Published

10 months ago

May 15, 2025

Alice Rush

Shanxi province in northern China is the country’s largest coal producer, leaving its coal-reliant economy and workers particularly exposed to the nation’s pledge to transition away from fossil fuels.

A new survey of Shanxi residents, exploring attitudes to climate change and the “just transition”, offers a rare insight into the views of Chinese people on the frontline of this policy drive.

While the province has installed significant new clean energy capacity, coal-related industries contributed around 80% of the province’s tax revenues and 55% of its jobs in 2022.

Indeed, Shanxi could lose more than 240,000 coal jobs by 2050 as China’s energy transition continues, according to energy thinktank Global Energy Monitor (GEM).

In an April 2025 speech, Chinese president Xi Jinping said the energy transition needed to “strike a balance between multiple goals including environmental protection, economic growth, job creation and poverty alleviation”.

So far, however, provincial policies relating to the energy transition have not been translated into “something…tangible to peoples’ lives”, says Tom Wang, executive director of People of Asia for Climate Solutions, a climate advocacy group and one of the groups who designed, carried out and helped analyse the results of the recent survey.

The survey asked almost 10,000 people in Shanxi about their views on China’s climate policies, the impacts on their local economy and whether they felt prepared for the energy transition. A detailed methodology can be found at the end of the article.

In this interview, Wang discusses the motivations for carrying out the survey and outlines its key findings.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On the importance of coal to Shanxi’s economy: “Millions of people and their families rely on coal-related jobs, such as coal miners, coal-truck drivers, coal power plant workers or coal-washing workers.”
On the lack of awareness of climate change in some communities: “The most vulnerable communities, by which I basically mean the coal community, don’t really know about climate change. They know about the energy transition, they know a little bit about big policies…but they don’t really understand them.”
On media narratives: “Most state-owned media talk a lot about climate change, peaking carbon emissions, renewable energy, the energy transition and so on…However, the media does not explain what that means for people’s everyday lives.”
On the interest in low-carbon industry jobs: “People are quite happy to move on, if they are provided with good training and strong support to help that transition go smoothly.”

On the importance of fast action: “2025 and 2026 will be two critical years for this province. They will be when we make our next five-year plan, the 15th five-year plan, which will cover 2026-2030. This will also be the five years we start to physically see the job losses in the coal mining industry, because of China’s overall climate policies.”
On why young people were concerned about coal mines and power plants closing: “We have spent so much energy and resources on educating and preparing our young people for the coal industry, instead of preparing them for the transition.”
On what needs to be done next: “We need to prepare our two communities – the coal community and the young generation – today. We cannot afford to wait any longer. We need to tangibly start to train people and raise new sectors, or at least raise incomes.”
On the need for inter-provincial support: “The [richer] provinces should step up and say: ‘Look, brothers, you have supported our economies and now it’s time for us to help you.’”

Carbon Brief: Why did you want to conduct this survey? Why did you want to focus on Shanxi?

Tom Wang: I always say working on coal is my job, but, at the same time, it’s a personal issue for me, because I’m from Shanxi province. I grew up with coal, thinking that it was a necessary part of life. We burned coal for cooking, heating and even festival celebrations. But I also lost quite a lot of people in my family – my cousins and uncles, who were coal miners or working for coal-fired power plants – either because of coal-mine accidents or air pollution.

Shanxi province is the world’s largest coal producer. [Note: The province’s coal output reached 1.3bn tonnes in 2024.]…Every year, whether China’s economy is performing well or badly, we contribute around one-third of its coal. Millions of people and their families rely on coal-related jobs, such as coal miners, coal-truck drivers, coal power plant workers or coal-washing workers. Around you, your cousins, classmates or friends [are working in the coal industry].

Even in my first job as a teacher, part of my pay would come from money made from coal. So it was a big part of my life. That’s why we have to address coal in China, including – or even starting with – Shanxi.

And then there is the bigger context. Internationally, after COP28 and COP29, we talk about a coal phase-down, if not a coal phase-out. Then, domestically, China is working towards its dual-carbon goals – targeting a carbon emissions peak before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060…This means we have five years to achieve a carbon emission peak and it also means that coal consumption should start to decline next year.

