This is the starting point for Europe’s lofty dreams of greener air travel – a collection point in Malaysia for greasy plastic bottles filled with discarded frying oil, thousands of miles from its final destination.
One Saturday morning last month in the city of Melaka, volunteers in green T-shirts rushed over as Adibah Rahim and her husband drove into the central square, eager to unpack, weigh and register her consignment of used cooking oil (UCO) – the “liquid gold” in European plans to ramp up production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Rahim left the collection point 90 ringgit ($21) richer, three ringgit per litre of oil – a welcome boost to her family’s household budget.
“We usually collect UCO from around 200 members of the public,” said Michael Andrew, sales manager for Evergreen Oil & Feed, the company running the Melaka collection with the local council and a supplier to leading European SAF producers including Spain’s Repsol, UK-based Shell and Finland’s Neste.
When made from waste such as UCO, rather than agricultural commodities like soy or palm oil, backers say SAF can slash planet-heating emissions by up to 80% over kerosene jet fuel, without taking up land that would otherwise be used for food crops, or fuelling forest destruction.
But behind SAF’s climate-friendly facade, a months-long investigation by Climate Home News and its partner The Straits Times has uncovered an opaque global supply chain that exposes jet fuel providers and their aviation clients to significant fraud risks, raising doubts about the climate benefits of the sector’s main green hope for the years ahead.
As SAF producers scramble for limited raw materials to meet new blending quotas in Europe and growing demand elsewhere, barely used and virgin palm oil is being passed off as UCO to traders that supply fuel companies, experts and industry operators told us. Palm oil that is not considered waste is not permitted under European Union rules for SAF because of its links to deforestation.
Our reporting focused on the UCO trade between Malaysia, the world’s second-biggest palm oil producer, and Spain, the EU’s largest aviation market and home to one of its SAF pioneers – oil-and-gas giant Repsol.
Fried in Spain?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Repsol CEO Josu Jon Imaz held up his company’s new 250-million-euro ($285 million) plant for renewable fuels, including SAF, near the historic Spanish port town of Cartagena as an example of how Europe can pursue a fair, green transition. Nearly half of the plant’s cost was financed by the EU’s lending arm, the European Investment Bank.
Repsol, which aims to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, started large-scale production of biodiesel and jet fuel – with its SAF mainly made from UCO – at the plant early last year.
Contrasting this with electric vehicles, many of them imported from China, Imaz said the raw material for Repsol’s renewable fuels “comes from Spanish farms and from the Spanish rural economy”.
In a promotional video for those fuels, Spanish celebrity chef Susi Díaz is seen dispensing advice to young cooks in the kitchen of her La Finca restaurant. Olive oil is then poured out of a pan into steel jugs as a voiceover explains how the waste cooking residue will be sent to the Repsol biofuels refinery.
Spain’s restaurants, however, are not the main source of Repsol’s UCO.
In 2024, more than 126,000 tonnes of UCO from Asia – enough to fill 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools – arrived in the Spanish region of Murcia, where Repsol’s flagship biofuels plant is located, according to trade data published by Spain’s tax agency.
Nearly two-thirds came from Malaysia, whose UCO exports to the region saw a 10-fold rise in the same year the energy heavyweight fired up its Cartagena SAF refinery.
The figures do not specify who provided or bought the raw material. But Climate Home obtained a list of shipments of UCO certified for the European market that were sourced from Malaysia by Repsol’s trading unit in Singapore, based on analysis of customs records provided by Data Desk, an investigative consultancy.
Repsol told Climate Home it “complements with imports when necessary” and receives raw material shipments from more than 20 countries. It declined to provide more details about its imports for “competitive reasons”.
The company is promoting the recycling of UCO from Spanish households – of which it says only 5% is currently collected – at its fuel stations across the country. But according to the trade data, Repsol purchased at least 53,000 tonnes of UCO from five Malaysian companies, including Evergreen Oil & Feed, in 2024.
No incidents involving fraudulent UCO were detected in Repsol’s supply chain, with its imports meeting EU rules on green certification. But our investigation found the company’s heavy reliance on Malaysian supplies exposes it to fraud risks that raise wider questions about global assertions over the sustainability of SAF.
