Spiking food prices have made headlines around the world this year, from eggs in the US to vegetables in India.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index has been slowly increasing over the past six months following declines over much of 2023.
For example, the price of orange juice concentrate in the US was 42% higher in April than it was a year ago, while the price of fresh orange juice in the UK has risen 25% over the last year.
In Greece, the price of olive oil rose by nearly 30% over 2023 and by more than 63% in April of this year.
No single factor alone can explain the rising prices.
But geopolitical conflict, extreme weather events, high input costs and increased demand are all playing a role.
The FAO’s recent Food Outlook report finds that, despite positive forecasts, “global food production systems remain vulnerable to shocks stemming from extreme weather events, geopolitical tensions, policy changes and developments in other markets”.
Carbon Brief has asked a range of scientists and policy experts from around the world what they think are the biggest factors driving spiking global food prices.
These are their responses, first as sample quotes, then, below, in full:
- Prof Elizabeth Robinson: “Whilst one can argue that food crises are not primarily caused by climate or weather, often food price spikes are due to a combination of weather and non-weather related factors.”
- Levi Sucre: “The overexploitation of agricultural lands and the intensive use of agrochemicals have led to a growing need for fertilisers to maintain production, which further increases production costs.”
- Dr Álvaro Lario: “Most food commodity markets present a stable outlook for 2024-25, which should help contain prices for consumers. However…many factors can tip the delicate demand-supply balance.”
- Siraj Hussain: “For long-term and stable food security, the yield has to go up and food losses have to come down.”
- Prof Andrew Challinor: “Put plainly, climate change is beginning to outpace us because it is interacting with our complex interrelated economic and food systems.”
- Dr Rob Vos: “Food prices in global markets are most sensitive to weather conditions and supply disruptions in major producing countries.”
- Prof Alan Matthews: “The rapid recovery of consumer demand following the disruptions caused by the measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, extreme weather events, animal disease outbreaks and tight global markets all contributed.”
- Xiomara Paredes: “In short, every time a new regulation is created, it increases production costs, makes market access difficult and thus makes food products more expensive.”
- Dr Manuel Otero: “Food prices have experienced significant increases due to various interrelated economic, social, environmental and political causes.”
- Dr Shouro Dasgupta: “Conflicts are one of the main reasons behind price shocks…Many of these events have also disrupted supply chains and infrastructure.”
Prof Elizabeth Robinson
Director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
London School of Economics and Political Science
Back in 2008, broad underinvestment in the agriculture sector, increasing demand for biofuels, changing diets and speculation – encouraged by declining global food stocks – were already putting longer-term upward pressure on food prices.
The 2008 food crisis was triggered by sequential poor wheat harvests in Australia, a breadbasket country. However, the extreme spike in wheat and rice prices was driven by a combination of export restrictions, panic buying and increased speculation, which amplified the short-term harvest shocks and the longer-term pressures.
More recently, the changing climate, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have disrupted food production and globally integrated food supply chains, putting rapid upwards pressure on food prices. Whilst one can argue that food crises are not primarily caused by climate or weather, often food price spikes are due to a combination of weather and non-weather related factors.
Earlier this year cocoa prices rapidly increased, a consequence of extreme weather conditions, linked in part to El Niño, resulting in multiple poor harvest seasons in west Africa, combined with longer-term pressures, including disease and ageing cocoa trees, and short-term pressures, particularly speculation, exacerbating the situation further.
Given the changing climate, and in particular increasing extremes of heat and precipitation, food price spikes are likely to be an increasingly common feature of our highly integrated global food systems, in which shocks in one part of the world can relatively easily be amplified and transmitted around the globe.
Levi Sucre
Coordinator
Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests
There are several factors causing the increase in food prices worldwide.
Firstly, the high dependency on oil, whose price keeps rising, drives up the costs of food production and transportation. Agricultural machinery, fertilisers and product transportation rely heavily on oil, so any increase in its price directly affects the final cost of food.
Additionally, the overexploitation of agricultural lands and the intensive use of agrochemicals have led to a growing need for fertilisers to maintain production, which further increases production costs.
Monocultures are also degrading the soil, reducing its capacity to produce food sustainably. The lack of crop rotation depletes soil nutrients, diminishing its fertility and forcing farmers to use more fertilisers and pesticides. This not only increases costs but also has negative effects on the environment and health.
The effects of climate change are impacting agricultural production; for example, rising temperatures are disrupting previously predictable agricultural seasons, making crop production more difficult. High temperatures in Mesoamerica continue to destroy crops and reduce food reserves, worsening shortages and driving up prices, affecting nearly 8 million people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Furthermore, economic injustice, inequality and lack of equity exacerbate the situation. The people with the least resources are the most affected by rising food prices, putting their food security at risk. On the other hand, small-scale producers, who do not use harmful soil practices, do not receive the necessary support to increase their production. These farmers cannot compete with large companies that dominate the market with their monocultures.
Dr Álvaro Lario
President
International Fund for Agricultural Development
International food prices have declined since their historic peak after the start of the war in Ukraine. According to the recently released biennial FAO Food Outlook, most food commodity markets present a stable outlook for 2024-25, which should help contain prices for consumers. But as the report reminds us, many factors can tip the delicate demand-supply balance, impacting food prices and global food security.
The drop in global food prices does not automatically mean that prices have decreased in real terms in local markets, especially considering the strong depreciation of local currencies in most low- and middle-income countries against a robust US dollar.
This is also true for rural communities in these countries, where 80% of the world’s poorest live. In these areas, people can spend up to 70% of their income on food, leaving them with no capacity to absorb any price hikes and pushing them into poverty and hunger. Since Covid-19 emerged, we have seen multiple crises, such as climate change, conflict and record-high food prices, have compounded to push 122 million more people into hunger.