Therefore, Shanxi cannot depend on the coal economy. We have been relying so heavily on coal mining, coal sales and coal exports to other provinces. That income-generating industry is going to disappear very soon…which means millions of people’s jobs and livelihoods will undergo dramatic changes.

For more than a decade, Shanxi province’s own policies have also covered the energy transition. It’s worrisome that these policies have remained [high-level], without being translated into something more tangible to people’s lives.

People are not prepared. Coal miners are not prepared. Their wives are not prepared. The coal-truck drivers are not prepared. The metallurgical coal industry is not prepared. That’s why we wanted to do this survey and interview as many people as possible. We ask two simple questions: do you know about and support the energy transition – and are you prepared?

CB: What do people in Shanxi think about the energy transition, climate change and climate policy?

When it comes to climate change, awareness levels are very different between different demographic groups. For example, government workers and people with higher income or education levels know about climate change.

Some people [in the survey] could identify things happening around them, such as temperatures getting warmer every year, drought periods getting longer, how last winter we didn’t have any snow – and they found these worrisome, based on their own experiences of how the province should be.

Some people even mentioned extreme weather events, including heatwaves and a week-long rainstorm that ruined a lot of Shanxi province’s ancient temples – the most valuable thing that we have.

However, the most vulnerable communities, by which I basically mean the coal community, don’t really know about climate change. They know about the energy transition, they know a little bit about big policies, such as the dual-carbon goals – they say they know about these buzzwords, but they don’t really understand them.

CB: In the survey, people would say they supported the ‘dual-carbon goals’ when asked about them specifically, but then were not as supportive of implementation measures, such as closing coal mines or coal-fired power plants. Why is that?

TW: This is uniquely Chinese, because most state-owned media talk a lot about climate change, peaking carbon emissions, renewable energy, the energy transition and so on. The visibility of all these ‘big words’ is really high.

However, the media does not explain what that means for people’s everyday lives. They are just copy-pasting [readouts of] policies from the State Council into their newspaper. For them, that’s ‘job done’, but it doesn’t really make sense to ordinary people. That’s how Chinese media works.

That is why the survey finds that, although more than 70% of people are aware of words like carbon emissions peak, or that they’re aware of the energy transition, it doesn’t mean they know what these words mean or how to interpret them.

But when we interpret these policies for them and explain that the energy transition means we are going to use less coal, they can understand…and feel the impact on their lives quite sharply.

That’s why there’s such a gap. [People say they] support everything the government does, whether or not they understand what that means. However, when you ask if they support something that would change their life completely – for the better or for the worse – they have to think twice.

CB: The survey also asked people what they would like to see prioritised in a just transition away from coal. What did respondents say was important to them?

TW: Two things stood out to me. First, I often talk about a mechanism called JET-B. We all know JET-P, the Just Energy Transition Partnership. However, in Shanxi province, what we really need is the JET-B, a Just Energy Transition Brotherhood.

The rich provinces in China, which are mostly along the east coastline – for example, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong – relied heavily on Shanxi’s coal in the past decades to develop their economies. [The JET-B calls on them to] support Shanxi with its energy transition.

Many [respondents] agreed with this! They expect other richer provinces to support us, because the whole province knows that we have been providing so much coal to other provinces, instead of using it ourselves.

Also, the people of Shanxi are actually willing to change or improve their own skill-sets. They know how dangerous it is to work in the coal industry, both because of accidents and because of pollution. There is a high awareness of the lack of a future for the coal industry among respondents. People are quite happy to move on, if they are provided with good training and strong support to help that transition go smoothly.

CB: In the report, you chose to pull out the responses from coal sector workers and young people as special focus areas. Why?

TW: Almost a half of [Shanxi’s] population works one way or another in or for the coal industry – they would have been a huge part of the survey whether we focused on them or not. But we did want to find out particularly how the coal community feels, because they will be the community who are most directly and immediately impacted by the energy transition.

Their responses are very important as an indicator to policymakers. They will have to be the very first group of people to be retrained and they should be supported in the transition into a cleaner and healthier future.

Prospects for the young generation are also a huge concern in Shanxi. We are losing many young people to other provinces – like a talent drain. Also, the energy transition and climate change are always about the future generations. I wanted young people to feel ownership over this topic and I wanted to hear about their [feelings towards their] own province. Do they want to stay here? Do they want to leave? What is keeping them here, or what is pushing them away?