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Factbox: How we tracked Repsol’s UCO supply chain
Climate Home set out to find out what sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) are made of and how sustainable they really are. We focused on the supply chain of Repsol as the leading fuel supplier in the EU’s largest aviation market and a prominent advocate of SAF as a solution to decarbonising the sector.
Repsol does not publicly disclose detailed information on where the raw materials used in its SAF production are sourced from. A company representative told us that Repsol operates in “a global market, and for competitive reasons, we do not specify the origins or percentages of the raw materials”.
We analysed the summary audit report for the sustainability certificate issued for Repsol’s flagship SAF refinery in Cartagena. The document from International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) lists the raw materials used at the plant, but provides only limited information on the origin of each specific feedstock.
We submitted a freedom of information request to the European Commission asking for a detailed list of shipments to Spain of used cooking oil (UCO), which we knew was Repsol’s main feedstock. In response, the Commission sent a highly redacted document obscuring the names of suppliers and recipients. We asked the Commission to review the decision, but after a nine-month wait, its original response was largely upheld.
Spanish authorities had asked for the names to be redacted, arguing that their disclosure would “infringe the legitimate interests” of those concerned, the Commission said.
We then analysed foreign trade records published by Spain’s tax authority. While the data did not include names of individual companies, it pointed to a spike in imports of UCO destined for the Murcia region – where Repsol’s SAF plant is located – from Malaysia and China in 2024.
Working with Data Desk – an investigative consultancy – we obtained a list of Malaysian companies that supplied UCO to Repsol’s trading unit in Singapore. This unit has said publicly that it is “deeply involved” in the supply chain for raw materials – mainly UCO – from Asia for renewable fuels, including SAF.
Having located Repsol’s suppliers, we then sent a reporter to attend a UCO collection event organised by the largest of these, Evergreen Oil & Feed, in the city of Melaka, where its owner confirmed it sells UCO to the Spanish energy giant.
Asked what steps it takes to fight fraud, Repsol said it operates a rigorous supplier monitoring system to ensure the sustainability and integrity of its SAF production. A “very strong” compliance process means dubious raw materials and suppliers suspected of misconduct are quickly weeded out, it added.
“Repsol firmly rejects any fraud that distorts competitiveness in the sector and supports all initiatives by relevant authorities to combat it,” the company said in emailed comments.
Shrinking air travel’s carbon footprint
Europe’s green aviation fuel refineries are boosting output because of new requirements by the EU and the UK for planes to use more SAF in the coming decades. From the start of this year, fuel supplied to airports across Europe needs to contain at least 2% of SAF, with targets rising gradually over the next 15 years, putting huge strain on tight global supplies.
SAF is crucial for shrinking aviation’s carbon footprint, according to industry body the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and is expected to account for 65% of emissions reductions by 2050, when the sector has committed to reaching net zero.
In 2023, emissions from international plane travel accounted for 2.5% of the world’s energy-related carbon emissions. As air travel increases, and other sectors are more easily able to decarbonise, that share is set to grow.
Repsol’s Imaz told financial analysts early last year that emissions-cutting alternatives to SAF – such as restricting short-haul flights – would represent “a drop in the ocean”.
But surging demand for SAF’s feedstock of choice, UCO, and a global certification system based on self-declaration at the start of the supply chain are encouraging fraud that undermines the new fuel’s green credentials.
‘Ridiculous’ collection numbers
This investigation found that by the time Asia-based traders ship UCO supplies overseas to refineries for processing into SAF, guaranteeing their environmental integrity is virtually impossible – despite the certification system on which fuel companies and airlines rely.
A source at a leading Malaysian UCO supplier to companies including Repsol told The Straits Times that some UCO collectors and restaurants are committing fraud by providing oil that does not qualify as used, although it is difficult to prove.
In Malaysia, which is among the world’s leading suppliers of both UCO and virgin palm oil, government-subsidised cooking oil is cheaper than UCO – providing a clear incentive for fraud.
In a 2024 report, Brussels-based environmental group Transport & Environment (T&E) cited figures showing that Malaysia already exports about three times as much UCO as it is estimated to collect domestically and import, raising concern about where that oil is coming from – and what it consists of.
The analysis by consultancy Stratas Advisors, used as a basis for the report, says the “substantial deficit” indicates the “risks of fraud and palm oil potentially compensating for the shortfall”.
