Published

1 year ago

February 12, 2025

Alice Rush

There is a “mismatch” between the importance of peatlands and their current level of protection, a new study warns.

The paper, published in Conservation Letters, combines maps showing global peatlands, protected areas and human impact in the year 2020, to provide a snapshot of the current level of global peatland protection.

The authors stress that peatlands are crucial carbon stores, holding more carbon than all the world’s forest biomass combined.

However, they find that only 17% of peatlands fall within protected areas – a “substantially lower” proportion than other “high-value ecosystems”, such as mangroves, saltmarshes and tropical forests, they say.

The study finds that 22% of global peatlands are under “high human pressure”, with regions in Europe and the east coast of the US under particular threat.

Furthermore, one-third of the global peatlands in protected areas and Indigenous people’s lands still experience “medium to high human pressure”, the paper finds.

‘Disproportionate’ carbon stores

Despite peatlands’ relatively small footprint – they cover only 3% of the Earth’s land surface – the ecosystems store a “disproportionate amount” of carbon.

Research has shown that there is more carbon contained in peatlands than in all of the world’s forests combined – around 600bn tonnes (GtC).

They also provide myriad other “ecosystem services”, such as regulating air temperatures, storing water and creating habitat for many species.

Peatlands are wetland ecosystems that form slowly over time. When plant matter in one of these habitats dies, the high water content of the soils prevents it from decomposing completely.

As a result, plant matter accumulates, building up as carbon-rich peat over time. Peatlands are found on every inhabited continent, primarily in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere and in the tropics.

The degradation and destruction of peatlands is a significant carbon source, contributing 2-4% of human-driven greenhouse gas emissions each year. Peatlands are often drained or degraded during use for agriculture, and about 16% of peatlands globally have been drained to date. In some places, peat is intentionally removed to be used as fuel or fertile soil.

Prof Chris Evans, a biogeochemist at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:

“Peatland degradation is second only to tropical deforestation as a source of greenhouse gas emissions from land use, yet peatlands are often overlooked in conservation and climate policy.”

At the same time, climate change itself is putting peatlands at risk.

Increased temperatures are causing permafrost thaw, allowing the once-frozen peat to decompose and release CO2 into the atmosphere. Warmer temperatures also increase microbial activity, leading to faster rates of decomposition, while warmer, drier peatlands are more susceptible to fires.

Losing peatlands has “cascading effects on local water supplies, agriculture and fisheries, disproportionately affecting Indigenous and rural communities”, says Dr Michelle Kalamandeen, a geospatial scientist at McMaster University in Ontario, who was not involved in the study.

Protected areas

This study centres on an existing map of global peatland. The map divides the world into grid cells and, using a machine learning model trained on data collected on the ground, estimates the proportion of each cell that contains peatland at least 30cm deep.

The map identifies around 4m square kilometres (km2) of peatland globally. More than 60% of this is “boreal peatland” – found in the high-latitude northern regions, such as Canada, Russia and Scandinavia – and the rest is found in temperature or tropical regions, according to the study.

The authors then cross-reference the map with a database of global protected areas. The database encompasses both “strict” protection areas, such as national parks and nature reserves, as well as less strict land-management regimes where some human activity is permitted.

The database also shows Ramsar sites, a subset of protected areas designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar convention – also known as the “Convention on Wetlands”. (The convention seeks to promote “the wise use of all wetlands” in participating countries and encourage international co-operation with other countries.)

The authors find that only 17% of peatlands are located in protected areas. This is “substantially lower than other high-value ecosystems such as mangroves, 42% of which are within official protected areas globally, saltmarshes (50%) and tropical forests (38%)”, the study says.

Dr Kemen Austin is the director of science at the Wildlife Conservation Society‘s forests and climate change programme, and lead author of the new study. In a press release, she says that the study “reveals that these vital ecosystems don’t have anywhere near the level of protection they need”.

The authors also present case studies of individual countries. For example, they find that nearly 90% of peatland in the Republic of the Congo is protected. However, they warn that “most of this falls within a designated Ramsar site that has not yet been backed-up by strong government commitments”.

The study identifies a large body of literature showing that “Indigenous land rights and community-based management result in positive environmental outcomes, such as reduced deforestation and forest degradation”. The authors analyse data on Indigenous stewardship and find that one-quarter of global peatlands sit on land owned by Indigenous groups.

Human impact

The authors assess human pressures on peatland using the Human Impact Index (HII). This metric quantifies the “cumulative anthropogenic pressures” on a region, using a scale of 0-50 that incorporates factors such as accessibility, land use and population density.

The map below shows human pressure in areas that contain more than 5% peatland by area. Light pink shows “low-pressure” regions, medium pink shows “medium-pressure” regions and dark pink shows “high-pressure” regions.

The top map shows the whole planet, while the three inset maps below highlight chosen case studies in Peru, the Congo Basin and Indonesia.

Map of human pressure in global peatlands — Human pressure in areas which contain more than 5% peatlands, where light pink shows “low-pressure” values, mid pink shows “medium-pressure” and dark pink shows “high-pressure” regions. Source: Austin et al. (2025).