And, despite the current trend, we must remember how fragile our food systems are. They are increasingly threatened by more frequent and intense weather extremes, and volatile geopolitics. Our food systems are overly concentrated on a few crops, countries and producers, and are inefficient, with significant food losses along the value chain and high levels of food waste at the consumer level.
Siraj Hussain
India’s former agricultural secretary. Trustee.
World Food Programme Trust for India
Food inflation has been a source of major concern for a vast majority of Indians.
It is quite an enigma that even cereals, in which India is surplus, have seen double-digit inflation in the last year. Despite the erratic monsoon in 2023, India produced 137m tonnes of rice. Yet in every month since April 2023, the consumer price index inflation for rice was 11-13%.
In the case of wheat, inflation was more than 12% from April to July 2023. The Indian government released 10m tonnes of wheat under an open market sales scheme to cool down wheat prices and the intervention was quite successful as inflation has come down to about 3-7% since July 2023.
The reasons behind inflation in basic cereals of wheat and rice are not well understood. Despite low monsoon rains in 2023-24 due to El Niño, the production of both was not too low in 2023-24. As per the Indian government, wheat production was 113m tonnes.
The real concern in the basket of food inflation comes from vegetables, where inflation in the last year has reached more than 25%. This is attributed to losses in the supply chain from harvesting to marketing. India’s food surpluses are quite small except for rice and sugar. For long-term and stable food security, the yield has to go up and food losses have to come down.
Prof Andy Challinor
Professor of Climate Impacts.
University of Leeds
Every five years, the UK is mandated to report on climate change risks. The scientific evidence for the second of these reports was published in 2017. It highlighted risks from weather-related shocks to international food production and trade as a key risk.
The final report, which is the responsibility of the government, not scientists, endorsed all the conclusions of the evidence report “with the exception of some of those on food security”. The reason? It said: “The government takes a more optimistic view of the levels of resilience that are achieved through functioning markets and diverse sources of supply.”
In the same month that the government response was written, reports of a UK courgette deficit, resulting from climate extremes abroad, soon deepened into wider concerns across a range of vegetables and rationing was commonplace across supermarkets. The World Economic Forum’s 2017 report on global risks identified extreme weather events – already ranked as the most likely global risk in every WEF report since 2014 – as both the most likely and most impactful risk, after weapons of mass destruction.
Skip forward to 2022, when the evidence for the new UK assessment was published. Amongst other additions, an increased underlying vulnerability to climate risk was identified along with a new specific risk of “risk amplification from the interactions and cascades of named risks across systems and geographies”.
The way we as a society (consumers, citizens, government, businesses) choose to set up our food systems has huge implications for stability and resilience – or lack thereof. The 2022 report makes clear that the UK is struggling to keep pace with climate change impacts because of both the pace of change and the way in which the many potential risks to food systems interact with each other.
Put plainly, climate change is beginning to outpace us because it is interacting with our complex interrelated economic and food systems. Until we find ourselves able to look at the big picture and adjust accordingly, we can expect more of the same.
Dr Rob Vos
Director for Markets, Trade and Institutions.
International Food Policy Research Institute
The war in Ukraine caused world market prices for staple foods, especially wheat and vegetable oils, to skyrocket in the first half of 2022. Since then, however, those world market prices have come down to pre-war levels.
At the same time, consumers around the world have felt soaring domestic food price inflation well into 2023. People in some low- and middle-income countries, such as in Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gaza, Haiti, Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela, are still seeing the cost of their daily bread and meals going up at high rates today.
What is driving these price fluctuations in global food markets and why are consumer prices not following the same pattern?
Food prices in global markets are most sensitive to weather conditions and supply disruptions in major producing countries. For instance, floods in India caused by the El Niño phenomenon disrupted rice production in India during 2023, pushing up rice prices worldwide.
The war in Ukraine caused shortages in global wheat, maize, sunflower seeds and fertiliser supplies as both Russia and Ukraine are major producers, pushing up wheat, vegetable oil and fertiliser prices.
I should add that the Ukraine war was not the only factor and, in fact, just exacerbated the surge in international food and fertiliser prices induced by the global economic recovery from the Covid-19 recession and the supply chain disruptions (recall the containership pile-up at harbours) that sent oil prices and shipping costs soaring and increasing the cost of farming and food trade worldwide.
Global market prices are further sensitive to misguided policy responses. Governments often respond to expected food supply shortages and price surges by imposing restrictions on exports (such as India’s bans on rice exports in 2023) or lowering import restrictions (as many rice-importing countries did in 2023). While trying to protect their consumers, these “insulation” measures end up just magnifying the price increase.
Why do domestic food prices not necessarily follow the same pattern?
In fact, most countries are relatively insulated from global price shocks as they rely predominantly on their own food production to feed their populations; typically, only 10-15% or less of food consumption is imported.
Domestic conditions for food production and distribution systems thus matter more than global prices. These conditions vary across countries, but countries with the highest rates of consumer price inflation have seen food systems disrupted by intensified conflict (as in Ethiopia, Gaza, Haiti and Sudan, for instance) and those suffering macroeconomic constraints and weak currencies that have kept both general and food price inflation high (e.g. Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey, and many highly indebted low-income countries).
Prof Alan Matthews
Professor Emeritus of European Agricultural Policy
University of Dublin Trinity College
Food prices in the EU rose dramatically in 2022 and 2023. EU food prices were 41% higher in May 2023 relative to the price level in 2015, while the overall price level rose by just 26% during this period. The monthly annual rate of food price inflation peaked at 19.2% in the EU in March 2023.
Even higher rates were recorded in central and eastern Europe, with Hungary a particular outlier, with food price inflation of 46% in February 2023. Since then, food prices have not fallen, but are now increasing at a rate below the general inflation rate for the first time in two years.
