The German government has used its financial power over climate activists in the Global South to try to stop them publicly criticising Israel’s attacks on Gaza in recent months, according to sources interviewed by Climate Home.
Many climate and development organisations based in developing countries rely directly or indirectly for funding on the German government, which is among Israel’s strongest political supporters.
Three sources Climate Home spoke to said that, after criticising Israel’s actions for humanitarian reasons, they were either pressured by their German-funded employers to resign, had contracts put on hold, or were warned they would lose funding if they made further comments on the issue.
Tensions between German and international climate campaigners were evident at December’s Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, with several German campaign groups distancing themselves from criticism of Israel by Climate Action Network International. One accused the civil-society umbrella group of antisemitism.
Funding threat
Twelve climate activists – all of whom asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the subject – told Climate Home many climate organisations fear that speaking out about Israel’s military actions in Gaza will cost them German funding.
The German development ministry BMZ says on its website that it checks whether organisations it funds have been involved in “statements or actions” that “make it undesirable to provide support to that organisation”.
As examples, it lists incitement to hatred and violence, denial of Israel’s right to exist, antisemitism and support for the global movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. It urges partner organisations to “sanction” staff who “violate these principles”.
A spokesperson for the German state development organisation GIZ told Climate Home the organisations it funds are “bound to comply” with its principles on non-discrimination.
The spokesperson added that, in line with the German government and parliament, GIZ uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
The IHRA provides examples of what it considers antisemitic, which include arguing that the state of Israel is a racist endeavour or comparing Israeli policy to the Nazis.
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One consultant to climate campaign groups told Climate Home they had an individual contract with a German foundation postponed after accusing Israel of genocide on social media. “It was going to be my main source of income,” they said, “I’m financially screwed.”
An activist from the Global South said their organisation’s German funder had told them not to criticise Israel. To keep the money, the organisation heeded this warning but “the relationship with the funder has become extremely tense”, the activist added.
“I completely get feeling guilt as Germans for an atrocity that occurred, but that should not trickle down into activist organisations and NGOs and civil society organisations trying to make a change on the ground,” they said.
Difficult position
Another activist from the Global South told Climate Home the German-funded climate and feminist campaign group they work for had issued guidelines advising staff on how to talk about the Israel-Gaza conflict.
The activist resigned after declining to follow the guidelines. “I’m not going to allow anyone to censor me,” they told Climate Home, adding they were now unemployed and their mental health had suffered.
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Another foreign employee of a German climate campaign group told Climate Home their bosses were “pretty pro-Israel”, while many of the organisation’s staff were not.
But even the group’s leadership is in a “very difficult position”, they said, because the German government funds the organisation and has discussed removing funding from groups that support the Palestinian cause or work with others that do.
Cancellations
Climate scientist Julia Steinberger, who specialises in ecological economics and is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, told Climate Home she was uninvited from an event in Austria after she said she would speak about Israel’s “genocide”.
Another climate scientist, based in Germany, told Climate Home they had been warned by colleagues that support for Palestine would “cancel” them in Germany.
It is not just climate activists who are running into problems over expressing their opinions on the Israel-Gaza conflict. In December, the chair of an Egyptian women’s rights charity told Egyptian news website Mada Masr that the German government had cut funding after she signed an open letter calling for an end to the war and support for the global boycott movement against Israel.
Asked about the case, the German embassy cited the government’s funding criteria that recipient organisations cannot call for boycotts against Israel. In 2019, the German parliament – with support from the Green Party – passed a non-binding motion calling for German funding to be cut to groups that support such boycotts.
Another NGO, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, ended its cooperation with the German government over the defunding of the feminist group and organised a petition, signed by nearly 1,000 people, calling for a boycott of the German-Egyptian cultural week.
Greta’s German critics
In Germany, support for Israel is more widespread than in most of the rest of Europe and goes beyond the far right to include liberals and leftists, who comprise much of the climate movement.
This has led to conflict between German climate groups and their international counterparts, both online and in person at Cop28 in Dubai.
As a result, several German climate organisations have split from, or threatened to quit international networks like Fridays for Future and Climate Action Network International.
On October 20 – two weeks after Hamas militants killed about 1,140 Israeli and foreign civilians and took more than 240 hostages, and with Israel’s military response ramping up – Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg posted on X “in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza”.
