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Scientists have long known that fires release substantial amounts of greenhouse gases and pollutants into the atmosphere.

However, estimating the total climate impact of fires is challenging.

Now, new satellite data has shed fresh light on the complex interplay between the climate and fires in different landscapes around the world.

It suggests that global emissions from fires are much higher than previously assumed.

In this article, we unpack the latest update to the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) – a resource that combines satellite information on fire activity and vegetation to estimate how fires impact the land and atmosphere.

The latest update to the database – explored in new research published in journal Scientific Data – includes data up to and including the year 2024.

It reveals that, once the data from smaller fires is included, fire emissions sit at roughly 3.4bn tonnes of carbon (GtC) annually – significantly higher than previous estimates.

It also shows that carbon emissions from fires have remained stable over the past two to three decades, as rising emissions from forest fires have been offset by a decline in grassland fire emissions.

The database update also illustrates how the amount of area burned around the world each year is falling as expanding agriculture has created a fragmented landscape and new restrictions on crop residue burning have come into force.

Landscape fires

Fire events vary widely in cause, size and intensity. They take place across the globe in many types of landscapes – deserts and ice sheets are the only biomes that are immune to fire.

When vegetation burns, it releases greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming. It also releases pollutants that cause local air pollution and, on a global scale, have a cooling effect on the climate.

Forest fires often generate considerable media attention, especially when they threaten places where people live. 

However, the forest fires that make the news represent just a small fraction of all fires globally.

More than 95% of the world’s burned area occurs in landscapes with few trees, such as savannahs and grasslands.

Fires have helped maintain tropical savannah ecosystems for millions of years. Savannahs have the perfect conditions for fire: a wet season which allows grasses and other “fuels” to grow, followed by an extended dry season where these fuels become flammable.

Historically, these fires were ignited by lightning. Today, they are mostly caused – intentionally or accidentally – by humans.

And yet, despite their prevalence, these fires receive relatively little media attention. This is not surprising, as they have been part of the landscape for so long and rarely threaten humans, except for their impact on air quality.

Fires also occur in croplands. For example, farmers may use fire to clear agricultural residues after harvest, or during deforestation to clear land for cultivation.

The term “landscape fires” is increasingly used to describe all fires that burn on land – both planned and unplanned.

(The term “wildfire”, on the other hand, covers a subset of landscape fires which are unplanned and typically burn in underdeveloped and underinhabited land.)

Calculating the carbon emissions of landscape fires is important to better understand their impact on local air quality and the global climate.

New data

In principle, calculating carbon emissions from fires is straightforward. The amount of vegetation consumed by fire – or “fuel consumption” – in one representative “unit” of burned area has to be multiplied by the total area burned.

Fuel consumption can be determined through field measurements and satellite analysis.

For example, the burned area of a relatively small fire can be measured by walking around the perimeter with a GPS device. Fuel consumption, meanwhile, can be derived by measuring the difference in amount of vegetation before and after a fire, something that is usually only feasible with planned fires.

In practice, however, fires are unpredictable and highly variable, making accurate measurement difficult.

To track where and when fires occur, researchers rely on satellite observations.

For two decades, NASA’s MODIS satellite sensors have provided a continuous, global record of fire activity. To avoid too many false alarms, the algorithms these satellites use are built in a way so fires are flagged only when they burn an entire 500-metre grid cell. 

However, this approach misses many smaller fires – resulting in conservative estimates of total burned area.

The latest update to the GFED includes, for the first time, finer-resolution satellite data, including from the European Space Agency’s “sentinel missions”.

This data shows that fires too small to be picked up by a satellite with a 500-metre spatial resolution are extremely common. So common, in fact, that they nearly double previous estimates of global burned area. 

The data shows that, on average, 800 hectares of land – an area roughly the size of Australia – has burned annually over the past two decades.

The map below shows the frequency of fires around the world. Regions shaded in dark red burn, on average, 50-100% each year. In other words, fires occur annually or biannually. Regions in dark blue, on the other hand, are those where fires occur, but are very infrequent. Most regions fall in between these extremes.

