Since its head office opened in Johannesburg 16 years ago, the African arm of environmental campaign group Greenpeace has made a name for itself, battling governments and corporations to defend forests, protect oceans and tackle climate change. It was an organisation staff said they were proud to work for.
But an internal restructuring – which Greenpeace Africa’s board asked newly-appointed executive director Oulie Keita to implement in June 2023 – has left management fighting affected employees as well as the planet’s foes.
Climate Home spoke to former staff and has seen leaked documents, meeting recordings and email correspondence that expose the disarray caused by the drive by Greenpeace Africa’s management to lay off around 40 people – about half of its total staff – at three of its five offices, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Africa and Senegal. The organisation cited financial and security reasons in justifying the job cuts.
Some ex-employees interviewed by Climate Home, however, expressed doubt about those motives, saying they felt unfairly targeted for dismissal. They also criticised the new management’s approach to interaction with African governments, as well as Greenpeace Africa’s stance on LGBT+ rights and trade union representation.
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In a written response to those grievances, Climate Home was told that Greenpeace Africa “values the rights and voices of our employees and fosters an inclusive and collaborative work environment”. “Our policies align with the legal requirements in each country,” it added.
As one of the highest-profile environmental organisations on the African continent, Greenpeace has an ambitious vision to bring about “an Africa where people live in harmony with nature in a peaceful state of environmental and social justice”. The internal turmoil uncovered by Climate Home raises questions about its ability to meet that goal.
The terms of reference for a three-month operational review of the organisation, which was due to start in August 2023, cited a need for cultural change as a key reason for the restructuring. It said collaborative processes intended to boost productivity and accountability had failed, slowing down the delivery of a 2022-2025 strategic plan.
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That four-year strategy “aimed to transform Greenpeace Africa, to be a viable organisation working on campaigns delivering systemic impacts in Africa, with an operating model that is fit for purpose and responsive to the challenges facing the continent”, the document added.
It also showed that Greenpeace Africa wanted to ensure it had enough of a presence in richer African nations to improve fundraising – an argument that was later used by management as a justification for downsizing offices in poorer nations like DRC.
Greenpeace told Climate Home this shift was “part of a broader effort to ensure that Greenpeace Africa remains financially sustainable. This approach strengthens our capacity to promote environmental justice in all regions, including those with fewer resources.”
Following the shake-up, Climate Home understands that more than 10 former employees have launched legal action against Greenpeace Africa in labour courts in South Africa and Senegal, alleging unfair treatment by the organisation. Greenpeace Africa did not respond to questions on the cases, which are ongoing.
It said, however, that its 2023-2024 restructuring was conducted “with the utmost care”, and “in accordance with all relevant labour laws in each of our countries and ethical guidelines”.
New strategy
On March 1, 2023, the Greenpeace Africa board announced that, after a series of interim bosses, Keita had been appointed as executive director.
In a statement, it said she would “lead the implementation of the organisation’s new strategy which, grounded in African consciousness, seeks to dismantle systems which have historically served only to benefit the colonial powers, still plundering Africa for its resources”.
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Then board chair Oury Traoré, a fellow Malian who resigned this year, said in the statement that it was “critical to build a movement led by women and youth”. As a woman joining from the United Nations youth platform YouthConnekt Africa, Keita seemed well-placed to do that.
She had studied law, sociology, international development and human rights at universities in Morocco, the US and Austria and then worked as a trainer, facilitator and consultant for NGOs and Western embassies across Africa. She joined the Greenpeace Africa board in April 2012.
Staff were initially pleased with Keita’s appointment as executive director, which ended the long hunt for a permanent leader. “We were very excited,” said one then staff member in Senegal. “We had the sense that the organisation would become more stable.”
But that did not happen. Just a week later, an email landed in the inbox of Greenpeace Africa’s people and culture director Paul Ngugi and its then lead campaigner on climate and energy Melita Steele, flagging earlier support by Keita for Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Sent by the head of Greenpeace Africa’s Congo rainforest campaign at the time, and signed on behalf of “the Congo Basin team”, the email raised “serious concerns” about Keita’s appointment, due to her alleged “very high admiration of Paul Kagame and her public communication to praise and admire him”.
The email, seen by Climate Home, included 15 posts by Keita on X (formerly Twitter), sent between November 2020 and October 2022. They praised Kagame’s “exemplary leadership”, calling him a “visionary”, “rare jewel” and “my Favourite President in the world”. Keita said she had moved to Rwanda “because of the admiration and respect I have for this man!”
A post on Oulie Keita’s X account on November 14, 2020 (Screenshot)
Commenting on this, the email from the Congo Basin team said that having a leader of Greenpeace Africa with that kind of admiration for Kagame was a serious problem for them and their work.
The United Nations has accused the military forces of Rwanda, governed by Kagame since 2000, of sending 4,000 troops to invade parts of neighbouring DRC and of backing Congolese rebel group M23. The violence has displaced millions of people in the DRC, which is home to large swathes of the world’s second-largest rainforest – a huge carbon store whose protection is regarded as vital to curbing global warming.