The authors find that globally, 22% percent of peatlands are under high human pressure, 12% are under medium pressure and 61% are under low pressure. The remaining 5% are in areas without reported HII data.

The authors find that almost half of peatlands in temperate regions are facing high human pressure, adding that Europe and the US east coast are under particular stress. At the other end of the scale, they estimate that human pressure is low in Brazil, the lowlands of Peru, the Republic of the Congo and eastern Indonesia.

The study says that, as expected, human pressure is “somewhat higher” in unprotected peatlands than protected peatlands. However, it adds:

“Nearly one-third of global peatlands, and nearly half of temperate and tropical peatlands in protected areas and Indigenous people’s lands, still experience medium-to-high human pressure.”

The chart below shows the area of peatland in protected and unprotected boreal, temperate and tropical regions that is facing high (black) medium (grey) and low (light grey) human pressure.

Peatlands in protection chart — Peatlands in protected and unprotected boreal, temperate and tropical regions that are facing high (black) medium (grey) and low (light grey) human pressure. Source: Austin et al. (2025).

Kalamandeen tells Carbon Brief that the study “underscores a fundamental disconnect between conservation priorities and real-world climate needs”.

However, she notes that there are some limitations to the methodology. For example, she tells Carbon Brief that the underlying peatland map “performs well in data-rich regions”, but says that “its accuracy drops where ground-truth data is lacking, notably in Africa, South America and boreal regions”.

Furthermore, the map only recognises peatlands deeper than 30cm, meaning that “shallower, but still ecologically valuable peatlands, are ignored”.

She continues:

“This study is an excellent starting point, but if we are serious about peatland protection, countries need to invest in better mapping and monitoring technologies such as using Earth observations and improving ground surveys to help refine conservation strategies.”

Peatland conservation

The new research “quantifies an issue that was previously known: that peatlands are under-protected when compared to other critical ecosystem types”, Dr Julie Loisel, a palaeoecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, tells Carbon Brief. Loisel, who was not involved in the study, adds:

“In the face of rapid environmental change, ensuring that peatlands can ‘do their job’ of storing CO2 into their soils for the next few thousands of years is very important and any policy or land management effort that is enabling this simple goal should be put forth and prioritised.”

The study notes that several international policy frameworks, such as the global stocktake process under the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, can be applied to further the protection of wetlands.

For example, the authors note that Peru’s nationally determined contribution includes strategies for improving peatland management, such as establishing new conservation areas and recognising Indigenous peoples’ knowledge about peatlands.

However, Peru is one of the few countries with plans for the preservation of peatlands, alongside the UK, according to the study. Austin adds:

“Based on the nationally determined contributions countries have submitted to date, the continued disturbance and damage to global peatlands is getting very little attention as a significant and avoidable source of greenhouse gas emissions.”

In addition to protection of intact peatlands, peatland restoration “will be necessary for managing peat fires and meeting climate targets nationally”, the study says. Restoration typically involves altering the wetland’s water flows to “rewet” drained peat. It can also encompass controls on pollution, protection from burning and grazing and regrowing plants.

Lango Bai in Odzala-Kokoua National Park, Republic of the Congo. Credit: Danita Delimont / Alamy Stock Photo

But while restoration can slow the release of CO2 and promote some ecosystem services, it is not an adequate substitute for peatland protection. The study notes:

“Notably, once emitted to the atmosphere, the carbon lost from peatlands cannot be restored on timescales that matter for preventing dangerous climate change.”

Promoting Indigenous peoples’ land rights is one way to support the protection of peatlands, Loisel says. She tells Carbon Brief:

“Conservation efforts do not necessarily imply ‘protection from use’, but are rather meant to ensure their ‘proper use’, or ‘sustainable use’. Indigenous community uses of peatlands have been known to be sustainable.”

Kalamandeen tells Carbon Brief that, while legal protections are “crucial”, their impact “depends on enforcement, management capacity and local engagement”. Meanwhile, she says that “Indigenous and community-managed lands, even without formal protection, often demonstrate strong conservation outcomes”.

Dr Adam Todd Hastie is the leader of the carbon and wetlands group at Charles University, and was not involved in the study. He agrees, calling Indigenous stewardship “often the best and most simple solution” to protecting peatlands.

However, he adds that global-north countries “need to be thoughtful in our calls for less economically developed countries to protect their peatlands”. He tells Carbon Brief:

“If we want less economically developed countries to take a different path of protecting their peatlands – and peat carbon – and to forgo short-term economic benefits, such as revenue from plantations or mining, we (especially Europe and North America) must contribute in real terms to developing alternative sustainable solutions, both environmentally and economically.”

The post Just 17% of world’s peatlands are protected, new study warns appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Just 17% of world’s peatlands are protected, new study warns

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.

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

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”.

Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “Cropped” email newsletter. A fortnightly digest of food, land and nature news and views. Sent to your inbox every other Wednesday.

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