We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
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Key developments
UN food insecurity report
HUNGER DECLINES: The prevalence of hunger dropped in most parts of the world in 2024, according to a new report covered by Carbon Brief – but rates are still rising in much of Africa and western Asia. The UN’s annual report on food security and nutrition found that around 673 million people experienced hunger in 2024. Other key findings were that the cost of a “healthy” diet increased in 2023 and 2024 and that food price inflation “significantly” outpaced general inflation over the past five years. The price inflation was mostly driven by global factors, but also by localised shocks such as “climate extremes” disrupting food production, the report said.
‘UNEVEN’ PROGRESS: Global progress on tackling hunger is “encouraging”, but “uneven”, the director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Dr Qu Dongyu, said in a statement. The new report found that the entire population in Gaza faced “high levels of acute food insecurity” in 2024, alongside more than half of people in Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen and Haiti. Elsewhere, the UN World Food Programme said that hunger levels in Gaza are “catastrophic”, while Reuters reported warnings from a global hunger monitor that a “worst-case scenario of famine is unfolding” there. UN chief António Guterres told the UN Food Systems Summit Stocktake this week in Ethiopia: “We must never accept hunger as a weapon of war.”
‘CLIMATEFLATION’: Elsewhere, a thinktank report said the UK faces “climateflation” impacts that could “drive up food prices by more than a third by 2050”, the Guardian said. The Autonomy Institute said that “increasing numbers of heatwaves and droughts would imperil staple crops, disrupt supply chains and intensify inflationary pressures”, the outlet added. UK food price inflation increased in July for the sixth consecutive month, partly driven by “rising meat and tea prices”, BBC News reported. Carbon Brief mapped out the findings of a new study showing links between extreme weather and food price spikes around the world.
Africa’s clean-cooking and nature goals
‘UNREACHABLE GOAL’: Sub-Saharan Africa will not reach the UN 2030 goal of providing clean cooking for all, according to a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). “Large gaps” in financing and infrastructure mean universal access by 2040 is “more realistic”, it continued. The number of Africans without access to clean cooking “has continued to grow” and is currently around 1 billion people, Climate Home News reported. The report stated that $37bn in investment is required to achieve universal access. In a statement, IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol, said that lack of clean cooking “remains one of the great injustices in the world”.
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WILDLIFE BONDS: The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has planned a new wave of wildlife conservation bonds to provide up to $1.5bn to “help African countries” save endangered species and ecosystems, Reuters reported. The GEF’s head of programming told the newswire that the bonds, which provide low-cost funding in return for curbing poaching or other conservation measures, will be issued for every country in Africa. The bonds will help poorer countries receive funding without adding to government debt. While such bonds usually target “emblematic” species, the GEF hopes to use the bonds to cover entire ecosystems, such as wetlands, Reuters said.
CONGO’S BIOFUELS: Italian oil company Eni has closed one biofuels pilot project in the Republic of Congo, but two other such projects remain in an experimental phase, InfoNile reported. Eni previously signed a 50-year agreement with the Congolese government to develop the country’s agro-biofuel sector, with a plan to cover 150,000 hectares of agricultural land by 2030. However, local farmer Chris Nsimba told InfoNile that, although Eni has brought economic development to his district, the company has made “little contribution” to local food security.
‘DRAMATIC EXPANSION’: Tenders for oil development are now available across “more than half” of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a new report from Earth Insight and other groups found. The government recently launched a licensing round for 55 oil blocks, the report said – a “dramatic expansion” which poses “major threats” to forests and protected areas. The oil blocks overlap with 8.6m hectares of “key biodiversity areas” and 66.8m hectares of intact tropical forests. This decision highlights “stark contradictions between the DRC’s fossil-fuel agenda and its stated commitments to biodiversity protection, climate action and community rights”, the report said.
Spotlight
‘Unprecedented’ marine heatwaves gripped the globe in 2023
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new study, published in Science, which found that 96% of the global ocean experienced a marine heatwave during 2023.
More than 95% of the world’s expanse of oceans experienced a marine heatwave – a period of abnormal ocean warming lasting at least five days – in 2023, according to new research.
The study, published in Science, used an ocean model that incorporates satellite and observational data to identify marine heatwave events and investigate the drivers of the unusual ocean heating.
