year – which is “insufficient for the scale-up required to meet the Paris temperature goal”, said the report.

Current ambition will not lead to net-zero

The report examined several scenarios where global temperature rise is limited to “well below” 2C by 2100, including a current ambition scenario and a highest-possible ambition scenario.

The current ambition scenario was based on “nationally determined contributions”, or NDCs, which countries submit periodically to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Under this scenario, the report projected a total of 5.9GtCO2 of CDR by 2050 and 12GtCO2 by 2100. This scenario would result in end-of-century warming of 1.7-2.7C.

Importantly, the report said, current ambition does not result in the world reaching net-zero CO2 levels, “meaning that global temperatures would continue to rise” – albeit more slowly – beyond 2100.

Under the highest-possible ambition scenario, CDR scales up to 8.8GtCO2 by mid-century and 15.3GtCO2 by the end of the century. This results in global temperatures peaking at 1.7-1.8C around 2050 and the world achieving net-zero emissions around that time.

Reducing emissions now lowers the need for future CDR

While many countries include some amount of CDR in their NDCs, there is currently a large gap between the amount of CDR pledged and the amount that will be needed to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C by the end of the century, said the report.

This quantity is referred to as the “CDR gap” – the difference between what is pledged and what is needed.

The size of the CDR gap is dependent on both the pledges made by countries and the choice of the “benchmark” scenario against which they are measured.

Current NDCs and other country submissions to the UNFCCC total 2.5GtCO2 per year of removals in 2030 and 3.6GtCO2 per year in 2050. Using the highest-ambition scenario as a benchmark, this gives a CDR gap of 0.3GtCO2 in 2030 and 5.2GtCO2 in 2050, according to the report.

By comparison, a 10-year delay in implementing ambitious emissions reductions will result in the need to remove at least an additional 150GtCO2 from the atmosphere, compared to the most ambitious scenario.

This Spotlight is adapted from Carbon Brief’s Q&A on the state of CDR report. You can read the article in full here.

Watch, read, listen

‘DEVASTATING’ DATA: Grist reported on a proposed Utah datacentre that could be “devastating” to the ecology of the Great Salt Lake – the largest saline lake in the world.

ECO-OIL: The Times explained how a new synthetic oil, grown in a lab in north-west England, could be used as a substitute for palm oil.

EL NIÑO IMPACTS: An interactive piece from BBC News described how the forecasted “super” El Niño could impact global climate and weather in the coming months.

‘BATTERY COWS’: The Guardian covered work from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that found a “huge rise” in factory-style dairy farming of “battery cows” in the UK.

New science

• Greenhouse gas emissions from rice paddies have doubled globally over the past six decades | Nature Food
• Climate change will shift the timing and location of hailstorms – increasing the risk of damage to winter crops, such as wheat, but decreasing the risk to summer crops, such as maize | Nature Climate Change 
• Wind turbines in western Europe put more than 100m migratory birds “at risk” of collision annually, but this number can be lowered through limiting energy production at strategic times | Nature Sustainability

In the diary

• 2-5 June: UN expert meeting on food and agriculture | Rome
• 5 June: World environment day
• 8-18 June: Subsidiary body meetings of the UNFCCC | Bonn, Germany
• 15-19 June: Meeting of the parties to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea | New York City
• 16-18 June: Our Ocean Conference | Mombasa, Kenya

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne and Orla Dwyer.  Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

The post Cropped 3 June 2026: Highway through the Amazon | El Niño impact | State of CO2 removal appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 3 June 2026: Highway through the Amazon | El Niño impact | State of CO2 removal