- Formal negotiations
- Finance
- Global review
- Global report
- Digital sequence information
- Harmful subsidies
- Marine biodiversity
- Planning, monitoring, reporting and review
- Article 8(j) implementation
- Biodiversity and climate change
- Links with other bodies
- Around the COP
- Armenian presidency
- Protests
- Lobbying and influence
- Carbon and biodiversity markets
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UN climate focus
PACT FOR THE FUTURE: The UN general assembly meeting in New York signed off on a plan for countries to work together to tackle large global challenges, “with climate change one of the headline topics”, EuroNews reported. The agreement reaffirmed global pledges to transition away from fossil fuels, but did not raise global ambitions, the outlet noted.
ACTION OVER WORDS: Amid the summit, developing countries “pleaded” with richer nations to end the “lip service” and take more action on climate change, Reuters reported. Samoan environment minister Cedric Schuster told reporters that “we need all countries, but particularly the G20, to lead the way” on emissions cuts and climate finance, the outlet said.
AMAZON BLAZES: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva mentioned Amazon fires in his UN general assembly opening speech, but “not the fact they’re adding to criticism of his administration’s own environmental stewardship”, the Associated Press said. The country’s portion of the Amazon rainforest recorded 38,000 fires last month – the highest in August since 2010, the newswire said.
Around the world
- ‘LIFE-THREATENING’: At least three people were killed and 1.3m left without power in “dangerous” Hurricane Helene, which made landfall over Florida on Thursday, CBS News reported. Sea surface temperatures have been “exceptionally warm” in the Gulf of Mexico – about 2C above normal for this time of years, BBC News said.
- COAL POWER: The Australian government cleared the way for three coal mines to extend their operations for a further 30-40 years in a move that has been criticised as “counter to action on climate change”, ABC News reported.
- BIG JOB: Former World Bank climate chief Rachel Kyte was appointed as the UK’s climate envoy – a position “axed” by former prime minister Rishi Sunak, according to the Guardian.
- GREENWASHING SPAT: French oil and gas company TotalEnergies is expected to appeal a South African advertising regulator ruling that it was “misleading” to “tout its commitment to ‘sustainable development’ in a campaign with the country’s national parks”, the Financial Times said.
- AI GOES NUCLEAR: Microsoft agreed to buy power from the Three Mile Island energy plant, “the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history”, which is set to reopen in 2028 “after improvements”, BBC News said. It added the deal is intended to bolster clean energy as “power-hungry data centres for artificial intelligence (AI) expand”.
£1.7bn
The extra funds the UK needs to spend on nature in the next two years to meet a flagship international target, according to Carbon Brief analysis, also covered by the Guardian.
Latest climate research
- Climate change doubled the likelihood of the heavy rainfall behind floods in central Europe earlier this month, a World Weather Attribution study found.
- Research in Atmospheric Science Letters explored the “new paradigms and challenges” for scientists researching extreme weather.
- The frequency of warm, dry and high fire-risk weather conditions have “surged” in parts of South America, including the Amazon region, in the past few decades, a study in Communications Earth and Environment found.
(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 UK’s last coal-fired power plant will close this month, ending a 142-year era of burning coal to generate electricity. It is the first major economy – and first G7 member – to phase out coal power. This chart shows the use of coal for electricity in the UK from 1880-2025, in millions of tonnes. Read Carbon Brief’s Q&A on how the country reached this milestone.
Spotlight
Rights for River Ouse
This week, Carbon Brief visits a river that could be the first in the UK to gain its own rights.
The River Ouse runs for 35 miles across east and west Sussex in England, winding through the town of Lewes and meeting the English Channel at Newhaven.
Since last year, the Ouse has been at the heart of community discussions in Lewes on what it means to give a river a voice – similar to a person – amid a growing global movement to grant legal rights to nature.
Lewes district council approved a motion on River Ouse rights in February 2023, agreeing to develop and consider a river rights charter in two years.
Ahead of the district council cabinet considering this charter next February, Carbon Brief visited the town to hear about the steps towards the Ouse gaining legal rights.
‘Eco-centric view’
Matthew Bird, a Lewes Green town councillor (pictured right) who put forward the 2023 motion, told Carbon Brief that the charter will be comparable to the universal declaration on river rights used in other parts of the world:
“It [will contain] things like the right to flow, the right to be free from pollution, the right to native biodiversity, the right to have a voice…The key thing for us is that it’s seeing things from an eco-centric point of view as much as you’re able to.”
The Ouse, as with many rivers, faces threats from climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss and invasive species such as Himalayan balsam – a fast-spreading plant with explosive seed pods.
Bird, who is also the director of the Love Our Ouse campaign, said that those involved in the motion aspired for a more holistic approach to tackling these issues. He told Carbon Brief:
“We’re just so focused on sewage [in the Ouse] that all those other really challenging issues were sort of drowned out. It felt like river rights, rights of nature could almost be a framework for looking at that.”
One focus of the movement is to grant the river the “right to restoration”.
Restoring and protecting rivers has proven to be an effective adaptation measure against increasing flood risk. Lewes was badly flooded in 2000 after the Ouse burst its banks following heavy rainfall. Hundreds of people were evacuated.