The email noted that the Congo Basin team had been preparing a statement on the DRC conflict for Greenpeace Africa’s leadership to endorse, “as for us our organisation’s silence on this conflict is no longer acceptable”. It added that the DRC office now believed “our new ED [Keita] would never accept such a statement”.
A mourning ceremony for the victims of the DRC conflict took place in the city of Goma on September 2, 2024. (Photo: Arlette Bashizi/Reuters)
Internal “smear campaign”
The email led to frantic activity at the top of Greenpeace Africa. The organisation’s engagement director brought forward training on social media use and prepared what she called a “risk mitigation comms plan for this particular concern”.
On March 16, 2023, Greenpeace Africa’s then head of communication, Johannesburg-based Mbong Akiy Fokwa Tsafack, sent an email to staff on the subject of “the smear campaign” against the new executive director.
Greenpeace Africa, it said, wanted “to express its ultimate concern and disgust at the onslaught”. It accused unnamed people of using a “colonial approach, of divide and rule, taking advantage of the fragile political situation in the DRC to drive their agenda” and to “resist the transformation that is required to bring credibility to the presence of Greenpeace in Africa”.
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Shortly afterwards, Keita herself sent a conciliatory email with no reference to Tsafack’s message. Keita said she had “heard with distress, yet with solidarity, the cries of the staff in the DRC who are rightfully disturbed about tweets on my social media handle”.
The posts, she noted, were made while she led YouthConnekt, which was chaired by Rwanda. “Cheering, supporting and celebrating the political will of these African leaders towards investing in the youth of Africa, including the main Champion the President of Rwanda as the co-initiator of this continental initiative was a big part of the job,” she wrote.
Keita added that she had “no personal political affiliations with any African countries”, thanked colleagues for raising “valid” concerns, and appealed for unity “to build the Africa we all want to live in”.
Keita did not respond to a request for comment for this article. Greenpeace Africa’s website states that the organisation “does not take sides in conflicts and wars on the African continent”, in line with Greenpeace’s global policy on peace.
Congo office closure
About seven months later, in October, Greenpeace Africa’s finance director, South African Gerhard Combrink, held a video call with the DRC office to tell staff there that management had decided “to close down” their office and centralise activities for the Congo Basin in Cameroon.
The announcement seemed to come as a surprise to those attending, many of whom criticised the decision. Combrink said the Greenpeace Africa board had “consulted widely with Greenpeace International and with other [national or regional offices], especially Belgium”, the DRC’s former colonial ruler. But staff in the DRC said on the call they had not been included.
The then lead for the Congo Basin team said that, as three-fifths of the Congo rainforest is in the DRC, losing the office there would be a “historical error” and would damage the organisation’s credibility globally.
The forest – and its central role in keeping climate change in check – is threatened by government-backed efforts to drill for oil and by industrial logging.
“It’s like closing an office in Brazil, and you say you’ll be campaigning from somewhere else to try to save the Amazon forest. It doesn’t work,” the team lead said. “Closing it will send a signal to many other African countries saying that no, this Greenpeace is not an organisation that we can count on,” she warned.
Environmental activists, with a banner co-signed by Greenpeace Africa, protest in Kinshasa, DRC, on November 29, 2019. (Photo: Hereward Holland/Reuters)
Combrink said one “fundamental” reason for the decision was “the security issues we face and our inability to openly confront the government without placing our staff at risk”. He noted that the organisation had evacuated staff to safeguard them against threats. The campaigner, who did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment, replied that these evacuations had only been “preventive” and no DRC employees had been arrested.
Fundraising prioritised
Combrink said another reason for shutting the DRC office was that, due to the war in Ukraine, funding from Germany – a key source of income for Greenpeace Africa – was drying up. He said that “the [Greenpeace Africa] board is adamant that if we do have activities, it is necessary that we focus on fundraising within those countries”, adding it was not possible to “substantially” raise funds in the DRC, one of Africa’s poorest countries.
In the terms of reference seeking an external consultant to conduct the review – to be hired in August 2023 and reporting to Combrink and Keita – Greenpeace Africa stipulated that its future footprint should “reflect adequate presence in countries affluent enough to raise income for the rest of the organisation”.
In its earlier June 2023 letter to Keita, mandating her to carry out the restructuring, the Greenpeace Africa board had noted that Greenpeace’s global revenue was decreasing against inflation, with the war in Ukraine negatively affecting its donor base and leading to a reduction in grants to regional offices including Africa.
It said staff alone accounted for almost two-thirds of Greenpeace Africa’s total annual projected costs, leaving it “poorly equipped to reduce its expenditure in the short term when its income streams diminish”.
“Given the large fixed overhead costs required to maintain a formal office within a country, it is crucial that we utilize current grant income streams to grow within geographical areas that can provide future donor income streams,” it added.
Several months later, on the call with DRC staff, Combrink said the review had identified Ghana, Nigeria and Mauritius as good targets for expansion, adding that fundraising in Kenya had “started to pick up”.
Responding to his comments, Greenpeace’s then Congo Basin lead argued that, while decisions on where to locate offices should be based on more than finances, DRC was “getting a lot of money compared to other offices”, particularly for its campaign to save the country’s huge rainforest.