It found that 2023 was an “unprecedented” year for marine heatwaves in terms of duration, extent and intensity of the events.
Many of the events had “immediate ecological and societal consequences”, the authors wrote.
‘Comprehensive investigation’
In 2023, marine heatwaves bleached corals in the Florida Keys, boosted the prevalence of a giant-clam-killing parasite in the Mediterranean and even intensified heatwaves on land during Europe’s “hellish” summer that year.
Using satellite data and an ocean model that incorporates different streams of data, the team of researchers “conducted a comprehensive investigation” of the global ocean’s state in 2023, they wrote. Together, the authors wrote, that year’s marine heatwaves had the “longest durations, widest extents and highest intensities on record”.
They found that the average duration of marine heatwaves in 2023 was 120 days, compared to an average duration of just under 36 days between 1982-2022. Spatially, the 2023 heatwaves covered 96% of the global ocean, compared to a historical average extent of around 74%.
Prof Regina Rodrigues, a physical oceanographer at Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, told Carbon Brief that, while the science underlying the study is “sound”, the study itself “does not bring many new aspects”. Rodrigues, who was not involved in the new research, added:
“The results are not different from those of many previous studies, except for the analysis of these regions together and for the same year.”
Driving factors
The researchers identified four main “hotspots” of the ocean that had the highest marine heatwave “cumulative intensity”: the tropical eastern Pacific, the south-west Pacific, the north Pacific and the north Atlantic. (Cumulative intensity is a metric that accounts for both intensity and duration of a heatwave.)
The researchers then used the ocean model to investigate the underlying drivers of marine heatwaves in each hotspot.
For example, in the north Pacific, they found that a combination of low cloud cover – allowing more sunlight to reach and warm the ocean’s surface – and weak winds resulted in around 1C of average warming throughout the year. A lack of cloud cover also contributed significantly to the heatwaves in the north Atlantic and south-west Pacific, they wrote.
It is “no surprise at all” to find that marine heatwaves have increased in frequency, intensity, duration and extent, “given that the ocean absorbs 90% of the heat from manmade climate change”, Rodrigues told Carbon Brief.
She pointed to a Nature study published earlier this year that examined the global record sea-surface temperatures of 2023-24. That study concluded:
“Without a global warming trend, such an event would have been practically impossible.”
News and views
WETLANDS SUMMIT: More than 3,000 delegates met in Zimbabwe for the 15th conference of the Ramsar Convention (COP15) to discuss the future of the world’s wetlands. Opening the event, Zimbabwe’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, called for the implementation of “collaborative approaches” towards wetlands protection, Down To Earth reported. Several southern African countries officially launched the Southern Africa Ramsar Regional Initiative to promote wetland conservation and sustainable use across borders, EnviroNews Nigeria reported. Additionally, China Daily reported that nine more Chinese locations were awarded “wetland city accreditation” at the conference, which concludes this Thursday.
‘DEVASTATION BILL’: Politicians in Brazil approved a bill to ease environmental licensing, a move criticised as the country’s “most significant environmental setback in nearly 40 years”, Mongabay said. The so-called “devastation bill” includes rule changes which would allow projects to be approved “by simply filling out an online form”, the outlet reported. It would also create a “special environmental licence” for “strategic” projects, “such as oil exploration on the Amazon coast”. Mongabay noted that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva can block or enact the bill, but “congress would likely overturn a veto”. It added: ”The law is bound to be challenged in the Supreme Court.”
SEABED STRIFE: Members of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) condemned the move earlier this year by a deep-sea mining company to “bypass the authority’s protocols by applying for a permit to mine in international waters under US law”, Inside Climate News reported. Oceanographic said that the ISA has “launched an official investigation” into contracting companies “over action taken to circumvent” existing protocols. The outlet said the decision was a “critical step in protecting the deep sea”. However, delegates at the recently concluded ISA meeting once again “failed” to reach an agreement on whether or not to allow seabed mining to proceed in international waters, reported Common Dreams.
FARMER FUNDS: The EU’s new long-term budget proposal featured cuts to agricultural spending, but the European Commission “insists” farmers will not be impacted, Euronews reported. The proposal outlined plans to combine agricultural subsidies and regional development funds into one “mega-fund worth €865bn”, the outlet said. Politico reported that the proposed changes mean “biodiversity goals have no earmarked funding at all – and will have to compete with the EU’s other environmental aims, including climate change, water security, the circular economy and pollution”.
