Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK parliament’s climate takeover
MILIBAND SPEECH: UK energy security and net-zero secretary Ed Miliband delivered a “scathing” address to parliament on the “state of the climate and nature” in the UK, Edie reported. Ahead of his speech, Miliband told the Guardian he intends it to become an annual event, adding: “I feel a deep sense of responsibility to the British people to tell them the truth about what we know about the climate and nature crisis.”
RENEWABLES ‘BOOST’: Elsewhere, the government unveiled a strategy for “longer clean power contracts”, reported BusinessGreen, with the aim of “boost[ing] investor confidence” and “curb[ing] consumer costs”. It said the government will amend its “contracts for difference scheme” (CfD), raising contract duration from 15 to 20 years. Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans provided more details.
REFORM U-TURN: The Financial Times reported that the hard-right Reform UK party wrote a letter to “green energy bosses” threatening to “strike down” renewable energy subsidies and “reassess all net-zero related commitments” due to “intolerable costs to the economy”, if successful in the next election. However, deputy leader Richard Tice appeared to backtrack just 24 hours later in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s PM, claiming the letter had been “misread” and that a “contract is a contract”.
Around the world
- NASA DATA: In the US, the Trump administration aborted plans to publish major climate change reports on NASA’s website, the Associated Press reported. This will “make it harder to find major, legally mandated assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people”, the newswire added.
- ‘LANDMARK’ BATTLE: The Australian government has no obligation to protect Torres Strait islanders from the impacts of climate change, concluded a major federal case covered by BBC News. It added that the verdict left community leaders “in shock”.
- ‘FAIR COMPETITION’: The European Union seeks “fair competition” with China on clean energy, Agence France-Press said. However, “tensions are high” ahead of an upcoming summit in Beijing on 24 July, according to the Economist, with electric vehicles a “particular crunch point”.
- MONSOON DEATHS: More than 60 people were killed in 24 hours in ongoing torrential monsoon rains in Pakistan, the nation’s Dawn newspaper reported.
- CANCELLED CELEBRATIONS: Traditional Bastille Day celebrations were cancelled across France due to the risk of fire amid extreme temperatures, Le Monde reported.
£113bn
The potential UK economic losses by 2040 due to stranded fossil-fuel assets, according to a new report covered by Edie.
Latest climate research
- There were a “record number” of compound drought and heatwaves in the Amazon over 2023-4, compared to the period since 1981 | Environmental Research Letters
- The “clean-up” of aerosol emissions in east Asia is likely a “key contributor” to a recent acceleration in global warming | Communications Earth & Environment
- Transformation of abandoned open-pit mines into “solar hubs” could “meet projected 2050 global electricity needs” | Nature Sustainability
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
India has reached a milestone of 50% of its installed electricity capacity coming from “non-fossil fuel” sources (renewables and nuclear) – ahead of its 2030 target under the Paris Agreement, Reuters reported. The newswire said the move “signal[s] accelerating momentum in the country’s clean-energy transition”. A press release from India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy stated that, “despite having one of the lowest per-capita emissions globally, India remains among the few G20 countries that are on track to meet – or even exceed – their NDC commitments”. The research group Climate Action Tracker rates India’s climate pledges as “highly insufficient“.
Spotlight
‘Climate justice and cultural survival’ in Kenya
This week, Carbon Brief interviews Julianna Loshiro, an Indigenous Yaaku activist working in Kenya to conserve nature and her native language.
Carbon Brief: Can you explain who you are, where you come from and the projects you work on?
Julianna Loshiro: I’m a proud Yaaku woman from Mukogodo Forest, north in Laikipia, Kenya, where our language, Yaakunte, and way of life have been passed down through generations. Raised by my grandparents, I was immersed in Indigenous knowledge systems.
Living in the forest is a struggle because of land insecurity. Evictions have been happening to the Ogiek of Mau, the Sengwer community from Cherangany, and even the Yaaku community.
Currently, I am leading efforts to revitalise the Yakuunte language through storytelling, theatre, curriculum development and digital tools. My work is driven by a commitment to cultural resilience and intergenerational justice.
CB: You’ve recently published a book, “Climate Justice is Gender Justice”. Could you outline the key messages that you are trying to get across and also what motivated you to write the book?
JL: My book is an extension of our ancestral wisdom. Every chapter echoes the values and land-based knowledge that I grew up with in the Mukogodo forest. It is an urgent call to centre Indigenous knowledge in the climate conversation and to understand justice through the lens of lived experience. I wrote this book to amplify the stories and wisdom that often go unheard, especially from rural Indigenous communities.