A PhD student measures the circumference of a tree in a forest reserve near the village of Masako in the DRC on August 8, 2012. (Photo: Ollivier Girard/CIFOR)
In spite of the subsequent restructuring, which led to most of the DRC office staff leaving, Greenpeace Africa told Climate Home its operations in the country had not ceased and had been strengthened in 2024.
During its latest mission to the DRC in August, to engage with “key stakeholders”, including the government, Greenpeace Africa said the Hydrocarbons Minister confirmed his government’s commitment to remove oil concessions overlapping protected forest areas, including in the Virunga National Park, and invited Greenpeace Africa to help identify the areas threatened by the concessions.
“Such political dialogue provides us a platform to campaign to achieve positive outcomes for the environment and the people in Africa,” Greenpeace Africa told Climate Home by email.
It added that the board’s decision to conduct a “geographic footprint” exercise to consider fundraising potential across the continent also supported this objective – and was not a threat to its activities in poorer countries like DRC.
“This approach does not diminish – in fact it strengthens – our capacity to promote environmental justice in all regions, including those with fewer financial resources,” it told Climate Home.
Union members sue in South Africa
As part of the broader restructuring of the organisation, further job cuts were announced at Greenpeace Africa’s offices in Senegal and South Africa.
Sources who worked at Greenpeace South Africa at that time said unionised staff members were affected by the retrenchment.
A document put together by trade union members, seen by Climate Home, lists 34 union members in Greenpeace Africa’s head office in Johannesburg. Of these, ten were in the fundraising department which trade union sources said was excluded from the restructuring.
Of the remaining 24, 15 were deemed “not suitable” for their positions and were laid off, as were several non-union staff, out of an overall headcount of around 50 employees.
Chart: Climate Home News
A legal document seen by Climate Home, dated May 2024, shows that lawyers acting for affected union members filed a case against Greenpeace Africa with the Labour Court of South Africa in Johannesburg alleging unfair dismissal and failure to follow due process.
It said court-ordered efforts at consultation between the employees and Greenpeace Africa had not resulted in any agreed selection criteria for retrenchment, but their contracts were terminated nonetheless. The case is pending and if not resolved in arbitration, will be heard by the court. Greenpeace did not comment on the proceedings.
Sources also raised questions about whether new staff, brought in after the restructuring, were permitted to unionise in the workplace.
A Greenpeace Africa employment contract from the end of 2023, seen by Climate Home, asked a potential employee in South Africa to “acknowledge that Greenpeace Africa is a non-unionised employer due to the nature of its operations, being a Non-Governmental not-for-profit institution relying on external grants for its survival”.
It requested that the employee “acknowledge that any [trade union] recognition agreement signed before 1 January 2024 is deemed cancelled and should a recognition agreement be required under local labour law, a new agreement will need to be signed in line with Greenpeace Africa’s new policies”.
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It is not known whether this is a standard clause in employment contracts for Greenpeace Africa staff. The organisation did not respond directly to Climate Home’s questions on this issue, or provide information on its unionisation policy, as requested.
In Senegal too, Climate Home understands that three former staff members have taken Greenpeace Africa to the local labour court. They are seeking damages and a declaration that their dismissals were unfair after they were accused of financial irregularities and other misdemeanours – which they deny. Greenpeace Africa declined to comment on the case, which is at a pre-trial stage pending conciliation efforts.
While Greenpeace’s management have insisted the job losses across their African offices were necessary to keep the organisation financially sustainable, many former staff members told Climate Home the restructuring was used as a way to ram through the changes wanted by the board in the face of internal opposition.
“It’s just a way to kill [the influence of] some activists who do not agree with what they say,” said a former staffer in Senegal “They want people who are very docile.”
Greenpeace Africa told Climate Home it recognised that “some people may not be happy with the growing success of the new management”.
“We understand that organisational changes can be challenging, and we made sure that the change management process was carried out legally, fairly and transparently,” it added.
Row over LGBT issues
During the restructuring period, Greenpeace Africa management also took issue with staff members’ criticism of its approach to LGBT+ rights.
In June 2023, Greenpeace Africa debated internally how to mark Pride month and how to respond to the Ugandan government’s new Anti-Homosexuality Act.
Ugandan LGBTQ activists protest against their government in the South African city of Pretoria on March 31, 2023. (Photo: Alet Pretorius/Reuters)
Some LGBT+ employees criticised a plan to hold an all-staff meeting in Johannesburg to discuss these issues, where LGBT+ workers were going to be asked to share their experiences.
In a letter to Greenpeace Africa management, they said this would require them to out themselves and “identify us for further victimisation later”.
Instead, they proposed that external experts on South African labour law, discrimination and gender sensitivity should be brought in to educate staff.
They accused management of “a refusal to maintain professional standards” and of not following South African labour and equality law.
Their email elicited a strongly worded response from Greenpeace Africa governance officer Eugene Perumal, who wrote that they did not represent all of the organisation’s LGBT+ employees. He added that it was “disingenuous and disrespectful to insinuate that Greenpeace Africa Management paid no attention to this particular area”.
He then warned them: “You need to revise the disrespectful manner you engage with Greenpeace Africa senior management, the defamation, false statements and undermining are unacceptable behaviour patterns and [Senior Leadership Team] will take action accordingly.”
