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
‘Tricks’ and ‘cover-ups’
LIVESTOCK EMISSIONS: Climate scientists speaking to the Financial Times accused the governments of New Zealand and Ireland of using an “accounting trick” to “cover up” methane emissions from their livestock sectors. An open letter from 26 climate scientists and covered by the newspaper said that New Zealand’s “proposed new methane targets risk setting a dangerous precedent”. The title added that scientists have separately raised concerns about Ireland’s approach.
POTENTIAL PROBLEMS: The controversy hinges on a way for measuring the impact of methane emissions on climate change, called “global warming potential star” (GWP*), the FT said. This method “estimates [methane’s] contribution to warming based on how emissions are changing relative to a baseline”. By contrast, the “long-established approach” used by most countries “compares the total warming impact of a given mass of methane to the same mass of [carbon dioxide] over a 100-year period”, the newspaper said.
‘MISAPPLICATION’: The scientists told the FT that some governments are “misapplying” GWP* to justify setting “no additional warming” targets, which allow methane emissions to remain flat rather than decline. The governments of Ireland and New Zealand did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment. But the newspaper added that “proponents” of the GWP* typically argue that it “better reflects methane’s short-lived nature in the atmosphere compared to the long-lasting effects of CO2”. One of the scientists behind the letter explained more of his thoughts in a LinkedIn post. A scientist not involved in the letter also posted a response.
SOMETHING FISHY: Elsewhere, an investigation by DeSmog and the Guardian has alleged that several UK supermarkets have sold seabass linked to “devastating overfishing” in Senegal. The two publications said that the retailers are accused of selling fish from Turkish farms that import large quantities of “fishmeal” – ground up fish used as feed – sourced from the African nation. Overfishing for fishmeal in Senegal is linked to “unemployment” and “food insecurity”, according to the Guardian. Responding to the claims, several of the supermarkets said they do not currently source from the implicated farms, but declined to say whether they had in the past.
Wild weather worldwide
EARLY MONSOON MAYHEM: An “unprecedented” early monsoon caught India’s farmers off guard, with “massive crop losses in states such as Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana and Gujarat”, IndiaSpend reported. Climate scientists attributed the pre-monsoon thunderstorms to “unusual sea surface temperature patterns in the Pacific since 2023” and a higher frequency of “western disturbances” – extratropical storms originating over the Mediterranean. In the past week, north-eastern India has been battered by flash floods and landslides, with “at least 32 people killed and tens of thousands displaced”, the Independent reported. The newspaper noted that “studies show the monsoon in south Asia is getting worse due to the climate crisis”.
DELUGE AND DROUGHT: BBC News reported that more than 700 people are believed to be dead after “devastating” floods hit Nigeria, with the farming region of Mokwa witnessing “the worst [floods] in the area for 60 years”. Separately, Reuters reported that China’s south-western Yunnan province was hit by “flash floods and mudslides”, triggered by heavy rainfall. In unconnected reporting, Bloomberg said that China had stepped up cloud seeding to “bolster rainfall across parched wheat-growing areas” in the north, adding that the country had ramped up “weather modification” investments as “climate change heightens food security risks.”
CANADA BURNS: Canada’s prairie provinces continued to reel from “record-breaking” early-season wildfires, the Guardian reported. It pointed out that in Manitoba alone, wildfires have burned “about 200,000 hectares already this year” – three times “the recent full-year average”. Manitoba premier Wab Kinew said that simultaneous fires “in every region” were a “sign of a changing climate that we are going to have to adapt to”. The Guardian added that First Nations peoples in Saskatchewan – one of three recognised Indigenous peoples in Canada – “have been particularly affected, with some entire communities evacuated”.
Spotlight
UK’s former lead negotiator on UN nature talks
In this Spotlight, Carbon Brief speaks to the UK’s former lead UN negotiator about the successes and challenges of international nature talks.
Will Lockhart OBE represented the UK in UN nature negotiations from 2021 until the end of COP16 talks in Rome in February of this year.