In 2023, 458,000 tonnes of UCO originating in Malaysia were registered with International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC), the leading certification scheme recognised by the European Commission to demonstrate compliance with its biofuels sustainability criteria.
In absolute terms, that puts Malaysia second only to China. But if all that UCO were collected from its population, it would have had by far the highest volumes per person worldwide: 15.2 litres for each Malaysian inhabitant, compared with 0.9 litres per capita in neighbouring Indonesia and 3.8 litres in Spain.
Cian Delaney, campaigns coordinator at T&E, said that figure is “ridiculous”, adding that for it to be feasible, Malaysia would need to be “a world leading collection and refining system – which it isn’t”.
Exactly what it says on the bottle?
The waste ingredients from which SAF is made change hands multiple times in a largely opaque system. To verify their sustainability, European regulators rely on checks by private auditors and agencies that issue green certificates based on their findings.
But there is a blind spot: the restaurants, street stalls, households and factories from which the UCO is pooled self-declare the origin and authenticity of their contributions. Aside from ad-hoc spot checks and sampling, there is no way of knowing that all of these providers are telling the truth.
“The opportunity, or incidents, of fraud is very high,” said Vasu R Vasuthewan, the former Malaysia head for the ISCC.
Malaysian authorities recently uncovered criminal syndicates that had pocketed thousands of dollars a day by getting hold of large amounts of subsidised cooking oil, mixing it in with UCO, and then selling it on to industrial UCO traders.
Industry sources told Climate Home and The Straits Times that many households and restaurants are motivated to replace cooking oil after a single use – contrary to standard practice – and then sell it on as UCO. Cooking oil is considered waste when it is no longer fit for frying – generally after being used between three and five times.
“Restaurant compliance [with sustainability standards] may be very low,” said Vasuthewan, who now runs his own UCO import and export business. “Many will fake their declaration, hoping they won’t get caught.”
Malaysia’s Deputy Minister of Plantation and Commodities Chan Foong Hin, who has acknowledged that fraud is an issue in the UCO sector, said authorities are “actively monitoring the industry to prevent fraudulent activities” and strengthening enforcement mechanisms.
“To maintain supply chain integrity, various measures are in place, including traceability systems, certification requirements, and stringent export documentation,” he told The Straits Times.
Delaney of T&E said it is difficult for auditors to physically check the origin of the oil, since hundreds of restaurants can supply the same collection point, making it a “notable blind spot”.
Spot checks, patchy audits
In theory, there is a system in place to keep fraudulent stocks out of the supply chain. Buyers and regulators in Europe rely on audit companies to trace the raw materials used in SAF and prove their green credentials.
Those audits are verified by authorised certification systems like ISCC – which is led by the biofuels industry and, according to one source, enjoys “a kind of monopoly” in the sector. It then issues sustainability certificates to commodities traders and fuel suppliers.
ISCC says its certification process supports “sustainable, fully traceable, deforestation-free and climate-friendly supply chains”.
Yet while auditors conduct random field checks in some cases, that happens less often in countries outside the EU, industry experts say.
According to James Cogan, compliance and markets lead at Irish biofuel firm Clonbio, it is far easier for fraud to occur outside the EU where “it’s much less visible to us”.
An analysis by T&E in China, for example, showed that sampling of points of origin happened in less than 10% of the ISCC-approved audits, whereas in the EU it was about 30%.
Adam Kirby, ISCC’s senior sustainability manager, told Climate Home that auditors monitor volumes coming in and out of collection points for any suspicious behaviour, in addition to carrying out spot checks.
He added that the ISCC follows the requirements established by regulators like the European Commission.
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Factbox: How ISCC verification works
Throughout the complex SAF supply chain, the ISCC requires operators to pass certified information on the origin of the raw materials and their carbon savings from one operator to another.
Traders typically receive UCO from individuals and restaurants at collection points or storage facilities audited under the scheme. But those bringing in the oil are mostly not vetted directly. In the majority of cases, they are simply required to fill out a self-declaration form stating that their UCO meets the definition of waste, meaning that it is not just regular palm oil, and is compliant with the ISCC’s sustainability criteria.
UCO collectors are required to keep all these forms in a database available for inspection by third-party auditors who check that the same amount of UCO coming into a facility is then going out.
If everything stacks up, the ISCC issues a “proof of sustainability” certificate which fuel producers like Repsol rely on to confidently buy the raw material in compliance with EU and/or international regulations.
