A few years ago, scientists studying satellite data discovered that there was an “unexpectedly large” source of CO2 emissions coming from tropical Africa, particularly over parts of Ethiopia and South Sudan.
This mysterious emissions source was so large, in fact, that if this region were a country, it would have been the second-largest emitter in the world, after China, in 2016 – releasing a total of 6bn tonnes of CO2, according to the study.
Now, newer research calls these results into question. Rather than using satellite data alone, it uses data taken by scientific aircraft travelling up and down the Atlantic Ocean off the western coast of tropical Africa.
This study finds that tropical Africa’s land acts as a net emitter of CO2 in the dry season, when practices such as biomass burning reach a peak, and a net sink in the wet season, when plants grow faster and take in more CO2 from the atmosphere. Thus, it concludes, tropical Africa’s land can be considered “neutral” in terms of its CO2 emissions.
However, the scientists that first reported the mysterious emissions tell Carbon Brief that they disagree with the new conclusions – and have a plan to explain where such large emissions could be coming from.
With neither study using data taken on the ground in Africa nor including African scientists, authors on both papers acknowledge the need for ground-based CO2 measurements to help solve the mystery.
Differing data
Africa is home to one-third of the world’s tropical rainforests, 3% of the world’s peatlands – including the world’s most extensive tropical peatland – and the majority of the world’s tropical savannahs. All of these ecosystems store large amounts of carbon.
Though the African tropics are a globally important carbon store, there have been few studies looking into the extent of year-to-year CO2 emissions from the land in this region.
Back in 2019, a study in Nature Communications sought to understand the extent of annual CO2 emissions from tropical Africa using data from Japan’s greenhouse gases observing satellite (GOSAT) and NASA’s orbiting carbon observatory (OCO-2).
The results showed that net CO2 emissions from Africa’s tropical land – the difference between the amount of CO2 absorbed and emitted by the land – totalled 5.4bn tonnes and 6bn tonnes in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
The maps below, taken from the paper’s supplementary information, show the extent of CO2 emissions from tropical land in 2015 and 2016. On the map, dark blue shows regions that acted as carbon sinks while yellow shows regions that were net emitters of CO2.
On the maps, a large yellow spot covers parts of Ethiopia and South Sudan – the source of the “unexpectedly large” emissions from Africa’s tropical land, the study’s lead author Prof Paul Palmer, a researcher of geosciences from the University of Edinburgh, told Carbon Brief back in 2019.
The newer study, published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, uses a different approach to study annual CO2 emissions from Africa’s tropical land.
This team of researchers used the NASA DC-8 Airborne Research Platform, an aeroplane that has been fitted out with equipment to conduct scientific research.
For four days across the northern hemisphere’s four seasons spread over the years 2016-18, the researchers flew south to north over the Atlantic Ocean to the west of tropical Africa, collecting CO2 measurements from the ocean surface to around 35,000 feet.
This approach allowed researchers to study the exhaust plume blown over to the Atlantic Ocean from tropical Africa. This plume contains particles such as dust, soot and wildfire smoke – along with gases such as CO2 .
The researchers then compared their data to estimates from models using the satellite data from the 2019 study.
The aircraft data found that Africa’s tropical land released far smaller emissions in the dry season, when compared to the estimates derived from satellite data. This led the researchers to conclude that the satellite data used in the 2019 study could have overestimated CO2 emissions from tropical Africa.
Instead of Africa’s tropical land being a large net source of CO2, the newer study concluded that it could actually be “neutral” in terms of annual CO2 emissions, says lead author Dr Benjamin Gaubert, a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Our findings suggest northern tropical Africa is a carbon source in the dry season and a sink in the wet season, with an annual exchange of around zero. Much of the seasonal biomass burning is inherently balanced over the year by photosynthetic uptake from grasses and shrubs.”
Conclusions questioned
Palmer, the author of the 2019 study, is not convinced by the new findings.