‘TOXIC’ ALGAE: A toxic algal bloom along South Australia’s coastline has shown “no sign of abating” four months in, after killing sharks, rays, fish, dolphins and seals, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The algae grew and spread due to a marine heatwave in September 2024, which caused ocean temperatures to be 2.5C warmer than usual. Marine ecologist Dr Scott Bennet told CNN: “This is symptomatic of climate-driven impacts that we’re seeing across Australia due to climate change.” Meanwhile, Reuters reported on a “revolution” in farm management that has boosted Australia’s wheat production “despite hotter, drier conditions”.
Watch, read, listen
CLOUD COVER: The New York Times profiled the scientists attempting to save the Great Barrier Reef by increasing cloud cover to cool the Pacific Ocean.
SYCAMORE SENTENCE: In Bloomberg, Josie Glausiusz argued that prosecuting the men who felled the Sycamore Gap tree in northern England in 2023 “mean[s] little” without stronger action to protect the natural world.
DECLINING SUPPLY: The Guardian visualised how Donald Trump’s “assault” on immigrants in the US could affect the country’s food supplies.
AN ICONIC TREE: Mongabay explored whether the Joshua Tree – a yucca plant native to the south-western US – can survive in the face of increasing drought, fires and development.
New science
- A Nature Communications study found that lands managed by Afro-descendant communities in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Suriname experience up to 55% less deforestation than lands managed by others. The study highlighted the adaptation of African knowledge, the authors said, calling for a greater inclusion of Afro-descendants in environmental decision-making.
- Fewer than 10% of predicted “hotspots” of a type of fungi around the world are currently contained in protected areas, according to a Nature study. The findings can benefit conservation, monitoring and restoration of the “largely hidden component of Earth’s underground ecosystems”, the study authors wrote.
- New research, published in Science Advances, found that the prioritisation of creating “biodiversity-friendly landscapes” through conservation activities may actually accelerate biodiversity loss by improving conditions for invasive alien species. The authors called for a “shift” towards “landscape-wide strategies to stop the ongoing decline of farmland biodiversity”.
In the diary
- 5-14 August: Fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution (part two) | Geneva
- 9 August: UN international day of the world’s Indigenous peoples
- 13-15 August: African Union-AIP water investment summit 2025 | Cape Town, South Africa
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Svetlana Onye also contributed to this issue. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 30 July 2025: ‘Unprecedented’ ocean heatwaves; ‘Uneven’ hunger progress; Brazil’s ‘devastation bill’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The governor’s office said the city’s two main reservoirs could dry up by May, much sooner than previous timelines. But authorities still offer no plan for curtailment of water use.
City officials in Corpus Christi on Tuesday released modeling that showed emergency cuts to water demand could be required as soon as May as reservoir levels continue to decline.
Corpus Christi Cuts Timeline to Disaster as Abbott Issues Emergency Orders
Lena Luig is the head of the International Agricultural Policy Division at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a member of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Anna Lappé is the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.
As toxic clouds loom over Tehran and Beirut from the US and Israel’s bombardment of oil depots and civilian infrastructure in the region’s ongoing war, the world is once again witnessing the not-so-subtle connections between conflict, hunger, food insecurity and the vulnerability of global food systems dependent on fossil fuels, dominated by a few powerful countries and corporations.
The conflict in Iran is having a huge impact on the world’s fertilizer supply. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical trade route in the region for nearly half of the global supply of urea, the main synthetic fertilizer derived from natural gas through the conversion of ammonia.
With the Strait impacted by Iran’s blockades, prices of urea have shot up by 35% since the war started, just as planting season starts in many parts of the world, putting millions of farmers and consumers at risk of increasing production costs and food price spikes, resulting in food insecurity, particularly for low-income households. The World Food Programme has projected that an extra 45 million people would be pushed into acute hunger because of rises in food, oil and shipping costs, if the war continues until June.
Pesticides and synthetic fertilizer leave system fragile
On the face of it, this looks like a supply chain issue, but at the core of this crisis lies a truth about many of our food systems around the world: the instability and injustice in the very design of systems so reliant on these fossil fuel inputs for our food.