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Greenpeace Africa told Climate Home it had engaged external experts to provide LGBT+ education and support, and ensured that “all staff feel safe and respected during these discussions”. A training workshop in March on this issue “proved very successful”, it added.
The organisation, it said, is “firmly committed to promoting the principles of Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Safety (JEDIS) across all aspects of our work”, including by fostering and maintaining “a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment for all employees, including our LGBTQ+ colleagues”.
More government “collaboration”
The organisational strife and contentious reforms inside Greenpeace Africa have been accompanied by a shift in external strategy, according to documents seen by Climate Home.
An internal report on Greenpeace Africa’s activities at the COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai last December, said that, during meetings, ministers from the Republic of Congo and Cameroon “expressed their strong displeasure with Greenpeace’s confrontational approach in trying to address the issues around climate change”.
A screenshot of Greenpeace Africa’s internal report on the COP28 climate summit
The report did not describe what they objected to, but said that Keita “reassured [the ministers] of a new approach of collaboration” and noted they “were willing to reset the relationship with [Greenpeace Africa] under the new leadership and map out areas of collaboration in the near future”.
This approach was criticised by former staff members. “It’s not the DNA of Greenpeace,” one said. “How can you be friendly with the government and it is killing people?” Another said, “it felt like we were being neutered.”
Greenpeace Africa, told Climate Home that, under its current management, it “supports the building of a climate justice movement across Africa to hold the extractive industries and governments to account”. It had launched its first such movement in the DRC, Cameroon and Ghana, with plans to expand into the Republic of Congo and Nigeria in 2025, it added.
In addition, Greenpeace Africa pointed to its lobbying work against the oil industry and its impacts on the continent, as well as its advocacy calling for plastic waste to be cleaned up in Kenya, and more protection for oceans and the livelihoods of African fishing communities, among other campaigns.
Greenpeace International silent
Despite the apparent turmoil experienced at Greenpeace Africa over the past 18 months, Climate Home understands that its parent organisation Greenpeace International has not intervened to help resolve the documented issues. Greenpeace did not respond directly when asked about this.
Greenpeace Africa is one of 26 Greenpeace branches around the world, known as national/regional organisations or NROs. They all have some independence but are overseen by Greenpeace International, which is based in the Dutch city of Amsterdam.
Nairobi-based development officer Yvonne Muyoti, who is in charge of monitoring Greenpeace Africa for Greenpeace International, was copied on the emails from Keita and Tsafack about DRC staff concerns over Rwanda.
Greenpeace Africa told Climate Home it is an independent NRO guided by its board of directors but collaborates closely with Greenpeace International. “We value the support and oversight provided by Greenpeace International,” it said.
Some former staff members of Greenpeace Africa, however, are concerned that a lack of racial diversity in the upper levels of Greenpeace international – whose senior executives are mostly white and from rich countries – is preventing the global parent organisation from intervening in the African disarray.
One black female former Greenpeace Africa staff member told Climate Home she believed Greenpeace International was reluctant to challenge Keita over her leadership style: “I think they are worried about how it will look – a Eurocentric organisation taking on a black woman.”
Another former employee described Greenpeace Africa as his “baby”, but said those now in charge “don’t know the DNA of the organisation”.
“People in Greenpeace have to be strong and be up against all the injustice they are facing in the organisation,” he said. “The fight must start inside before it goes outside.”
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Nairobi-based development officer Yvonne Muyoti, who is in charge of monitoring Greenpeace Africa for Greenpeace International, was copied on the emails from Keita and Tsafack about DRC staff concerns over Rwanda.
Greenpeace Africa told Climate Home it is an independent NRO guided by its board of directors but collaborates closely with Greenpeace International. “We value the support and oversight provided by Greenpeace International,” it said.
Some former staff members of Greenpeace Africa, however, are concerned that a lack of racial diversity in the upper levels of Greenpeace International – whose top executives are mostly white and from rich countries – is preventing the global parent organisation from intervening in the African disarray.
One black female former Greenpeace Africa staff member told Climate Home she believed Greenpeace International was reluctant to challenge Keita over her leadership style: “I think they are worried about how it will look – a Eurocentric organisation taking on a black woman.”
Another former employee described Greenpeace Africa as his “baby”, but said those now in charge “don’t know the DNA of the organisation”.
“People in Greenpeace have to be strong and be up against all the injustice they are facing in the organisation,” he said. “The fight must start inside before it goes outside.”
(Reporting by Joe Lo; fact-checking by Sebastian Rodriguez; editing by Megan Rowling, Sebastian Rodriguez and Matteo Civillini)
The post Greenpeace Africa in disarray as restructuring meets resistance appeared first on Climate Home News.
Greenpeace Africa in disarray as restructuring meets resistance
In 2026, the dangers of fossil fuel dependence have been laid bare like never before. The illegal invasion of Iran has brought pain and destruction to millions across the Middle East and triggered a global energy crisis impacting us all. Communities in the Pacific have been hit especially hard by rising fuel prices, and Australians have seen their cost-of-living woes deepen.
Such moments of crisis and upheaval can lead to positive transformation. But only when leaders act with courage and foresight.