There have been multiple drivers of this food price inflation. The rapid recovery of consumer demand following the disruptions caused by the measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, extreme weather events, animal disease outbreaks and tight global markets all contributed.
For Europe, the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been particularly important. There was a direct impact through the increased price of energy, and thus fertilisers and fuel, given the EU’s dependence on imports particularly of Russian gas, but also an indirect impact through the knock-on effect of higher world market crop prices due to the subsequent curtailment of Ukrainian exports to the world market.
Extreme weather events have contributed to food price increases. High temperatures and drought badly affected olive oil production in 2022-23 as well as production of cereals in southern Europe, while heavy rains and wet weather have delayed planting and harvests and damaged fruit quality in northern Europe.
Despite these production losses, a March 2024 study in Communications Earth & Environment estimated that the 2022 extreme summer heat had increased food inflation in Europe by 0.43-0.93 percentage points – so making a relatively minor contribution to the overall 19% increase in food prices at that time. Nonetheless, in more normal times that would cause a more noticeable uptick in food prices, and the authors suggest that the warming projected for 2035 could amplify these numbers by 30-50%.
Xiomara Paredes
Executive Director, Latin American and Caribbean Coordinating Association of Small Fair Trade Producers and Workers
The new regulations that the EU has recently implemented, such as the deforestation-free regulation, changes in organic regulation, human rights and environmental due diligence, entail the investment of additional resources, thus raising production costs.
For example, to comply with the deforestation-free regulation, producers must first invest in geolocation equipment and have technical staff who can survey the points or polygons on the plots of each producer member of the organisation. Geolocating all the producers’ plots also takes time and effort that must be diluted in the installed capacity of the producer organisations.
In short, every time a new regulation is created, it increases production costs, makes market access difficult and thus makes food products more expensive.
Dr Shouro Dasgupta
Environmental Economist
Fondazione CMCC
Visiting Senior Fellow
Grantham Research Institute, LSE
The issue of increasing food prices is multifaceted and is due to a complex set of reasons including conflicts, climate change and supply chain disruptions.
Conflicts are one of the main reasons behind price shocks. For instance, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe, has substantially reduced exports of wheat, maize and sunflower, resulting in food price fluctuations. While global food prices have decreased from their peak levels at the onset of the conflict, they remain higher than the pre-conflict levels.
Climate change, manifested by increasing temperatures and the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme events such as heatwaves, droughts and floods, has led to crop failures and reduced yields in many parts of the world. This, in turn, has pushed up food prices through supply shocks.
Many of these events have also disrupted supply chains and infrastructure, such as roads, and lowered water levels of major rivers such as the Rhine. Whether due to conflicts or climate change, several countries have imposed export bans on major agricultural commodities (for example, India, Myanmar and Russia on rice; Thailand on sugar; Argentina on beef). These restrictions affect countries that are highly dependent on imports the most.
Several policy failures in the global food system also contribute to food inflation. One such issue is the inadequacy of storage facilities, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Another is the concentration of food production in certain regions and on selected crops (60% of the plant-based calorie intake is provided by rice, wheat and maize) and the fact that global food chains are dominated by a small number of multinational corporations.
Dr Manuel Otero
Director-general, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture
In recent years, food prices have experienced significant increases due to various interrelated economic, social, environmental and political causes. Armed conflicts have disrupted supply chains and food production and distribution, exacerbating shortages and driving up prices. These conflicts have also displaced millions of people, affecting their ability to produce and access food.
Economic shocks, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and its repercussions, plus the slowdown of economies, have reduced consumers’ purchasing power, decreasing incomes and increasing unemployment, which has raised relative demand and prices.
Extreme weather events, such as droughts and storms, have affected agricultural production, reducing supply and increasing production costs, resulting in higher prices for consumers. Volatility in fertiliser markets, driven by trade restrictions and armed conflict, has also increased agricultural production costs, reflected in higher prices for food products.
Trade restrictions, such as export bans, have exacerbated the global food crisis, limiting international food trade and further driving up prices in global markets. According to our Observatory of Public Policies for Agrifood Systems tool, since the pandemic, food inflation has reached 28% annually on a global average – compared to a general inflation of 19% annually.
This is despite the fact that international food prices fell 9% annually for the same comparison period, suggesting that other economic, political and environmental factors contribute to food inflation.
Latin America and the Caribbean is home to 16 net-exporting and 16 net-food-importing countries, so the region has benefited from the increase in international food prices, but has also been one of the most affected by food insecurity due to factors such as increasing poverty.
The post Experts: What is causing food prices to spike around the world? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Experts: What is causing food prices to spike around the world?
The number of global climate initiatives launched or run by China has been growing since 2009, a new study shows.
But whether this will translate into China taking up the mantle of climate leadership remains an “open question”, says Dr Sun Yixian, study co-author and professor of sustainability governance at the University of Bath.
Sun’s team has compiled a database tracking all global environmental initiatives established from the 1980s onwards that were launched or run by China.
These initiatives are either created by China or co-created with other governments, or have operations that are mainly managed by Chinese institutions.
They range from research cooperation and south-south climate funding to high-level policy signalling, such as joint statements on climate change.
In an interview with Carbon Brief, Sun discusses the key findings of the new “China’s Global Environmental Leadership” (CGEL) database.
He adds that it is not yet clear if the US withdrawal from the UN climate regime will change China’s role in global climate governance.
The conversation covers how the number of China-led initiatives has changed over time, what these projects look like and how China’s approach to climate “leadership” is changing.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
- Sun on the types of climate initiatives: “There are all different kinds of initiatives – we have these typologies of governance functions, including sharing information and building platforms, or developing capacity – capacity building activities, which can be training delivered by China to other countries. Or also by providing funding, for example.”
- On the rise in new climate initiatives: “From after 2009 and 2010, we’ve seen many initiatives – of course, more and more over the last 10 years, and even the last five years, from 2021…have been created.”