At the Global Alliance, a strategic alliance of philanthropic foundations working to transform food systems, we have been documenting the fossil fuel-food nexus, raising alarm about the fragility of a system propped up by fossil fuels, with 15% of annual fossil fuel use going into food systems, in part because of high-cost, fossil fuel-based inputs like pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. The Heinrich Böll Foundation has also been flagging this threat consistently, most recently in the Pesticide Atlas and Soil Atlas compendia.
We’ve seen this before: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked global disruptions in fertilizer supply and food price volatility. As the conflict worsened, fertilizer prices spiked – as much from input companies capitalizing on the crisis for speculation as from real cost increases from production and transport – triggering a food price crisis around the world.
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‘Completely delusional’: UN climate chief warns against fossil fuel push after Iran crisis
As Gulf disruptions send oil and gas prices soaring, Simon Stiell urges leaders to double down on renewables and fight fossil fuel dependency -
Gulf oil and gas crisis sparks calls for renewables investment
Energy analysts and some politicians say the Iran war’s effect on oil and gas prices shows renewables are the path to energy security
Since then, fertilizer industry profit margins have continued to soar. In 2022, the largest nine fertilizer producers increased their profit margins by more than 35% compared to the year before—when fertilizer prices were already high. As Lena Bassermann and Dr. Gideon Tups underscore in the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Soil Atlas, the global dependencies of nitrogen fertilizer impacted economies around the world, especially state budgets in already indebted and import-dependent economies, as well as farmers across Africa.
Learning lessons from the war in Ukraine, many countries invested heavily in renewable energy and/or increased domestic oil production as a way to decrease dependency on foreign fossil fuels. But few took the same approach to reimagining domestic food systems and their food sovereignty.
Agroecology as an alternative
There is another way. Governments can adopt policy frameworks to encourage reductions in synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, especially in regions that currently massively overuse nitrogen fertilizer. At the African Union fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in 2024, African leaders at least agreed that organic fertilizers should be subsidized as well, not only mineral fertilizers, but we can go farther in actively promoting agricultural pathways that reduce fossil fuel dependency.
In 2024, the Global Alliance organized dozens of philanthropies to call for a tenfold increase in investments to help farmers transition from fossil fuel dependency towards agroecological approaches that prioritize livelihoods, health, climate, and biodiversity.
In our research, we detail the huge opportunity to repurpose harmful subsidies currently supporting inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides towards locally-sourced bio-inputs and biofertilizer production. We know this works: There are powerful stories of hope and change from those who have made this transition, despite only receiving a fraction of the financing that industrial agriculture receives, with evidence of benefits from stable incomes and livelihoods to better health and climate outcomes.
New summit in Colombia seeks to revive stalled UN talks on fossil fuel transition
Inspiring examples abound: G-BIACK in Kenya is training farmers how to produce their own high-quality compost; start-ups like the Evola Company in Cambodia are producing both nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and protein-rich animal feed with black soldier fly farming; Sabon Sake in Ghana is enriching sugarcane bagasse – usually organic waste – with microbial agents and earthworms to turn it into a rich vermicompost.
These efforts, grounded in ecosystems and tapping nature for soil fertility and to manage pest pressures, are just some of the countless examples around the world, tapping the skill and knowledge of millions of farmers. On a national and global policy level, the Agroecology Coalition, with 480+ members, including governments, civil society organizations, academic institutions, and philanthropic foundations, is supporting a transition toward agroecology, working with natural systems to produce abundant food, boost biodiversity, and foster community well-being.
Fertilizer industry spins “clean” products
We must also inoculate ourselves from the fertilizer industry’s public relations spin, which includes promoting the promise that their products can be produced without heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Despite experts debunking the viability of what the industry has dubbed “green hydrogen” or “green or clean ammonia”, the sector still promotes this narrative, arguing that these are produced with resource-intensive renewable energy or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a costly and unreliable technology for reducing emissions.
As we mourn this conflict’s senseless destruction and death, including hundreds of children, we also recognize that peace cannot mean a return to business-as-usual. We need to upend the systems that allow the richest and most powerful to have dominion over so much.
This includes fighting for a food system that is based on genuine sovereignty and justice, free from dependency on fossil fuels, one that honors natural systems and puts power into the hands of communities and food producers themselves.
The post Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems appeared first on Climate Home News.
Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems
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