Wandering the streets of Shenzhen, a city which has earned the title of China’s “first city of ‘new-energy vehicles’” (NEVs), you will not miss the scene of numerous NEVs parking under slogans promoting “green and low carbon” lifestyles.
Shenzhen, a city of nearly 18 million people bordering Hong Kong, is known for pioneering China’s economic reforms 40 years ago.
Now, it is taking carbon mitigation measures ahead of others and acts as a “pilot” for the construction of “low-carbon cities” in China.
It is the first Chinese city that has replaced all of its buses, taxis and ride-hailing cars with electric versions, while about 77% of all new cars sold in Shenzhen were NEVs 2024 – significantly higher than the national rate of 48%.
It has also introduced a carbon emissions cap – in support of switching from the “dual control of energy” to “dual control of carbon” – ahead of the announcement of a national cap.
In addition, the Shenzhen local emissions trading system (ETS) and “green bonds” were both rolled out before the national ETS and national “green” bonds.
Despite taking steps early, some scholars tell Carbon Brief that Shenzhen’s efforts – which the local government calls the “Shenzhen model” – will be tricky to reproduce for city-level low-carbon transitions elsewhere in China.
Carbon Brief looks back at Shenzhen’s low-carbon transition efforts to date and assesses its progress on carbon mitigation.
Electric transportation
Shenzhen’s low-carbon transition did not happen overnight – it resulted from early planning, government support and market-driven solutions, Wei Fulei, director of finance, taxation, trade and the industrial development research centre at the China Development Institute (CDI), a state-sponsored thinktank based in Shenzhen, tells Carbon Brief.
The city’s low-carbon transformation kicked off in the 2000s, when the number of days with heavy air pollution peaked in Shenzhen.
A BBC News report back in 2017 said that after a decade’s work on tackling pollution, Shenzhen “reduced its average air pollution by around 50%”.
The move was largely a result of changing its “industrial base”, which made Shenzhen “one of [the] first batch of these ‘low-carbon cities’”, said the BBC News article.
During this period, the officials developed strategies for “low-carbon development”. Part of this included nourishing the growth of a number of “strategic emerging industries”, such as the “information and communications technology“, which in return provided core technology support for low-carbon industries, largely benefiting the NEV sector.
The current leading global electric vehicle (EV) giant, BYD, for example, was born in Shenzhen against this background.
“With this ‘industry gene’, Shenzhen only needs to adapt and upgrade accordingly to meet the new demands of the NEV industry [in the 2020s],” says Wei.
According to the Shenzhen government work report at the 2025 “two sessions”, the city – whose population makes up 1% of the country’s total – produced 22% of China’s NEVs in 2024.
About 100 new “climate investment and financing projects” will be launched in the year ahead, said the report, adding that another 180bn yuan ($24bn) of “green loans” will be also be issued.
Shen Xinyi, analyst and China team lead at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), tells Carbon Brief that the local government has a track record of nurturing new industries:
“Wind and solar power, along with EVs, were all emerging industries that required substantial investment and technological research 20 years ago…The risk of failure was high, but the Shenzhen government introduced innovative policies to support them.”
The quick growth of NEV companies has pushed up the share of NEVs in the local vehicle market. On top of national subsidies, the local government has also provided support for producing and purchasing NEVs.
In 2024, NEVs accounted for some 77% of new car sales in Shenzhen, significantly higher than the national share of 48%.
In addition, the city has also replaced all of its buses, taxis and ride-hailing cars with electric versions – the first city to have done so in China.
Heran Zheng, lecturer in sustainable infrastructure economics and finance at University College London (UCL), tells Carbon Brief that the “greener transport fleet” speeds up Shenzhen’s low-carbon transition, because a city’s low-carbon transition mainly requires two focuses – “transport transition” and “industry decarbonisation”.
Zheng says:
“There are limited policy efforts a city can make in carbon mitigation. It can work on greener transports. London, for example, set up the Ultra Low Emission Zone to encourage the usage of public transport and cleaner vehicles. And a city can upgrade industries and mitigate their emissions, which are harder to do because no city wants to slow down economic growth.”