One of the key ideas I share is that climate solutions are not just scientific, they are also cultural, emotional and relational. The book reflects how climate change impacts everyday lives and how different genders experience this crisis differently, but it also shows how we can heal by listening to those closest to the land.
Writing the book was a way of sharing our Yaaku worldview with the wider world, where nature is family and language is spirit. Culture is a form of resistance. So, by linking climate justice with our cultural survival, I am showing that language and environmental conservation are deeply intertwined. If we lose one, we risk losing the other. This book is a living testimony that our Indigenous identity is key to the future of our planet.
CB: Your book promotion also references the organisation, Indigenous Young Moms, for which you serve as project manager. What perspectives does motherhood lend to efforts to achieve both climate and gender justice?
JL: Motherhood sharpens our sense of urgency and hope. As an indigenous young mother, I don’t just see climate change in statistics, I see it in the drying rivers, the struggling bees and the questions my child will ask tomorrow.
Climate justice is gender justice because it demands that we account for these differences. It means dismantling systems that exclude women, men, non-binary and gender-diverse people from decisions, and it is Indigenous women who often lead the way.
CB: What has been missing from the conversation around preserving Indigenous cultural heritage and empowering Indigenous communities? How do you see your book filling this gap?
JL: Indigenous systems are too often ignored in development efforts. As a Yaaku woman, I have felt the silence imposed on both my language and my gender. We need to create solutions led by Indigenous people. We must be trusted as experts and storytellers in this journey.
Now, it is young people bringing positive and impactful solutions, at the grassroots level, and to even bigger platforms, like speaking at Indigenous caucuses. We’re really happy to see individuals and organisations holding out their hands to us. It’s really moving because it’s been hard for our voices to be heard.
Watch, read, listen
FRUITS OF LABOUR: Migration Story highlighted the “daily struggle” of informal workers in Asia’s “largest wholesale fruit and vegetable market” as they endure the economics of heat stress.
COMMODIFICATION: Indigenous storyteller Nina Gualinga, in a Guardian documentary, explored the “extractivism” associated with “spiritual healing in the Amazon”.
HOLIDAY HEATWAVES: In the BBC’s The Climate Question podcast, host Graihagh Jackson asked how more frequent extreme temperatures will transform the travel industry.
Coming up
- 14-23 July: High-level political forum on sustainable development, New York
- 19 July: Tasmanian state election, Australia
- 21-22 July: International Conference on Climate Leadership, Harbin, China
- 24-25 July: EU-China summit, Beijing, China
Pick of the jobs
- Ember, digital communications intern | Salary: £25,207. Location: Remote
- Sequoia Climate Foundation, programme manager | Salary: $185,000-$190,000. Location: Irvine, California (hybrid)
- Australian National University, research fellow | Salary: $118,632-$134,507. Location: Canberra, Australia
- WWF, head of policy (climate) | Salary: £56,297-£65,680. Location: Woking, UK
- The Conversation, commissioning editor, environment | Salary: £34,000-£40,000. Location: London (hybrid)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 18 July 2025: India’s clean-energy milestone; Climate reaches UK parliament; Conserving trees and culture in Kenya appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Countries will meet in Armenia this month to carry out the first global review of progress towards meeting key nature targets by 2030.
These targets – and the wider ambition to halt and reverse biodiversity loss around the world – were agreed in the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022.
But the ambitions will not be achieved in time for the 2030 deadline unless action “accelerates rapidly”, a key UN report found.
It noted that nations are falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets, which focus on restoring ecosystems, increasing nature finance and reducing harmful subsidies.
This report and other findings will inform the global progress review taking place at the COP17 biodiversity summit in Armenia over 19-30 October.
The sections below summarise the report’s findings on where progress has – and has not – been made on each of the 23 targets.
They also rank the extent to which countries have addressed elements of each target on a national basis. Click on each target for more information. Key terms are defined throughout each section and in a glossary below.
The post COP17: Tracking progress towards the UN’s 2030 nature targets appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/nature-targets-2030-progress/
The amount of finance for nature delivered to date “falls far short” of what is needed to meet the UN’s global goals, according to a report released ahead of the COP17 biodiversity summit.
The global stocktaking report, prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UN CBD) ahead of this month’s summit in Armenia, finds that developed nations are failing to close the $200bn “biodiversity finance gap”.
Initiatives designed to support this goal are also stumbling, with a special “framework” fund for biodiversity receiving less than $140m from developed countries in the past two years and the “landmark” Cali Fund receiving only $6,000 from private companies.
The availability of finance – or lack thereof – is likely to be a key point of contention in negotiations at COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia, which begin on 19 October.
