Published

1 year ago

December 24, 2024

Alice Rush

Sikeade Egbuwalo is the biodiversity lead at Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment.

Here in Nigeria, we are suffering badly from forest loss and degradation. We are losing our unique wild animals and plants and suffering from encroaching deserts, failing rainy seasons, declining wetlands and diminishing food supplies. Our Indigenous communities are struggling to survive on the land where they have sustainably lived for millennia.

To tackle this and preserve our forests, we are advancing policies to secure effective protection of 30% of the West African ECOWAS region by 2030.

But unfortunately, despite global commitments, this ambition is not shared around the world. International attention has focused almost entirely on tropical deforestation, allowing the wealthiest countries of the Global North to avoid accountability for impacts in their own forests.

This deeply rooted double standard now jeopardises the implementation of the ambition to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030, which was enshrined in a declaration at COP26 in 2021 and at COP28 last year.

Biodiversity market takes off at COP16, in shadow of carbon credit chaos

Boreal and temperate forests in the Global North are among the most ecologically vital ecosystems in the world. In addition to their importance for biodiversity, they store a significant share of the planet’s forest carbon, making them critical for the climate.

Yet primary and old-growth forests are being clear-cut at alarming rates in the Global North, where forestry is driving some of the highest rates of tree cover loss in the world. Like tropical deforestation, the impacts of northern logging do not stop at countries’ borders – they are felt everywhere.

World Resources Institute analysis of tree cover loss by region (2001-2023)

Despite the science, countries in the Global North continue to insist their practices are sustainable and are working to limit the forest discussion solely to deforestation and degradation of tropical forests in the Global South.

Just days following the 16^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Cali, Colombia, last month, policymakers from several countries in Europe attempted to effectively exempt their industries from the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) through a “no risk” category for countries with increasing forest cover.

While EU member states have fortunately held firm against these amendments, this is not the only attempt by Global North countries to weaken the EUDR’s application within their own borders.

Obstructionism under the EUDR is also only part of a broader effort by Global North countries to permit themselves to continue business-as-usual forestry practices without transparency or accountability, while putting the burden for improvement and due diligence solely on the Global South.

Failure of Busan talks exposes fossil fuel barrier to UN plastics pact

Not only does this inequity undermine progress on natural climate solutions in the Global North, it also places an additional burden on the Global South, prevents us from addressing this problem as true partners, and stunts the development of cohesive global supply chain standards.

As we move toward the latter half of this critical decade and look toward next year’s COP30 climate talks in Belém, Brazil, we must commit to a shared global responsibility for forest protection. This should increase ambition from tropical countries, but even more so address destructive forest practices in the Global North and – like we are doing in the tropics – build more sustainable, healthy supply chains.

Global equity framework

This is why I am extremely proud that, last year, in the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment’s declaration, African nations reached a consensus to support the development of a global forest accountability and equity framework. This is a means of driving global progress and promoting greater alignment between forest protection standards across tropical, temperate, and boreal forests.

The vision of Nigeria and the rest of Africa through the development of this framework is to ensure that the world truly unites and responds as one to protect our forests.

Our continent as a whole seeks, through this framework, to secure the development of enhanced and common reporting, monitoring and definitions to ensure global commitments to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation are implemented to the same standards within and outside the tropics.

We need to drive cooperation and collaboration across all forests. We encourage all countries to join us in this endeavor by supporting the development of an equity framework.

Nigeria just reiterated this important call for equity in Cali. The fight against forest loss and degradation is not a fight that should solely be tackled by the Global South. We are all affected by the harmful impacts of climate change, and losing or degrading tree cover anywhere in the world has dire consequences for everyone on the planet.

We cannot have a system that holds the wealthiest countries to a different standard. In the lead-up to next year’s COP30 summit in Belém, we urge all countries to come together as true partners to advance our shared commitments, working equitably and transparently to protect and restore the forests on which all our futures depend.

The post Global North countries must step up on protecting their own forests appeared first on Climate Home News.

Global North countries must step up on protecting their own forests

Climate Change

Wondering How to Talk About Climate Change? Take a Lesson from Bad Bunny

Published

20 hours ago

March 21, 2026

Alice Rush

Discussing climate change can make a difference. Focusing on the impacts in everyday life is a good place to start, experts say.

By David Sun

When Bad Bunny climbed onto broken power lines during his Super Bowl halftime show, millions of viewers saw a spectacle. Climate communicators saw a lesson in how to talk about climate change.