Airlines are given access to these certificates as evidence they are buying SAF that meets sustainability requirements
In 2024, ISCC also conducted 79 special “integrity assessments” – around two-thirds targeting Asia-based suppliers – which independently monitored the work of auditors. In a third of cases, it found violations of its certification requirements, including an inability to demonstrate the traceability of products, leading to the withdrawal of 11 certificates.
From frying pan to frequent flier
Under the current system, the entire SAF supply chain relies on a long paper trail rooted in those self-declarations and sporadic inspections at the points where UCO is collected.
In Malaysia, Evergreen’s owner CK Lau told The Straits Times the company follows the “proper processes” in its collection based on the requirements established by the ISCC. He added that the documentation is “critical” as, otherwise, the company would not be able to export its UCO.
Repsol, for its part, said it requires “suppliers to be certified under European Commission-recognised voluntary regimes”.
In turn, airline companies that buy from Repsol such as International Airlines Group (IAG) – the parent company of British Airways, Iberia, Vueling, Aer Lingus and LEVEL – rely on documentation they get from it and other jet fuel providers, to show the SAF they are paying for has green certification.
In exceptional cases, IAG told Climate Home it has sent its own staff to carry out checks on the ground, as with a Shanghai-based Chinese supplier last year. It described the outcome of that audit – which included supply, record-keeping, environmental and health and safety standards – as “positive”.
Robert Boyd, Boeing’s Asia-Pacific sustainability lead who previously worked for IATA, thinks airlines’ exacting standards will bring positive change in the SAF industry. “You’ll see a race to the top… on sustainability, and it will, in a way, be self-regulated,” he added.
SAF certification faces EU scrutiny
In the meantime, following a string of fraud allegations about the authenticity of UCO-derived biofuels imported from China, the EU has been trying to ascertain whether the certification system governments and businesses rely on is fit for purpose.
EU authorities have been in talks to strengthen that system, leading to speculation that the ISCC could be suspended for failing to catch cases of biodiesel fraud. The ISCC denied in a statement that regulators had considered halting automatic EU-wide acceptance of its certificates, adding that its relationship with the European Commission remained constructive.
“There’s always bad actors, there’s always bad people, and there’s only a certain amount of policing that can be done in any industry,” said Kirby. “We at ISCC have done, I think, an incredible job.”
A European Commission spokeswoman said the bloc’s executive arm was “closely monitoring” the SAF market “to detect and prevent fraud, which risks undermining the EU’s ambition to effectively decarbonise air transport”.
Authorities in the US and Singapore, which wants to position itself as a regional SAF hub, have also voiced concern about fraud in the SAF supply chain.
“We are aware of concerns raised by various stakeholders, including the EU and the US, regarding fraudulent practices in the SAF supply chain. We share the same concerns as these pose risks to market confidence, fair trading and development of a nascent SAF market,” said Daniel Ng, chief sustainability officer at the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS).
He said the authority was working with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection to develop “harmonised standards for feedstock verification to prevent further fraudulent practices”.
Demand for UCO sizzles
Whatever action regulators take to keep SAF fraud-free, leading European refiners such as Repsol are pushing for a level global playing field as well as more public funding to bring down costs and help develop the nascent sector on the continent.
IATA warned earlier this month that the European mandates had caused the SAF price paid by airlines to double because of hefty compliance fees being charged by producers.
Repsol’s aviation head Carlos Suárez Cubillo warned that fuel producers in parts of the world with laxer rules could produce SAF “with less regulation and less control of the feedstock… and here in Europe that could de-incentivise the production, the construction of new facilities”.
In Brazil, for example, an emerging SAF industry is gearing up to use crop-based feedstocks that are commonly linked to deforestation – and are therefore banned in Europe – such as soy and palm oil, as well as sugarcane-based ethanol, which has been linked to labour abuses and modern slavery.
An investigation by Climate Home’s partner in Brazil, InfoAmazonia, found that the palm oil producer behind a planned biorefinery in the Amazon region – billed as Brazil’s first SAF project – is growing the crop on land areas subject to sanctions by the national environment agency over illegal deforestation, and is struggling financially after rights abuse allegations.
