Published

1 year ago

December 25, 2024

Alice Rush

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.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

COP29 skirts nature

BIODIVERSITY BLANK: Despite taking place just days after a major UN biodiversity summit, the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, produced few new commitments on food, forests, land and nature. Countries negotiated a new text “reaffirming” the “importance of conserving, protecting and restoring nature”. However, countries failed to adopt this document during COP29’s chaotic final plenary session. The COP29 presidency also organised a “high level” event on a new “Rio trio” initiative, which seeks to strengthen ties between the UN Rio conventions on climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification. But many of the event’s speakers failed to show up, as the event coincided with the start of the endgame in the negotiations.

CARBON MARKETS: Elsewhere at COP29, countries did manage to find agreement on the remaining sections of Article 6 on carbon markets, meaning all elements of the Paris Agreement have now been finalised – nearly 10 years after it was signed. The COP29 presidency hailed the agreement as a “breakthrough” that “achieves full operationalisation of Article 6”, a COP “win” that it pushed from day one of the two-week talks. Observers, however, raised concerns that the agreed rules may not do enough to ensure that past issues with carbon offsets, including human rights violations and a failure to meaningfully cut emissions, are not repeated. Read Carbon Brief’s summary of all the key takeaways for food, land, forests and nature at COP29.

CIAO, COP16: Following an abrupt end in November triggered by negotiators needing to catch flights home, the COP16 biodiversity summit will resume for a three-day session in Rome in February 2025, the Convention on Biological Diversity has confirmed. Countries will aim to agree to the remaining items on COP16’s agenda, which include a monitoring framework for tracking progress on tackling biodiversity loss, a plan for reviewing progress at future COPs and – most contentiously – the issue of developed nations mobilising enough funds to help developing countries protect nature. Carbon Brief has tracked where countries stand on these issues in an interactive grid.

Historic climate case

CLIMATE CASE: A historic legal case on who bears responsibility for climate change has begun at the UN international court of justice (ICJ) at the Hague in the Netherlands. The Guardian reported that the case “is the culmination of years of campaigning by a group of Pacific island law students and diplomacy spearheaded by Vanuatu”, an island nation at risk of losing land from sea level rise. In 2025, it will deliver a verdict on “on what obligations states have to tackle climate change and what the legal consequences could be if they fail to do so”, it added.

‘BIGGEST IN HISTORY’: Over the next two weeks, the court will hear statements from 98 countries, including small island nations and least-developed countries most vulnerable to climate impacts, as well as large historical emitters, the Guardian said. The participation of so many countries means “we can safely say that this is the biggest case in human history”, Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, legal counsel for Vanuatu’s ICJ case and international lawyer at Blue Ocean Law, told Justice Info, an international-law news site.

‘MORAL WEIGHT’: Justice Info added that ICJ opinions are non-binding, but “do carry legal and moral weight, often taken into account by national courts”. However, “there are difficulties in dealing with states such as China, who never accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, or the US who withdrew from it”, according to the outlet. As part of the advisory opinion process, the court is publishing written statements from countries, which include nations’ views on who should take responsibility for climate change and personal testimonies from those most affected.

Spotlight

‘Land’ COP underway

This week, Carbon Brief looks at what is on the agenda for the “largest ever” UN land conference that is underway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

In a “triple COP” year, few expected the desertification COP to receive as much attention as its higher-profile climate and biodiversity cousins. In fact, getting international and regional media to engage with the lesser-known Rio treaty – the 30-year old UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) – is one of the actual objectives of the talks that began in Riyadh on Monday.

The headline numbers are stark.

According to the UNCCD’s own estimates, 1.2 billion people and 1.5bn hectares of land are affected by degradation, with another 100m hectares of land degrading each year.

A new report looking at land use through the lens of “planetary boundaries” found that “a third of humanity now lives in drylands, which include three-quarters of Africa”. It added that unsustainable agricultural practices are the “main culprit” of degradation. And a newly released world drought atlas presents an even starker – but complex – picture of the state of the world’s land.