He argues that, because the aircraft data was collected over the Atlantic Ocean, to the west of tropical Africa, it is likely to be much more sensitive to CO2 plumes travelling over from western tropical Africa than from eastern tropical Africa – where his study found that most of the emissions were actually occurring. He tells Carbon Brief:
“I suspect – though I’m not 100% sure – that the team have shown with their analysis that west Africa, which is dominated by biomass burning, is close to neutral [for CO2 emissions], which would be less of a surprise.”
He added that while the Atlantic Ocean does receive plumes of CO2 blowing over from Africa’s tropical land, it is also likely to be affected by other sources of emissions from other parts of the world, muddying the ability to pinpoint emissions to specific regions.
Responding to these points, Dr Britton Stephens, co-author of the newer study and a senior scientist in the Earth Observing Laboratory at NCAR, tells Carbon Brief:
“It is true that the aircraft have a relatively broad region of influence that may not correspond precisely to the strongest postulated emission source of the [2019] study.”
He adds, however, that the emissions source from eastern tropical Africa identified in the 2019 study has not been exactly replicated by other research efforts using satellites. Instead, these studies typically produce “similar annual region-wide sources with very different within-region spatial patterns”.
Prof Emanuel Gloor is a researcher of CO2 emissions from tropical land at the University of Leeds, who was not an author on either paper. (He did act as a reviewer for the newer study.)
He tells Carbon Brief that the findings of the newer study – that Africa’s tropical land is neutral in CO2 terms – is much more in keeping with scientists’ understanding of the global carbon cycle:
“Essentially the result they find is exactly what you would expect.”
Mysterious emissions
As Gloor sees it, there were several issues with the 2019 study.
One of the major ones, he says, was that the scientists concluded that there could be a very large source of CO2 emissions coming from parts of Ethiopia and South Sudan – an area not only with very little infrastructure and commercial activity, but also very little forest cover. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Where would these emissions be coming from if they were really coming from Ethiopia? That’s not where you have massive amounts of biomass.”
Although the region is not covered by large areas of forest, it is home to some very carbon-rich soils, the 2019 study noted.
At the time, the scientists suggested that land degradation and deforestation could have potentially caused large amounts of carbon to be released from soils, with Palmer telling Carbon Brief in 2019:
“Substantial changes in land use over a region with high levels of soil organic carbon are conditions that could potentially release carbon from the soils.”
The detected CO2 spike could have also been influenced by the 2015-16 El Niño event, which was one of the strongest on record, another scientist not involved in the research told Carbon Brief at the time. (Warming can cause soils to release CO2 at a higher rate.)
Speaking to Carbon Brief in 2024, Palmer says that his research team do now have a firmer idea of where such a large amount of CO2 emissions could be coming from in the region comprising Ethiopia and South Sudan.
However, he declined to give more details on what this source was, arguing that it was still an area of active research and saying that he hoped to soon publish a research paper on his findings.
Data drought
Neither study uses data taken on the ground in Africa nor includes African scientists.
This is amid a backdrop of unequal participation for African scientists and institutions in global climate research.
Previous analysis by Carbon Brief found that just 1% of the most highly-cited climate research papers from the years 2017-21 featured African scientists.
And further Carbon Brief analysis showed that Africa has the lowest density of weather stations of any continent – hamstringing the ability to study how climate change could be affecting factors relevant to carbon loss from ecosystems, such as air and soil temperatures, soil moisture, rainfall and cloud cover.
Africa is the world’s second-largest continent and encompasses 20% of Earth’s land surface, meaning a lack of understanding of how its ecosystems are changing could hold consequences for scientists’ understanding of the global carbon cycle.
Carbon Brief asked the authors of both of the papers whether it was a weakness to not include data taken on the ground in Africa.
Stephens agrees that having “ground-based CO2 measurements in the region would be a big help”.
He adds, however, that to fully capture how emissions disperse in the atmosphere, these measurements should be complemented with a “systematic programme of airborne observations” – something his colleagues “recently started pursuing”.
Palmer also agrees that having on-the-ground measurements would have been preferable.
He adds that his team did have plans to travel to the region where they detected the large source of CO2 emissions via satellite data in order to take on-the-ground measurements. However, ongoing conflicts in South Sudan and Ethiopia made this impossible, he says.