Shenzhen, “different from some coal mining cities in China”, has an “advantage” in industry transition, says Zheng, which allows it to set “more ambitious” emissions targets.
Carbon control
China uses energy intensity and carbon intensity – the energy use and emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) – as key metrics in its climate policies.
In addition, the country has been using the “dual control of energy” system – regulating energy intensity and energy consumption – since 2016. However, it announced plans to switch to the “dual control of carbon” in 2024.
Under the new system, a binding cap for total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will be set and will become the main target after 2030, while carbon intensity – the prime target before 2030 – will be gradually lowered to be the secondary target.
(Read more about the “dual control” systems in this edition of China Briefing.)
Here too, Shenzhen was an early mover. As early as 2023, it became China’s “first city to explicitly state its commitment to the ‘dual control [of carbon]’ system”, according to Dialogue Earth.
It issued two “implementation plans” towards this effort, published in 2023, as well as developing a city-level carbon emissions cap.
The plans, compared to the national ones, have more ambitious timelines. A city-level “dual control of carbon” system will be built up by 2025 and it will be “fully implemented” in 2026-30. One of the plans says:
“We will strive to achieve the goal of using a dual carbon emission control approach to carry out quota allocation in the Shenzhen carbon market [for the] manufacturing industry by 2028…and strive to achieve a significant improvement in market regulation capabilities by 2030.”
Shenzhen plans to reduce its energy intensity by 14.5% before the end of 2025, compared to 2020 levels. The national energy intensity target is 13.5% during the same period.
Zheng says that Shenzhen’s commitment “should be within its capacity”, adding:
“There are three major carbon mitigation areas [for China as a whole] – steel, cement and electricity. Shenzhen has no major steel and cement industries, so it only needs to largely focus on electricity…It is also not at the upstream of a supply chain, unlike some fossil fuel cities; it doesn’t need to worry about business, such as coal mining. Its industry structure is dominated by ‘high value-added’ industries, such as technology and NEVs, whose emissions are easier to mitigate.
“In addition, the city is a technology hub. A lot of high-emissions manufacturers have moved out of Shenzhen to its neighbouring cities, such as Shanwei. This is what we call ‘emissions outsourcing’. Shenzhen, benefiting from this, has fewer hurdles in [its] green transition.”
Last year, Zheng and colleagues published a study on this outsourcing of emissions between Chinese cities in Nature. They found that “some cities benefit from the carbon mitigation efforts of other cities more than their own” and suggested that policymakers work to acknowledge these effects.
Another “big difference” between Shenzhen and other cities is that “Shenzhen has its own nuclear power”, says Zheng, which is “important” for the city’s electricity transition – the remaining sector that Shenzhen needs to put efforts towards low-carbon transition.
Low-carbon energy
According to a 2021 report, Shenzhen’s “largest local power source” is the Daya Bay nuclear power station, with a total installed capacity of 6.1 gigawatts (GW).
Nuclear power accounted for 35% of the city’s total power generation in 2021.
It has also pushed up Shenzhen’s low-carbon energy usage – about 47% of Shenzhen’s primary energy consumption was from clean energy in 2024.
Nuclear dwarfs all the other clean energy sources feeding into the city’s grid. The Shenzhen local authority’s 2025 government work report says current solar power capacity stands at about 1GW – and it does not mention wind capacity.
Its “14th five-year plan for climate change response” says that Shenzhen’s renewable energy capacity has “little room” for future growth due to “scarce” energy resources and “limited” land for wind and solar power.
Meanwhile, Shenzhen relies heavily on imported electricity, which accounts for approximately 70% of the city’s total electricity consumption.
This reliance limits Shenzhen’s control over emissions from the sector. It also challenges the local grid’s ability to manage demand during peak usage times.
In 2024, China approved the constructions of more nuclear reactors in Shenzhen’s neighbouring city of Huizhou.
The Shenzhen government also aims to “raise the combined share of natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy to 90% in 2025, up from the current figure of 77%, which is noticeably ahead of the nationwide figure of 52%”, according to a research paper in 2022.
Zheng says that “Shenzhen is a lot like its neighbour Hong Kong, whose energy transition does not rely on solar and wind build up either”.