Gaining prominence

With all this daunting research placed before its delegates, the two-week Riyadh COP marks a small series of firsts. According to the UN, it is the largest land conference ever and the first to be held in the Middle East and North Africa region, “which knows first-hand the impacts of desertification”.

Mirroring what has become the norm in other COPs, it is also the first time that the conference has a separate “action agenda” for leaders to announce voluntary commitments on thematic days, in addition to the official, negotiated decisions.

Interestingly, the “land COP” has drawn several leaders and ministers to Riyadh who gave Cali and Baku a miss.

Fresh from steering his party to an election win in the drought-prone state of Maharashtra, India’s climate minister Bhupender Yadav hailed India’s “proactive drought strategy”, reiterated a 26m-hectare land restoration pledge and support for the G20’s trillion trees initiative.

Aside from high-profile ministerial discussions, delegates will have to undertake a midterm review of actions over 2018-30 and agree on what is holding back countries from implementing the drought convention.

Resources required

Finding resources to build drought resilience remains the running theme in Riyadh.

On Monday, the UNCCD’s executive secretary, Ibrahim Thiaw, quantified the cost of “restoring the world’s degraded land and holding back its deserts” for the first time, calling for “at least $2.6tn” in investment by the end of the decade, according to Reuters. Thiaw also drew attention to the fact that the world spends as much on harmful subsidies each year, Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported.

Mohlago Flora Mokgohloa, South Africa’s deputy director general of biodiversity and conservation outlined her delegation’s key negotiation priorities to Carbon Brief. She said:

“The African position is ensuring we come out with an ambitious decision on drought, which is deciding on a drought protocol. This is one convention that does not have a protocol, so it does not have an implementation mechanism.”

A protocol is a legally-binding instrument that interprets a treaty and can establish additional rights and obligations. A drought management protocol, for instance, could set up clear obligations for who should pay for restoration and could link the UNCCD to climate and biodiversity conventions.

Mokgohloa told Carbon Brief:

“We are also saying that a decision on a protocol must also come with a discussion around how it’s going to be financed, because that affects all of us, and we can’t just say ‘let’s decide on the money after’. The 54 countries of Africa are not moving on our position.”

News and views

IRA-TE FARMERS: US farmers “are urging the White House to crack down on Chinese imports of used cooking oil”, the Financial Times reported. The country’s farmers “invested in green fuel crops such as corn, camelina and soybeans” based on an expected surge in demand for low-carbon fuels after the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed, the story said. However, it points out that the IRA’s rules “have not been finalised” and the law – which does not limit incentives just to domestic farmers – “may be scrapped by Donald Trump’s incoming administration”. Meanwhile, used cooking oil imports from China “have reached record highs”, driving fears that imports could “undercut” tax credits to US farmers even before they take effect in January, according to the story.

SHOOTS, NOT BOMBS: At the recent G20 summit in Rio, Mexico’s president Dr Claudia Sheinbaum proposed “dedicating 1% of the military annual budgets of the world’s biggest economies” towards global reforestation efforts, Mongabay reported. If successful, the programme could reforest 15m hectares of land “across the globe”, according to the story. Sheinbaum also “plans to continue” the country’s existing Sembrano Vida (planting life) programme, which incentivises farmers to protect trees, it added. While that programme has “reforested 1.1bn trees” since 2018, it is currently mired in “serious allegations of corruption, labour threats and data manipulation”, a column in El Siglo De Durango pointed out.

GAZA FOOD CRISIS: Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed more than 90% of cattle and destroyed 70% of cropland, a UN analysis of satellite imagery has found, according to the Guardian. More than three-quarters of Gaza’s orchards, known for producing olive oil and fruits, have also been destroyed, the Guardian said. Before the violence started in October last year, 40% of Gaza was covered by farms and food production met around a third of local demand, the newspaper reported. It added that aid officials in Gaza have described the situation in much of Gaza, where more than two-thirds of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, as “apocalyptic”.