The map shows that the areas most prone to fire are largely found in the world’s savannah and agricultural regions.

This map shows global distribution of the average burned area over 2002-22, expressed as a percentage of the land area in each 0.25 by 0.25 degree grid cell. Based on the GFED dataset.
Global distribution of the average burned area over 2002-22, expressed as a percentage of the land area in each 0.25 by 0.25 degree grid cell. Based on the GFED dataset. Credit: Chen et al. (2023)

Falling burned area

Over recent decades, the total burned area globally each year has been declining

This is largely due to land-use change in regions which used to have frequent fires.

For example, savannah is being converted to croplands in Africa. This transforms a frequently burning land-use type to one that does not burn – and creates a more fragmented landscape with new firebreaks which limit the spread of fire.

The decline in burned area is also due to the introduction of more stringent air quality regulations limiting crop residue burning in much of the world, including the European Union.

The amount of “fuel” – or biomass – in a unit area of land varies greatly. Arid grasslands are biomass-poor and, therefore, produce less carbon emissions when burned, whereas fuel consumption in tropical forests with peat soils is extremely high.

Maps of carbon emissions from fires closely resemble maps of burned area. However, they typically highlight biomass-rich areas, such as dense forests.

This is illustrated in the map below, which shows how fires in regions coloured dark red on the map produce, on average, 1,000-5,000 grams of carbon per square metre. In these places, much more carbon is lost during fires than gained through photosynthesis.

Meanwhile, much of the world’s savannah regions are coloured in yellow and orange on the map, indicating that fires here produce between 100-500 grams of carbon per square metre.

This map shows fire carbon emissions, in grams of carbon per square metre. Based on the GFED emissions dataset.
Fire carbon emissions, in grams of carbon per square metre. Based on the GFED emissions dataset. Credit: Van der Werf et al. (2025)

Rising forest fire carbon emissions

The boost in fire emissions captured by the latest version of the GFED is most pronounced in open landscapes, including savannahs, grasslands and shrublands.

Forest fire emissions, on the other hand, have barely changed in the updated version of the database. This is because most forest fires are relatively large and were already well captured by the coarse resolution satellite data used previously.

However, the trend in forest fire emissions is sloping upwards over the study period.

Overall, current estimates – which take into account the new data from smaller fires – suggest that, over 2002-22, global fire emissions averaged 3.4GtC per year.

This is roughly 65% higher than estimates set out in the previous update to the GFED, which was published in 2017. 

For comparison, today’s fossil fuel emissions are around 10GtC per year.

Comparisons between fire and fossil fuel carbon emissions are somewhat flawed, as much of the carbon released by fires is eventually reabsorbed when vegetation regrows.

However, this is not the case for fires linked to deforestation or the burning of tropical peatlands, where regrowth is either much slower – or non-existent, if forests are converted to agriculture. These fires account for roughly 0.4GtC each year – just less than 12% of total fire emissions – and contribute directly to the long-term rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

The traditional view of forest fires as “carbon-neutral” is increasingly uncertain as the climate changes due to human activity. Longer fire seasons, drier vegetation and more lightning-induced ignitions are increasing fire frequency in many forested regions. 

This is most apparent in the rapidly-warming boreal forests of the far-northern latitudes. The year 2023 saw the highest emissions ever recorded by satellites in boreal forests, breaking a record set just two years before

Moreover, the fires in boreal forests are becoming more intense – meaning they burn hotter and consume a larger fraction of vegetation. This, in turn, jeopardises the recovery of forests. 

In cold areas, fires also cause permafrost to break down faster. This happens because fires remove an organic soil layer that has an insulating effect which prevents permafrost thaw. 

The map below shows the dominant fire type in different regions of the world, including boreal forest fires (dark green), cropland fires (red), open savannah (darker yellow) and woody savannah (brown).