There is no clearer statement of a government’s plans and priorities for the nation than its budget — how it plans to raise money, and what services, communities, and industries it will invest in.
As we count down the days to the 2026-27 Federal Budget, will the Albanese Government deliver a budget for our times? One that starts breaking the shackles of fossil fuels, accelerates the shift to clean energy, protects nature, and sees us work together with other countries towards a safer future for all? Or one that doubles down on coal and gas, locks in more climate chaos, and keeps us beholden to the whims of tyrants and billionaires.
Here’s what we think the moment demands, and what we’ll be looking out for when Treasurer Jim Chalmers steps up to the dispatch box on 12 May.
1. Stop fuelling the fire
2. Make big polluters pay
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
4. Build the industries of the future
5. Build community resilience
6. Be a better neighbour
7. Protect nature
1. Stop fuelling the fire
In mid-April, Pacific governments and civil society met to redouble their efforts towards a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. Moving beyond coal, oil and gas is fundamental to limiting warming to 1.5°C — a survival line for vulnerable communities and ecosystems. And as our Head of Pacific, Shiva Gounden, explained, it is “also a path of liberation that frees us from expensive, extractive and polluting fossil fuel imports and uplifts our communities”.
Pacific countries are at the forefront of growing global momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels, and it is way past time for Australia to get with the program. It is no longer a question of whether fossil fuel extraction will end, but whether that end will be appropriately managed and see communities supported through the transition, or whether it will be chaotic and disruptive.
So will this budget support the transition away from fossil fuels, or will it continue to prop up coal and gas?
When it comes to sensible moves the government can make right now, one stands out as a genuine low hanging fruit. Mining companies get a full rebate of the excise (or tax) that the rest of us pay on diesel fuel. This lowers their operating costs and acts as a large, ongoing subsidy on fossil fuel production — to the tune of $11 billion a year!
Greenpeace has long called for coal and gas companies to be removed from this outdated scheme, and for the billions in savings to be used to support the clean energy transition and to assist communities with adapting to the impacts of climate change. Will we see the government finally make this long overdue change, or will it once again cave to the fossil fuel lobby?
2. Make big polluters pay
While our communities continue to suffer the escalating costs of climate-fuelled disasters, our Government continues to support a massive expansion of Australia’s export gas industry. Gas is a dangerous fossil fuel, with every tonne of Australian gas adding to the global heating that endangers us all.
Moreover, companies like Santos and Woodside pay very little tax for the privilege of digging up and selling Australians’ natural endowment of fossil gas. Remarkably, the Government currently raises more tax from beer than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) — the main tax on gas profits.
Momentum has been building to replace or supplement the PRRT with a 25% tax on gas exports. This could raise up to $17 billion a year — funds that, like savings from removing the diesel tax rebate for coal and gas companies, could be spent on supporting the clean energy transition and assisting communities with adapting to worsening fires, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of climate change.
As politicians arrive in Canberra for budget week, they will be confronted by billboards calling for a fair tax on gas exports. The push now has the support of dozens of organisations and a growing number of politicians. Let’s hope the Treasurer seizes this rare window for reform.
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
As the price of petrol and diesel rises, electric vehicles (EVs) are helping people cut fuel use and save money. However, while EV sales have jumped since the invasion of Iran sent fuel prices rising, they still only make up a fraction of total new car sales. This budget should help more Australians switch to electric vehicles and, even more importantly, enable more Australians to get around by bike, on foot, and on public transport. This means maintaining the EV discount, investing in public and active transport, and removing tax breaks for fuel-hungry utes and vans.
Millions of Australians already enjoy the cost-saving benefits of rooftop solar, batteries, and getting off gas. This budget should enable more households, and in particular those on lower incomes, to access these benefits. This means maintaining the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, and building on the Household Energy Upgrades Fund.
4. Build the industries of the future
If we’re to transition away from fossil fuels, we need to be building the clean industries of the future.
No state is more pivotal to Australia’s energy and industrial transformation than Western Australia. The state has unrivaled potential for renewable energy development and for replacing fossil fuel exports with clean exports like green iron. Such industries offer Western Australia the promise of a vibrant economic future, and for Australia to play an outsized positive role in the world’s efforts to reduce emissions.
However, realising this potential will require focussed support from the Federal Government. Among other measures, Greenpeace has recommended establishing the Australasian Green Iron Corporation as a joint venture between the Australian and Western Australian governments, a key trading partner, a major iron ore miner and steel makers. This would unite these central players around the complex task of building a large-scale green iron industry, and unleash Western Australia’s potential as a green industrial powerhouse.
5. Build community resilience
Believe it or not, our Government continues to spend far more on subsidising fossil fuel production — and on clearing up after climate-fuelled disasters — than it does on helping communities and industries reduce disaster costs through practical, proven methods for building their resilience.
Last year, the Government estimated that the cost of recovery from disasters like the devastating 2022 east coast floods on 2019-20 fires will rise to $13.5 billion. For contrast, the Government’s Disaster Ready Fund – the main national source of funding for disaster resilience – invests just $200 million a year in grants to support disaster preparedness and resilience building. This is despite the Government’s own National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) estimating that for every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, there is a $9.60 return on investment.