He adds that in order to achieve a sustainable energy transition, both Shenzhen and Hong Kong would need to utilise their advantage as “financial cities”.
‘Green finance’
Shenzhen has long been using “market forces” and has successfully “struck a balance between government support and market-driven solutions”, where enterprises “take the lead, handling 90% of the work”, while the government intervenes only when necessary, says Wei.
With little interference from the government, Shenzhen was one of the first seven cities and provinces in China that established a local “pilot” ETS in 2013, ahead of the national rollout in 2021.
Similar to China’s national scheme, the local ETS allocates emissions allowances for companies to trade on the market, based on their emissions intensity – the emissions per unit of output – rather than absolute emissions.
The Shenzhen local ETS covered 38% of the city’s carbon emissions upon launching. The figure rose to 50% in 2020 and will continue to expand, says a report by the trading forum International Carbon Action Partnership (ICPA), with a shift to an “absolute cap” for carbon emissions being announced to apply from 2027.
(For now, the national ETS does not include a cap on emissions either, although this is also set to change.)
However, Yan Qin, carbon analyst at consultancy firm ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that despite Shenzhen ETS plans to expand its coverage, more pilot ETS are seeing their coverage “shrinking” due to enterprises leaving to join the national ETS”.
ICPA’s research also finds that electricity production was excluded from the Shenzhen ETS after 2019 when it “transitioned to the China national ETS”.
Yan says that the pilot ETS, nevertheless, “has been an important testing field, paving the way for the successful launch of national ETS eventually. [It] will continue to exist and cover the small to medium enterprises as well as sectors outside national ETS”.
The Shenzhen local ETS, as of 2022, covers water, gas, heat, manufacturing, transport and other sectors, says ICPA.
It was the biggest local ETS in China as of 2024 and maintains the highest annual trading volumes in the country for several consecutive years, says Shenzhen Business News.
In the meantime, Shenzhen has taken initiatives in “green finance”, bringing private investments into the market.
In 2021, Shenzhen issued China’s first overseas sales of “green government bonds” in Hong Kong along with China’s first local “green finance legislation”, which provides a “solid institutional guarantee” for regulating the “green market”, according to an assessment of the legislation by research institute the International Institute of Green Finance.
In contrast, China’s national sovereign bonds were only available to international buyers from April 2025.
Various other “green finance” products have also been issued. According to state-run newspaper Economic Daily, about 4.6 trillion yuan ($633bn) was traded for new energy, NEVs and other environment-related stocks at the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange in the first half of 2024.
Nevertheless, Zheng says that the impact of the “green bonds” is “hard to evaluate”. He says: “A lot of projects, such as sewage treatment, can also fall into the category of ‘green bonds’”.
According to the state broadcaster CCTV, Shenzhen’s “green bonds” issued in 2021 covered projects including “construction of ordinary public high schools, urban rail transit and water management”.
Zheng says that although these projects are linked to energy efficiency improvements, they nonetheless make only “limited contributions” to cutting carbon emissions.
Zheng adds that market guidance is “necessary” in a city’s low-carbon transition, but “there is not yet a study on how large a green finance product can make a difference on mitigation”.
Shen says there is nevertheless an important role for “financial instruments” to support the low-carbon transition. She explains:
“Low-carbon industries generally have higher costs than fossil fuel-based industries…With policy support and financial instruments, the costs can be reduced, allowing these industries to scale up.”
‘Shenzhen model’
The local government and media outlets have touted the city’s achievements on climate as the “Shenzhen model”, implying that it could be applied elsewhere.
Xu Hua, an official from the Shenzhen Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau, said the model “demonstrated the results to the world” at last year’s COP29:
“Firstly, Shenzhen has continuously improved its top-level design…establishing a comprehensive policy system. Secondly, the city has focused on the transformation and upgrading of key sectors…promoting strategic emerging industries such as new energy, energy conservation, and environmental protection. Thirdly, following the principle of openness…Shenzhen has been exploring new paths for green and low-carbon development.”
Xu added that the city “positions itself as a leader in green development nationwide”, as it had “significantly reduced its energy consumption, water usage and carbon emissions per 10,000 yuan of GDP to one-third, one-eighth and one-fifth of the national average, respectively” by the end of 2023.
