Published

1 year ago

December 25, 2024

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

COP16 kicks off

HOLA CALI: The largest ever UN biodiversity summit, COP16, is officially underway in Cali, Colombia. At the talks, countries will grapple with how to put the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – often described as the “Paris Agreement for nature” – into action, alongside debates on finance for developing countries and how to best share the benefits from genetic information.

TRACKING NEGOTIATIONS: Carbon Brief has produced an interactive grid of where each party stands on the key negotiating issues and a live tracker of the texts under negotiation. On Tuesday, Carbon Brief’s team of five journalists on the ground in Cali held an online webinar on the key issues up for discussion at the summit. A recording is available.

Around the world

CLIMATE PLANS: The UK must decide “how far and how fast” to cut emissions amid preparations to release a new national climate pledge at the COP29 climate summit in November, the Guardian reported. Carbon Brief understands that the US, Brazil and UAE are planning to do the same, three months before the deadline.
LOBBYING: An “influential” group of 30 oil and gas producers drafted “detailed plans” for “dismantling” key US climate rules after the upcoming presidential election, the Washington Post reported. Members of the group were “aggressively pursued for campaign cash by Donald Trump”, the newspaper noted.
CUBA CHAOS: At least six people were killed as Hurricane Oscar brought heavy rainfall to Cuba, according to the New York Times.
ENERGY BOOST: South-east Asia must accelerate clean-energy investments to $190bn by 2035 – around five times current levels – to meet climate goals, according to a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report covered by Reuters.

3,071

The number of “square brackets” remaining in negotiating documents at COP16, as of Thursday night, according to Carbon Brief’s COP16 text tracker. (Square brackets denote areas of disagreement in UN texts. They must all be resolved before countries can reach consensus.)

Latest climate research

The extreme floods that hit Sudan in August were made nearly 20% more intense by human-driven climate change, according to a new World Weather Attribution analysis.
Research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that a 1% increase in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was associated with a 6.3% jump in malaria cases the following month.
Over the past 30 years, polar bears have been increasingly exposed to a range of pathogens, due in part to the loss of sea ice habitat and rapid warming in the Arctic, a new PLOS One study said.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Greenhouse gas emissions remain far off track to meet global climate goals, according to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) 2024 emissions gap report covered by Carbon Brief. The chart above, based on a figure from the report, shows how emissions will change by 2035 under current policy and under current national climate plans, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs). The chart compares this with the emissions reductions needed by 2035 to put the world on track with a scenario where global temperatures are kept to 1.5C (red) or 2C (pale red).

Spotlight

Where countries stand on reversing nature loss

This week, Carbon Brief reports on how countries plan to get back on track after the majority of them missed a deadline to release new nature pledges ahead of COP16.

In a cold and snowy Montreal in the depths of December 2022, countries agreed to the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), often referred to as the “Paris Agreement for nature”.

The GBF is a list of four goals and 23 targets that collectively aim to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and to put Earth “in harmony with nature” by 2050.

At the Montreal talks, countries pledged to release new national plans to lay out how they plan to implement the goals and targets within their borders.

These plans are known as national biodiversity strategies and action plans, or “NBSAPs”.

Under the GBF and its underlying documents, countries agreed to submit new NBSAPs by the COP16 biodiversity summit, which is currently taking place in Cali, Colombia.

Carbon Brief analysis shows that just 30 countries and the EU met the deadline to submit an updated NBSAP ahead of COP16.

Since then, a further five countries have published new NBSAPs, including COP16 host Colombia.

That leaves 162 parties that are yet to submit updated NBSAPs.

Countries that had submitted updated NBSAPs by 14 October (green). Data source: UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Map by Joe Goodman for Carbon Brief

Countries that were unable to meet the deadline to submit NBSAPs ahead of COP16 were requested to instead submit national targets. These submissions simply list biodiversity targets that countries will aim for – without an accompanying plan for how they will be achieved.

As of 25 October, 113 parties had submitted national targets.

Next steps

One of the major tasks for negotiators in Cali will be to decide how to move forward after the majority of countries failed to produce new NBSAPs ahead of the talks.

On Thursday, a draft decision submitted for review by COP16 president and Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad laid out the next steps for countries when it comes to NBSAPs.

The text still contains some brackets, meaning countries will need to negotiate the finer details before it can be officially adopted.

The draft “urges” countries that have not yet done so to release new NBSAPs “as soon as possible”. (In UN language terms, “urges” is stronger than “invites” or “encourages”, but not as strong as “requests” or “instructs”.)

Eyebrows may be raised at the failure to include a specific timeframe for when laggard countries should submit new NBSAPs.

One NGO observer told Carbon Brief that they had hoped to see the language say “as soon as possible, but no later than the end of 2025”, adding:

“Generally having a clear deadline is good to keep countries to account. ‘As soon as possible’ is commonly understood as ‘really really soon’ and we can only hope that parties see it that way too.”

The text also “requests” the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a major multilateral environmental fund, “provide[s] timely support to all eligible parties, aligned with national circumstances and needs, upon request, to enable them to” release new NBSAPs.

It comes after developing countries said that a lack of timely funding from the GEF had prevented them from being able to produce new biodiversity plans on time.

Watch, read, listen

‘BLENDED’ FINANCE: Writing in Le Monde ahead of COP29, Mette Frederiksen and Mia Mottley, the prime ministers of Denmark and Barbados, respectively, argued in favour of scaling up state-backed “blended” finance instruments to channel private investment for climate action.

COP16 OUTSIDER: Vox examined why the US is the only country in the world, other than the Vatican, to refuse to join the UN biodiversity convention.

PANTANAL JAGUARS: A podcast by the Brazilian Report covered how extreme fires in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands are affecting jaguars, “the biome’s most emblematic species”.

Coming up

21-26 October: World Bank and IMF annual meetings, Washington DC
21 October-1 November: UN Biodiversity Conference COP16, Cali, Colombia
25-28 October: International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission Leaders’ Meeting 2024, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Pick of the jobs

California Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, senior climate research specialist | Salary: $6,963-$8,650 per month. Location: Sacramento, California
Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, ember vacancy on the Great Artesian Basin Stakeholder Advisory Committee | Salary: Unknown. Location: Remote, Australia
Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, project development specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Belize

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 25 October 2024: COP16 kicks off; ‘Quantum leap’ needed for 1.5C; Where countries stand on reversing nature loss appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 25 October 2024: COP16 kicks off; ‘Quantum leap’ needed for 1.5C; Where countries stand on reversing nature loss

Climate Change

A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won

Published

23 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.

Interview by Paloma Beltran, Living on Earth

From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.

A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won

Climate Change

Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit

Published

1 day ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.

ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.

Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.

“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”

The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]

ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]

Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.

“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”

Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.

-ENDS-

Images available in Greenpeace Media Library

Notes:

[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.

[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee

[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.

[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.

Media contact:

Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit

Climate Change

Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump

Published

1 day ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

The Trump administration’s relentless rollback of public health and environmental protections has allowed widespread toxic exposures to flourish, warn experts who helped implement safeguards now under assault.

By Liza Gross

In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.