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
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people.
Together, these initiatives would have made up around half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support conservation in the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.
When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge by 12 donors of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.
Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.
Alongside the US and much of Europe, the UK has significantly cut its aid budget in recent years, leading to much of its Congo rainforest spending being cancelled or reappraised.
The government says it still plans to “prioritise” rainforest regions, including the Congo basin, but civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.
COP pledge
At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030. This was backed by more than 140 nations.
The UK also made various funding pledges, including £200m to protect the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.
These commitments target the world’s three largest rainforests, all of which face major forest loss due to threats such as agriculture, logging and climate change.
The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink. Yet, its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.
This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.
Forest cuts
Following successive aid cuts introduced by both the Conservative and then Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.
The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was launched by the UK at COP27. It was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.
CBFA set out to “empower central African nations”, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with support for “community forests” and other measures to curb forest loss.
Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s recent aid cuts, intended to free up money for defence spending.
Its original £90m budget has now been reduced to £18.8m. Government data shows that £15m of this has already been spent.
This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to this latest round of aid cuts.
The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – championed by the previous government and worth at least £12.3m – has been closed, just two years into its seven-year schedule.
Government documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk as the UK scales back its aid budget, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region.
One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”. Officials working on the other, while more optimistic, reported that the project may be forced to operate in fewer countries as the cuts set in.
Documents also reveal the difficulties that come when operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.
‘Breaking promises’
Damian Fleming, a senior director of forests at WWF International tells Carbon Brief:
“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”
In a series of recent parliamentary responses, Chapman revealed that the UK had only spent £39.8m on Congo forest finance, as of 2024. (She declined to provide any information on the Indonesia and Amazon regional goals.)
Despite being presented as the UK’s “contribution” to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029.
Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution so far has been relatively small.
Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, tells Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:
“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world for whom the environment is an existential issue.”
Future targets
The Labour government says it has met the five-year “climate finance” target of £11.6bn that expires this year.
Ministers also say the government has met “and exceeded” the £3bn and £1.5bn sub-goals for “preserving nature” and forests, respectively, within the £11.6bn. These are the funding streams that include support for the Congo basin and other rainforests.
The UK has funded a variety of projects in line with its forest goals, including mangrove restoration in Indonesia, support for carbon-offsetting projects in Brazil and promoting “forest stewardship” among farmers in Cameroon.
Chapman has stated that the UK will continue to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest, in line with its new plan for aid spending in Africa. The UK even helped to launch a new “call to action” for Congo basin funding at COP30 last year.
The UK government also says it supported the creation of Brazil’s flagship “Tropical Forest Forever Facility” (TFFF). However, so far it has not provided any funding for the facility.
When the government announced a new climate finance pledge for 2026 onwards, it stressed that nature would still be a “focus” and said it would also generate billions in “climate and nature positive investments”. Nevertheless, it dropped the “ring-fenced” amounts for nature and forests that had appeared in its previous pledge.
The UK, alongside other developed countries, has pledged to provide biodiversity finance to developing countries, under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) – a non-binding global pact to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.
Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee of MPs, says “sub-pledges” for nature and forests are a “cost-effective and impactful” way to ensure this finance is provided, alongside climate finance. She tells Carbon Brief that she was “concerned” about the move away from this approach:
“When the minister recently appeared before the international development committee, I was concerned to hear her characterise this shift as a ‘gamble’.”
A government spokesperson tells Carbon Brief:
“We remain committed to providing finance for forests, including in the Congo basin, as a core element of our overall climate funding.”
A shorter version of this article was first published in Cropped, Carbon Brief’s fortnightly newsletter that provides a digest of food, land and nature news, on 15 July 2026. Subscribe for free.
The post UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo
Climate Change
Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid
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
Global drought and heat
DRY THEN WET: A recent heatwave and months of low rainfall has led to a prolonged drought for Uganda, resulting in at least 16 deaths from hunger and significant crop losses, reported BBC News. Bastille Post Global suggested that “a developing El Niño later this year could bring heavier rainfall to parts of the region, raising the risk of flooding in areas now struggling with drought”.
FUNDING FOOD: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have appealed for $200m in funding to help African nations deal with the impact of El Niño, stated Deutsche Welle. This would target 22 high-risk countries with measures, including “cash transfers, climate-resilient seeds, livestock protection and flood control.” The Guardian explained how El Niño could still “cause a severe shock to global food prices lasting into 2028”.
FARMING FEARS: Extreme weather has devastated agriculture across the world. India saw its driest June in 12 years, reported BBC News, and France has had a “double-digit production” decline, according to Le Monde. The Financial Times reported that farmers in the UK are mitigating the impacts of extreme heat by eliminating “chemicals and intensive ploughing to improve soil quality so it retains water”.
EURO FIRES: Wildfires have spread across Europe, with Spain reporting at least 12 deaths so far, according to the Guardian, and France experiencing road closures, said Reuters. Wildfire Today reported that the most extreme conditions are “across France, Spain and northern Portugal, the Alpine arc extending into northern Italy, the south of the UK and south-east Ireland”. CNN explained how “the climate crisis is driving hotter, drier weather, which is setting the stage for fiercer fire seasons”.