Target for 2025 ‘not achieved’
At COP15 in 2022, 196 countries agreed to an ambitious global deal to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, dubbed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
Goal D of the agreement, shown below, states that countries must “close” a $700bn “biodiversity finance gap” by 2030.
This overall $700bn is made up of two parts: changes to nature-harming subsidies; and raising financial resources to support biodiversity.
Target 18 within the text calls for countries to “identify by 2025, and eliminate, phase out or reform incentives, including subsidies, harmful for biodiversity…progressively reducing them by at least $500bn per year by 2030”.
The remaining $200bn should be met by “mobilising” resources, according to target 19 of the GBF. It states that countries should “substantially and progressively increase the level of financial resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030.
The overarching $200bn can be from national budgets, multilateral development banks or money “mobilised” from the private sector.
However, the target also specifically states that “at least $20bn per year by 2025 and…at least $30bn per year by 2030” should be public biodiversity funding provided to developing countries by developed countries – or others that “voluntarily assume” their obligations.
According to the global stocktaking report prepared by the CBD, between 2020 and 2023, countries mobilised a cumulative total of just $186.4bn. This is equivalent to an average of less than $50bn per year.
While the report – published on 10 September 2026 – cautions that it is “still too early to draw any conclusions”, it adds that this total “falls far short” of what is needed to close the $200bn-per-year biodiversity finance gap.
It continues to specify that the milestone of raising “at least $20bn per year by 2025” in public finance was also “likely not achieved”.
The report states that reporting countries raised a cumulative total of just $17.7bn in international public funding for biodiversity, across four years from 2020-23, as shown in the figure below. This amounts to an average of just $4.4bn per year.
These figures are supported by a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which suggests that global biodiversity finance reached $74.9-92.4bn per year between 2023 and 2025.
It adds that, of this, international public finance contributed around $16.1bn per year on average – nearly $4bn below the 2025 goal.
Moreover, the OECD report says that only $7.9bn in 2023 to $8.5bn in 2024 was “biodiversity-specific” funding, with another $5.7bn and $6.5bn, respectively, coming in the form of funds for other priorities, in which support for biodiversity was a secondary aim.
While the GBF sets targets for nature finance in 2025 and 2030, developed countries should be making similar contributions every year, according to thinktank Third World Network.
Faltering initiatives
There are two main channels of international public finance that developed countries can use to meet their biodiversity finance commitments under the GBF. These are official development finance (ODF) and the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF).
Separate figures for these channels also show financing falling behind the subtargets set out in the GBF.
This includes the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), which was established at COP15 in 2022.
It is currently housed under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and reports directly to the biodiversity COP.
Despite an initial flurry of pledges for the initiative, developed nations had contributed less than $400m to the fund, as of July this year, according to data shared with Carbon Brief by the GEF.
Between August 2023 and 30 June 2026, the GBFF has received only $387.2m in signed commitments from 11 countries and one subnational government (Quebec in Canada).
The figure below shows that, after the initial pledges ahead of COP16 in 2024, there have only been a handful of new contributions to the fund.
Elsewhere, the Cali fund was created at the COP16 nature negotiations in Colombia in 2024.
It is the first-ever global fund for companies profiting from genetic data to contribute to conservation goals.
According to a working paper from the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, if all 21,690 eligible firms shared their profits according to the fund’s rules, they could raise $3.6bn for nature annually. The paper adds that, under a realistic uptake from companies, this could generate $929m annually for nature.
To date, however, the fund has received only two contributions, totalling $6,000.
Finance gap ‘fight’
Ahead of COP17 in Armenia, experts tell Carbon Brief that finance will be the most closely watched element of the stocktake of progress.
For developing countries that “hold most of the world’s biodiversity and bear the greater burden of implementation” of nature targets, the need for this financing is “very real”, says Lim Li Ching of the Third World Network speaking to Carbon Brief. She adds:
“These amounts fall far short of the GBF’s target 19. Developed countries have regrettably not met their legal obligations…[T]his failure should not be used as an excuse to pivot to the private sector or market-based mechanisms, which struggle to raise finance at scale and often deepen social and ecological harm.”
Options for private and “innovative” finance include debt-for-nature swaps, biodiversity offsets and carbon credits, but these are harder to monitor and have often faced criticism.
The Cali Fund is one avenue for companies to contribute directly to the CBD’s goals, with dedicated, transparent allocations for conservation projects and Indigenous peoples.
Dr Siva Thambisetty, associate professor of law at the London School of Economics, tells Carbon Brief that the fund is still a voluntary measure and it is up to countries “to create a constructive, ethical obligation” for companies to contribute. She adds:
“The private sector is doing what it always does: m