The post Mystery over ‘unexpectedly large’ emissions from Africa’s tropical ecosystems appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Mystery over ‘unexpectedly large’ emissions from Africa’s tropical ecosystems
Andreas Sieber is head of political strategy at 350.0g. Cat Abreu is director of the International Climate Politics Hub.
From the US abduction of Venezuela’s president at the start of this year to the Iran war which rumbles on, disruption is the new normal for global geopolitics, more often than not linked to conflict over supplies of oil and gas.
Events so far in 2026 – driven largely by the desire of the Trump administration to grab control of fossil fuels around the world – show that the climate community’s approach to energy diplomacy will have to evolve if we are to operate effectively and push for climate action in such a volatile landscape.
Today’s climate and energy governance must be able to cope with trade wars, genocide, fascism, spiralling inequality and challenges to multilateralism. The increasingly dominant paradigms of economic competitiveness, energy security and green industrialisation can help drive the transition but they also challenge our collective mission to deliver an equitable green shift.
US-China rivalry dominates
Longer-term geopolitical trends that are seeing power move from West to East and North to South have fuelled a US–China “superpower rivalry”, which is pulling the global economy apart and reining in trade.
A key question will be how the fracture “lines” are drawn: by the US and China, or also by other countries or blocs? Many governments will try to remain “in the middle” between the two giants to capture economic gains from both sides. Yet despite the language of “strategic autonomy”, Washington and Beijing may be in a position to force choices via market access, export controls and sanctions.
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At first glance, this may not seem particularly relevant for climate and energy politics. But Huawei’s exclusion from 5G operations across the political West and India following the so-called Clean Network Campaign by the US government serves as a warning of what could happen to climate green tech.
And the recent debate to cut out Chinese inverters from European markets follows the same pattern – US security forces perceive a risk and start encouraging their allies to drop Chinese technology.
The new drivers: competition and security
Despite this fracturing geopolitical and economic context, energy transition is still happening. To ensure it is effective and equitable, we need to understand what is driving it and how to adapt climate politics so that it better responds to these drivers.
Put simply, China is supplying the world with low-cost renewables (roughly 60% of critical wind and 80% of solar components), batteries, EVs and other key elements. Other countries now also want their piece of the green tech pie and are forming industrial policies to get it.
It is this new competitiveness-driven logic that will shape the quest for decarbonisation, which has shifted from cooperating around the cost of tackling climate change to rivalry for the benefits of climate action.
Over 90% of new renewables projects are now cheaper than fossil alternatives. Gas-fired power is 3–4 times more expensive than solar and wind. In 2015, most decarbonisation policies were “traditional” emissions-cutting strategies like carbon pricing or net zero dates, whereas green industrial policies now underpin the majority.
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Meanwhile, security has become a central driver of energy politics. We are living through the second major fossil fuel crisis in just four years. Elevated oil and gas prices will impose up to $1 trillion in additional costs on the global economy by the end of the year if disruption continues in the Strait of Hormuz. Fossil fuel supply chains have exposed countries to conflict, coercion and brutal price shocks.
Fossil fuel volatility destabilises whole economies – higher fuel costs drive up food prices, increase political instability, and push millions into poverty and hunger. This incentivises governments to shield themselves from global shocks, especially in countries that are net fossil fuel importers and home to roughly three-quarters of the world’s population.
Yet security fears can cut both ways. The same instability that makes fossil fuel dependence untenable is also sharpening concern over China’s dominance of critical clean technologies and supply chains.
Equity, cooperation and the opportunity for change
Developing countries benefit from the rapid uptake of renewables enabled by low-cost Chinese technologies. But significant fiscal space and public investment is needed for the electricity grids and infrastructure required to fully unleash the energy transition, as well as for green industrialisation to diversify revenue streams.
Despite this, industrial-scale domestic production and ownership often remain out of reach for too many countries that lack the fiscal space to allow green supply chains to flourish and compete with their traditional industrial base. But more just and diversified green tech supply chains could be achieved with concomitant support.