Endangering species
REDEFINING HARM: The Trump administration “reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species…opening up sensitive habitats…to drilling, mining, farming and real estate development”, reported CNN. According to the story, the change “redefines what constitutes ‘harm’” to endangered species, which historically prohibited habitat modification or degradation. Agence France-Presse reported that US environmental groups sued the Trump government over the move, arguing that it had violated “common sense, biological science and federal law”.
OPEN SEASON: Reuters reported that the change “limits the reach of the 50-year-old Endangered Species Act” (ESA), which is a “key regulatory consideration” when granting permits for “oil and gas, mining, electric transmission and other operations on federal lands and water”. Legal scholars told the New York Times the US government “was acting without conducting scientific research into the impact” of the change, while the National Mining Association “applauded the announcement”.
News and views
- INTERNATIONAL WATERS: After a significant delay, the UK ratified the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ), also known as the High Seas Treaty. Oceanographic detailed how this will allow for “marine protected areas across international waters for the first time”, but also stressed that the “hard part” starts now.
- SCOPE-FREE: The world’s largest meat supplier JBS “scrapped a key climate goal” in its net-zero plan that accounts for its suppliers’ emissions, “which make up the vast bulk of the company’s environmental footprint”, reported the Financial Times. The company told the paper it was difficult to control these “indirect” emissions.
- DEEP TROUBLE: Pacific gray whales are facing a “catastrophic die-off” as sea-ice loss threatens their food sources, said the Guardian. Separately, conservationists warned that more than half of all molluscs that “cluster around underwater vents” could face extinction from deep-sea mining, reported Reuters.
- ETHANOL PUSHBACK: India’s new rules to promote 100% ethanol fuel and make ethanol-blended fuel mandatory at pumps “triggered a political row”, reported the Times of India. While the Indian government defended the push to automobile owners, a Hindu editorial and an Indian Express comment warned against incentivising fuels made from “water-intensive” sugarcane and rice.
- AMAZON ACTION: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell to its lowest level in a decade, but president Lula’s plans to “end illegal deforestation by 2030” could be hampered if he is not re-elected, reported Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, Colombia’s outgoing environment minister warned of greater environmental and climate risk under the incoming government, said the Associated Press.
- WAR WORRIES: The International Energy Agency (IEA) warned of the impact of the Iran war on Africa’s clean cooking efforts as disruption in the strait of Hormuz has stunted supplies and increased prices of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), explained Climate Home News.
Spotlight
UK ‘discards’ Congo rainforest funding
Amid worldwide cuts to aid spending, Carbon Brief explores how the UK is backtracking on funding for the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people.
Together, these initiatives would have made up half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support forest conservation in the Congo basin.
When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.
Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.
COP pledge
At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030.
The UK also made various regional funding pledges, including £200m for the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.
All of these rainforests face major forest loss. The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink, but its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.
This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.
Forest cuts
Following successive aid cuts introduced by both Conservative and Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.
The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.
Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s aid cuts. Its £90m budget has been “quietly reduced by 79% to £18.8m”, according to the Times.
This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to aid cuts. The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – worth at least £12.3m – has closed five years early.
Official documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region. One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”.
Documents also show the difficulties operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.
‘Breaking promises’
Damian Fleming, a senior forests director at WWF International told Carbon Brief:
“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”
In a parliamentary response, Chapman said that the UK had spent £39.8m towards its £200m Congo target, as of 2024.
Despite being described as the UK’s contribution to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029. Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution was relatively small.
Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, told Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:
“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world.”
The Labour government says it has met its overarching “climate finance” goals and still intends to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest.
However, civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.
Watch, read, listen
TOXIC TROUBLES: DeSmog unpacked a new report that said Northern Ireland is being turned into a “toxic” pig and poultry farming “sacrifice zone” to satiate the UK’s meat appetite.
NEED TO NOAA: Laid-off scientists from the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched Climate.Us – an independent, public-backed version of the climate information website shut down by Trump last year.
DRY FRUIT: A Dialogue Earth long read looked at how climate change is impacting apricot harvests in the “stark, high-altitude desert” region of Ladakh, India.
READING ALOUD: A London Review of Books podcast discussed Robin Wall Kimmerer’s influential book “Braiding Sweetgrass”, weighing its compelling themes and where it veers into “scientific overreach”.
New science
- Climate change could cause Indigenous peoples in the Amazon to lose 28-34% of their plant species and 18-23% of their associated services | Nature
- Biodiversity in forests can act as a “buffer” against compound extreme weather events | Nature Communications
- Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia’s palm oil sector have had “no additional impacts” on reducing forest loss | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
In the diary
- 7-15 July: High-level political forum on sustainable development | New York City
- 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council | Kingston, Jamaica
- 16 July: International Energy Agency critical minerals outlook 2026, online
- 27 July-1 August: Scientific and technical subsidiary body meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity | Nairobi, Kenya
This edition of Cropped was written by Jess Milligan, Josh Gabbatiss and Aruna Chandrasekhar. Cropped is edited by Dr Giuliana Viglione. This edition was edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org.
