Large-scale banana plantations in Latin America and the Caribbean could face a “dramatic” reduction in “suitable” growing area by 2080 due to rising temperatures, a new study warns.
Banana production is a labour-intensive process and the $25bn banana industry provides employment for more than one million workers globally. Latin America and the Caribbean are responsible for 80% of the world’s banana exports.
The study, published in Nature Food, investigates how climate change could impact export-driven banana plantations in the world’s biggest banana-exporting region.
It finds rising temperatures will drive a 60% reduction in the land area currently suitable for large-scale banana plantations in the region by 2080.
As the suitable area for banana plantations shrinks, farmers will need to adapt through implementing irrigation, implementing drought-resilient varieties of banana and shifting their growing regions, the study says.
An expert not involved in the study warns that “the current intensive banana industrial model perpetuates certain injustices towards farmers”. She tells Carbon Brief that the research “provides valuable insight about the constraints [and] risks”, adding that it “should be a call for adaptation – and also transforming the industry for the better”.
The banana industry
Bananas are one of the most commonly exported and consumed fruits in the world and a key source of nutrition for more than four million people.
The banana sector is a growing industry, currently worth around $25bn globally. The map below shows the mass of bananas produced in 2022, in tonnes, per country.
While Asia is the world’s largest banana producer, Latin America and the Caribbean are responsible for around 80% of the world’s banana exports – particularly from Ecuador and Costa Rica.
More than 1,000 different varieties of bananas are grown around the world, with the sweet yellow Cavendish banana making up around half of global banana production. This cultivar is typically grown in large-scale monoculture plantations in Latin America, using extensive irrigation and drainage facilities. Large export plantations can be up to 5,000 hectares in size (50 square kilometres).
Mapping plantations
To assess the distribution of banana plantations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, the authors developed a high-resolution map of banana production for the year 2019. They used data from NASA’s Sentinel-1 SAR and an algorithm to identify banana plantations in the satellite images.
The authors only include banana plantations larger than 0.5 hectares in area in their map, because the study focuses on bananas grown at a large scale for export. They also do not include banana production by smallholder farmers, as their crops are often in sparser, mixed-cropping systems that are harder to identify in images.
The authors identified and validated more than 360,000 plantations in total.
They authors combined their banana plantation distribution map with a wide range of climatic and socioeconomic data, including temperature, rainfall, elevation, soil acidity, latitude, irrigation infrastructure, human population density and distance to the nearest port.
To identify the conditions best suited for banana plantations, the authors identified ranges for each of these variables where 90% of mapped banana plantations were observed.
The results show that banana plantations are typically found at lower elevations and in more acidic soils than other croplands in the region. They are also found in areas with higher population density and close to ports. Three-quarters of the mapped banana plantations in this study are within 86km of the nearest port, the study finds.
Dr Varun Varma, the lead author of the study, is an ecosystems services modeller at Rothamsted Research in the UK. He tells Carbon Brief that large-scale banana farming “relies heavily on access to labour”. He adds:
“In these intensive export-focussed farms, bananas – a perishable product – are continuously harvested, processed, packaged and made ready for transport by sea in large shipping containers. Being closer to a port would be a logistical advantage.”
The authors also find that irrigation plays an important role in determining where bananas can grow.
Prof Matti Kummu from Aalto University’s water and development research group, who was not involved in the study, praises the authors for considering so many variables. He tells Carbon Brief that this is an “important and impressive study”, adding that its approach could be used for other similar crops.
Rising temperatures
Next, the authors modelled temperature and rainfall over Latin America and the Caribbean, using 12 climate models from the sixth coupled model intercomparison project (CMIP6) under the “middle-of-the-road” SSP2-4.5 warming scenario.
By combining simulations of temperature and rainfall across Latin America and the Caribbean with data on elevation and soil acidity, the authors find that around 3,340,000 square kilometres (km2) of land is currently “suitable” for banana plantations.
Central America, coastal Brazil and the northern and southern borders of the Amazon basin are the most suitable, they say.
Factoring in socioeconomic conditions, such as population density and distance to a port, shrinks the “suitable area” to 990,000km2. This “brings into focus how important socioeconomic factors are, and will be, in adapting to climate change”, Varma says.
The authors also investigated how climate change may impact the “suitable” area for banana plantations over the 21st century. The maps below show how changes in temperature (left) and rainfall (right) are expected to impact the suitability of land for banana plantations under the projected climate in 2061-80.