Brazilian firm behind SAF plan found growing oil palm on deforested Amazon land
IATA hopes its efforts to put in place a global registry for SAF, launched in April as a voluntary initiative, will boost transparency around feedstocks and their greenhouse gas savings – and enable airlines to have some level of visibility and comparability between countries, fuel providers and airports.
SAF producers and airlines are also looking to other waste-based materials to meet rising mandates – especially as more advanced fuels made from green hydrogen and carbon dioxide, known as e-SAF, are still being developed and tested.
Air travel’s ‘holy grail’: Jet fuel made from CO2 and water prepares for take-off
Repsol, for example, recently closed a deal with US vegetable oils giant Bunge to source camelina and safflower – non-food crops that can grow on poor land – to produce hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) for biodiesel and SAF.
In January, it also announced it would invest more than 800 million euros ($906 million) in Europe’s first plant in the Catalan city of Tarragona to produce “renewable” methanol from organic urban waste that now ends up in landfill, for use in maritime, road and aviation transport from 2029.
But in the meantime, Europe’s overwhelming reliance on UCO means it will continue to import supplies from Asia – despite the concerns over fraud, said Sophie Byron, global head of biofuels pricing at S&P Global Commodity Insights.
“That trade flow is not going away anytime soon,” she said.
‘Token effort’ on aviation emissions?
At Repsol’s vast refinery complex near Cartagena, the colourful pipes and metal cylinders of the flagship SAF unit are dwarfed by the site’s traditional, fossil fuel-refining infrastructure.
Repsol’s plants processed 43.3 million tonnes of crude oil last year, according to its annual report. In contrast, its renewable fuels production capacity stands at 1.25 million tonnes per year – of which the Cartagena plant accounts for 250,000 tonnes, including SAF.
It is a token effort towards tackling rising aviation emissions, said Pedro Luengo of Spanish environmental network Ecologistas en Acción, standing on a hillside overlooking the complex.
As Spain’s airports prepare for another record-breaking summer holiday influx this year, Luengo warned that the hype around SAF could prove counter-productive in the fight against climate change by justifying yet more air travel.
“Instead of gradually substituting fossil fuels with other [green] sources and consuming less, what we are doing is expanding the opportunities because we have more fuels available to use,” he said. “That is a contradiction.”
This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
The Straits Times in Singapore will publish a version of this story in the coming days.
The post Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people.
Together, these initiatives would have made up around half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support conservation in the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.
When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge by 12 donors of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.
Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.
Alongside the US and much of Europe, the UK has significantly cut its aid budget in recent years, leading to much of its Congo rainforest spending being cancelled or reappraised.
The government says it still plans to “prioritise” rainforest regions, including the Congo basin, but civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.
COP pledge
At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030. This was backed by more than 140 nations.
The UK also made various funding pledges, including £200m to protect the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.
These commitments target the world’s three largest rainforests, all of which face major forest loss due to threats such as agriculture, logging and climate change.
The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink. Yet, its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.
This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.
Forest cuts
Following successive aid cuts introduced by both the Conservative and then Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.
The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was launched by the UK at COP27. It was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.
CBFA set out to “empower central African nations”, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with support for “community forests” and other measures to curb forest loss.
Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s recent aid cuts, intended to free up money for defence spending.
Its original £90m budget has now been reduced to £18.8m. Government data shows that £15m of this has already been spent.
This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to this latest round of aid cuts.
The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – championed by the previous government and worth at least £12.3m – has been closed, just two years into its seven-year schedule.
Government documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk as the UK scales back its aid budget, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region.
One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”. Officials working on the other, while more optimistic, reported that the project may be forced to operate in fewer countries as the cuts set in.
Documents also reveal the difficulties that come when operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.
‘Breaking promises’
Damian Fleming, a senior director of forests at WWF International tells Carbon Brief:
“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”
In a series of recent parliamentary responses, Chapman revealed that the UK had only spent £39.8m on Congo forest finance, as of 2024. (She declined to provide any information on the Indonesia and Amazon regional goals.)
Despite being presented as the UK’s “contribution” to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029.
Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution so far has been relatively small.
Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, tells Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:
“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world for whom the environment is an existential issue.”
Future targets
The Labour government says it has met the five-year “climate finance” target of £11.6bn that expires this year.
Ministers also say the government has met “and exceeded” the £3bn and £1.5bn sub-goals for “preserving nature” and forests, respectively, within the £11.6bn. These are the funding streams that include support for the Congo basin and other rainforests.