The post Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid
Climate Change
Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
Climate and environment campaigners have urged the Kenyan government to halt plans for a proposed 700,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery backed by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, warning the project threatens one of East Africa’s most ecologically sensitive coastlines.
The refinery, which is planned to be situated in Lamu County on Kenya’s northern coast, will be East Africa’s largest refining project and is expected to take up to three years to build. Once finished, it would supply refined petroleum products to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, among others, helping to reduce the region’s dependence on imported fuels.
Campaigners are questioning the viability of such a large refinery at a time when renewable energy and electric transportation are expanding rapidly.
Mohamed Adow, director of a Kenya-based climate and energy think-tank Power Shift Africa, said the decision to give Dangote the green light for the refinery is “an extraordinary act of environmental recklessness and economic short-sightedness”, arguing it would tie Kenya to “yesterday’s energy system” just as global demand for petroleum products faces increasing uncertainty.
-
Nigeria gives fossil gas a bigger role as “transition fuel” in climate plan
Officials say the country needs time and money to ramp up renewables, but critics say betting on gas is a risky strategy that could prolong the “oil curse” -
Gas flaring soars in Niger Delta post-Shell, afflicting communities
Since the multinational sold its assets in Nigeria’s oil hub, data analysis for Climate Home News shows flaring has risen, harming locals and the climate
Campaigners argue the refinery risks coming online just as transport – the largest market for petrol and diesel – is beginning to electrify across the continent.
Kenya launched a National Electric Mobility Policy earlier this year to speed up the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) and reduce the country’s roughly $5 billion annual fuel import bill. Ethiopia has already banned imports of non-electric vehicles and now has more than 100,000 EVs on its roads, while Rwanda is expanding its electric mobility programme with plans to convert its fleet of around 100,000 motorcycles to electric.
Adow said the project risks billions of dollars in investment in infrastructure that could become obsolete as the world moves away from oil.
“Building a refinery today assumes decades of robust demand for fuels that much of the world is actively trying to phase out,” he said in a statement.
Ecological concerns
Lamu – the proposed site for the project – is home to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Lamu Old Town and an archipelago containing extensive mangrove forests, coral reefs and seagrass beds that support fisheries, tourism and coastal livelihoods.
Locating the refinery in Lamu would “place one of Africa’s largest fossil fuel developments in one of the continent’s most ecologically sensitive and culturally significant coastal regions,” Power Shift Africa said.
Major emitting countries knew of climate risks decades earlier than claimed
Sherelee Odayar, oil and gas campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, warned that a refinery of this scale could increase the risk of habitat destruction, marine pollution, oil spills and air pollution in one of East Africa’s most fragile coastal ecosystems.
She said the risks stem not only from the refinery itself – including storage tanks, pipelines and fuel handling facilities – but also from the large volumes of crude oil that would need to be shipped into Lamu and refined products exported by sea. Increased tanker traffic and fuel transfers, she said, would raise the likelihood of accidents in ecologically sensitive coastal waters.
Odayar added that Lamu’s low-lying, flood-prone coastline could compound those risks by damaging infrastructure and carrying contaminants from storage facilities into nearby fishing grounds and marine ecosystems.
“Lamu’s mangroves, coral reefs and seagrass beds are not expendable; they support fisheries, livelihoods and coastal protection,” Odayar added.
She said Kenyan authorities should suspend any approvals until an independent environmental and social impact assessment is completed, with genuine public participation and transparent scrutiny of the long-term economic, health and ecological risks.
“Any review must assess cumulative impacts on Lamu’s mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds and fishing livelihoods, alongside the wider economic risk of locking Kenya into costly fossil fuel infrastructure as the global energy transition accelerates”.
Dangote Group declined to answer questions from Climate Home News when contacted by phone.
Technological change threaten project’s future
The Kenya refinery would replicate Dangote’s 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Lagos, currently Africa’s largest, which has plans to more than double capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2028.
Adow of Power Shift Africa said projects like this represent “a breathtaking failure to recognise where the global economy is heading”, pointing out that the East African refinery risks arriving when Africa is experiencing an unprecedented clean energy boom.
Referencing Africa’s solar boom, global electric vehicles uptake and the International Energy Agency’s projection that global oil demand is set to enter a decline later this decade, the think-tank founder said African governments risk anchoring the continent’s future to an industry facing mounting economic uncertainty.
Loss and damage fund delays first project approvals as needs dwarf resources
The organisation said the project faces a bigger threat aside from environmental opposition and that is technological change. “The danger is not simply that the refinery will pollute, it is that it will become obsolete long before it has paid for itself,” he added.
Kenyan President William Ruto said the project will create about 60,000 jobs for Kenyans and supply refined fuel to eight East and Central African countries.
GreenPeace Africa’s Odayar said the promise of ‘thousands of jobs’ cannot be used to hide the true cost of the investment which is that large fossil fuel projects often create temporary jobs while undermining existing livelihoods in fishing, tourism and small-scale local economies.
“The enormous capital required for a project of this scale could instead help accelerate Kenya’s renewable energy future through solar, wind, geothermal, storage and better energy access,” she added.
The post Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
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