The Busan talks which ended in the early hours of Monday were meant to be the final step in agreeing a UN treaty to end plastic pollution. But rumours started swirling on Sunday afternoon – later confirmed – that they wouldn’t be the last.
Fighting back the exhaustion from one too many sleepless nights, diplomats and observers wondered why the talks had broken down – and what could prevent the same happening again when countries reconvene next year to try and push a pact over the finish line?
One clear, prevailing narrative was borrowed straight from UN climate change negotiations: a vocal minority of defiant, well-coordinated petrostates had killed off the majority’s efforts to clinch an ambitious agreement to end plastic pollution.
More than 100 countries – from rich Western states to African, Latin American and Pacific nations – got behind a drive to include provisions to cap plastic manufacturing in the new UN accord, rather than limiting it to a narrower focus on recycling.
Anything short of that would be a failure and a betrayal, they repeated in unison throughout the week-long deliberations. “The time for the freedom to pollute is over,” said European Union envoy Tony Agotha on Friday. “Mopping the floor when the tap is open is useless.”
“Economic interests”
Only around 9% of plastic is recycled worldwide, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It wrote in an October report that only through “stringent policies to curb production and demand”, combined with better waste management, could the world “nearly end plastic leakage to the environment by 2040”.
Nearly all plastic is made using plant-heating fossil fuels and, as production is projected to double or triple in the next 25 years, that spells trouble for efforts to limit global warming and stem the flood of plastic waste clogging up the Earth’s oceans and littering its land.
But a group of self-defined “Like-Minded” countries led by Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran – which also includes most Arab states and quietly counts on support from India – don’t want to close the door on a key economic sector. In Busan, they pushed back strongly against any attempt to include provisions to cap plastic manufacturing in a legally binding UN pact.
They reiterated their view that production curbs fall outside the scope of the treaty, saying they could cause “economic disruption”, trade restrictions and shortages of essential materials.
In response, Ghana’s lead negotiator Sam Adu-Kumi told reporters on Sunday it seems that “people are looking at their economic interests without looking at the common enemy” of plastic pollution and “its devastating effects”.
Fossil fuel-producing nations and companies see the petrochemicals industry, including plastics, as a lifeline because demand for oil and gas in the energy sector is projected to decline as the world shifts to cleaner sources for power and transport.
China, the United States, India, South Korea and Saudi Arabia were the top five primary polymer-producing nations in 2023, according to data provided by Eunomia.
More time needed
The deep divisions between countries were on full display during a marathon seven hour-long closing plenary stretching into the early hours of Monday morning in South Korea.
Juliet Kabera from Rwanda, speaking on behalf of the High-Ambition Coalition (HAC) of countries, brought the house down when she asked everyone who supported her statement – condemning calls from a minority of countries to remove “indispensable” binding provisions from the text – to “stand for ambition”.
Russia’s delegate spoke of “production regulation models” being imposed “purely for economic reasons”, while Kuwait’s negotiator – on behalf of the Like-Minded group – expressed “concern” over a “rush to showcase progress” in negotiations where “everyone is bringing its lenses”.
On Sunday, after the final session was suspended without an agreement, Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which is running the talks, said more time is needed to overcome “persisting divergence in critical areas”.
“We cannot afford to miss” the opportunity to make tackling plastic pollution a reality at the next session, she added in a written statement.
But, given the enduring stalemate, many weren’t sure how that would be possible as they exited the cavernous plenary room.
Higher level political involvement
Siddharth Singh, programme manager at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), told Climate Home the next round of talks would be “tough as the US would be negotiating under the Trump administration, possibly strengthening the low-ambition countries”.
The date for the resumption of the INC-5 talks has yet to be set, with the Earth Negotiations Bulletin reporting some countries want the next session to be convened in the first half of 2025 so as not to lose the momentum built in Busan, and others calling for it to be held in July or August next year given much work is still required before agreement can be reached.
Some negotiators and observers are hoping China can play a decisive role in bridging the divide with the petrostates. Its Vice Minister Guo Fang told the closing plenary that all countries should “propose more pragmatic and balanced solutions” that address the “entire life cycle” of plastics, while taking into account their national differences.
Aleksandar Rankovic, co-founder of the Common Initiative, a campaign group, called for “a much stronger involvement from heads of states or ministers” – something that was glaringly missing in Busan.
As negotiations continued behind closed doors, signs outside the UN plastic talks venue in Busan called for leaders to act and produce a strong treaty to address plastic pollution, November 29, 2024.
(Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)
Vote or consensus?
Meanwhile, a growing chorus of voices believes the only viable option to ensure that a new global pact contains stringent provisions on plastic production is to put the issue to a vote, rather than relying on the current consensus-based system for approving decisions.
David Azoulay, director of environmental health at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said ambitious countries should combat “the weaponisation of consensus by a small number of countries”.
“We must resist the idea that this process is destined to remain paralysed by obstruction,” he added, calling on governments to resolve the issue “once and for all” at the next negotiating session.
Eirik Lindebjerg, global plastics policy lead at WWF, said a small number of countries are “holding the negotiations hostage” – and those pushing for a strong agreement “must be ready to vote or adopt a treaty-of-the-willing”.
Production curbs needed for strong global pact on plastic pollution, campaigners say
Invoking a vote is technically an option according to the rules that govern the negotiations.
But at the second session of talks on the treaty in June 2023 in Paris, countries struck what Senegal’s national delegate Cheikh Ndiaye Sylla described on Sunday as a “gentleman’s agreement” to rule out voting throughout the process, adding it had been a “big mistake”.
Backtracking on it now is likely to spark a strong response from the “Like-Minded” group – and some other developing countries – which strongly believe all decisions should be made by consensus.
Delegates gather for the closing plenary of the INC-5 talks in Busan, South Korea on December 1, 2024. Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)
While several Latin American, African and Pacific island members of the High-Ambition Coalition have publicly supported the need to consider voting, rich nations by and large remain nervous about that option.
According to CIEL’s Azoulay, they fear it would create “bad blood”, upsetting powerful players like India and China, and running the risk of denting multilateralism in an already tense geopolitical situation.
In a statement following the end of the meeting in Busan, the INC’s chair, Ecuadorian diplomat Luis Vayas Valdivieso, said the mandate of the talks had “always been ambitious”, adding “ambition takes time to land”.
Governments agreed that a “Chair’s Text” compiled by Valdivieso and issued on Sunday will serve as the starting point for negotiations at the resumed INC session in 2025.
“We have many of the elements that we need, and Busan has put us firmly on a pathway to success,” he said. “I call on all delegations to continue making paths, building bridges, and engaging in dialogue.”
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post Failure of Busan talks exposes fossil fuel barrier to UN plastics pact appeared first on Climate Home News.
Failure of Busan talks exposes fossil fuel barrier to UN plastics pact
Climate Change
Albanese’s NY Climate Week address acknowledges scale of the climate challenge, but fossil fuels notably absent
SYDNEY, Tuesday 22 September 2026 — In response to Prime Minister Albanese’s keynote address at New York Climate Week, Dr Simon Bradshaw, COP31 Lead and climate expert at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“It is encouraging to see Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acknowledging the immediate and profound climate threat to communities in the Pacific, Australia and worldwide, and the need to work together, with bravery and compassion. Now we must match those words with real action to phase out fossil fuels.
“Earlier this month in Palau, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese committed Australia to helping accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and defend the crucial goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C — a survival line for Pacific island countries and all those paying the cost of our fossil fuel addiction through worsening floods, fires, drought and sea level rise.
“However, Australia continues to undermine its aspirations for global climate leadership by expanding fossil fuel production. The Albanese Government has approved an astonishing 37 new, extended or expanded coal and gas projects since first elected. Every one of which compounds the threats to our shared security and wellbeing. Remarkably, in his major climate speech in New York overnight, the Prime Minister failed to even mention fossil fuels.
“As our Minister for Climate Change Chris Bowen has said, we are in a global fossil fuel crisis. Getting off fossil fuels through transitioning to renewable energy is the quickest pathway to greater security, stability and affordability for all. But right now Australia is throwing more fuel on the fire.
“We are now near certain to overshoot 1.5°C of warming. For the Pacific and Australia alike, this will be measured in more communities torn from their land and homes, and the loss of more people and places we love. There is a path back below 1.5°C of warming, and every fraction of a degree matters, but it will demand all minds and all hearts working together.
Australia fought hard for the privilege to chair the next round of global climate negotiations. The world is crying out for a clear vision and leadership from Australia as we head towards COP31 in Antalya.
“Australia must lead by example at home through an immediate end to new fossil fuel approvals, including rejecting Woodside’s mammoth Browse project. And must ensure that COP31 boosts our shared security by accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels. Get this right, and Australia will emerge as a responsible middle power and force for good in troubled times.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
This year’s so-called “super El Niño” is entering into record-breaking territory.
Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific now equal the previous daily record set in 2015 and will likely keep rising in the days ahead.
El Niño is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon in the Pacific that reshapes weather patterns around the world and temporarily boosts global temperatures.
The current El Niño event – which has been underway since June and is expected to last until next year – has been developing faster than any previous event on record.
The strength of an event is tracked using the “Niño 3.4 anomaly”, which measures how much warmer sea surface temperatures in a section of the central Pacific are than average.
As of 19 September, the daily anomaly in the Niño 3.4 region stands at 3.07C, putting it in a statistical tie with the previous record of 3.08C.
Some scientists, using a different baseline for calculating the anomaly, have already called the new record.
Either way, this is remarkable, in part because of how early in the calendar year it is occurring. El Niño typically peaks in the winter months, most commonly in November or December.
Every strong El Niño on record has continued to strengthen after mid-September – and there is every reason to think that this one will as well.
(For more on El Niño, see Carbon Brief’s recent interactive explainer.)
Record territory
El Niño events are typically classed as “weak” when the Niño 3.4 anomaly reaches 0.5C, “moderate” above 1C, “strong” above 1.5C and “very strong” above 2.0C.
For this year’s event, the Niño 3.4 anomaly has now reached 3.07C, which puts it in a statistical tie with the record set on 18 November 2015, set during a “very strong” El Nino event.
The chart below shows how the strength of the current El Niño (red line) is dramatically outpacing both 2015-16 (blue) and another “very strong” event in 1997-98 (light blue).
To analyse the developing El Niño, Carbon Brief followed the convention of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Oceanic Niño index (ONI).
ONI is calculated by subtracting the latest 30-year average temperature in the Nino 3.4 region from daily sea surface temperatures. This approach allows for the most recent years to be compared against the most recent 30-year period. It removes much of the influence of longer-term, human-driven warming from the index.
(While meteorological organisations typically track changes to ONI on a three-month rolling average basis, Carbon Brief’s analysis looked at how the metric is changing on a daily basis.)
If ONI is calculated using a baseline of 1991-2020 then the current El Niño has already set a new record.
Since the start of June, El Niño’s strength has been greater than any other year. In early September in both 1997 and 2015, anomalies were around 1.9C – more than one degree below where they are this year.
An alternative index
There is another commonly used metric – the relative Oceanic Niño index (RONI) – used to study El Niño.
Introduced by NOAA in 2024, the RONI index adjusts for tropical ocean warming linked to human-caused climate change. To do this, it takes sea surface averages in the Nino 3.4 region and subtracts out temperature anomalies observed across the tropical oceans (between the latitudes of 20 degrees north and south).
This approach may better remove the influence of climate change in this specific region, but can also diminish the apparent strength of strong El Niño events, such as the current one, which extend well outside the Niño 3.4 region.
The chart below shows daily RONI values, which are record setting for this time of year, but remain below an all-time daily record set during the 1982-83 El Niño event.
RONI stood at around 2.5C in mid-September, some 0.7C below the 1982 record.
However, that record was set in late December, at the peak of the event.
The 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16 events added between 0.5C and 1.9C to their RONI values between mid-September and their peaks.
On track to smash monthly and seasonal records
Because daily El Niño values are noisy, scientists typically turn to monthly or seasonal averages to compare El Niño events.
The latest full calendar month for which data is available – August 2026 – had a Niño 3.4 anomaly of around 2.45C. This is higher than the peak of every prior El Niño event on record except 2015-16 – where the anomaly reached 2.75C – and 1877-78, when the anomaly sat at around 2.7C, based on a reconstruction of sea surface temperatures using sparse ship data.
The figure below shows the monthly evolution of the five strongest El Niño events on record alongside 2026, as well the current forecast from 14 seasonal forecast models.
Taken together, the models project a peak monthly anomaly later this year of around 4.1C, with 80% of the 674 individual model runs falling between 3.4C and 4.6C.
Every single model run peaks above the 2015-16 record. The projected margin over that record, some 1.3C, is larger than the entire gap between the strongest and fifth-strongest El Niño of the past 150 years.
Some caution here is warranted, however. No seasonal forecast system has ever been verified against an event of this size, because none has ever occurred. The models also predicted temperatures slightly warmer than observed this summer, with real-world observations for August coming in around 0.3C below forecasts.
However, all strong El Niño events on record have continued to strengthen well into the winter – and the models are in near-unanimous agreement that this one will, too. If the forecast holds, the current event will peak between November and January at a level far beyond any event previously observed in the instrumental record.