Week 270. Today we strike in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza. The world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians affected.#FreePalestine #IStandWithPalestine #StandWithGaza #FridaysForFuture
Threadpic.twitter.com/0hVtya0yWO
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) October 20, 2023
She had previously posted similar messages “in solidarity with Ukrainians”, but this one proved more controversial, not just with the Israeli government and her traditional critics on the far-right but with the German branch of Fridays for Future (FFF), the student-led climate movement Thunberg inspired.
Two days later, FFF Germany’s most high-profile activist Luisa Neubauer spoke at a rally in Berlin on a podium showing the message “against terror and antisemitism, solidarity with Israel”.
In a statement, she sought to strike a balance, saying that FFF Germany had “unlimited solidarity” with the Jewish people as well as being concerned about anti-Muslim racism and civilians in Gaza.
Dubai divisions
In late November, the international climate movement gathered in person at Cop28 in Dubai. The Israeli army had by then invaded the Gaza Strip, killing 17,000 people, bombing a refugee camp and an ambulance convoy, and raiding a hospital.
Many climate activists felt those were actions they could not ignore. In solidarity, many wore keffiyehs and lanyards in the colours of the Palestinian flag, given out by the Palestinian pavilion at Cop28.
At their big climate march in the venue, activists carried banners saying “ceasefire now, end occupation”, and chanting “no climate justice without human rights”.
At Cop28 in Dubai, protesters march behind a “ceasefire now” banner (Photos: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)
The next day, the umbrella group Climate Action Network (CAN) International gave its “Fossil of the Day” award to Israel, accusing the Israeli government of genocide and colonialism. That decision went down badly with CAN International’s German members.
The acting CEO of the Oeko-Institut, Anke Herold – which gets much of its funding from the German government – said that CAN used “antisemitic phrases” in its presentation of the award.
She told Climate Home: “The two antisemitic phrases in the statement are the references to ‘Israeli colonialism’ and the reference to ‘the intent of genocide’.” She declined to comment further on why she considers those phrases antisemitic.
At Cop28, she added that the institute would consider terminating its CAN membership if “universal values such as solidarity with all those affected, human rights for all and international humanitarian law” were not upheld.
Watch the #FossilOfTheDay ceremony from today, as we condemn Israel for its intention of genocide. #CeasefireNow
— Climate Action Network International (CAN) (@CANIntl) December 10, 2023
Christoph Bals, policy director of environmental advocacy group Germanwatch, told the Deutsche Press Association: “Despite Israel’s very problematic actions in the Gaza Strip, we neither adopt nor support the justification for the Fossil of the Day to Israel.”
He said Germanwatch had voted against the decision, “and – when it was actually carried out – communicated our red lines for the reasons. Unfortunately, this input was not taken into account this time.”
As a result, Germanwatch stopped going to the CAN political coordination group, a daily meeting of around 50 people during Cop28 to discuss strategy. Germanwatch got €2.7m ($2.9m) from the German government in 2022 – about €1m of which was from BMZ.
The German branches of Greenpeace and Oxfam also distanced themselves from Israel’s Fossil of the Day award.
Humanitarian crisis
Five months after Hamas’ attack on Israeli citizens, Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip continues, amid growing international calls for a ceasefire.
The United Nation says about a quarter of Gaza’s population is on the brink of starvation, after attacks on aid convoys, and infectious diseases are spreading fast with little access to medical care.
With Germany’s position on the conflict unchanged, British climate justice activist Asad Rehman said many in the climate movement are questioning their partnerships with the German government and German climate campaign groups.
“How can we ally and work together with German organisations that are not prepared to stand up against their own government?” he asked.
The post Germany uses funding to pressure climate groups on Israel-Gaza war appeared first on Climate Home News.
Germany uses funding to pressure climate groups on Israel-Gaza war
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.
The 2026 global carbon budget report also estimates that:
- Fossil emissions are projected to fall in China (-0.9%), the US (-1.3%) and the EU (-1.5%) in 2026, but rise by 4.4% in India.
- Oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region, with the largest drop in China (-4.6%).
- Land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, around 21% lower than the decade before.
- Total CO2 emissions (fossil and land-use) grew by an average 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over the decade before.
- The remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is 150GtCO2, or less than four years of current emissions.
- The land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, rebounding after being weakened during the 2023-24 El Niño. The current El Niño is expected to weaken the land sink in 2027.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels.
(For more on previous editions of the Global Carbon Project’s annual report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in