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For the first time in decades, the international order is being substantially reshaped. If within this context, decarbonisation is increasingly driven by green industrial policy, energy security and competitiveness, the climate policy community must better anticipate where these debates are moving. We must speak the same language, and enter the forums where decisions are made, including security, trade and bilateral or trilateral spaces.
We should build on an enlightened self interest recognising that cooperation remains essential and beneficial. This includes using the UN climate process differently: less as an ever-expanding negotiation machine, and more as a space for norm-setting, political alignment and deal-making. In an age of fragmentation, effective cooperation must not only be framed as necessary but thought of as a strategically compelling source of resilience and shared advantage.
The post Energy transition policymaking must evolve to fit an age of rupture appeared first on Climate Home News.
Energy transition policymaking must evolve to fit an age of rupture
Low-income Indian workers, many of them migrants from rural areas hit by climate change, are paying for worsening extreme heat through lost working days and health complications, with the cost equivalent to 2% of national GDP per year, new research shows.
The International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), a London-based think-tank, worked with local organisations to survey around 540 households of informal workers in three Indian cities: Ajmer, Delhi and Agra. Most had migrated from rural areas to find work in industries such as construction, brick-making, garment manufacturing and food packaging.
The survey found them struggling through long working days with little access to shade, cooling, rest or water, as well as few toilets for women. And even when they go home, many live in makeshift shelters or airless cramped rooms with barely a single fan, bringing almost no respite.
Outdoor workers are losing about 24 days of work a year due to heat, costing them nearly a tenth of their annual earnings, while indoor workers sacrifice roughly 15 days. On top of losing income, they are also bearing the cost of health problems like heat exhaustion, psychological stress and kidney damage brought on by repeated dehydration.
If the survey’s findings are extrapolated to a national level, the IIED researchers estimate that the decline in productivity and effects of kidney disease combined add up to lost wages of $78 billion each year.
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Vishram Meena, 45, from Alwar in Rajasthan, has worked on construction sites in Ajmer for more than a decade, toiling for 10 to 12 hours a day carrying materials and mixing cement in the full sun.
In May 2024, on one of the hottest days, he collapsed after feeling dizzy and suffering a nosebleed. His wife and colleagues managed to get him to hospital where he was diagnosed with heat stroke. He has since returned to the same building work because the family needs the money.
“I went back because what else could I do? We are not machines. We are human beings. The heat is killing us slowly,” he was quoted as saying in a report on the survey’s findings.
“Victorian-era” conditions
Ritu Bharadwaj, IIED’s director of climate resilience, finance and loss and damage, described some of the stories from workers about their experiences of extreme heat as “genuinely horrifying”.
Kusum, a tailor at a garment manufacturing and export unit in Kapashera, Delhi, recounted how the machines for ironing finished garments are in the same tiny room where workers are making the clothes, with steam and hot air building up through her shift.
Fans are too far apart to move the air and nothing has changed in over a decade, she said, adding that “in summer, the unit feels like a furnace”.
“These are Victorian-era working conditions and they’re completely unacceptable in the 21st century,” said Bharadwaj. She called for stepped-up social protection from the government to pay people for days they are unable work due to heat, as well as micro-insurance schemes with payouts triggered by temperature measurements.
This money would help families buy food and pay medical bills when their income dips if they fall ill or cannot work their usual hours due to soaring temperatures.
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The aim of the IIED study, Bharadwaj added, is to get policy-makers’ attention by showing the scale of damage extreme heat is doing to India’s GDP in an economy whose growth relies on service-led industries. “If the workers within them start falling sick, you know it’s the economic growth which is going to get impacted,” she told a webinar to present the research.
“Whether [policymakers] care about the workers or not, at least they would care about the GDP, and therefore then invest in their care,” she explained.
Labour code leaves out heat
However, Bharadwaj noted that a 2026 reform to India’s labour law bringing a range of regulations together in one code does not include heat-related protections for workers and only applies to businesses above a certain size. She urged the government to introduce a temperature threshold above which all workers would be able to stop their activities.
IIED and its partners have also carried out a similar study in Bangladesh which will be published later this month, showing that extreme heat is costing its workforce the equivalent of nearly 1.4% of GDP.