- On the impact of the Trump administration: “The shift of the US under the second Trump administration will probably help Chinese initiatives get more traction from their international partners…Whether or not this will translate into new initiatives or strengthen existing initiatives, I think that’s an open question.”
- On a growing focus on multilateral programmes: “What we have seen is a very clear upward trend of transnational initiatives with a global scope. That means they operate in more than two continents. So, in that sense, what we can see is, actually, China is moving from this bilateral engagement model to more kind of global engagement and trying to project its influence at the global scale.”
- On a climate leadership ‘mindset’: “[Leading Chinese experts] said the government, and also people in China, are not ready to become a global leader. But, at the same time…in climate governance, but also in clean-energy supply chains – China is playing a leading role. So, I think the question is whether this…will translate into the understanding, or mindsets, of people, including policymakers or decision-makers in the country.”
- On the future of China’s climate engagement: “My read is that China is willing to share more knowledge, and technology as well, through its international global engagements…But, at the same time, I think, it is not a given. It depends on how countries can make arrangements with China, how they can also propose viable solutions in terms of absorbing Chinese technologies.”
- On the future of multilateral climate negotiations: Multilateralism is a very important principle, championed in almost all the initiatives. That means China is not going to abandon multilateral processes. Also, we have done some work looking at the alignment of Chinese climate initiatives with existing UN institutions and frameworks, and we also see very close alignment.
Carbon Brief: Thank you for joining us, Yixian. Your team has compiled a database of China’s “environmental leadership”. What do you mean by leadership and what did you find in relation to climate change?
Sun Yixian: Thanks Anika, it’s great to speak to Carbon Brief. Leadership is a very contested concept in social science, or especially in international relations. This is why we were very cautious when we thought about the name of this dataset, but we thought it was a good way to capture what we’re trying to do.
In this project, what we are trying to look at is China’s role in global environmental governance – China’s shifting role, especially from a more passive participant in global governance processes to play a more proactive role in developing or managing its own initiatives on transnational or cross-border environmental governance.
So, [this includes] different environmental issues, but, of course, we found that climate change is a very important issue area. By leading, we are using the concept of governance – in a sense that we are looking at the initiatives where Chinese actors claim some authority over other audiences towards certain public goods. So, it’s trying to provide public goods, in different ways. We have come up with a typology of different governance functions, trying to look at what specific activities Chinese actors are doing, or what kind of public goods Chinese actors are delivering, to the audiences of different initiatives.
And by audience we mean…international actors. So, that means we are not interested in what China is doing domestically, but beyond its borders.
CB: Could you explain what some of these climate initiatives look like in practice?
SY: This is very important, because it sounds very abstract if we just talk about leadership. In practical terms, there are all different kinds of initiatives – we have these typologies of governance functions, including sharing information and building platforms, or developing capacity – capacity building activities, which can be training delivered by China to other countries.
Or also by providing funding, for example, China has created this south-south climate fund. It can also include research collaboration or producing knowledge – mainly between research institutes.
It can be traditional leadership activities, in the sense of developing certain international regulatory frameworks or rules or standards – we call this rulemaking and standard-setting. It can also be pilot projects. China sometimes can start to work directly with some international partners to trial new ideas and new practices – what we call direct actions.
These are the different types of leadership activities that we look at and we actually code each initiative that meets the criteria of our database according to this topology, to try to look at what [the Chinese government] are looking at.
Some initiatives can do multiple things at the same time…One example is the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization [GEIDCO]. [This was] initially created by the State Grid of China to try to promote clean energy and energy interconnections.
This initiative will deliver different types of activities, including building the capacity of some developing countries on energy and electricity grids, and also, for example, developing an international platform – they have annual international meeting and a lot of information-sharing activities, and engagement at UN meetings, including at COP side-events, and also directly engaging with some international organisations.
So, this is an example of the type of leadership initiative that has been included in our database.
CB: And would you say that there’s one particular type of activity that dominates, in terms of China’s climate leadership? Or is it very evenly split against all of the different types?
SY: This is also one of the main findings in our work. In the first paper we published to highlight the key patterns from the dataset, we highlighted that there’s a very uneven distribution in terms of what China tries to deliver or to promote, itself, internationally on environmental governance.
There have been a lot of initiatives focusing on sharing information and building platforms and this is the most dominant category – across all environmental issues, but the same pattern applies to climate change.
In the first article we published in the Earth Systems Governance journal, we looked at the whole dataset, but we are also developing a few studies, currently under review. One paper particularly looks at climate initiatives and it’s the same pattern: information-sharing and networking.
At the same time, the least frequent or popular type is the provision of funding – creating some financing programmes to directly give funding to international partners. I think this reflects China’s position on environmental or climate finance, especially internationally.
[China’s] not trying just to provide money, but really think about how to support other countries on more practical, more pragmatic terms. This is why I think that after information-sharing, what we have seen is capacity-building activities, which have also been quite frequently used by Chinese initiatives when collaborating with their international partners. This also explains China’s logic to teach [others] how to develop things, but not just giving money.
The other important category is research collaboration and knowledge production. This has been mainly led by research institutes in China, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, especially with a strong focus on scientific co-production.
But, lately, we have also seen more and more initiatives focused on sharing knowledge not just about science itself, but sometimes also on the social sciences side – the experiences of China as a whole. China’s experiences can also be learned from by other countries, especially in the global south.
These are just some examples, but the overall pattern is [a focus on] information-sharing, capacity building and knowledge production and not too much on provision of funding.
CB: You mentioned the GEIDCO example earlier. How much of a tangible impact would you say a lot of these initiatives have? Are they very high-level, strategic and quite abstract? Or do they kind of result in programmes on the ground?