These answers are valuable for policymakers because young people are leaving and trying to make a living [in other provinces]. Ironically, historically, we have a reputation of being the “stubborn province” – a community of people who refuse to leave their hometowns, because we are so attached to this place.

I don’t know why this is! I guess [the community feels] we have such a beautiful history, beautiful nature and lovely people. There are many reasons to be proud of being from Shanxi, but we are losing so many young people.

2025 and 2026 will be two critical years for this province. They will be when we make our next five-year plan, the 15th five-year plan, which will cover 2026-2030. This will also be the five years we start to physically see the job losses in the coal mining industry, because of China’s overall climate policies.

At the same time, in late 2024 and early 2025, Shanxi was put into the spotlight for its rich tourism opportunities. I’m not sure how familiar you are with the area?

CB: I have been to Shanxi before – to Datong, Pingyao and a couple of other areas…

TW: …so you saw the beautiful grottos in Datong and the ancient temples? When I was talking about [the week-long] rainstorm in 2021 that damaged our ancient cities and towns, I was talking about Pingyao!

I would feel so guilty if we weren’t able to hand down a beautiful Shanxi province to future generations. That is why the voice of the young generation is so interesting to me.

CB: It struck me how young people in Shanxi responded to the questions. Just over a quarter felt they did not have the skills they needed for a clean-energy economy and around half were worried about the closure of coal mines and coal-power plants. What can be done to address their concerns?

TW: In Shanxi province we have universities that are dedicated to the coal industry. These young people are trained to become engineers, coal miners, metallurgical coal factory technicians or steel factory workers. We have spent so much energy and resources on educating and preparing our young people for the coal industry, instead of preparing them for the transition away from coal.

Young people don’t know how to prepare for the energy transition. And then there’s the current job market. Shanxi’s economy is so weak – in 2024, our province had the lowest economic growth rate in China.

Shanxi is not supposed to have the weakest growth, theoretically speaking – we have both heavy industry and a services industry. But we didn’t do very well last year because coal prices were rising and falling and China was importing a lot of coal from other countries, which meant Shanxi lost market share for coal in 2024.

At the same time, Shanxi is not very good at setting up new industries. For example, China’s AI industry is getting stronger. Shanxi province is full of mountainous regions that could provide natural cooling environments for big data centres.

Data centres require two things: cooling and energy. Shanxi has both: natural cooling and energy, including a lot of renewable energy – curtailment is a big problem for us.

We have all of this potential but we’re not translating it into good, decent, healthy, strong, futuristic, sustainable jobs. That’s why the young generation doesn’t feel confident.

CB: What lessons should be taken away from the survey?

TW: We need to prepare our two communities – the coal community and the young generation – today. We cannot afford to wait any longer. We need to tangibly start to train people and raise new sectors, or at least raise incomes.

Communications are also critical. We, as communicators, know the importance of communications, but policymakers – and sometimes even China’s journalists – do not know that yet. I want to see more opinion leaders or TikTok influencers from my province [talking about Shanxi’s transition away from coal].

Wouldn’t it be beautiful to see a coal miner from Datong [which was once China’s largest coal production and export base] become a tour guide on TikTok and show that he can still make decent money without coal?

We need to inspire people. Young people and the coal community are feeling lost and sad, they don’t know what to do. We need to find the different seeds of possibilities and highlight that all these doors are out there. They might look as if they’re closed, but with a little pushing they will open.

That’s what I would like our policymakers and investors, as well as NGOs – although we don’t have many of them! – to say. And the [richer] provinces should step up and say: “Look, brothers, you have supported our economies and now it’s time for us to help you.” Not necessarily even with money, it could be with technology.

For example, once, I almost cried when I was visiting a museum in another province, because it was so well set-up and curated. As a tourist, I really appreciated its beauty.

The subject the exhibition was focused on was only 300 years old, whereas in Shanxi province so many of our artifacts are more than 500 years old. But we don’t have the investors and technologies, or even the awareness, to make our museums that attractive.