By redirecting funds currently spent on subsidising fossil fuel production, the Government can both stop incentivising climate destruction in the first place, and ensure that Australian communities and industries are better protected from worsening climate extremes.
No communities have more to lose from climate damage, or carry more knowledge of practical solutions, than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The budget should include a dedicated First Nations climate adaptation fund, ensuring First Nations communities can develop solutions on their own terms, and access the support they need with adapting to extreme heat, coastal erosion and other escalating challenges.
6. Be a better neighbour
The global response to climate change depends on the adequate flow of support from developed economies like Australia to lower income nations with shifting to clean energy, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and addressing loss and damage.
Such support is vital to building trust and cooperation, reducing global emissions, and supporting regional and global security by enabling countries to transition away from fossil fuels and build greater resilience.
Despite its central leadership role in this year’s global climate negotiations, our Government is yet to announce its contribution to international climate finance for 2025-2030. Greenpeace recommends a commitment of $11 billion for this five year period, which is aligned with the global goal under the Paris Agreement to triple international climate finance from current levels.
This new commitment should include additional funding to address loss and damage from climate change and a substantial contribution to the Pacific Resilience Facility, ensuring support is accessible to countries and communities that need it most. It should also see Australia get firmly behind the vision of a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific.
7. Protect nature
There is no safe planet without protection of the ecosystems and biodiversity that sustain us and regulate our climate.
Last year the Parliament passed important and long overdue reforms to our national environment laws to ensure better protection for our forests and other critical ecosystems. However, the Government will need to provide sufficient funding to ensure the effective implementation of these reforms.
Greenpeace has recommended $500 million over four years to establish the National Environment Agency — the body responsible for enforcing and monitoring the new laws — and a further $50 million to Environment Information Australia for providing critical information and tools.
Further resourcing will also be required to fulfil the crucial goal of fully protecting 30% of Australian land and seas by 2030. This should include $1 billion towards ending deforestation by enabling farmers and loggers to retool away from destructive practices, $2 billion a year for restoring degraded lands, $5 billion for purchasing and creating new protected areas, and $200 million for expanding domestic and international marine protected areas.
Conclusion
This is not the first time that conflict overseas has triggered an energy crisis, or that a budget has been preceded by a summer of extreme weather disasters, highlighting the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. What’s different in 2026 is the availability of solutions. Renewable energy is now cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Global momentum is firmly behind the transition away from fossil fuels. The Albanese Government, with its overwhelming majority, has the chance to set our nation up for the future, or keep us stranded in the past. Let’s hope it makes some smart choices.
The 2026 budget test: Will Australia break free from fossil fuels?
Anne Jellema is Executive Director of 350.org.
The war on Iran and Lebanon is a deeply unjust and devastating conflict, killing civilians at home, destroying lives, and at the same time sending shockwaves through the global economy. We, at 350.org, have calculated, drawing on price forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Goldman Sachs, just how much that volatility is costing us.
Even under the IMF’s baseline scenario – a de facto “best case” scenario with a near-term end to the war and related supply chain disruptions – oil and gas price spikes are projected to cost households and businesses globally more than $600 billion by the end of the year. Under the IMF’s “adverse scenario”, with prolonged conflict and sustained price pressures, we estimate those additional costs could exceed $1 trillion, even after accounting for reduced demand.
Which is why we urgently need a power shift. Governments are under growing pressure to respond to rising fuel and food costs and deepening energy poverty. And it’s becoming clearer to both voters and elected officials that fossil dependence is not only expensive and risky, but unnecessary.
People who can are voting with their wallets: sales of solar panels and electric vehicles are increasing sharply in many countries. But the working people who have nothing to spare, ironically, are the ones stuck with using oil and gas that is either exorbitantly expensive or simply impossible to get.
Drain on households and economies
In India, street food vendors can’t get cooking gas and in the Philippines, fishermen can’t afford to take their boats to sea. A quarter of British people say that rising energy tariffs will leave them completely unable to pay their bills. This is the moment for a global push to bring abundant and affordable clean energy to all.
In April, we released Out of Pocket, our new research report on how fossil fuels are draining households and economies. We were surprised by the scale of what we found. For decades, governments have reassured people that energy price spikes are unfortunate but unavoidable – the result of distant conflicts, market forces or geopolitical shocks beyond anyone’s control. But the numbers tell a different story.
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Santa Marta: Ministers grapple with practicalities of fossil fuel phase-out
Around 60 governments that want to make progress on transitioning away from coal, oil and gas are meeting in Colombia to work out how they can do it an equitable way -
Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action
Cities will help identify concrete pathways for an equitable shift to clean energy at the Santa Marta conference, with C40 members aiming to halve their fossil fuel use by 2030
What we are living through today is not an energy crisis. It is a fossil fuel crisis. In just the first 50 days of the Middle East conflict, soaring oil and gas prices have siphoned an estimated $158 billion–$166 billion from households and businesses worldwide. That is money extracted directly from people’s pockets and transferred, almost instantly, into fossil fuel company balance sheets. And this figure only captures the immediate impact of price spikes, not the permanent economic drain of fossil dependence. Fossil fuels don’t just cost us once, they cost us over and over again.