SY: That’s a very interesting question – the answer is that it really varies. GEIDCO, as you mentioned, is a very high-level initiative. I think, initially, the idea of energy interconnection was proposed by President Xi himself. Now, of course, GEIDCO, with the backing of the State Grid, does a lot of high-level [national planning] and trans-national [grid network] planning work with developing countries.
But, at the same time, there are also a lot of grounded, locally focused initiatives. A lot, for example, are co-developed between China – especially supported by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment [MEE] – and UNEP [United Nations Environment Programme] in, for example, Africa and Southeast Asia. [This includes] some projects looking at climate adaptation and resilience. But these are more small-scale projects.
So, in our database – and I welcome your readers to explore the database itself that you can see – there are a big variety of initiatives and their scope, their mission and their intended outcomes or impacts vary significantly.
But we are just providing this public resource. Hopefully, people can use it to further explore, for example, the question of the impact or outcome. At this stage, we’re not going to assess what has been delivered, but I think if we can take, for example, a case-study approach – trying to trace what has been done, what has been delivered – this could also be a very interesting research agenda.
CB: Is there a particular time from when China’s interest in engaging on climate change started, or has this been a very long-term process?
SY: In our database, we really wanted to capture the historical trend. That’s why we looked back from early on – [we focused on] from the beginning of this century, but also traced initiatives that had been created even earlier but became active in the 21st century.
So we can [see that,] already in the late 1980s or 90s, there were some initiatives in the area of climate change. But, most importantly, the majority of the initiatives were started after 2008, mainly in the 2010s. We can see a very clear upward trend. It was not shown directly in our recently published article, but it’s in the database and we have looked at the data and produced a graph for other studies we are currently developing.
Really, from after 2009 and 2010, we’ve seen many initiatives – of course, more and more over the last 10 years, and, even the last five years, from 2021, we still see more and more initiatives have been created.
This timeframe corresponds to China’s shifting international role, to move from [being] a more regional power, a large developing country, to a global superpower, and trying to project its influence globally.
That also correlates with, for example, the belt and road initiative and lately the global development initiative – China is trying to also use climate change in this broader policy framework and trying to promote and support climate action in different parts of the world.
CB: The database stops at 2024 – just before the current administration withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement. Have you noticed any changes in China’s global climate engagements following this?
SY: I would say the trend is a continuous one, even with the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement and lately from the UNFCCC. Because, as I mentioned earlier, over the past 10 years, we have seen this upward trend, with more and more new initiatives created by Chinese actors.
But I think the shift of the US under the second Trump administration will probably help Chinese initiatives get more traction from their international partners – or countries or actors that haven’t been engaged very closely with China – to work more closely with China.
Whether or not this will translate into new initiatives or strengthen existing initiatives, I think that’s an open question.
We really want to explore [this] further. Something I didn’t mention earlier is we are publishing this data set as version one, we want to keep updating on a regular basis. We hope we’ll have versions two or three out, maybe every two years. We’ll see how things go, but I think this is a very important question.
CB: Looking at how China is engaging with all of these different countries – as you mentioned, more and more potentially wanting to work with it following the US’s withdrawal – do you get the sense that the Chinese government prefers to engage with countries bilaterally, on a one-to-one basis, or are they also engaging at the regional and multilateral levels?
SY: This is a great question. This is also an important finding from our work, because the conventional understanding is that China prefers to engage with countries bilaterally.
But, if we look at our database, what we can see is that, actually, China has developed more and more transnational initiatives – meaning that it also involves non-state actors or [works] beyond the traditional multilateral processes and [develops initiatives] with a global scope.
If we look at the historical trends, initially – especially up to 2010 – there were a lot of bilateral initiatives. Most cases in our database are bilateral initiatives.
But, lately, I think this trend is shifting. Still, I think there are many more bilateral initiatives than multilateral and transnational initiatives.
How we differentiate leadership activities of Chinese [state] actors across different levels [affects the trend], but, lately, what we have seen is a very clear upward trend of transnational initiatives with a global scope. That means they operate in more than two continents.
So, in that sense, what we can see is, actually, China is moving from this bilateral engagement model to more kind of global engagement and trying to project its influence at the global scale.
I think this is also quite interesting, to understand how not only the government, but also lots of Chinese actors – including, for example, businesses and civil society actors – are trying to project and their footprint globally.
And also I think this reflects a shifting global role of China, in general. We can further explore what the implications of this phenomenon are. This is some ongoing research I’m doing – trying to understand how actors in different parts of the world react or perceive this changing rule of China and how such engagement between China and different countries shape, or reshape, the sustainability transition.
CB: You mentioned just then that there’s not just the Chinese government, but also civil society, businesses and other non-state actors. What role do you think these non-state organisations play in the country’s overall climate strategy and climate engagement?
SY: Let me start with the caveat that, first of all, as shown in our database, the government, or state actors, still play a very important role – especially central government agencies, for example, the MEE [Ministry of Ecology and Environment] or NDRC [National Development and Reform Commission].
But, at the same time, especially over the last 10 years, what we have seen is that non-state actors have become more active and engaged more, in various ways, in leading climate initiatives beyond China’s borders.
This means, sometimes, they collaborate with state actors to co-develop certain initiatives. Sometimes, they develop their own initiatives with, of course, some support from the state. One thing we need to bear in mind is, in China, it’s almost impossible to [avoid involving] the state. At least, you have to closely align with the strategy of the government.
But, at the same time, what we can see is the agency of these actors. They have developed or showed the ambition to develop certain initiatives, including, for example, standards in the critical mineral space, to provide guidelines to companies for their overseas activities.
Similarly, some civil society actors, [such as] research institutes, also want to claim their leadership in a global sphere, trying to showcase how they can lead certain activities and show how their expertise or their knowledge can support countries or actors in other parts of the world.