The UK has funded a variety of projects in line with its forest goals, including mangrove restoration in Indonesia, support for carbon-offsetting projects in Brazil and promoting “forest stewardship” among farmers in Cameroon.
Chapman has stated that the UK will continue to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest, in line with its new plan for aid spending in Africa. The UK even helped to launch a new “call to action” for Congo basin funding at COP30 last year.
The UK government also says it supported the creation of Brazil’s flagship “Tropical Forest Forever Facility” (TFFF). However, so far it has not provided any funding for the facility.
When the government announced a new climate finance pledge for 2026 onwards, it stressed that nature would still be a “focus” and said it would also generate billions in “climate and nature positive investments”. Nevertheless, it dropped the “ring-fenced” amounts for nature and forests that had appeared in its previous pledge.
The UK, alongside other developed countries, has pledged to provide biodiversity finance to developing countries, under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) – a non-binding global pact to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.
Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee of MPs, says “sub-pledges” for nature and forests are a “cost-effective and impactful” way to ensure this finance is provided, alongside climate finance. She tells Carbon Brief that she was “concerned” about the move away from this approach:
“When the minister recently appeared before the international development committee, I was concerned to hear her characterise this shift as a ‘gamble’.”
A government spokesperson tells Carbon Brief:
“We remain committed to providing finance for forests, including in the Congo basin, as a core element of our overall climate funding.”
A shorter version of this article was first published in Cropped, Carbon Brief’s fortnightly newsletter that provides a digest of food, land and nature news, on 15 July 2026. Subscribe for free.
The post UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo
Climate Change
Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Global drought and heat
DRY THEN WET: A recent heatwave and months of low rainfall has led to a prolonged drought for Uganda, resulting in at least 16 deaths from hunger and significant crop losses, reported BBC News. Bastille Post Global suggested that “a developing El Niño later this year could bring heavier rainfall to parts of the region, raising the risk of flooding in areas now struggling with drought”.
FUNDING FOOD: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have appealed for $200m in funding to help African nations deal with the impact of El Niño, stated Deutsche Welle. This would target 22 high-risk countries with measures, including “cash transfers, climate-resilient seeds, livestock protection and flood control.” The Guardian explained how El Niño could still “cause a severe shock to global food prices lasting into 2028”.
FARMING FEARS: Extreme weather has devastated agriculture across the world. India saw its driest June in 12 years, reported BBC News, and France has had a “double-digit production” decline, according to Le Monde. The Financial Times reported that farmers in the UK are mitigating the impacts of extreme heat by eliminating “chemicals and intensive ploughing to improve soil quality so it retains water”.
EURO FIRES: Wildfires have spread across Europe, with Spain reporting at least 12 deaths so far, according to the Guardian, and France experiencing road closures, said Reuters. Wildfire Today reported that the most extreme conditions are “across France, Spain and northern Portugal, the Alpine arc extending into northern Italy, the south of the UK and south-east Ireland”. CNN explained how “the climate crisis is driving hotter, drier weather, which is setting the stage for fiercer fire seasons”.
Endangering species
REDEFINING HARM: The Trump administration “reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species…opening up sensitive habitats…to drilling, mining, farming and real estate development”, reported CNN. According to the story, the change “redefines what constitutes ‘harm’” to endangered species, which historically prohibited habitat modification or degradation. Agence France-Presse reported that US environmental groups sued the Trump government over the move, arguing that it had violated “common sense, biological science and federal law”.
OPEN SEASON: Reuters reported that the change “limits the reach of the 50-year-old Endangered Species Act” (ESA), which is a “key regulatory consideration” when granting permits for “oil and gas, mining, electric transmission and other operations on federal lands and water”. Legal scholars told the New York Times the US government “was acting without conducting scientific research into the impact” of the change, while the National Mining Association “applauded the announcement”.
News and views
- INTERNATIONAL WATERS: After a significant delay, the UK ratified the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ), also known as the High Seas Treaty. Oceanographic detailed how this will allow for “marine protected areas across international waters for the first time”, but also stressed that the “hard part” starts now.
- SCOPE-FREE: The world’s largest meat supplier JBS “scrapped a key climate goal” in its net-zero plan that accounts for its suppliers’ emissions, “which make up the vast bulk of the company’s environmental footprint”, reported the Financial Times. The company told the paper it was difficult to control these “indirect” emissions.