Wondering How to Talk About Climate Change? Take a Lesson from Bad Bunny

Climate Change

Greenpeace response to escalating attacks on gas fields in Middle East

Published

1 day ago

March 20, 2026

Alice Rush

Sydney, Thursday 19 March 2026 — In response to escalating attacks on gas fields in the Middle East, including Israeli strikes on Iran’s giant South Pars gas field and Iranian retaliations on gas fields in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the following lines can be attributed to Solaye Snider, Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:

“The targeting of gas fields across the Middle East is a perilous escalation that reinforces just how vulnerable our fossil-fuelled world really is.

“Oil and gas have long been used as tools of power and coercion by authoritarian regimes. They cause climate chaos and environmental pollution and they drive conflict and war. The energy security of every nation still hooked on gas, including Australia, is under direct threat.

“For countries that are reliant on gas imports, like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and South Korea, this crisis is just getting started. It can take months to restart a gas export facility once it is shut down, meaning the shockwaves of these strikes will be felt for a long time to come.

“It is a gross and tragic injustice that while civilians are killed and lose their homes to this escalating violence, and families struggle with a tightening cost-of-living, gas giants like Woodside and Santos have seen their share prices surge on the prospect of windfall war profits.

“We must break this cycle. Transitioning to local renewable energy is the way to protect Australian households from the inherent volatility of fossil fuels like gas.”

-ENDS-

Images available for download via the Greenpeace Media Library

Media contact: Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lkeller@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace response to escalating attacks on gas fields in Middle East

Climate Change

DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case

Published

1 day ago

March 20, 2026

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

Iran war fallout continues

WORK FROM HOME: The International Energy Agency has advised its member countries to take 10 steps in response to the ongoing energy crisis fuelled by the Iran war, including reducing highway speeds and encouraging people to work from home, said the Guardian. It came after retaliatory attacks between Israel and Iran continued to destroy energy infrastructure in the Middle East, causing energy prices to soar further, said Reuters.

SUPPLY DISRUPTED: The IEA also said it is prepared to make more of its member nations’ 1.4bn-barrel oil reserves available to help ease the impacts of what it called the “biggest supply disruption in the history of the oil market”, reported Bloomberg. The outlet noted that Asian countries have been hit hardest by the shortages, caused by a “near-halt” of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

EU SUMMIT: The energy crisis dominated talks at an EU leaders summit on Thursday, said Politico. Arriving at the summit, Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez attacked other European leaders for using the energy crisis as an excuse to “gut climate policies”, according to the EU Observer. The Financial Times said that some European leaders have asked the European Commission to overhaul its flagship emissions trading system (ETS) by summer in response to the energy crisis.

COAL BOOST: In response to the conflict, utility companies in Asia are “boosting coal-fired power generation to cut costs and safeguard energy supply”, said Reuters. UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell told Reuters: “If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, breaking dependencies which have shackled economies, this is the time.”

Around the world

WINDFARM WINDFALL: The Trump administration in the US is considering a nearly $1bn settlement with TotalEnergies to cancel the French energy company’s two planned windfarms off the US east coast and have it instead invest in fossil-gas infrastructure in Texas, according to documents seen by the New York Times.
BUSINESS CLASH: Following “clashes” with the agribusiness sector, Brazil launched its new climate plan, which calls for a 49-58% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2022 levels by 2025 and includes “specific guidelines for different sectors”, reported Folha de Sao Paolo.
SALES SLUMP: Sales of liquified petroleum gas from India’s state-run oil companies have fallen by 17% this month due to cuts in deliveries to commercial and industrial consumers “amid the widespread logistical bottlenecks triggered by the Iran war”, said the Economic Times.
CUBAN ENERGY CRISIS: The US imposed an “effective oil blockade” on Cuba, leaving the country facing its “worst energy crisis in decades”, reported the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Chinese exports of solar panels to the island have “skyrocketed” since 2023, it added.
RECORD HIGHS: An “unprecedented” heatwave in the western and south-western US is “shattering dozens of temperature records” and could lead to drought in California in the coming months, reported the Los Angeles Times.
VULNERABILITY CONCERNS: Landslides that killed more than 100 people in southern Ethiopia have “renewed concerns about Ethiopia’s vulnerability to climate-related disasters”, said the Addis Standard.

1%

The percentage of England’s land surface that could be devoted to renewables by 2050, according to the long-awaited “land-use framework” released by the UK government this week and covered by Carbon Brief.