This map shows dominant fire type around the world, based on total carbon emissions. Cropland fires are in red, woody savannah in brown, open savannah in dark yellow, grassland and shrubland in light yellow, peatland in black, tropical forest in aquamarine, temperature forest in mid-green and boreal forest in dark green.
Dominant fire type around the world, based on total carbon emissions. Cropland fires are in red, woody savannah in brown, open savannah in dark yellow, grassland and shrubland in light yellow, peatland in black, tropical forest in aquamarine, temperature forest in mid-green and boreal forest in dark green. Credit: GFED5

Changing ‘pyrogeography’

Thanks to more precise satellite data we now know that fire emissions are higher than we thought previously, with the new version of GFED having 65% higher overall fire emissions than its predecessor.

However, all evidence suggests that emissions from fires have been stable over the past two to three decades. This is because an increase in forest fire emissions is being offset by a decline in grassland fire emissions.

The world’s changing “pyrogeography” is illustrated in the bar chart below, which breaks down annual fire emissions across different types of biome.

It shows how low-intensity grassland fires with modest fuel consumption – represented in yellow and brown – have declined over time, while high-intensity forest fires – illustrated in green colours – are becoming more prominent, albeit with substantial variability in emissions year-on-year.

This map shows annual emissions across various fire categories, where yellow-brown represents savannah and grassland, orange cropland, black peatland and various shades of green the different forest-fire types.
Annual emissions across various fire categories, where yellow-brown represents savannah and grassland, orange cropland, black peatland and various shades of green the different forest-fire types. Credit: GFED5

The post Guest post: Why carbon emissions from fires are significantly higher than thought appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Guest post: Why carbon emissions from fires are significantly higher than thought

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Indigenous groups warn Amazon oil expansion tests fossil fuel phase-out coalition

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Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon have warned that stopping the expansion of oil drilling into their territories will be a crucial test for a growing international coalition committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels.

As 60 countries discussed at a landmark conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, pathways to end the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, Indigenous groups said the process risks losing credibility if governments continue opening new oil frontiers in the Amazon.

Their central demand was the establishment of fossil fuel “exclusion zones” across Indigenous territories and biodiverse areas of the rainforest, permanently barring new oil and gas expansion in one of the world’s most critical ecosystems. Indigenous representatives proposed establishing protected “Life Zones”, which they said would provide legal safeguards against governments and companies seeking to expand extraction into their lands.

But Indigenous delegates left the conference frustrated as the final synthesis report drafted by co-chairs Colombia and the Netherlands failed to include the proposal.

In a statement at the end of the conference, Patricia Suárez, from the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), said formally declaring Indigenous territories – especially those inhabited by peoples in voluntary isolation – as exclusion zones for extractive industries was “an urgent measure”.

“If the heart of the conference does not begin there, it risks remaining a set of good intentions that fails to respond to either science or our Indigenous knowledge systems,” she added.

Pushing for a new oil frontier

Campaigners say the pressure on the Amazon is intensifying just as scientists warn the rainforest is nearing irreversible collapse. Around 20% of all newly identified global oil reserves between 2022 and 2024 were discovered in the Amazon basin, fuelling renewed interest from governments and companies seeking to develop the region as the world’s next major oil frontier.

Ecuador has moved ahead with the auction of new oil blocks in the rainforest, while the country’s right-wing president Daniel Noboa has promoted the region as a “new oil-producing horizon” and backed efforts to expand fracking with support from Chinese companies.

    In Santa Marta, a coalition of seven Indigenous nations from Ecuador issued a declaration condemning the government, which did not participate in the conference.

    “While the world talks about energy transition, our government is pushing for more oil in the Amazon,” said Marcelo Mayancha, president of the Shiwiar nation. “Throughout history, we have always defended our land. That is our home. We will forever defend our territory.”

    Indigenous groups also warned that Peru – another South American nation absent from the conference – plans to auction new oil blocks in the Yavarí-Tapiche Territorial Corridor, a highly sensitive region along the Brazilian border that contains the world’s largest known concentration of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.

    COP30 host under scrutiny

    Indigenous leaders also criticised Brazil, arguing that despite its international climate leadership, the country is simultaneously advancing major new oil projects in the Amazon region.