However, not all of Shenzhen’s journey is “replicable”, says Shen, adding: “Shenzhen capitalised on the opportunities of its era.” She tells Carbon Brief:
“For example, its supply chain advantages and the skilled workforce that has settled in the city have been key enablers of its high-end manufacturing sector.”
Zheng agrees with Shen, saying that Shenzhen can only represent a certain type of city in China. He says:
“Shenzhen is China’s Silicon Valley and heavily invests in high-end technology. It can only represent a [certain] type of cities in China, the ‘top tier’, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. There are more than 300 cities in China, all facing unique transition situations. It is meaningless for coal-heavy industrial cities to learn from Shenzhen.”
Other cities in China, meanwhile, have also started to explore their own ways to achieve sustainable development.
The city of Suzhou has built the Suzhou Industrial Park – one of China’s first pilot low-carbon industrial parks. It has also established a “market-based carbon inclusion trading system”, which incentivises “voluntary” carbon emission trading among citizens, as well as small- and medium-sized companies.
Meanwhile, the city of Tianjin has launched a collaboration with Singapore to “explore a path for China’s urban systems to reduce carbon emissions”, according to a Xinhua report.
Other cities must “adapt strategies according to their unique conditions”, Shen adds. This sentiment is reflected in a 2023 document issued by China’s State Council – the country’s central government. The document, called “China’s green development in the new era”, says that:
“Local authorities should rely on their resource endowments, environmental conditions and industrial development foundations to fully leverage the comparative advantages.”
The post Explainer: What is China’s ‘Shenzen model’ for low-carbon transition in cities? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Explainer: What is China’s ‘Shenzen model’ for low-carbon transition in cities?
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people.
Together, these initiatives would have made up around half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support conservation in the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.
When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge by 12 donors of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.
Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.
Alongside the US and much of Europe, the UK has significantly cut its aid budget in recent years, leading to much of its Congo rainforest spending being cancelled or reappraised.
The government says it still plans to “prioritise” rainforest regions, including the Congo basin, but civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.
COP pledge
At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030. This was backed by more than 140 nations.
The UK also made various funding pledges, including £200m to protect the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.
These commitments target the world’s three largest rainforests, all of which face major forest loss due to threats such as agriculture, logging and climate change.
The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink. Yet, its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.
This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.
Forest cuts
Following successive aid cuts introduced by both the Conservative and then Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.
The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was launched by the UK at COP27. It was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.
CBFA set out to “empower central African nations”, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with support for “community forests” and other measures to curb forest loss.
Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s recent aid cuts, intended to free up money for defence spending.
Its original £90m budget has now been reduced to £18.8m. Government data shows that £15m of this has already been spent.
This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to this latest round of aid cuts.
The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – championed by the previous government and worth at least £12.3m – has been closed, just two years into its seven-year schedule.
Government documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk as the UK scales back its aid budget, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region.
One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”. Officials working on the other, while more optimistic, reported that the project may be forced to operate in fewer countries as the cuts set in.
Documents also reveal the difficulties that come when operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.
‘Breaking promises’
Damian Fleming, a senior director of forests at WWF International tells Carbon Brief:
“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”
In a series of recent parliamentary responses, Chapman revealed that the UK had only spent £39.8m on Congo forest finance, as of 2024. (She declined to provide any information on the Indonesia and Amazon regional goals.)
Despite being presented as the UK’s “contribution” to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029.
Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution so far has been relatively small.
Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, tells Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:
“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world for whom the environment is an existential issue.”
Future targets
The Labour government says it has met the five-year “climate finance” target of £11.6bn that expires this year.
Ministers also say the government has met “and exceeded” the £3bn and £1.5bn sub-goals for “preserving nature” and forests, respectively, within the £11.6bn. These are the funding streams that include support for the Congo basin and other rainforests.
The UK has funded a variety of projects in line with its forest goals, including mangrove restoration in Indonesia, support for carbon-offsetting projects in Brazil and promoting “forest stewardship” among farmers in Cameroon.
Chapman has stated that the UK will continue to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest, in line with its new plan for aid spending in Africa. The UK even helped to launch a new “call to action” for Congo basin funding at COP30 last year.