El Nino’s effect on global temperatures typically lags rising ocean temperatures in the Pacific by several months, so most of the impact will be felt in 2027 rather than 2026.
Carbon Brief’s most recent “state of the climate” quarterly analysis found 2026 on track to be the warmest or second-warmest year on record. The next update in early October will examine what a record El Niño means for 2027.
The post Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ reaches ‘remarkable’ all-time record appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ reaches ‘remarkable’ all-time record
Artificial intelligence (AI) is set for a bigger role at this year’s UN climate summit, as Türkiye’s COP31 presidency seeks backing for a new pledge on the technology’s energy use.
In a statement on Monday, the COP31 hosts said they will launch the Antalya Pledge on AI, which they billed as a “political” commitment on how AI is “designed, procured, powered, deployed, measured and managed” in support of climate action.
“We must openly discuss AI’s growing energy consumption and it is time for governments to start setting the terms,” COP31 president Murat Kurum said in an emailed statement. “We expect companies to be transparent about their energy use and to power their operations with clean energy”.
No further details about the pledge have been made available so far, including whether it will include a clean energy commitment or whether governments and companies will be invited to sign on. The COP31 presidency said it would share a draft before the summit opens in Antalya in early November.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell went further in a New York speech on Monday, warning that AI leaders are “on thin ice when it comes to license to operate, and sinking deep underwater when it comes to public support”.
“Energy-guzzling artificial intelligence is driving up planet-heating pollution from coal, oil and gas, while ratcheting up energy costs for households and businesses,” he said, adding that data centre projects are being put on hold due to public opposition from New York to Texas.
Growing energy use and emissions
Concerns about the environmental impacts of AI infrastructure and its impact on rising electricity prices have led to a growing backlash in some communities, especially in the US.
Big Tech’s breakneck race to develop new AI models and build out the energy-hungry infrastructure supporting them has stoked fears over the technology’s growing climate impact.
Greenhouse gas emissions generated by data centres through their electricity use are set to more than double between 2024 and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Data centres, which underpin various technologies including AI, are expected to consume more power than all but five countries by the end of the decade.
-
UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts
UN chief António Guterres says big AI firms should disclose the emissions, water and energy use of their data centres amid community opposition -
Explainer: Will AI data centres make or break the energy transition?
As grids struggle to meet soaring electricity demand for AI data-crunching, big tech is under pressure to cover the costs of boosting power supplies – which may be dirty or clean
The AI race is also driving a surge in new fossil gas investment in the United States, where Big Tech giants including Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta have struck up major deals with fossil fuel operators to power their infrastructure.
In China, the other major global AI force, coal provides around 70% of the electricity powering the country’s data centers, according to an IEA report published last year.
More space for AI at COPs?
Despite AI’s rapidly growing relevance for the world’s ability to limit global warming, high-level discussions on the climate impact of the technology have been largely absent at UN climate summits.
While the pledge is still being developed and scarce details have been made public so far, the Antalya initiative, alongside sharper rhetoric from Stiell, suggests that might be changing.
Climate Home News understands that the UN climate change body is encouraging AI companies to be present at COPs as the climate summits set the global direction for energy policy and tech firms now have a major stake in it.
Earlier this year, UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched an initiative aimed at holding AI companies accountable for their environmental impacts and repeated a call for all big AI companies to commit to powering every data centre with renewable energy by 2030.
Align AI with science
Stiell said that tech titans need to start showing why the benefits of AI outweigh its “skyrocketing costs”, by setting credible climate targets, coming clean about their energy use and powering data centres with renewable energy.
AI proponents claim that, despite its growing energy use, the technology’s widespread application would bring net benefits in the fight against climate change by driving massive energy efficiency gains and optimising renewable energy integration. The IEA estimates that existing AI applications could cut emissions by more than data centres add.
Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn
But critics argue that it is wrong to compare theoretical gains with real-world emission growth and any gains are outweighed by the widespread adoption of AI tools by fossil fuel companies to extract planet-heating oil and gas faster and more cheaply.
Stiell said the tech industry needs to “respect science and start aligning with global climate efforts – urgently”.
Alongside the AI pledge, the COP31 presidency has also announced it will launch an ‘AI for Clean Technologies’ Initiative, which will develop a portfolio of AI-enabled clean-technology pilots in priority sectors, including smart energy and green industry.
This programme aims to demonstrate the responsible use of AI in practice, the COP31 presidency promised.
The post COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’ appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
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