    Luene Karipuna, delegate from Brazil’s coalition of Amazon peoples (COIAB), said the oil push threatens the stability of the rainforest. Not far from her home, in the northern state of Amapá, state-run oil giant Petrobras is currently exploring for new offshore oil reserves off the mouth of the Amazon river.

    Brazil participated in the Santa Marta conference and was among the countries that first pushed for discussions on transitioning away from fossil fuels at COP negotiations. Yet the country is also planning one of the largest expansions in oil production in the world, according to last year’s Production Gap report.

    Veteran Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre told Climate Home that the country’s participation at the Santa Marta conference contrasted with its oil and gas production targets. “It does not make any sense for Brazil to continue with any new oil exploration,” he said, and noted that science is clear that no new fossil fuels should be developed to avoid crossing dangerous climate tipping points.

    He added that the Brazilian government faces pressures from economic sectors, since Petrobras is one of the countries top exporting companies. “They look only at the economic value of exporting fossil fuels. Brazil has to change.”

    The COP30 host also promised to draft a voluntary proposal for a global roadmap away from fossil fuels, which is expected to be published before this year’s COP31 summit.

    “In Brazil, that advance has caused so many problems because it overlaps with Indigenous territories. Companies tell us there won’t be an impact, but we see an impact,” Karipuna said. “We feel the Brazilian government has auctioned our land without dialogue.”

    For Karipuna and other Indigenous leaders, establishing exclusion zones across the Amazon is no longer just a regional demand, but a prerequisite to prevent the collapse of the rainforest.

    “That’s the first step for an energy transition that places Indigenous peoples at the centre,” she added.

    The post Indigenous groups warn Amazon oil expansion tests fossil fuel phase-out coalition appeared first on Climate Home News.

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    Kenya seeks regional coordination to build African mineral value chains

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    African leaders have intensified calls for governments to stop exporting raw minerals and step up efforts to align their policies, share infrastructure and coordinate investment to add value to their resources and bring economic prosperity to the continent.

    In a speech to the inaugural Kenya Mining Investment Conference & Expo in Nairobi this week, Kenyan President William Ruto became the latest African leader to confirm the country will end exports of raw mineral ore. The East African nation has deposits of gold, iron ore and copper and recently launched a tender for global investors to develop a deposit of rare earths, which are used in EV motors and wind turbines, valued at $62 billion.

    Kenya is among more than a dozen African nations that have either banned or imposed export curbs on their mineral resources as they seek to process minerals domestically to boost revenues, create jobs and capture a slice of the industries that are producing high-value clean tech for the energy transition.

      “For too long we have extracted and exported raw materials at the bottom of the value chain, while others have processed, refined, manufactured and captured the greater share of economic value,” Ruto told African ministers and stakeholders gathered at the mining investment conference in Nairobi.

      As a result, Africa currently captures less than 1% of the value generated from global clean energy technologies, he said. To address this, Kenya, in collaboration with other African nations, “will process our minerals here in the continent, we will refine them here and we will manufacture them here”, he added.

      Mineral export restrictions on the rise

      Africa is a major supplier of minerals needed for the global energy transition. The continent holds an estimated 30% of the world’s critical mineral reserves, including lithium, cobalt and copper. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces roughly 70% of global cobalt, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, while countries such as Guinea dominate bauxite production, and Mozambique and Tanzania hold significant graphite deposits.

      But African governments have struggled to attract the investment needed to turn their vast mineral wealth into a green industrial powerhouse. Recently Burundi, Malawi, Nigeria and Zimbabwe are among those that have resorted to banning the export of unrefined minerals to incentivise foreign companies to invest in value addition locally.

      Outdated geological data limits Africa’s push to benefit from its mineral wealth

      This week, Zimbabwe exported its first shipments of lithium sulphate, an intermediate form of processed lithium that can be further refined into battery-grade material, from a mine and processing plant operated by Chinese company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt.

      After freezing all exports of lithium concentrate – the first stage of processing – earlier this year, the government introduced export quotas and will ban all exports from January 2027.