The UK government also says it supported the creation of Brazil’s flagship “Tropical Forest Forever Facility” (TFFF). However, so far it has not provided any funding for the facility.
When the government announced a new climate finance pledge for 2026 onwards, it stressed that nature would still be a “focus” and said it would also generate billions in “climate and nature positive investments”. Nevertheless, it dropped the “ring-fenced” amounts for nature and forests that had appeared in its previous pledge.
The UK, alongside other developed countries, has pledged to provide biodiversity finance to developing countries, under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) – a non-binding global pact to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.
Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee of MPs, says “sub-pledges” for nature and forests are a “cost-effective and impactful” way to ensure this finance is provided, alongside climate finance. She tells Carbon Brief that she was “concerned” about the move away from this approach:
“When the minister recently appeared before the international development committee, I was concerned to hear her characterise this shift as a ‘gamble’.”
A government spokesperson tells Carbon Brief:
“We remain committed to providing finance for forests, including in the Congo basin, as a core element of our overall climate funding.”
A shorter version of this article was first published in Cropped, Carbon Brief’s fortnightly newsletter that provides a digest of food, land and nature news, on 15 July 2026. Subscribe for free.
The post UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo
Climate Change
Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Global drought and heat
DRY THEN WET: A recent heatwave and months of low rainfall has led to a prolonged drought for Uganda, resulting in at least 16 deaths from hunger and significant crop losses, reported BBC News. Bastille Post Global suggested that “a developing El Niño later this year could bring heavier rainfall to parts of the region, raising the risk of flooding in areas now struggling with drought”.
FUNDING FOOD: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have appealed for $200m in funding to help African nations deal with the impact of El Niño, stated Deutsche Welle. This would target 22 high-risk countries with measures, including “cash transfers, climate-resilient seeds, livestock protection and flood control.” The Guardian explained how El Niño could still “cause a severe shock to global food prices lasting into 2028”.
FARMING FEARS: Extreme weather has devastated agriculture across the world. India saw its driest June in 12 years, reported BBC News, and France has had a “double-digit production” decline, according to Le Monde. The Financial Times reported that farmers in the UK are mitigating the impacts of extreme heat by eliminating “chemicals and intensive ploughing to improve soil quality so it retains water”.
EURO FIRES: Wildfires have spread across Europe, with Spain reporting at least 12 deaths so far, according to the Guardian, and France experiencing road closures, said Reuters. Wildfire Today reported that the most extreme conditions are “across France, Spain and northern Portugal, the Alpine arc extending into northern Italy, the south of the UK and south-east Ireland”. CNN explained how “the climate crisis is driving hotter, drier weather, which is setting the stage for fiercer fire seasons”.
Endangering species
REDEFINING HARM: The Trump administration “reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species…opening up sensitive habitats…to drilling, mining, farming and real estate development”, reported CNN. According to the story, the change “redefines what constitutes ‘harm’” to endangered species, which historically prohibited habitat modification or degradation. Agence France-Presse reported that US environmental groups sued the Trump government over the move, arguing that it had violated “common sense, biological science and federal law”.
OPEN SEASON: Reuters reported that the change “limits the reach of the 50-year-old Endangered Species Act” (ESA), which is a “key regulatory consideration” when granting permits for “oil and gas, mining, electric transmission and other operations on federal lands and water”. Legal scholars told the New York Times the US government “was acting without conducting scientific research into the impact” of the change, while the National Mining Association “applauded the announcement”.
News and views
- INTERNATIONAL WATERS: After a significant delay, the UK ratified the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ), also known as the High Seas Treaty. Oceanographic detailed how this will allow for “marine protected areas across international waters for the first time”, but also stressed that the “hard part” starts now.
- SCOPE-FREE: The world’s largest meat supplier JBS “scrapped a key climate goal” in its net-zero plan that accounts for its suppliers’ emissions, “which make up the vast bulk of the company’s environmental footprint”, reported the Financial Times. The company told the paper it was difficult to control these “indirect” emissions.