In 2022, he helped to negotiate the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), a landmark deal which has a headline “mission” to “halt and reverse” nature loss by 2030.
Following his departure from government, he spoke to Carbon Brief about his highs and lows, whether the world is making progress towards meeting its biodiversity goals and the role of UN summits – called COPs – in tackling environmental issues.
Carbon Brief: When you look back at your time heading up biodiversity negotiations, what are your highlights?
Will Lockhart: It’s all still emotionally raw. From a global perspective, the agreement of the GBF was a huge personal highlight. That was a really, really complicated negotiation. The notion that you could have frontpage news that was about an international agreement on nature, that was immensely exciting.
CB: In your view, is it possible to achieve the GBF’s mission to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030?
WL: The trajectory right now would suggest, no, it’s looking incredibly hard to achieve. But, even then, with exactly the right interventions at exactly the right scale, it might still be possible. A fair question might be was it ever possible?…There has always been a contested evidence base about whether it could ever have been achieved.
The important thing is that people spent a lot of time thinking about why we were setting certain kinds of targets…We wanted them to be specific, measurable and achieveable. What does achievable mean? What does ambitious mean? What message are we trying to send? This is politics, this isn’t necessarily science.
If the answer is that it was never possible in the first place, then the question is: ‘Why did the world agree to it?’ And the answer to that is: ‘Because it matters that we try.’
CB: Could there be a better way for countries to address biodiversity loss than the current system?
WL: It’s a very complicated question. A question that everyone has to bear in mind is: ‘What [is the] value [of] the COPs?’ You pour a huge amount of time and resource into a global dialogue, which results in a very, very carefully negotiated outcome. It’s extremely important, in my view, that you have a space where the whole world can come together in a room and agree that it wants to do something. The question is, where does the world locate that process?
I worry that the world is simultaneously asking too much and too little of COPs. It’s asking too much in the sense that there’s so much coverage and intense scrutiny of ‘this person’s arrived’, ‘this comma has moved’…There’s an extraordinary media circus. [There is] extreme expectation on each individual meeting.
And, at the same time, it’s simultaneously asking too little of them. It’s like: ‘Great, this word was in so it was a good COP’ or ‘this word was out so it was a bad COP’. And of course COPs are just one tiny part of this huge global process that needs to happen if we’re going to tackle these problems. I rather worry – and I know that colleagues feel the same – they’re just viewed as ends in themselves.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. A longer article has been published on Carbon Brief’s website.
News and views
RECORD FOREST LOSS: Tropical forest loss hit its highest level in a two-decade record in 2024 – double the level of 2023 – according to satellite data from Global Forest Watch covered by New Scientist. The report authors “attributed the surge in forest loss to the El Niño weather phenomenon and the warming global climate, which made the rainforest a tinderbox”, the magazine said. Climate Home News added that the rate of forest loss was the equivalent of losing 18 football pitches every minute.
RATIFY THIS: The EU ratified the UN “High Seas Treaty” last Wednesday, “joining a global effort to protect the ocean, curb environmental damage, tackle climate change and preserve biodiversity”, Jurist News reported. The EU’s ratification of the landmark treaty was joined by six of its member states: Cyprus, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Portugal and Slovenia. The EU also pledged €40m as part of a Global Ocean Programme to support African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, according to an EU Commission press release.
THOUSAND CUTS: A “cornerstone” ecological research programme could potentially be culled by the Trump administration, the New York Times reported. Abolishing the Ecosystems Mission Area (EMA) “was an explicit goal of Project 2025, the blueprint for shrinking the federal government”, the story added. However, the budget cut “still needs to be approved by Congress”, with scientists rallying to save the EMA, the paper wrote. On Monday, the Trump administration announced plans to “eliminate federal protections across millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness” that could open the region to drilling and mining, according to another New York Times story.