Rights for rivers
Local campaigns are ongoing in other parts of the UK to give rights to rivers such as the Cam, Don and Medway.
Further afield, a city in Brazil “legally recognised its waves as living beings” earlier this month. Ecuador was the first country in the world to include nature rights in its constitution in 2008.
Emma Montlake, the director of casework at the Environmental Law Foundation, who is also involved with Love Our Ouse, said that the charter, if approved, “will be a declaration by the local authority that they accept that the river has these rights”. She told Carbon Brief:
“The charter will also introduce a governance structure that can represent the river. Whether that’s an inter-species council or a citizens’ assembly.”
It will take longer to give legal rights to the river, however, “because there’s no national legislation to pin this on” in the UK, she added:
“It’s about giving nature a voice that it doesn’t currently have. We have lots of legislation, we have protections for habitats and species, we have different regulations for permitting, for pollution. But…our laws are not adequate to protect nature.”
Watch, read, listen
ICE JOB: Researchers spoke to the British Antarctic Survey’s podcast Beyond the Ice about their field work studying the “rapidly” changing Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica.
NOT-SO GREEN: DeSmog mapped the influence of Ireland’s “powerful farming lobby”, highlighting the “damage the [agricultural] sector is wreaking on Ireland’s climate targets”.
HEATING UP: The New York Times explored Nigeria’s “cooling crisis” amid scarce electricity and rising temperatures.
Coming up
- 29 September: Austria parliamentary elections
- 30 September-4 October: International Maritime Organization (IMO) marine environment protection committee meeting, London
- 1-2 October: 9th Forest Europe ministerial conference, Königswinter, Germany
Pick of the jobs
- African Climate Foundation, senior strategist for African Energy Futures Initiative | Salary: Unknown. Location: Remote
- Washington Post, accountability reporter, climate and environment | Salary: $97,400-$162,300. Location: Washington DC
- ClientEarth, lawyer, clean air, water and soil | Salary: €4,938 p\m in Brussels, €5,612 p\m in Berlin, €61,346 p\y in Madrid. Location: Berlin, Brussels or Madrid
- The Commonwealth, national climate finance adviser, Tuvalu | Salary: £50,727. Location: Tuvalu
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 27 September 2024: UN ‘pact for the future’; UK turns its back on coal power; River ‘rights’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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Countries have completed the first “global review” of their progress towards reversing nature loss by 2030 at the COP17 biodiversity talks in Yerevan, Armenia.
The review “notes with deep concern” that, unless action is “rapidly accelerated”, the goal to reverse nature loss and meet a set of 23 targets by 2030 “will not be achieved”.
It “urges” countries to accelerate action, including by “increased ambition in addressing the gaps”.
Much of the discussions in Yerevan focused on how to raise the necessary funds to help developing countries protect nature.
Some major economies pushed to expand the range of nations that are expected to provide finance, with countries agreeing at the end of the two weeks of talks that non-donors that want to contribute can “signal interest” before COP18.
This came after developed countries failed to meet a target to significantly ramp up nature finance over the last few years.
It also came as a landmark fund agreed at COP16 in Colombia to pay communities for the genetic resources derived from nature stands nearly empty two years on.
The Yerevan talks marked the halfway point of the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature” first made in 2022 and due to be achieved by 2030.
During the nearly 12-hour-long final plenary, countries voted for Quito, Ecuador, to host the COP18 nature talks, which will be held in 2028.
Countries managed to sign off on all the major negotiation texts, marking a stark contrast to COP16, which ran so far over time that the Colombian presidency lost “quorum”, forcing talks to resume in Rome months later.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed analysis of all of the key outcomes from COP17.
Formal negotiations
Finance
Finance, predictably, was at the heart of the discord and deadlock at the Yerevan talks.
At COP17, discussions on finance had to achieve several outcomes.
The first part – to take stock of biodiversity finance mobilised so far to meet the nature deal’s goals – fell under the global review.
As the global report noted, developed countries failed to meet their commitments to raise “at least $20bn a year by 2025” for nature. Delegates pointed to falling aid levels and a sharp 27% decline in environmental funding for the 2026-30 period.
The second part was to agree on how to mobilise resources for the next four years, to meet the GBF’s goals and targets.
Calls to “broaden the contributor base” of who pays to protect nature – and whether that should include emerging economies – became the most fraught element of the talks.
Eventually, countries agreed on what Switzerland described as a “super, mega-delicate” text. It hinged on major “political compromises”, with “no major winner or loser”, according to Kenya.
Per the decision, countries that want to be included on a list of developed country donors can “signal interest” through bilateral, confidential consultations before COP18 and every alternate COP after.
Finally, countries also agreed on criteria to shape and resource a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature after 2030.
However, this did not immediately take the form of a new fund under the COP that biodiverse countries have demanded since 2022, deferring the mechanism’s institutional structure to COP18.
Resource mobilisation discussions at the GBF’s halfway mark were supposed to agree on how to close the “biodiversity finance gap” and to “increase resources from all s