Shakirul Islam, chairperson of the Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP) in Bangladesh, said the government had introduced stricter safety policies for garment-making companies after the Rana Plaza complex collapsed in 2013. But, he said, these rules are rarely followed by manufacturers, especially at the level of smaller subcontractors.
The workers’ welfare centres that do exist are open mainly during work hours so they are difficult to visit. Some companies also make saline water available for heat stress, which is no good for those with high blood pressure, he noted.
For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity
Archana Shukla Mukherjee, CEO of India’s Change Alliance, which also partnered with IIED on the survey, said it was time to hold both the government and businesses accountable for finding solutions to the intensifying problem of extreme heat’s effects on workers.
She said that employee state insurance schemes should identify heat stroke as an occupational disease while companies along the whole supply chain should start putting in place heat protection measures, including for informal workers and migrants.
If the tools and mechanisms available to help workers do not reach the most vulnerable and marginalised people, “then I think we are not doing something right,” she said.
The post Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds appeared first on Climate Home News.
Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds
A United Nations investigation into deep-sea mining firms will continue after the world’s top maritime court rejected their bid to suspend the inquiry triggered by a US-backed push to extract critical minerals from the ocean floor.
In two orders issued on Saturday, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) declined to halt an inquiry launched by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) into whether permit holders, including Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd (TOML) and Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI), have breached their obligations under UN exploration contracts.
The two companies are subsidiaries of Canadian firm The Metals Company (TMC), which earlier this year sought permits from the United States to commercially mine the deep seabed in an area already covered by its UN exploration licences, bypassing the ISA’s regulatory process.
The inquiry was opened after TMC’s move raised questions over whether its subsidiaries had complied with their contractual obligations to the ISA, which regulates mining in international waters under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. TOML and NORI sued the ISA last June for allegedly targeting them “in breach of due process” and without “good faith”.
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While allowing the inquiry to proceed, the court ordered the ISA to ensure the companies receive due process. Judges said the regulator must explain the factual and legal basis of its inquiry, clarify the procedures being followed and provide TOML and NORI with a meaningful opportunity to respond.
The companies seeks to mine an area called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which holds vast reserves of critical minerals like nickel, manganese and rare earths but is also home to a little-studied deep ocean ecosystem with thousands of unnamed species.
In response to the court’s ruling, the ISA welcomed the decision, saying the inquiry “remains in effect” and would continue “with due regard to all applicable legal requirements”.
Last week, during an annual meeting of its member governments, ISA secretary-general Leticia Carvalho said the resources in the ocean floor are “the common heritage of humankind” and upheld the agency’s role as “more important than ever”.
TMC also welcomed the court decision in a statement and claimed that judges ruled to “protect the rights of TMC subsidiaries”.
“Contractors like NORI and TOML, who have together spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the promise of a fair regulatory framework, should be informed of the factual and legal basis of any non-compliance inquiries, understand the procedure being applied, and receive a meaningful opportunity to respond,” said Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company.
Environmental groups said the ruling allows scrutiny of the companies’ actions to continue.
Louisa Casson, deep-sea mining campaigner with Greenpeace, said the “entire litigation has been an egregious waste of time and money”, which was part of the industry’s “textbook distraction tactic” meant to delay the consequences of the inquiry.
“If the inquiry confirms that TMC’s subsidiaries are breaching their contracts, governments must send the strongest possible signal that complicity in unlawful deep sea mining will not be tolerated,” she said.
While investigation is still ongoing, NORI’s contract is set to expire this week and is up for review. Governments asked the ISA to report back and make “make appropriate recommendations” by the next ISA assembly, its main decision-making body set to take place next week from July 27 to 31.
The court ordered both the ISA and TMC to submit a report on how they complied with the ruling by August 31, and called on both to “cooperate and refrain from any action that might lead to
aggravating the dispute”.
The post Top maritime court rejects bid to halt UN deep-sea mining inquiry appeared first on Climate Home News.
Top maritime court rejects bid to halt UN deep-sea mining inquiry
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