      Export restrictions on critical raw materials have grown more than five-fold since 2009, found a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published this week. In 2024, a more diverse group of countries, including many resource-rich developing economies in Africa and Asia, introduced restrictions, including Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Angola.

      This is “a structural shift in the wrong direction,” Mathias Cormann, the OECD’s secretary-general, told the organisations’ Critical Minerals Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, this week.

      “We understand the motivations: building local industries, managing environmental impacts, capturing greater value domestically. But our research is quite clear. Export restrictions distort investment, reduce volumes and undermine supply security often while delivering limited gains in value added,” he said.

      In-country barriers to success

      Thomas Scurfield, Africa senior economic analyst at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, told Climate Home News that export restrictions “can look like a promising route to local value addition” for cash-strapped African mineral producers but have “rarely worked” unless countries already have reliable energy, infrastructure and competitive costs for processing.

      “Without those conditions, bans may simply push companies to scale back mining rather than scale up processing,” he said.

      Alaka Lugonzo, partnerships lead for Africa at Global Witness, identified gaps in practical skills and infrastructure as other major barriers. “You need engineers, geologists, marketers,” Lugonzo said, warning that graduates are increasingly unable to match the pace of industry change.

      On infrastructure, she said that plentiful and stable energy supplies are vital and while Kenya has relatively robust road networks, they are insufficient for industrial-scale operations.

      “Meaningful value addition and real industrialisation requires heavy machinery… and you will need better infrastructure,” she said, highlighting persistent last-mile challenges in mining regions where “there’s no railway, there’s no electricity, there’s no water”.

      Export capacity is another concern, she said, particularly whether existing port systems could handle increased volumes of processed minerals.

      Regional approach recommended

      Scurfield said that through regional cooperation – including pooling supplies, specialising across different stages of refining and manufacturing, and building larger regional markets – “African countries could overcome many domestic constraints that make going alone difficult”.

      That’s what close to 20 African governments are working to deliver as part of the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, which was set up by African ministers and is dedicated to foster cooperation among African nations to build mineral value chains and better benefit from the energy transition.

      Africa urged to unite on minerals as US strikes bilateral deals

      Nigerian Minister of Solid Minerals Dele Alake, who chairs the group, said “true collaboration” between countries, including aligning mining policies, sharing infrastructure, coordinating investment strategies and promoting trade across the continent, will create the conditions for long-term investments that could turn Africa into “a formidable and competitive force within the global mineral supply chain”.

      “The time has come for Africa to redefine its place within the global mineral economy and that transformation must begin with regional integration and regional cooperation,” he told the mining investment conference in Nairobi.

      Lugonzo of Global Witness agreed, saying that value-addition would benefit from adopting a continental perspective. “Why should Kenya build another smelter when we can export our gold to Tanzania for smelting, and then we use the pipeline through Uganda to take it to the port and we export it?” she asked.

      To facilitate that, there is a need to operationalise the Africa Free Trade Continental Agreement (AFTCA), she added. “That agreement is the only way Africa is going to move from point A to point B.”

      The post Kenya seeks regional coordination to build African mineral value chains appeared first on Climate Home News.

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      Key green shipping talks to be held in late 2026

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      The future of the global shipping industry – and its 3% share of global emissions – will be decided in three weeks of talks in the third quarter of this year, after a decision taken in London on Friday.

      At the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) headquarters this week, governments largely failed to substantively negotiate a controversial set of measures to penalise polluting ships and reward vessels running on clean fuels known as the Net-Zero Framework. The green shipping plan has been aggressively opposed by fossil fuel-producing nations, in particular by the US and Saudi Arabia.

      This week, countries delivered statements outlining their views on the measures in a session that ran from Wednesday into Thursday. Then, late on Friday afternoon, they discussed when to negotiate these measures and what proposals they should discuss.

      After a lengthy debate, which the talks’ chair Harry Conway joked was confusing, governments agreed to hold a week of behind-closed-door talks from 1 September to 4 September and from 23 November to 27 November.

      Following these meetings, which are intended to negotiate disagreements on the NZF and rival watered-down measures proposed by the US and its allies, there will be public talks from November 30 to December 4.