CB: On the standards-setting point, is that something where it might be led by one Chinese company with multiple partners – whether it be from one country or from various different countries in a region? Or is it a broad spectrum of Chinese companies coming together saying that we want to work with Chile, Zimbabwe etc, on mining standards? Is it very representative of the industry, or does it tend to be quite piecemeal?
SY: This is an inclusion criteria for the databases. We [only] look at the initiatives that are, to a large extent, institutionalised. It’s not that company’s claim that “we are doing this”. If we can’t track down any information or find any records then we cannot include things like that in our database.
That means we only tend to look at initiatives that are well-developed. These are often, for example, developed by national industry associations. They try to convene different companies together and try to collaborate with, or coordinate, different actors along supply chains and also across sectors or industries.
When they work with different international partners, this is also a question I think we need to further explore, using our data set to try to look at – sometimes I think it’s not easy for us to do everything! – but try to look at what kind of partners they select and how they get involved with partners in different countries or different regions.
But I think this probably requires some other methodologies to look at, or maybe zoom out to specific cases.
This is similar – I always want to use this as a comparison – when we started [seeing] this phenomenon in Europe or in North America, for example, where companies start to take climate actions, we didn’t really pay a lot of attention to how and who they work with, as long as they say: “We are trying to support global climate action.”
But, nowadays, when it comes to the question of China, people start to be interested in who they work with. But if we look at the narrative and discourse of these initiatives, they say as well: “We want to support actions around the world.”
They don’t always specify [the geographic scope of their standard-setting work], but if we further zoom into where they are working and why they work in specific areas or regions, this is also an interesting question – I think there is also a question of politics or political economy there. I would encourage researchers to use our dataset to further explore that kind of question.
CB: Zooming back out – the theme of the data set is environmental leadership, but – at least in global climate negotiations – Chinese officials have eschewed being called a climate leader. Your database seems to show an uptick in activity that could be defined as leadership. Would you say that China wants to be seen as a climate leader?
SY: This is a very strong claim, so I probably would not say [so] – also, it’s very subjective, depending on who you ask this question to and how people perceive it.
Let me frame me this way – let’s separate multilateral negotiation processes from what the country or different actors are doing. Of course, for leadership, another way to measure this is to see the performance itself.
But, in the end, I think we also tried to be very reflective when we developed this work to acknowledge the subjectivity of leadership and the relational nature of leadership. That means that, if you want to be a leader, others need to acknowledge your leadership or recognise this status.
But this is why I think it comes to an interesting question about what’s the role of China and how different actors perceive China’s role in today’s global climate governance.
In multilateral negotiation processes, we are entering into the implementation phase for the Paris Agreement. That means it is very difficult to create new agendas at this stage. [Instead the focus is] trying to see if countries can deliver what they have done.
Of course, I think there is a question of ambition in terms of updating your nationally determined contributions. So, there is an ambition question – there is a performance question.
If we want to see whether China is becoming a leader, we have to look at how fast, for example, China is accelerating its energy transition, trying to reduce – of course, some data shows China has already peaked its emissions – but maybe, how fast China can reduce its emissions.
Then, in terms of international engagement, what our data is trying to show is that China has become more proactive in that space. The question is also if this engagement translates into some progress in different parts of the world – if China is actually helping. We need more data to do this kind of impact assessment.
But, at the same time, I think the question of whether the Chinese government wants itself to be seen as a leader – this is also an interesting question. Depending on who they want to engage with, in different fora or on different platforms, the answer may be different.
I just want to quote, when I was in China a few months ago, we had some dialogues with leading Chinese experts. They said the government – and also people in China – are not ready to become a global leader. But, at the same time, I think, what China is doing or the role of the country – in climate governance, but also in clean-energy supply chains – China is playing a leading role.
So, I think the question is whether this physical change that has already happened will translate into the understanding, or mindsets, of people, including policymakers or decision-makers in the country.
I think this is a question that China needs to figure out, itself. Then, of course, there will be implications for China’s strategy for engaging with the rest of the world, especially on climate change.
CB: And what do you think China’s climate engagements will look like in 5-10 years from now?
SY: I think, from an energy-transition perspective – let me start from there – China is going to be, at the least, more proactive in promoting energy transition, because it aligns with China’s economic interests and, to a certain extent, its political interest as well, to support energy transitions around the world.
The key question is what role China can play in doing that. Of course, there is the question of trade, of tariffs. There is also the question of investment, intellectual property and technology transfer.
My read is that China is willing to share more knowledge, and technology as well, through its international global engagements, to support other countries. But, at the same time, I think, it is not a given. It depends on how countries can make arrangements with China, how they can also propose some viable solutions in terms of absorbing Chinese technologies.
What we have seen is a lot of countries, especially in the global south, have benefited already, or are in the process of benefiting from, affordable technologies produced by China.
But, at the same time, this is not sustainable – at least from an economic point of view – not a sustainable situation in the sense that these countries also need to find a way to move themselves upward in supply chains and try to absorb some technologies. How they can work with China [to achieve this] – that’s a very important question to me and also my team. We want to do more research in that area.
This is from the energy-transition perspective. But then, if we look at multilateral processes, I would say China is very committed to multilateralism. If we look at all the discourse, including the cases in our database – we have done some text analysis looking at the narrative discourse of the vision of these initiatives. Multilateralism is a very important principle, championed in almost all the initiatives. That means China is not going to abandon multilateral processes.
Also, we have done some work looking at the alignment of Chinese climate initiatives with existing UN institutions and frameworks, and we also see very close alignment.
So, I think this pattern will probably last. At the same time, because – depending on the other important countries’ climate policies, for example, the US – back to your question about the leadership in multilateral processes, how proactive and how ambitious China wants to be in taking on this leadership position in multilateral processes is still an open question.
This also depends on the concept of leadership in different cultures.