First, through our bills. Every time there is a war, an embargo or a supply disruption, fossil fuel prices surge. For ordinary people, this means higher costs for energy, transport and food. Many Global South countries have little or no fiscal space to buffer the shock; instead, workers and families pay the price.
Second, through our taxes. Governments around the world continue to pour vast sums of public money into fossil fuel subsidies. These are often justified as a way to protect the most vulnerable at the petrol pump or in their homes. But in reality, the benefits are overwhelmingly captured by wealthier households and corporations. The poorest 20% receive just a fraction of this support, while public finances are drained.
Third, through climate impacts. New research across more than 24,000 global locations gives a granular account of the true costs of extreme heat, sea level rise and falling agricultural yields. Using this data to update IMF modelling of the social cost of carbon, we found that fossil fuel impacts on health and livelihoods amount to over $9 trillion a year. This is the biggest subsidy of all, because these massive and mounting costs are not charged to Big Oil – they are paid for by governments and households, with the poorest shouldering the lion’s share.
Massive transfer of wealth to fossil fuel industry
Adding up direct subsidies, tax breaks and the unpaid bill for climate damages, the total transfer of wealth from the public to the fossil fuel industry amounts to $12 trillion even in a “normal” year without a global oil shock. That’s more than 50% higher than the IMF has previously estimated, and equivalent to a staggering $23 million a minute.
The fossil fuel industry has become extraordinarily adept at profiting from instability. When conflict drives up prices, companies do not lose, they gain. In the current crisis, oil producers and commodity traders are on track to secure tens of billions of dollars in additional windfall profits, even as households face rising bills and governments struggle to manage the fallout.
Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say
This growing disconnect is impossible to ignore. Investors are advised to buy into fossil fuel firms precisely because of their ability to generate profits in times of crisis. Meanwhile, ordinary people are told to tighten their belts.
In 2026, unlike during the oil shocks of the 1970s, clean energy is no longer a distant alternative. Now, even more than when gas prices spiked due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, renewables are often the cheapest option available. Solar and wind can be deployed quickly, at scale, and without the volatility that defines fossil fuel markets.
How to transition from dirty to clean energy
The solutions are clear. Governments must implement permanent windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies to ensure that extraordinary profits generated during crises are redirected to support households. These revenues can be used to reduce energy bills, invest in public services, and accelerate the rollout of clean energy.
Second, we must shift subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards renewable solutions, particularly those that can be deployed quickly and equitably, such as rooftop and community solar. This is not just about cutting emissions. It is about building a more stable, fair and resilient energy system.
Finally, we need binding plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether, replacing them with homegrown renewable energy that can shield economies from future shocks. Because what the current crisis has made clear is this: as long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels, we remain vulnerable – to conflict, to price volatility and to the escalating impacts of climate change.
The true price of fossil fuels is no longer hidden. It is visible in rising bills, strained public finances and communities pushed to the brink. And it is being paid, every day, by ordinary people around the world.
It’s time for the great power shift.
Full details on the methodology used for this report are available here.
The Great Power Shift is a new campaign by 350.org global campaign to pressure governments to bring down energy bills for good by ending fossil fuel dependence and investing in clean, affordable energy for all
The post What fossil fuels really cost us in a world at war appeared first on Climate Home News.
Computer models that use artificial intelligence (AI) cannot forecast record-breaking weather as well as traditional climate models, according to a new study.
It is well established that AI climate models have surpassed traditional, physics-based climate models for some aspects of weather forecasting.
However, new research published in Science Advances finds that AI models still “underperform” in forecasting record-breaking extreme weather events.
The authors tested how well both AI and traditional weather models could simulate thousands of record-breaking hot, cold and windy events that were recorded in 2018 and 2020.
They find that AI models underestimate both the frequency and intensity of record-breaking events.
A study author tells Carbon Brief that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI weather forecasts
Extreme weather events, such as floods, heatwaves and storms, drive hundreds of billions of dollars in damages every year through the destruction of cropland, impacts on infrastructure and the loss of human life.
Many governments have developed early warning systems to prepare the general public and mobilise disaster response teams for imminent extreme weather events. These systems have been shown to minimise damages and save lives.
For decades, scientists have used numerical weather prediction models to simulate the weather days, or weeks, in advance.
These models rely on a series of complex equations that reproduce processes in the atmosphere and ocean. The equations are rooted in fundamental laws of physics, based on decades of research by climate scientists. As a result, these models are referred to as “physics-based” models.
However, AI-based climate models are gaining popularity as an alternative for weather forecasting.
Instead of using physics, these models use a statistical approach. Scientists present AI models with a large batch of historical weather data, known as training data, which teaches the model to recognise patterns and make predictions.
To produce a new forecast, the AI model draws on this bank of knowledge and follows the patterns that it knows.
There are many advantages to AI weather forecasts. For example, they use less computing power than physics-based models, because they do not have to run thousands of mathematical equations.
Furthermore, many AI models have been found to perform better than traditional physics-based models at weather forecasts.
However, these models also have drawbacks.
Study author Prof Sebastian Engelke, a professor at the research institute for statistics and information science at the University of Geneva, tells Carbon Brief that AI models “depend strongly on the training data” and are “relatively constrained to the range of this dataset”.