NET NATURE LOSS?: In the UK, the Guardian reported that the “nature-friendly farming budget is set to be slashed” for “all but a few farms” in an upcoming spending review. Meanwhile, legal analysis of the Labour government’s new planning and infrastructure bill showed that “more than 5,000 of England’s most sensitive, rare and protected natural habitats are at high risk of being destroyed by development”, per another Guardian story. A key concern for green groups, it added, is a “cash for trash” clause that allows developers to “inflict adverse effects on the integrity of a protected site” if they pay into a fund to restore nature elsewhere.
MIRAGE CITY: Reuters reported on Egypt’s plans to build a new desert city, 42km west of Cairo, that could reroute “about 7% of [its] annual Nile River quota” from fertile delta land. According to the story, an estimated 10m cubic metres of Nile water will flow daily to Jirian city to “pass by upscale glass-fronted housing units and eventually” irrigate a 2.28m acre “New Delta” agricultural project. Jirian city will include luxury housing, a free economic zone and even a “yacht marina”, the newswire added, noting that the country is facing “mounting water shortages, power constraints and deepening economic crisis”.
FOREST-FRIENDLY BATTERIES: Electric car batteries made using iron and phosphorus “that pose less of a threat to forests” are “rapidly replacing batteries reliant on cobalt and nickel”, according to an International Energy Agency (IEA) report covered by Climate Home News. From 2020 to 2024, the market share of lithium nickel manganese cobalt batteries has risen from one-tenth to almost half, according to the IEA data. Both cobalt and nickel are “mainly mined in rainforest countries”, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, the publication added.
Watch, read, listen
REFORESTED SCHOOLS: Mongabay explored how “urban forests” in schools in Niger are helping to build “climate resilience and education”.
SO LONG, SALGADO: The New Yorker examined the visual legacy of photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, who died last week. Salgado’s Genesis series is celebrated as a “paean to natural landscapes and Indigenous ways of living”.
SECOND ACT: In an Atlantic long-read, writer Emma Marris looked at the debate calling for a law to protect ecosystems along with endangered species in the US.
PROUD, NATURALLY: CBC News reviewed Animal Pride, a new documentary about queer animal behaviour that filmmaker Connel Bradwell described as “nature’s coming-out story”.
New science
- Greater fish biodiversity can help improve nutrition and make fisheries more resilient, according to new research published in Nature Sustainability. The study found that fishing waters with complementary species could provide more than 60% in additional nutrients than a similar-sized catch of the most nutrient-rich species.
- A new study in Nature Climate Change found that “natural climate solutions” in croplands offer only “modest” mitigation benefits if reductions in crop yields are to be avoided. According to the authors, this indicates that “cropland soil will constitute a fraction of food system decarbonisation”.
- New research in Communications Earth and Environment found that global agricultural labour productivity could decrease by 18% by 2100 under a scenario of high heat-stress and labour sensitivity.
In the diary
- 2-6 June: 69th Meeting of the Global Environment Facility Council | Washington DC
- 5 June: World Environment Day
- 7 June: Ocean Rise and Coastal Resilience Summit | Nice, France
- 9-13 June: 2025 UN Ocean Conference | Nice, France
- 16-26 June: UN Framework Convention on Climate Change intersessional meetings | Bonn, Germany
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 June 2025: ‘Tricks’ and ‘cover-ups’; Wild weather; Former UN nature negotiator interviewed appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 4 June 2025: ‘Tricks’ and ‘cover-ups’; Wild weather; Former UN nature negotiator interviewed
Climate Change
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Blazing heat hits Europe
FANNING THE FLAMES: Wildfires “fanned by a heatwave and strong winds” caused havoc across southern Europe, Reuters reported. It added: “Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares (1,700 square miles) in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006.” Extreme heat is “breaking temperature records across Europe”, the Guardian said, with several countries reporting readings of around 40C.
HUMAN TOLL: At least three people have died in the wildfires erupting across Spain, Turkey and Albania, France24 said, adding that the fires have “displaced thousands in Greece and Albania”. Le Monde reported that a child in Italy “died of heatstroke”, while thousands were evacuated from Spain and firefighters “battled three large wildfires” in Portugal.