‘FRANKENCHICKENS’: Fast food chain KFC has ditched a pledge in the UK to improve its animal welfare by sourcing chicken from slower-growing breeds by 2026, the publication Restaurant reported. Back in 2019, KFC committed to transition away from using so-called “Frankenchickens”, which are bred at an accelerated rate that is linked to a range of health issues, including higher mortality rates, lameness and muscle disease, the publication said. However, speaking at the UK’s egg and poultry industry conference in November, a representative of the fried-chicken giant said the UK’s poultry industry is not yet in a “commercial or operational position” to allow the delivery of such a pledge, according to Restaurant.

AMAZON AT RISK: Several Brazilian states “are trying to rid themselves of rainforest protections, bowing to pressure from cattle ranchers and soybean growers to cut down trees and expand agriculture”, the Associated Press reported. It said that the Acre state unanimously passed a new law allowing the privatisation of almost 900km2 of protected forest, an area the size of New York City. In neighbouring Rondonia state, lawmakers are seeking to annul 11 “conservation units” covering thousands of square kilometres of pristine rainforest, the publication reported. Another Amazonian state, Pará, is pushing a similar initiative, it added. Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, with deforestation accounting for more emissions than any other driver, AP noted.

MISSING MAU: Kenya’s Mau forest, which plays a key role in capturing water for millions of people, experienced a sharp rise in deforestation this year, according to satellite data reported on by Mongabay. The ecosystem, which is one of the largest forests in east Africa and is home to endangered African bush elephants, African golden cats and bongo antelopes, lost a quarter of its tree cover between 1984 and 2020. Forest loss slowed over 2021-22, but has since increased dramatically, according to Global Forest Watch data seen by Mongabay. Separately, Mongabay covered how the Kenyan government has spent years evicting Indigenous Ogiek communities from Mau forest over unfounded claims that they are to blame for deforestation.

Watch, read, listen

‘THE GREAT ABANDONMENT’: A long read in the Guardian looked at “what happens to the land left behind” when people and development are displaced by climate change.

REIMAGINING BRETTON WOODS: A talk by Dr Nicola Ranger for the Leverhume Centre for Nature Recovery explored how the global financial system can be reformed to address biodiversity loss and climate change.

COLD TURKEY: From meat-free days to making plant-based foods “taste at least as good”, Bloomberg listed strategies to “shift diets at scale away from meat-centric meals”.

‘TOXIC TRADE’: An investigation by SourceMaterial and Data Desk uncovered evidence of European companies shipping high-sulphur car fuels to west Africa, with catastrophic impacts for local people.

New science

China’s forests increased in size by 4m hectares a year over 2000-15 and by 2m hectares a year over 2015-22, according to a new Geophysical Research Letters study. The research used high-resolution satellite data to examine how tree cover has changed in the world’s fastest “greening” nation.
A Science Advances study uncovered “compelling evidence” that temperature can affect the immune performance of wild capuchin monkeys. The results “offer insight into how climate change will affect the immune system of wild mammals”.
Reducing deforestation pressure and forest fires in the Amazon region “leads to a reduction” in hospitalisation and deaths arising from respiratory health problems, a new study in Communications Earth & Environment found. Researchers estimated a decrease of 678 deaths and almost $6m in savings from hospitalisation costs each year.

In the diary

2-13 December: UN Desertification Conference, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
2-13 December: International court of justice hearings on the obligations of states in respect of climate change, The Hague, Netherlands
9-16 December: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Plenary, Windhoek, Namibia

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 4 December 2024: Climate talks omit nature; Land COP underway; ‘Frankenchickens’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 4 December 2024: Climate talks omit nature; Land COP underway; ‘Frankenchickens’

Greenhouse Gases

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

Published

12 hours 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

15 hours 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

2 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