Whether China wants to take over the US to become the only superpower of a global system – I think this is probably very unlikely. China may want to figure out a slightly different model. Even if, physically, it’s one of the most, or the most, important or powerful countries in the world, how using how the country can use this position to support or guide the governance of global challenges, this is probably slightly different from the views or understanding of, for example, European and other global north countries.
The question is how China can propose a slightly different model – still in the current multilateral system – for governing global challenges, including climate change. This is really important. I don’t have an answer, so that’s why we will continue to look at this question and try to use our research to help people understand what role China can play in global climate governance.
CB: Thank you.
This interview was conducted by Anika Patel via Zoom on 1 July 2026.
The post Interview: Dr Sun Yixian on his new database tracking Chinese climate ‘leadership’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interview: Dr Sun Yixian on his new database tracking Chinese climate ‘leadership’
Tucked among forested slopes and pristine valleys in a corner of northeastern India, young villagers have been busy knocking on doors – hoping to convince sceptical elders that graphite mining would bring much-needed jobs to their distant region.
“The youth in our village migrate to cities for work. What’s better than to have jobs near home?” Gollo Doni, a farmer and secretary of the local youth association, told Climate Home News as he and other members in their 20s discussed the latest meetings between locals and representatives of Oil India Limited (OIL), a state company exploring graphite and vanadium reserves in Arunachal Pradesh.
The mining plans in the state, which is home to more than one-third of India’s graphite reserves and the subject of a sovereignty dispute with China, reflect a push by the Indian government to position itself as a leading producer of battery-grade graphite as the mass rollout of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and power storage drives demand for the mineral.
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An average electric car contains about 60 kg of graphite anode materials, according to the International Energy Agency, and the graphite supply chain is heavily dominated by China, which produces about 80% of the world’s natural graphite and controls more than 90% of global refining.
As Western countries seek to reduce their dependency on China, India’s reserves of graphite and other minerals vital for the switch to clean energy have caught governments’ attention, with Germany signing a critical minerals partnership agreement in January.
Ambitious plans
But hurdles remain to India’s ambitious plans to ramp up critical minerals output, both to position itself as an alternative to China and to meet its own fast-growing needs.
India has a target for 30% of new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, and demand for EV lithium batteries looks set to surge close to 35-fold between 2023 and 2035, according to S&P Global Mobility, driven by growth in two- and three-wheelers in the country of 1.4 billion people.
Although domestic manufacturing of EV batteries is expanding, the sector remains at an early stage and India depends heavily on imports from China, South Korea and Japan.
At the same time, it wants to get graphite processing off the ground, aiming to turn its reserves of the mineral – which rank among the world’s 10 biggest – into higher value battery-grade supplies.
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With exploration already underway, the next step should be starting discussions about developing processing facilities – including support from foreign partners, said Kaira Rakheja, South Asia energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
“These exploration and extraction projects have a long gestation period. So even if discussions on processing start now, it will still take a while,” she said, noting India’s simultaneous push to create “rare earth corridors” encompassing every step of production.
Hurdles ahead
India’s graphite reserves are mainly of a lower grade, however, making processing for use in battery anodes more complex, while the country is a late entrant.
“We are not a big player in the market and have missed the bus,” said Aditya Ramji, director of the Global South Clean Transportation Centre at the University of California, Davis.
While exploration work is already underway at several sites in Arunachal Pradesh, and at some places in eastern and southern India, production will take at least two years to start, said Tana Tage, director at the Centre for the Earth Sciences and Himalayan Studies, OIL’s local partner and holder of a 10% stake in the Phop project.
A mine would create about 300 jobs and the project’s partners are discussing options for processing the site’s medium- to high-grade graphite locally, Tage added, despite voicing concern about a lack of technological know-how.
“India does not have the large-scale, advanced processing capabilities to achieve the ultra-high purity levels required for EV batteries and clean technologies,” he told Climate Home News.
Diversification drive
Despite such challenges, industry experts say India could benefit from the push to find sources of battery graphite other than China.
“We can’t beat China in this space, but we can still create a space for ourselves in buying and selling, as everyone is looking for a space to diversify,” said Rishabh Jain, fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a New Delhi-based think-tank.
India’s government hopes the bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with Germany could help.
As well as pledging cooperation on critical minerals exploration, the declaration envisions the exchange of know-how to add value through processing and recycling, facilitating investment and building the supply chain resilience of both countries. That could include identifying joint research projects and facilitating cooperation between industry players.
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“India and Germany will work together to mutually strengthen supply chains in the field of critical minerals,” a spokesperson for the German government’s energy strategy said. “We will encourage companies to build strong ties in terms of knowledge sharing, offtake agreements and investments.”
Germany is already supporting several domestic projects focused on converting graphite into battery anode material – valuable experience that could potentially be shared with India, said Rakheja. In return for shared technical expertise, India offers a strong pool of workforce talent and a big market.
“This way, both partners can look beyond China,” she said.
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The MoU, which is non-binding, is “a good start”, said Svenja Schöneich, a senior advisor at the NGO Germanwatch, adding that it was thin on details, including on how to add value to India’s critical mineral resources.
“The partnership document should figure out the problem of local value creation. It should also consider that it can’t really skip processing through China,” Schöneich said.
An official at India’s Mining Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Trade deals and tax breaks
Beyond the five-year German accord, India has implemented numerous policy measures aimed at securing its own supplies of critical minerals and adding value to its mineral exports, for example by signing favourable trade deals. Last year, India’s graphite was granted zero-duty access to the US, just as the tariffs on Chinese graphite imports climbed to a high 160%.
When the government announced the national budget in February, it included a raft of financial measures aimed at kickstarting a plan to process minerals domestically – the details of which are expected to be announced in the coming months.