- DEEP TROUBLE: Pacific gray whales are facing a “catastrophic die-off” as sea-ice loss threatens their food sources, said the Guardian. Separately, conservationists warned that more than half of all molluscs that “cluster around underwater vents” could face extinction from deep-sea mining, reported Reuters.
- ETHANOL PUSHBACK: India’s new rules to promote 100% ethanol fuel and make ethanol-blended fuel mandatory at pumps “triggered a political row”, reported the Times of India. While the Indian government defended the push to automobile owners, a Hindu editorial and an Indian Express comment warned against incentivising fuels made from “water-intensive” sugarcane and rice.
- AMAZON ACTION: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell to its lowest level in a decade, but president Lula’s plans to “end illegal deforestation by 2030” could be hampered if he is not re-elected, reported Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, Colombia’s outgoing environment minister warned of greater environmental and climate risk under the incoming government, said the Associated Press.
- WAR WORRIES: The International Energy Agency (IEA) warned of the impact of the Iran war on Africa’s clean cooking efforts as disruption in the strait of Hormuz has stunted supplies and increased prices of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), explained Climate Home News.
Spotlight
UK ‘discards’ Congo rainforest funding
Amid worldwide cuts to aid spending, Carbon Brief explores how the UK is backtracking on funding for the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people.
Together, these initiatives would have made up half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support forest conservation in the Congo basin.
When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.
Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.
COP pledge
At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030.
The UK also made various regional funding pledges, including £200m for the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.
All of these rainforests face major forest loss. The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink, but its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.
This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.
Forest cuts
Following successive aid cuts introduced by both Conservative and Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.
The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.
Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s aid cuts. Its £90m budget has been “quietly reduced by 79% to £18.8m”, according to the Times.
This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to aid cuts. The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – worth at least £12.3m – has closed five years early.
Official documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region. One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”.
Documents also show the difficulties operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.
‘Breaking promises’
Damian Fleming, a senior forests director at WWF International told Carbon Brief:
“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”
In a parliamentary response, Chapman said that the UK had spent £39.8m towards its £200m Congo target, as of 2024.
Despite being described as the UK’s contribution to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029. Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution was relatively small.
Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, told Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:
“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world.”
The Labour government says it has met its overarching “climate finance” goals and still intends to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest.
However, civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.
Watch, read, listen
TOXIC TROUBLES: DeSmog unpacked a new report that said Northern Ireland is being turned into a “toxic” pig and poultry farming “sacrifice zone” to satiate the UK’s meat appetite.
NEED TO NOAA: Laid-off scientists from the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched Climate.Us – an independent, public-backed version of the climate information website shut down by Trump last year.
DRY FRUIT: A Dialogue Earth long read looked at how climate change is impacting apricot harvests in the “stark, high-altitude desert” region of Ladakh, India.
READING ALOUD: A London Review of Books podcast discussed Robin Wall Kimmerer’s influential book “Braiding Sweetgrass”, weighing its compelling themes and where it veers into “scientific overreach”.
New science
- Climate change could cause Indigenous peoples in the Amazon to lose 28-34% of their plant species and 18-23% of their associated services | Nature
- Biodiversity in forests can act as a “buffer” against compound extreme weather events | Nature Communications
- Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia’s palm oil sector have had “no additional impacts” on reducing forest loss | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
In the diary
- 7-15 July: High-level political forum on sustainable development | New York City
- 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council | Kingston, Jamaica
- 16 July: International Energy Agency critical minerals outlook 2026, online
- 27 July-1 August: Scientific and technical subsidiary body meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity | Nairobi, Kenya
This edition of Cropped was written by Jess Milligan, Josh Gabbatiss and Aruna Chandrasekhar. Cropped is edited by Dr Giuliana Viglione. This edition was edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org.
The post Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid
Climate Change
Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
Climate and environment campaigners have urged the Kenyan government to halt plans for a proposed 700,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery backed by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, warning the project threatens one of East Africa’s most ecologically sensitive coastlines.
The refinery, which is planned to be situated in Lamu County on Kenya’s northern coast, will be East Africa’s largest refining project and is expected to take up to three years to build. Once finished, it would supply refined petroleum products to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, among others, helping to reduce the region’s dependence on imported fuels.