UK WILDFIRE RISK: The UK saw temperatures as high as 33.4C this week as England “entered its fourth heatwave”, BBC News said. The high heat is causing “nationally significant” water shortfalls, it added, “hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires”. The Daily Mirror noted that these conditions “could last until mid-autumn”. Scientists warn the UK faces possible “firewaves” due to climate change, BBC News also reported.
Around the world
- GRID PRESSURES: Iraq suffered a “near nationwide blackout” as elevated power demand – due to extreme temperatures of around 50C – triggered a transmission line failure, Bloomberg reported.
- ‘DIRE’ DOWN UNDER: The Australian government is keeping a climate risk assessment that contains “dire” implications for the continent “under wraps”, the Australian Financial Review said.
- EXTREME RAINFALL: Mexico City is “seeing one of its heaviest rainy seasons in years”, the Washington Post said. Downpours in the Japanese island of Kyushu “caused flooding and mudslides”, according to Politico. In Kashmir, flash floods killed 56 and left “scores missing”, the Associated Press said.
- SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: China and Brazil agreed to “ensure the success” of COP30 in a recent phone call, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
- PLASTIC ‘DEADLOCK’: Talks on a plastic pollution treaty have failed again at a summit in Geneva, according to the Guardian, with countries “deadlocked” on whether it should include “curbs on production and toxic chemicals”.
15
The number of times by which the most ethnically-diverse areas in England are more likely to experience extreme heat than its “least diverse” areas, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- As many as 13 minerals critical for low-carbon energy may face shortages under 2C pathways | Nature Climate Change
- A “scoping review” examined the impact of climate change on poor sexual and reproductive health and rights in sub-Saharan Africa | PLOS One
- A UK university cut the carbon footprint of its weekly canteen menu by 31% “without students noticing” | Nature Food
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Factchecking Trump’s climate report
A report commissioned by the US government to justify rolling back climate regulations contains “at least 100 false or misleading statements”, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists. The report, compiled in two months by five hand-picked researchers, inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed” and misleadingly states that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”80
Spotlight
Does Xi Jinping care about climate change?
This week, Carbon Brief unpacks new research on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s policy priorities.
On this day in 2005, Xi Jinping, a local official in eastern China, made an unplanned speech when touring a small village – a rare occurrence in China’s highly-choreographed political culture.
In it, he observed that “lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of silver and gold” – that is, the environment cannot be sacrificed for the sake of growth.
(The full text of the speech is not available, although Xi discussed the concept in a brief newspaper column – see below – a few days later.)
In a time where most government officials were laser-focused on delivering economic growth, this message was highly unusual.
Forward-thinking on environment
As a local official in the early 2000s, Xi endorsed the concept of “green GDP”, which integrates the value of natural resources and the environment into GDP calculations.
He also penned a regular newspaper column, 22 of which discussed environmental protection – although “climate change” was never mentioned.
This focus carried over to China’s national agenda when Xi became president.
New research from the Asia Society Policy Institute tracked policies in which Xi is reported by state media to have “personally” taken action.
It found that environmental protection is one of six topics in which he is often said to have directly steered policymaking.
Such policies include guidelines to build a “Beautiful China”, the creation of an environmental protection inspection team and the “three-north shelterbelt” afforestation programme.
“It’s important to know what Xi’s priorities are because the top leader wields outsized influence in the Chinese political system,” Neil Thomas, Asia Society Policy Institute fellow and report co-author, told Carbon Brief.
Local policymakers are “more likely” to invest resources in addressing policies they know have Xi’s attention, to increase their chances for promotion, he added.
What about climate and energy?
However, the research noted, climate and energy policies have not been publicised as bearing Xi’s personal touch.
“I think Xi prioritises environmental protection more than climate change because reducing pollution is an issue of social stability,” Thomas said, noting that “smoggy skies and polluted rivers” were more visible and more likely to trigger civil society pushback than gradual temperature increases.