The colours indicate regions suitable for producing bananas for export in both the recent past (1970 to 2000) and future (blue), those suitable in the recent past, but not in future (red) and those that were not suitable in the recent past, but will be in the future (green).
The authors find that under the SSP2-4.5 scenario, “increasing temperature is the sole climatic driver of suitable area loss”. In contrast, changes in annual rainfall will not noticeably change the distribution of land suitable for banana plantations – partly due to the presence of irrigation, the authors say.
Overall, they find that changes in climate will shrink the area of land suitable for banana plantations by 60%, if no changes are made to irrigation infrastructure or other socioeconomic factors.
Dr Monica Ortiz is an environmental scientist and assistant professor at the University of Concepción in Chile, who was not involved in the study. She tells Carbon Brief:
“60% is no small figure and this means that banana-growers need to do climate-resilient planning to maintain their livelihood and business model.”
The paper finds that implementing more irrigation infrastructure where needed could expand the future suitable area. Adding this adaptation measure would mean that future climate change would only shrink the current area of land suitable for growing bananas by 41%.
The authors find that due to warming, the suitable area for banana production will decline by 2080 in most exporting regions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The study says that Colombia and Venezuela will become “almost entirely suboptimal for export production”.
The authors then used a series of equations developed in paper they published in 2019 to calculate banana yields from data on temperature and rainfall.
Yield in current banana producing areas will decline for most countries, the study says. It finds that “Ecuador and Brazil are the only major producers expected to see yield increases in current banana production areas due to climate change”.
Adaptation
As the area suitable for banana production shrinks, farmers will need to adapt to the changing conditions. These measures include maintaining irrigation supplies and breeding “drought-tolerant banana varieties”, the authors say.
However, they note that farmers in the global south “may be less able to adapt agricultural practices to cope with changing climate than their counterparts in wealthier countries”.
Prof Kenneth Feeley from the University of Miami was not involved in the study, but has conducted separate research on the impacts of climate change on banana growing regions.
He tells Carbon Brief that as a result of widespread irrigation, many growers have turned large areas of “pristine desert habitat” with low rainfall into banana plantations. This is a “major transformation of the ecosystem”, which may not be “good for the environment”, he warns.
Feeley adds that Cavendish bananas are also facing “attacks” from the fungus Fusarium, which are becoming a “major problem for banana production”. The fungus is spread through raindrops bouncing between plants, but the use of drip irrigation can “limit” the spread of the fungus, he explains.
Additionally, lead author Varma notes that rising temperatures are creating “increasingly inhospitable working conditions in this labour-intensive sector”.
Ortiz tells Carbon Brief that “the current intensive banana industrial model perpetuates certain injustices towards farmers”. She explains that farmers “work hard and are paid little”, adding that women are typically assigned the tasks that are paid the least.
She adds:
“The time is indeed ripe for change. I think the study provides valuable insight about the constraints, risks and should be a call for adaptation – and also transforming the industry for the better.”
The post Major banana exporters could face ‘60% drop’ in growing area due to warming appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Major banana exporters could face ‘60% drop’ in growing area due to warming
Climate Change
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Researchers are testing whether cross-breeding elkhorn corals from Florida and Honduras can help restore lost genetic diversity and improve the threatened species’ ability to withstand warmer waters.
Nearly three dozen young lab-grown elkhorn corals were outplanted onto reefs in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park this spring, including a group of “Flondurans,” marking the first time this experimental cross-breed of Florida and Honduran elkhorn corals was introduced to the remote park about 70 miles from Key West.
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Climate Change
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy” temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.
‘BRUTAL REMINDER’: In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.
Around the world
- CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
- DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
- SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
- NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
- EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.
Four million
The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.
Latest climate research
- Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
- LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
- Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.
Spotlight
How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.
Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.
In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.
Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.
Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.
However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.
“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.
A nascent industry
Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.
The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.
Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.
However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.
“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.
The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.
Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.
Powering rural communities
Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.
According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.
A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.
With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.
Watch, read, listen
MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.
ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.
Coming up
- 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
- 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
- Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
- Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)
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 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.
At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.
Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.
Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”
As the Mission 300 initiative advances, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).
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In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, GEAPP’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.
Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. So we want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country.
Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed.
(Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)
The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.
Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.
We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.
The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.
Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?
A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that.
So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities.
Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?
A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses.
Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.
Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?
A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.
So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that.
Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?
A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.
Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies
When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable.
To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.
Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.
The post Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
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