Campaigners are questioning the viability of such a large refinery at a time when renewable energy and electric transportation are expanding rapidly.
Mohamed Adow, director of a Kenya-based climate and energy think-tank Power Shift Africa, said the decision to give Dangote the green light for the refinery is “an extraordinary act of environmental recklessness and economic short-sightedness”, arguing it would tie Kenya to “yesterday’s energy system” just as global demand for petroleum products faces increasing uncertainty.
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Campaigners argue the refinery risks coming online just as transport – the largest market for petrol and diesel – is beginning to electrify across the continent.
Kenya launched a National Electric Mobility Policy earlier this year to speed up the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) and reduce the country’s roughly $5 billion annual fuel import bill. Ethiopia has already banned imports of non-electric vehicles and now has more than 100,000 EVs on its roads, while Rwanda is expanding its electric mobility programme with plans to convert its fleet of around 100,000 motorcycles to electric.
Adow said the project risks billions of dollars in investment in infrastructure that could become obsolete as the world moves away from oil.
“Building a refinery today assumes decades of robust demand for fuels that much of the world is actively trying to phase out,” he said in a statement.
Ecological concerns
Lamu – the proposed site for the project – is home to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Lamu Old Town and an archipelago containing extensive mangrove forests, coral reefs and seagrass beds that support fisheries, tourism and coastal livelihoods.
Locating the refinery in Lamu would “place one of Africa’s largest fossil fuel developments in one of the continent’s most ecologically sensitive and culturally significant coastal regions,” Power Shift Africa said.
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Sherelee Odayar, oil and gas campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, warned that a refinery of this scale could increase the risk of habitat destruction, marine pollution, oil spills and air pollution in one of East Africa’s most fragile coastal ecosystems.
She said the risks stem not only from the refinery itself – including storage tanks, pipelines and fuel handling facilities – but also from the large volumes of crude oil that would need to be shipped into Lamu and refined products exported by sea. Increased tanker traffic and fuel transfers, she said, would raise the likelihood of accidents in ecologically sensitive coastal waters.
Odayar added that Lamu’s low-lying, flood-prone coastline could compound those risks by damaging infrastructure and carrying contaminants from storage facilities into nearby fishing grounds and marine ecosystems.
“Lamu’s mangroves, coral reefs and seagrass beds are not expendable; they support fisheries, livelihoods and coastal protection,” Odayar added.
She said Kenyan authorities should suspend any approvals until an independent environmental and social impact assessment is completed, with genuine public participation and transparent scrutiny of the long-term economic, health and ecological risks.
“Any review must assess cumulative impacts on Lamu’s mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds and fishing livelihoods, alongside the wider economic risk of locking Kenya into costly fossil fuel infrastructure as the global energy transition accelerates”.
Dangote Group declined to answer questions from Climate Home News when contacted by phone.
Technological change threaten project’s future
The Kenya refinery would replicate Dangote’s 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Lagos, currently Africa’s largest, which has plans to more than double capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2028.
Adow of Power Shift Africa said projects like this represent “a breathtaking failure to recognise where the global economy is heading”, pointing out that the East African refinery risks arriving when Africa is experiencing an unprecedented clean energy boom.
Referencing Africa’s solar boom, global electric vehicles uptake and the International Energy Agency’s projection that global oil demand is set to enter a decline later this decade, the think-tank founder said African governments risk anchoring the continent’s future to an industry facing mounting economic uncertainty.
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The organisation said the project faces a bigger threat aside from environmental opposition and that is technological change. “The danger is not simply that the refinery will pollute, it is that it will become obsolete long before it has paid for itself,” he added.
Kenyan President William Ruto said the project will create about 60,000 jobs for Kenyans and supply refined fuel to eight East and Central African countries.
GreenPeace Africa’s Odayar said the promise of ‘thousands of jobs’ cannot be used to hide the true cost of the investment which is that large fossil fuel projects often create temporary jobs while undermining existing livelihoods in fishing, tourism and small-scale local economies.
“The enormous capital required for a project of this scale could instead help accelerate Kenya’s renewable energy future through solar, wind, geothermal, storage and better energy access,” she added.
The post Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
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