The paper also said topics might not be linked to Xi personally when they are “too technical” or “politically sensitive”.
For example, Xi’s landmark decision for China to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 is widely reported as having only been made after climate modelling – facilitated by former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua – showed that this goal was achievable.
Prior to this, Xi had never spoken publicly about carbon neutrality.
Prof Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of law not involved in the research, noted that emphasising Xi’s personal attention may signal “top” political priorities, but not necessarily Xi’s “personal interests”.
By not emphasising climate, he said, Xi may be trying to avoid “pushing the system to overprioritise climate to the exclusion of the other priorities”.
There are other ways to know where climate ranks on the policy agenda, Thomas noted:
“Climate watchers should look at what Xi says, what Xi does and what policies Xi authorises in the name of the ‘central committee’. Is Xi talking more about climate? Is Xi establishing institutions and convening meetings that focus on climate? Is climate becoming a more prominent theme in top-level documents?”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP EFFECT: The Columbia Energy Exchange podcast examined how pressure from US tariffs could affect India’s clean energy transition.
NAMIBIAN ‘DESTRUCTION’: The National Observer investigated the failure to address “human rights abuses and environmental destruction” claims against a Canadian oil company in Namibia.
‘RED AI’: The Network for the Digital Economy and the Environment studied the state of current research on “Red AI”, or the “negative environmental implications of AI”.
Coming up
- 17 August: Bolivian general elections
- 18-29 August: Preparatory talks on the entry into force of the “High Seas Treaty”, New York
- 18-22 August: Y20 Summit, Johannesburg
- 21 August: Advancing the “Africa clean air programme” through Africa-Asia collaboration, Yokohama
Pick of the jobs
- Lancaster Environment Centre, senior research associate: JUST Centre | Salary: £39,355-£45,413. Location: Lancaster, UK
- Environmental Justice Foundation, communications and media officer, Francophone Africa | Salary: XOF600,000-XOF800,000. Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Politico, energy & climate editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels, Belgium
- EnviroCatalysts, meteorologist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
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 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Climate Change
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
The specter of a “gas-for-wind” compromise between the governor and the White House is drawing the ire of residents as a deadline looms.
Hundreds of New Yorkers rallied against new natural gas pipelines in their state as a deadline loomed for the public to comment on a revived proposal to expand the gas pipeline that supplies downstate New York.
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
A “critical assessment” report commissioned by the Trump administration to justify a rollback of US climate regulations contains at least 100 false or misleading statements, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists.
The report – “A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate” – was published by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on 23 July, just days before the government laid out plans to revoke a scientific finding used as the legal basis for emissions regulation.
The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”.
It also states misleadingly that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”.
Compiled in just two months by five “independent” researchers hand-selected by the climate-sceptic US secretary of energy Chris Wright, the document has sparked fierce criticism from climate scientists, who have pointed to factual errors, misrepresentation of research, messy citations and the cherry-picking of data.
Experts have also noted the authors’ track record of promoting views at odds with the mainstream understanding of climate science.
Wright’s department claims the report – which is currently open to public comment as part of a 30-day review – underwent an “internal peer-review period amongst [the] DoE’s scientific research community”.
The report is designed to provide a scientific underpinning to one flank of the Trump administration’s plans to rescind a finding that serves as the legal prerequisite for federal emissions regulation. (The second flank is about legal authority to regulate emissions.)
The “endangerment finding” – enacted by the Obama administration in 2009 – states that six greenhouse gases are contributing to the net-negative impacts of climate change and, thus, put the public in danger.
In a press release on 29 July, the US Environmental Protection Agency said “updated studies and information” set out in the new report would “challenge the assumptions” of the 2009 finding.
Carbon Brief asked a wide range of climate scientists, including those cited in the “critical review” itself, to factcheck the report’s various claims and statements.
The post Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-trumps-climate-report-includes-more-than-100-false-or-misleading-claims/
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