- DEEP TROUBLE: Pacific gray whales are facing a “catastrophic die-off” as sea-ice loss threatens their food sources, said the Guardian. Separately, conservationists warned that more than half of all molluscs that “cluster around underwater vents” could face extinction from deep-sea mining, reported Reuters.
- ETHANOL PUSHBACK: India’s new rules to promote 100% ethanol fuel and make ethanol-blended fuel mandatory at pumps “triggered a political row”, reported the Times of India. While the Indian government defended the push to automobile owners, a Hindu editorial and an Indian Express comment warned against incentivising fuels made from “water-intensive” sugarcane and rice.
- AMAZON ACTION: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell to its lowest level in a decade, but president Lula’s plans to “end illegal deforestation by 2030” could be hampered if he is not re-elected, reported Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, Colombia’s outgoing environment minister warned of greater environmental and climate risk under the incoming government, said the Associated Press.
- WAR WORRIES: The International Energy Agency (IEA) warned of the impact of the Iran war on Africa’s clean cooking efforts as disruption in the strait of Hormuz has stunted supplies and increased prices of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), explained Climate Home News.
Spotlight
UK ‘discards’ Congo rainforest funding
Amid worldwide cuts to aid spending, Carbon Brief explores how the UK is backtracking on funding for the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people.
Together, these initiatives would have made up half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support forest conservation in the Congo basin.
When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.
Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.
COP pledge
At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030.
The UK also made various regional funding pledges, including £200m for the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.
All of these rainforests face major forest loss. The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink, but its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.
This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.
Forest cuts
Following successive aid cuts introduced by both Conservative and Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.
The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.
Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s aid cuts. Its £90m budget has been “quietly reduced by 79% to £18.8m”, according to the Times.
This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to aid cuts. The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – worth at least £12.3m – has closed five years early.
Official documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region. One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”.
Documents also show the difficulties operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.
‘Breaking promises’
Damian Fleming, a senior forests director at WWF International told Carbon Brief:
“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”
In a parliamentary response, Chapman said that the UK had spent £39.8m towards its £200m Congo target, as of 2024.
Despite being described as the UK’s contribution to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029. Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution was relatively small.
Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, told Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:
“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world.”
The Labour government says it has met its overarching “climate finance” goals and still intends to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest.
However, civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.
Watch, read, listen
TOXIC TROUBLES: DeSmog unpacked a new report that said Northern Ireland is being turned into a “toxic” pig and poultry farming “sacrifice zone” to satiate the UK’s meat appetite.
NEED TO NOAA: Laid-off scientists from the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched Climate.Us – an independent, public-backed version of the climate information website shut down by Trump last year.
DRY FRUIT: A Dialogue Earth long read looked at how climate change is impacting apricot harvests in the “stark, high-altitude desert” region of Ladakh, India.
READING ALOUD: A London Review of Books podcast discussed Robin Wall Kimmerer’s influential book “Braiding Sweetgrass”, weighing its compelling themes and where it veers into “scientific overreach”.
New science
- Climate change could cause Indigenous peoples in the Amazon to lose 28-34% of their plant species and 18-23% of their associated services | Nature
- Biodiversity in forests can act as a “buffer” against compound extreme weather events | Nature Communications
- Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia’s palm oil sector have had “no additional impacts” on reducing forest loss | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
In the diary
- 7-15 July: High-level political forum on sustainable development | New York City
- 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council | Kingston, Jamaica
- 16 July: International Energy Agency critical minerals outlook 2026, online
- 27 July-1 August: Scientific and technical subsidiary body meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity | Nairobi, Kenya
This edition of Cropped was written by Jess Milligan, Josh Gabbatiss and Aruna Chandrasekhar. Cropped is edited by Dr Giuliana Viglione. This edition was edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org.
The post Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid
Climate Change
Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
Climate and environment campaigners have urged the Kenyan government to halt plans for a proposed 700,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery backed by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, warning the project threatens one of East Africa’s most ecologically sensitive coastlines.
The refinery, which is planned to be situated in Lamu County on Kenya’s northern coast, will be East Africa’s largest refining project and is expected to take up to three years to build. Once finished, it would supply refined petroleum products to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, among others, helping to reduce the region’s dependence on imported fuels.