In other words, AI models struggle to simulate brand new weather patterns, instead tending forecast events of a similar strength to those seen before. As a result, it is unclear whether AI models can simulate unprecedented, record-breaking extreme events that, by definition, have never been seen before.
Record-breaking extremes
Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent as the climate warms. Record-shattering extremes – those that break existing records by large margins – are also becoming more regular.
For example, during a 2021 heatwave in north-western US and Canada, local temperature records were broken by up to 5C. According to one study, the heatwave would have been “impossible” without human-caused climate change.
The new study explores how accurately AI and physics-based models can forecast such record-breaking extremes.
First, the authors identified every heat, cold and wind event in 2018 and 2020 that broke a record previously set between 1979 and 2017. (They chose these years due to data availability.) The authors use ERA5 reanalysis data to identify these records.
This produced a large sample size of record-breaking events. For the year 2020, the authors identified around 160,000 heat, 33,000 cold and 53,000 wind records, spread across different seasons and world regions.
For their traditional, physics-based model, the authors selected the High RESolution forecast model from the Integrated Forecasting System of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. This is “widely considered as the leading physics-based numerical weather prediction model”, according to the paper.
They also selected three “leading” AI weather models – the GraphCast model from Google Deepmind, Pangu-Weather developed by Huawei Cloud and the Fuxi model, developed by a team from Shanghai.
The authors then assessed how accurately each model could forecast the extremes observed in the year 2020.
Dr Zhongwei Zhang is the lead author on the study and a researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He tells Carbon Brief that many AI weather forecast models were built for “general weather conditions”, as they use all historical weather data to train the models. Meanwhile, forecasting extremes is considered a “secondary task” by the models.
The authors explored a range of different “lead times” – in other words, how far into the future the model is forecasting. For example, a lead time of two days could mean the model uses the weather conditions at midnight on 1 January to simulate weather conditions at midnight on 3 January.
The plot below shows how accurately the models forecasted all extreme events (left) and heat extremes (right) under different lead times. This is measured using “root mean square error” – a metric of how accurate a model is, where a lower value indicates lower error and higher accuracy.
The chart on the left shows how two of the AI models (blue and green) performed better than the physics-based model (black) when forecasting all weather across the year 2020.
However, the chart on the right illustrates how the physics-based model (black) performed better than all three AI models (blue, red and green) when it came to forecasting heat extremes.
The authors note that the performance gap between AI and physics-based models is widest for lower lead times, indicating that AI models have greater difficulty making predictions in the near future.
They find similar results for cold and wind records.
In addition, the authors find that AI models generally “underpredict” temperature during heat records and “overpredict” during cold records.
The study finds that the larger the margin that the record is broken by, the less well the AI model predicts the intensity of the event.
‘Warning shot’
Study author Prof Erich Fischer is a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and a Carbon Brief contributing editor. He tells Carbon Brief that the result is “not unexpected”.
He adds that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
The analysis, he continues, is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI models are likely to continue to improve, but scientists should “not yet” fully replace traditional forecasting models with AI ones, according to Fischer.
He explains that accurate forecasts are “most needed” in the runup to potential record-breaking extremes, because they are the trigger for early warning systems that help minimise damages caused by extreme weather.
Leonardo Olivetti is a PhD student at Uppsala University, who has published work on AI weather forecasting and was not involved in the study.
He tells Carbon Brief that “many other studies” have identified issues with using AI models for “extremes”, but this paper is novel for its specific focus on extremes.
Olivetti notes that AI models are already used alongside physics-based models at “some of the major weather forecasting centres around the world”. However, the study results suggest “caution against relying too heavily on these [AI] models”, he says.
Prof Martin Schultz, a professor in computational earth system science at the University of Cologne who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the results of the analysis are “very interesting, but not too surprising”.
He adds that the study “justifies the continued use of classical numerical weather models in operational forecasts, in spite of their tremendous computational costs”.
Advances in forecasting
The field of AI weather forecasting is evolving rapidly.
Olivetti notes that the three AI models tested in the study are an “older generation” of AI models. In the last two years, newer “probabilistic” forecast models have emerged that “claim to better capture extremes”, he explains.
The three AI models used in the analysis are “deterministic”, meaning that they only simulate one possible future outcome.
In contrast, study author Engelke tells Carbon Brief that probabilistic models “create several possible future states of the weather” and are therefore more likely to capture record-breaking extremes.
Engelke says it is “important” to evaluate the newer generation of models for their ability to forecast weather extremes.
He adds that this paper has set out a “protocol” for testing the ability of AI models to predict unprecedented extreme events, which he hopes other researchers will go on to use.
The study says that another “promising direction” for future research is to develop models that combine aspects of traditional, physics-based weather forecasts with AI models.
Engelke says this approach would be “best of both worlds”, as it would combine the ability of physics-based models to simulate record-breaking weather with the computational efficiency of AI models.
Dr Kyle Hilburn, a research scientist at Colorado State University, notes that the study does not address extreme rainfall, which he says “presents challenges for both modelling and observing”. This, he says, is an “important” area for future research.
The post Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts
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