Climate Change
DeBriefed 19 September 2025: EU ducks UN climate target; Australia delivers; Tracing beef’s impact on the Amazon
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
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.
This week
EU delay
NO NDC: The EU has “failed to agree” on a 2035 target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in time for a climate event taking place alongside the UN general assembly next week, the Financial Times reported. On 24 September, representatives from more than 100 nations will take part in an event where they will announce or offer more details on their 2035 climate plans, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), Carbon Brief understands. The FT added that, instead of agreeing to a target, EU member states have signed up to a “statement of intent”, which noted that the bloc would aim to cut emissions somewhere in the range of 66.3% and 72.5% by 2035.
DEADLY: Meanwhile, recent analysis showed that more than 16,000 heat deaths that occurred from June to August this year in the EU can be attributed to fossil-fueled global warming, reported the Guardian. Other recent research covered by Euronews indicated that this summer’s extreme weather events will cost the region about €126bn by 2029.
Australia delivers
NEW TARGET: Australia announced an NDC target of cutting emissions to between 62% and 70% below 2005 levels by 2035, reported the Sydney Morning Herald. This is a jump from the current goal of 43% by 2030, providing a “major challenge to the government and the economy”, given that Australia’s emissions have fallen by just 28% over the past two decades, the newspaper added.
RISING THREATS: The country also published its first national climate risk assessment this week, which concluded that 1.5 million Australians living in coastal areas could be at risk from sea level rise by 2050, BBC News reported. The Guardian added that the report looks at 10 “priority hazards”, including flooding and extreme heat, forecasting a rise of 190% in annual heat-related deaths in Sydney if warming reaches 2C.
Around the world
- FURTHER CHALLENGE: Construction workers announced an indefinite strike in Belém, the Brazilian city hosting COP30 this year, to demand better wages, Folha de São Paulo reported. Reuters reported that the UN had “urge[d] its staff to limit attendance” at COP30, due to concerns over high accommodation costs.
- CUTTING EMISSIONS: India’s power sector CO2 emissions fell by 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, only the second such reduction in 50 years, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Reuters and the Indian Express were among those to cover the analysis.
- NEW THREAT: A US Environmental Protection Agency proposal to stop collecting industrial emissions data threatens plans to capture and store CO2, reported the New York Times. Meanwhile, the US National Academies responded to the Trump administration’s misleading claims, with a report calling climate change “beyond scientific dispute”, said Politico.
- ‘REALITY CHECK’: A German government report called for cost efficiency and rapid – but limited – expansion of renewables, Clean Energy Wire reported.
- SECOND CALL: The International Energy Agency reiterated that the world would not need to invest in new oil and gas projects if demand for the fuels fell in line with the 1.5C limit on global warming, Carbon Brief reported.
1%
The percentage of global electricity consumption currently taken up by data centres, according to a new Carbon Brief explainer looking into the climate impact of artificial intelligence.
Latest climate research
- Forest specialist birds, such as the red-cockaded woodpecker and the bearded bellbird, are more diverse and abundant in undisturbed forests | Global Ecology and Biogeography
- Community-led surveillance expands protection, monitoring and defence of larger areas in Amazon forests | Nature Sustainability
- Incorporating aerosols can improve the accuracy of climate attribution studies, since aerosols “strongly influence” local heat extremes | Weather and Climate Extremes
(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 seventh assessment cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science authority, will include more authors from global south institutions than ever before, according to Carbon Brief analysis. A total of 660 scientists from 90 countries will write the three reports in the next assessment cycle, scheduled for publication in 2029. Some 42% of those authors belong to institutions based in the global south (see chart above), according to Carbon Brief.
Spotlight
Tracing beef in the Brazilian Amazon
In this spotlight, Carbon Brief reports from the Amazonian state of Pará, Brazil, which is implementing new measures to track the impact of beef on deforestation.
The state will host the COP30 climate summit in November.
The Amazonian state of Pará is home to 26m beef cows. The second-largest driver of deforestation in the state is cattle ranching.
Maria Gorete Rios is a small cattle producer in Pará’s municipality of Novo Repartimento. She was the first in Pará to implement individual identification of her cattle.
Of the 78 hectares of her land, 50 hectares are used for cattle and grazing, 10 hectares for her forest reserve and four hectares for producing cocoa and other crops such as cassava, beans, squash and açaí – a fruit native to the Amazon.
Gorete began identifying her cattle thanks to Pará’s first mandatory cattle traceability programme, announced by the state government at COP28 in 2023. The programme seeks to make the cattle supply chain more transparent and to channel incentives for producers to reduce deforestation.
To track her cows, Gorete has given each of them an ear tag tracker, which allows the programme to record which farm each cow was raised on, which slaughterhouse it went to and whether it was raised in illegally deforested areas, Rodrigo Freire, private areas leader for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Brazil’s Amazon, explained to Carbon Brief.
To verify that an area was not deforested for cattle production, Brazil’s government has a mandatory registry for rural farmers, which collects information on land use changes over farms, Fábio Medeiros, strategic cattle partnerships director at TNC, told Carbon Brief.
Gorete supports the traceability system because she believes that rural or small producers do not keep proper records of their property. She added:
“With traceability, they will be able to keep track. I think it’s fantastic.”
Further benefits
In addition to traceability, Gorete has begun to combine livestock farming with tree planting, under an “agroforestry” system.
She said that her land had been 100% degraded by industrial livestock farming, but now her planted trees provide shade for her livestock, as well as water availability and habitat for other animals.
Gorete told journalists visiting her farm that diversifying her agricultural production with trees and beekeeping provides her with more income. She added:
“I’m happy where I am. Livestock allows me to pay the highest fees, because livestock is what sustains us. I have açaí, I have cocoa, the basis of my diet. I also have to cultivate the land.”
Medeiros said that, with COP30 coming to the state in November, more incentives are expected for producers to comply with cattle traceability in the region.
Travel to Pará was organised by The Nature Conservancy Brazil, Instituto Clima e Sociedade (iCS) and Nature4Climate.
Watch, read, listen
10 YEARS OF PARIS: Ahead of the 10-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement, climate writer David Wallace-Wells reflected on progress and setbacks for climate action in the New York Times magazine.
COP REFORM: For the Chatham House blog, climate geopolitics expert Bernice Lee addressed the arguments for how the UN climate process should “evolve to move from pledge-making to delivery”.
‘BLACK GOLD’: A Reuters video showed how New York is turning food scraps into nutrient-rich soil, dubbed “black gold”.
Coming up
- 9-23 September: 80th session of the UN general assembly, New York
- 21-28 September: New York Climate Week
- 24 September: NDC summit at the UN general assembly
Pick of the jobs
- IPCC working group one technical support unit, communication officer | Salary: Unknown. Location: Paris
- The Economist, science and technology correspondent | Salary: Unknown. Location: London
- Rainforest Alliance, climate director | Salary: Unknown. Location: London
- Conservation International, director of natural climate solutions policy | Salary: Unknown. Location: Singapore, Japan or Australia
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 19 September 2025: EU ducks UN climate target; Australia delivers; Tracing beef’s impact on the Amazon appeared first on Carbon Brief.