They included zero customs duty on critical mineral inputs and enhanced tax deductions for exploration, while the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme allocated the equivalent of $1.87 billion to build domestic battery cell manufacturing.
Before that can happen, progress on new mining – such as the Arunachal Pradesh graphite projects – is vital, Jain said.
“We are in 2026, and looking to move towards a cleaner world. This is the future,” he said.
The state government in Arunachal Pradesh agrees. It called last year for fast-tracked environmental permitting for graphite projects, new infrastructure around mine sites and reforms to avoid legal disputes that could hold the sector back.
Back in the village of Phop, youth association secretary Doni said that while reluctant residents did not raise an objection to OIL’s preliminary exploration licence, he fears a bigger fight ahead.
Tage said up to 3,000 people could ultimately be displaced if the project proceeds, raising questions about whether economic benefits would outweigh the social and environmental costs.
“It has been difficult to make the elders agree to actual mining,” Doni said, as he and other young villagers sipped on sweet tea in a thatched mountain house. “We are trying to convince our elders that mining will not only bring resources for the nation, but bring us jobs here.”
The post India looks to untapped graphite riches for slice of critical minerals boom appeared first on Climate Home News.
India looks to untapped graphite riches for slice of critical minerals boom
Wamuyu Manyara is country director for Trócaire Malawi and Tarcizio Kalaundi is its climate resilience officer.
This week, the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) faces a significant decision that will determine its ability to address the harms being done by climate change.
Discussions on the Fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy must get the scale and accessibility of the Fund right. Failure to do so would risk undermining its role to channel finance to countries experiencing loss and damage, and undermine obligations to climate justice and human rights.
This discussion could not come at a more pressing time. As loss and damage (L&D) continues to escalate globally, and as the world teeters perilously close to the Paris Agreement’s critical 1.5C warming limit, the FRLD also faces the very real danger of running out of funding in 2027.
As Nigeria rails at loss and damage “mirage”, fund boss assures money is coming
Experts calculate that in 2025, L&D finance needs for climate-vulnerable countries may have reached USD$937 billion. Last year’s major impacts included a series of extremely destructive cyclones that hit the Philippines, estimated to have caused over $5 billion in losses, while in Jamaica, the losses and damage caused by Hurricane Melissa were estimated at $12.2 billion.
The bill for just one of these disasters would exhaust the Fund’s existing resources many times over. While the costs and human rights violations rack up, almost four years after being agreed at COP27, the FRLD remains critically underfunded.
Pledges to the Fund ($822 million) are just a fraction of 1% of annual loss and damage needs, and only around half of those pledges ($448 million) have been paid into the Fund so far.
Meanwhile, those who have done nothing to cause the climate crisis are facing its worst – and intensifying – impacts and are being left to foot the bill for the damages already incurred, not to mention the severe non-economic costs to communities. It is therefore crucial that the FRLD’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy urgently brings in far more L&D finance.
Contributor conundrum
Many developed states will claim that additional countries should provide L&D finance. This, however, is a distraction – particularly considering the deep abyss between the contributions of developed states that are obligated to pay and their fair share as calculated according to their wealth and historical emissions. Furthermore, some states and regions that are currently not obligated to contribute are already doing so.
Analysis reveals that, even in the highly inequitable scenario where all states including those who have contributed nothing to causing the climate crisis were to pay towards L&D finance, wealthy countries would still be responsible for the vast majority of L&D finance.
The Fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy must focus political discussions on the ability of rich and highly polluting states to raise public, grant-based L&D finance that is new and additional to existing climate finance obligations and overseas development assistance.
Developed states have the means to pay and the FRLD should introduce mandatory and progressive mechanisms to make the biggest polluters, including the ultra-rich and fossil fuel corporations, pay for their climate harms.
African impacts
Increasingly unpredictable seasons and more frequent and extreme events are driving food insecurity, malnutrition, displacement and other human rights risks in climate-vulnerable countries, and communities facing these escalating and compounding impacts must be centred in FRLD policies.
In Ethiopia, 2023 saw 24 million people affected by five back-to-back failed rains leading to severe food and water shortages, including a 90% crop loss in drought-affected areas. Eleven million people required food assistance, and over 500,000 people were displaced. Meanwhile, the 2023–24 floods and the 2024 Gofa landslide disrupted or destroyed health facilities, displaced thousands, and led to outbreaks of cholera, malaria, and measles.
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Today, Somalia is facing one of its most severe drought emergencies in recent history driven by climate extremes. Malnutrition rates continue to exceed projections and previous devastating records, with 1.9 million children in Somalia acutely malnourished.
In Malawi, child stunting had significantly reduced, but climate impacts are now affecting children’s growth and development. Tropical Cyclone Freddy in 2023 was one of the worst on record, causing over 1,200 deaths, displacing half a million people, and causing damages exceeding $500 million. Recovery needs for four major disasters between 2015 and 2023 are estimated at $1.7 billion, equivalent to more than a quarter of Malawi’s 2026-2027 budget.
Funding for communities
Access to community grants in the southern African country, however, has catalysed local responses to L&D that coordinate around immediate and long-term needs and restoring livelihoods.
Direct access to the FRLD for climate-vulnerable countries and communities, with community-centric planning, is essential to ensure that the Fund can respond to the needs of people experiencing the worst impacts of climate change, through prompt and flexible mechanisms that do not hinder recovery options.
Stepping up to fill the FRLD through an ambitious and needs-based Resource Mobilisation Strategy is the bare minimum that wealthy states can and must do. It is, after all, an obligation that flows from the international duties of cooperation and prevention of harm, and from the obligation to provide reparation when harm occurs. Failure to do so would further erode climate justice and human rights for communities on the frontline of loss and damage.
The post The loss and damage fund needs far more finance to deliver climate justice appeared first on Climate Home News.
The loss and damage fund needs far more finance to deliver climate justice
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