Campaigners are questioning the viability of such a large refinery at a time when renewable energy and electric transportation are expanding rapidly.
Mohamed Adow, director of a Kenya-based climate and energy think-tank Power Shift Africa, said the decision to give Dangote the green light for the refinery is “an extraordinary act of environmental recklessness and economic short-sightedness”, arguing it would tie Kenya to “yesterday’s energy system” just as global demand for petroleum products faces increasing uncertainty.
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Campaigners argue the refinery risks coming online just as transport – the largest market for petrol and diesel – is beginning to electrify across the continent.
Kenya launched a National Electric Mobility Policy earlier this year to speed up the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) and reduce the country’s roughly $5 billion annual fuel import bill. Ethiopia has already banned imports of non-electric vehicles and now has more than 100,000 EVs on its roads, while Rwanda is expanding its electric mobility programme with plans to convert its fleet of around 100,000 motorcycles to electric.
Adow said the project risks billions of dollars in investment in infrastructure that could become obsolete as the world moves away from oil.
“Building a refinery today assumes decades of robust demand for fuels that much of the world is actively trying to phase out,” he said in a statement.
Ecological concerns
Lamu – the proposed site for the project – is home to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Lamu Old Town and an archipelago containing extensive mangrove forests, coral reefs and seagrass beds that support fisheries, tourism and coastal livelihoods.
Locating the refinery in Lamu would “place one of Africa’s largest fossil fuel developments in one of the continent’s most ecologically sensitive and culturally significant coastal regions,” Power Shift Africa said.
Major emitting countries knew of climate risks decades earlier than claimed
Sherelee Odayar, oil and gas campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, warned that a refinery of this scale could increase the risk of habitat destruction, marine pollution, oil spills and air pollution in one of East Africa’s most fragile coastal ecosystems.
She said the risks stem not only from the refinery itself – including storage tanks, pipelines and fuel handling facilities – but also from the large volumes of crude oil that would need to be shipped into Lamu and refined products exported by sea. Increased tanker traffic and fuel transfers, she said, would raise the likelihood of accidents in ecologically sensitive coastal waters.
Odayar added that Lamu’s low-lying, flood-prone coastline could compound those risks by damaging infrastructure and carrying contaminants from storage facilities into nearby fishing grounds and marine ecosystems.
“Lamu’s mangroves, coral reefs and seagrass beds are not expendable; they support fisheries, livelihoods and coastal protection,” Odayar added.
She said Kenyan authorities should suspend any approvals until an independent environmental and social impact assessment is completed, with genuine public participation and transparent scrutiny of the long-term economic, health and ecological risks.
“Any review must assess cumulative impacts on Lamu’s mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds and fishing livelihoods, alongside the wider economic risk of locking Kenya into costly fossil fuel infrastructure as the global energy transition accelerates”.
Dangote Group declined to answer questions from Climate Home News when contacted by phone.
Technological change threaten project’s future
The Kenya refinery would replicate Dangote’s 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Lagos, currently Africa’s largest, which has plans to more than double capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2028.
Adow of Power Shift Africa said projects like this represent “a breathtaking failure to recognise where the global economy is heading”, pointing out that the East African refinery risks arriving when Africa is experiencing an unprecedented clean energy boom.
Referencing Africa’s solar boom, global electric vehicles uptake and the International Energy Agency’s projection that global oil demand is set to enter a decline later this decade, the think-tank founder said African governments risk anchoring the continent’s future to an industry facing mounting economic uncertainty.
Loss and damage fund delays first project approvals as needs dwarf resources
The organisation said the project faces a bigger threat aside from environmental opposition and that is technological change. “The danger is not simply that the refinery will pollute, it is that it will become obsolete long before it has paid for itself,” he added.
Kenyan President William Ruto said the project will create about 60,000 jobs for Kenyans and supply refined fuel to eight East and Central African countries.
GreenPeace Africa’s Odayar said the promise of ‘thousands of jobs’ cannot be used to hide the true cost of the investment which is that large fossil fuel projects often create temporary jobs while undermining existing livelihoods in fishing, tourism and small-scale local economies.
“The enormous capital required for a project of this scale could instead help accelerate Kenya’s renewable energy future through solar, wind, geothermal, storage and better energy access,” she added.
The post Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
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