Having artists, professors, historians or curators come from these rich provinces and make our heritage stay here and shine [would be helpful] – it doesn’t have to be financial support that they send! We have this piece of gold but it isn’t shining because our policymakers aren’t doing their jobs and our people aren’t aware of its value.

As a final thought, a speaker at one of our recent conferences was a coal miner who was also a poet. One of his collections was called “Seeking starlight in the coal pit”.

That metaphor reminded me about an English poem I had read. The UK was probably the world’s very first coal-mining country and there’s a lot of poetry and poets that came out of the UK’s coal community as well. And it just so happened that a UK coal-miner poet also wrote a very similar poem. [The poem is titled “The stars are twinkling”.]

It is beautiful that two coal miners from two different centuries, countries and language groups both became poets who wrote about standing in a coal mine and seeing the stars.

Note on the survey methodology: According to the survey report, the findings of the report were primarily sourced from a survey, supplemented by in-depth interviews with 30 individuals representing a range of industries.

The survey was hosted on Credamo, an online survey website, and was open from 17 July 2024 to 18 August 2024. The survey organisers recruited 201 students from universities in Shanxi province as volunteers to promote the survey and gather responses. Volunteers were asked to ensure that at least one of every three responses they gathered was collected in-person.

In total, 9,776 complete responses were gathered. Respondents who responded to control questions incorrectly, or took less than seven minutes to complete the survey, had their responses removed, leaving 6,035 valid responses.

Among the respondents with valid responses, 44% were men, 54% were women, with 2% selecting ‘other’. Respondents were located in 11 towns or cities across Shanxi province: Changzhi (25%), Taiyuan (15%), Linfen (10%), Yuncheng (9%), Datong (7%), Jincheng (7%), Shuozhou (6%), Lüliang (6%), Xinzhou (5%), Jinzhong (5%) and Yangquan (3%). The survey respondents skewed young, with 55% aged 24 years old or younger. 57% of respondents completed a university degree.

The interview was conducted by Anika Patel on 2 April 2025 via Zoom.

The post Interview: What the people of China’s coal-rich Shanxi think about climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Interview: What the people of China’s coal-rich Shanxi think about climate change

Greenhouse Gases

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Published

2 days ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

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

This week

Absolute State of the Union

‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.

COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.

OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.

SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.

Around the world

RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.

$467 billion

The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.

Latest climate research

Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action

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

Captured

The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.

Spotlight

Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?

This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.

Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.

Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.

Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:

“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”

Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.

Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:

“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”

Conservative gear shift

For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.

Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.

Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.

Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.

Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:

“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”

Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)

Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:

“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”

But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:

“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”

UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Global ‘greenlash’?

All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.

At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.

Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.

She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.

Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:

“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”

Watch, read, listen

TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.

RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.

Coming up

2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
3 March: UK spring statement
4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
5 March: Nepal elections

Pick of the jobs

The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil

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

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Greenhouse Gases

Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding

Published

2 days ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.

This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.

Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.

The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.

As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.

Flood defences

Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.

This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.

There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.

However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.

The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.

The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.

Map of England showing that Richard Tice's Boston and Skegness constituency is set to receive at least £55m for flood defences between 2024 and 2026 — Flood-defence spending on new and replacement schemes in England in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The government notes that, as Environment Agency accounts have not been finalised and approved, the investment data is “provisional and subject to change”. Some schemes cover multiple constituencies and are not included on the map. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.

Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.

He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.

Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.

Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.

Chart showing that Conservative, Reform and Liberal Democrat constituencies are the top recipients of flood defence spending — Top 10 English constituencies by FCERM funding in 2024-25 and 2025-26. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.

Reform funding

While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.

Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.

Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.

Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.

Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:

“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”

While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.

The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding

Greenhouse Gases

Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate

Published

4 days ago

February 25, 2026

Alice Rush

We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

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Key developments

Food inflation on the rise

DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.

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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.

‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.

El Niño looms

NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”

WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”

CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.

News and views

DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.

Spotlight

Nature talks inch forward

This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.

The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.

The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.

The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.

Money talks

Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.

Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.

Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.

Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).

Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:

“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”

Monitoring and reporting

Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.

Parties do so through the submission of national reports.

Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.

A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.

Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:

“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”

Watch, read, listen

NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.

COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.

HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.

‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.

New science

Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food