        Last October, talks intended to adopt the NZF provisionally agreed in April 2025 were derailed by the US and Saudi Arabia, who successfully persuaded a majority of countries to vote to postpone the talks by a year.

        Those talks, known as an extraordinary session, are now scheduled to resume on Friday December 4 unless governments decide otherwise in the preceding weeks. While this Friday session will be in the same building with the same participants as the rest of the week’s talks, calling it the extraordinary session is significant as it means the NZF can be voted on.

        Em Fenton, senior director of climate diplomacy at Opportunity Green said that the NZF “has survived but survival is not a victory” and called for it to be adopted later this year “in a way that maintains urgency and ambition, and delivers justice and equity for countries on the frontlines of climate impacts”.

        NZF’s supporters

        The NZF would penalise the owners of particularly polluting ships and use the revenues to fund cleaner fuels, support affected workers and help developing countries manage the transition.

        Many governments – particularly in Europe, the Pacific and some Latin American and African nations – spoke in favour of it this week.

        South Africa said the fund it would create is “the key enabler of a just transition” and its removal would take away predictable revenues from African countries. Vanuatu said that “we are not here to sink the ship but to man it”.

        Australia’s representative called it a “carefully balanced compromise”, as it was provisionally agreed by a large majority after years of negotiations, and warned that failing to adopt it would harm the shipping industry by failing to provide certainty.

        Santa Marta summit kick-starts work on key steps for fossil fuel transition

        Canada’s negotiator said that if it was weakened to appease its critics like the US and Saudi Arabia, this would disappoint those who think it is too weak already like the Pacific islands.

        A large group of mainly big developing countries like Nigeria and Indonesia did not rule out supporting the framework but called for adjustments to help developing countries deal with the changes. Nigeria called for developing countries to be given more time to implement the measures, a minimum share of the fund’s revenues and discounts for ships bringing them food and energy.

        According to analysis from the University of College London’s Energy Institute, the countries speaking in support of the NZF include five countries which voted with the US to postpone talks in October and a further ten countries which did not take a clear position at that time. Most governments support the NZF as the basis for further talks, the institute said.

        Opposition remains

        But a small group of mainly oil-producing nations said they are opposed to any financial penalties for particularly polluting ships.

        They support a proposal submitted by Liberia, Argentina and Panama which has proposed weakening emission targets and ditching any funding mechanism for the framework involving “direct revenue collection and disbursement”.

        Argentina argued that the NZF would harm countries which are far from their export markets and said concerns over that cannot be solved “by magic with guidelines”. They added that, as a result, the NZF itself needs to be fundamentally re-negotiated.

        The UCL Energy Institute said that just 24 countries – less than a quarter of those who spoke – said they supported Argentina’s proposal.

        While this week’s talks did not see the kind of US threats reported in October, their delegation did leave personalised flyers on every delegate’s desk which were described by academics, negotiators and climate campaigners as misleading.

        One witness told Climate Home News that junior US delegates arrived early on Wednesday and placed flyers behind governments’ name plates warning each country of the costs they would incur if the NZF is adopted.

        The figures on a selection of leaflets seen by Climate Home News ranged from $100 million for Panama to $3.5 billion for the Netherlands. “They are trying to scare countries away from supporting climate action with one-sided information”, one negotiator told Climate Home News.

        A flyer left on Pakistan’s desk, shared by a witness with Climate Home News

        They added that the calculations, by the US State Department’s Office of the Chief Economist, ignore the fact that the money raised would be shared to help poorer countries’ transition as well as ignoring the economic costs of failing to address climate change.

        Tristan Smith, an academic representing the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, told the meeting that the calculations were “opaque” and flawed as they overstate the contribution of fuel cost to trade costs.

        A US State Department Spokesperson said in a statement that they “firmly stand behind our estimates” which were shared “in good faith” and to “provide an additional tool to policymakers as they contemplate the true economic burden over the NZF”.

        The post Key green shipping talks to be held in late 2026 appeared first on Climate Home News.

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