Latest climate research

Approaching international climate action by shifting the burden of mitigation onto higher-income countries could avoid 13.5 million premature deaths from air pollution in middle- and lower-income countries by 2050 | The Lancet Global Health
Beavers can turn the ecosystems surrounding streams into “persistent” sinks of carbon that can sequester an order of magnitude more than non-beaver-modified ecosystems can store | Communications Earth & Environment
Mobile-phone data from seven diverse countries during the summer heatwaves of 2022-23 showed a “widespread tendency to withdraw into homes” and an increase in out-of-home activities that can offer cooling, such as indoor retail | Environmental Research: Climate

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Nearly_750_studies_have_found_that_climate_change_has_made_extreme_events_more_severe_or_likely

Carbon Brief this week published a significant update to its map of how climate change is affecting extreme weather events around the world. The map now includes 232 new extreme weather events from studies published in 2024 and 2025. Of these events, 196 were made more severe or more likely to occur by human-driven climate change, 12 were made less severe or less likely to occur and 10 had no discernible human influence. (The remaining 14 studies were inconclusive.)

Spotlight

New Zealand breaks new ground on climate litigation

This week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts about a first-of-its-kind climate lawsuit in New Zealand.

Earlier this week, representatives from two environmentally focused legal advocacy groups challenged the New Zealand government’s climate-action plan in court.

The plaintiffs argued that the measures laid out in the plan are insufficient to achieve the country’s legal obligation to hold global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.

The case could be “influential” in shaping lawsuits and rulings around the world, one legal expert not involved in the case told Carbon Brief.

Reductions vs removals

The new case contends that there are several issues regarding the New Zealand government’s response to climate change.

One of the key arguments the plaintiffs make is that New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan, which covers the period from 2026-30, is overreliant on the use of tree-planting to achieve its targets.

When the plan was released in December 2024, it was “immediately clear that it was a pretty lacklustre plan”, Eliza Prestidge Oldfield, senior legal researcher at the Environmental Law Initiative, one of the groups behind the legal case, told Carbon Brief.

The plan called for large-scale planting of pine tree plantations, which are not native to New Zealand and have a high risk of burning. Because of this, there are concerns about how permanent any carbon removal provided by these plantations actually can be, experts told Carbon Brief.

Catherine Higham, senior policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who was not involved in the case, said:

“The lawyers are arguing that there are real challenges with equating the emissions that you may be able to remove from the atmosphere through afforestation with actual emissions reductions, which are much more certain.”

‘Global dialogue’

While other climate lawsuits elsewhere in the world have also focused on the inadequacy of a government’s plan to meet its stated emissions-reduction targets, this is the first such case that addresses the role of removals head-on.

Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, told Carbon Brief that the lawsuit “builds on a decade of climate litigation” in national, regional and international courts.

Maxwell, who was not involved in the New Zealand case, added that there is a “real global dialogue” between, not just plaintiffs, but national courts as well. She said:

“[National courts] look to common issues that have been decided in other countries. They’re not binding on that court if it’s at the national level, but they are influential.”

Given that many other countries have legal frameworks requiring their governments to create plans outlining the pathway to their long-term climate targets, Prestidge Oldfield told Carbon Brief that other jurisdictions “should be interested in these questions around the level of certainty”.

Higham noted that, even if the case is successful, addressing the plan’s shortfalls will face its own set of challenges. She told Carbon Brief:

“A lot of these decisions are political and they can be politically contentious…Those [measures] have to be put into action through legislation and that is then subject to the usual political process. So that’s where the challenge comes in.”

While she could not speculate on the outcome of the case, Prestidge Oldfield said it was “very heartening” to see that both the judge and the opposing counsel “appreciated how much of a concern climate change is globally”.

She added:

“It’s not a given that the judge would even be interested in climate change.”

Watch, read, listen

COMMON APPROACH: The Heated podcast analysed fossil-fuel advertisements and highlighted the most common deception tactics they employed.

THREAT ASSESSMENT: Mongabay mapped the potential threat that oil extraction poses to Venezuela’s ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest and its coral reefs.

SALT LAKES? GREAT!: High Country News interviewed journalist Dr Caroline Tracey about her new book on saline lakes – such as Utah’s Great Salt Lake – the threats that face them and what they can teach us.

Coming up

23 March-2 April: Third meeting of the preparatory commission for the High Seas Treaty, New York
24-27 March: 64th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bangkok
26-29 March: 14th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, Yaoundé, Cameroon

Pick of the jobs

International Centre of Research for the Environment and Development (CIRAD), IPCC chapter scientist | Salary: €3,200-3,750 per month. Location: Nogent-sur-Marne, France
Avaaz, chief of staff | Salary: Dependent on location. Location: Remote, with preferred time zones
Green Party, social media officer | Salary: £31,592-£32,192. Location: Remote or Westminster, UK

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

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