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
Britain’s new prime minister announced in his first week that he will cut the cost of public transport and electricity, making lower-emission technologies like bus travel, electric vehicles and heat pumps more affordable for voters. But some of the funding for those policies will come from the budget for international climate finance, the government has said, raising concerns about fairness.
Former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham took over from Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader and prime minister on Monday, appointing climate advocates Ed Miliband as foreign and development minister and Miatta Fahnbulleh as climate and energy minister.
On Tuesday, Burnham said his government would cut the value added tax (VAT) households and some small businesses pay on their electricity bills from 5% to zero from October 1, saving households £45 ($60) a year.
On Wednesday, he said the maximum fare bus companies in England can charge for a single journey will be reduced from £3 ($4) to £2 ($2.67) from January 1, 2027. The government said the subsidies to achieve this would be mostly funded by switching money set aside for overseas climate finance projects from grants to loans. It did not give further information in its announcement, while the UK’s transport minister told Sky News the plan is still being worked out.
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The floated changes to the climate finance budget were immediately criticised by groups working on climate justice for developing countries, including Bond, the UK network for NGOs, which described the decision as “disappointing”.
“Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not the answer and pitches marginalised communities in the UK against marginalised communities in lower-income and climate-vulnerable countries,” BOND CEO Romilly Greenhill said in a statement. “Climate finance must not worsen the debt burden of countries that are already suffering the worst – and most costly – impacts of a climate crisis they did not cause.”
Hunt for money
Burnham promoted both policies as measures to combat the rising cost of living and “give people breathing space”, with climate campaigners and industry groups noting they are also likely to reduce the UK’s climate-heating emissions by encouraging bus travel and the use of electric vehicles and heating.
But thorny questions remain over how the policies will be paid for. The government said Tuesday’s VAT cut for electricity would be funded by scrapping the previous government’s digital ID programme, but Darren Jones, a former minister involved with that policy, said it had been “unfunded” – a statement that dominated media coverage.
A day later, the government said the new bus fare cap would cost £454 million ($606m). Transport minister Heidi Alexander told Sky News that £54 million would be taken from an under-spend in the budget of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and £400 million would come from changing unspecified international climate finance from grants to loans. The details “still need to be worked through”, she said, adding that the government “had wanted to make an announcement today”.
Mohamed Adow, director of Nairobi-based think-tank Power Shift Africa, said “climate finance was never meant to be a pot of money that governments raid when they need to pay for domestic spending”.
DESNZ had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication. “We’re not wanting to fleece anyone here, and we actually want to maximise the development potential of this money that is available,” minister Alexander said in her TV interview.
Aside from the controversy over their funding, the policies themselves were widely welcomed by climate campaigners. Jess Ralston, energy lead at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said the tax cut on electricity bills “could help households to switch to electric heat pumps, protecting UK homes from becoming ever more exposed to the whims of Putin and Trump when turning on their gas boiler”.
The last few months have seen global momentum build behind electrification, spurred by the US-Iran war disrupting oil and gas supplies and driving up prices. The Turkish and Australian COP31 presidencies have announced a global target to boost electrification, backed by the European Union, Canada, Philippines, UK and others.
Campaigners call for lower power prices
While reaction to the VAT cut was supportive, some questioned whether £45 a year of savings per household is enough and called for more measures to cut electricity bills.
Friends of the Earth’s energy lead Imogen Dow said those on the lowest incomes should be given cheaper electricity through a “social tariff” and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think-tank – which is close to the Labour Party – said levies on energy bills should be shifted to general taxation.
Matthew Paterson, a politics professor at Manchester University, told Climate Home News that the most effective way to reduce electricity bills is to take on the UK’s private electricity companies, while consumer-oriented measures like the VAT cut are “tinkering around the edges”.
Jarrod Birch, head of policy and public affairs for the EV charging industry association Charge UK, said that while the policy would make home-charging cheaper, people who charge their vehicles at public points will still have to pay 20% VAT. The UK’s tax authority is fighting a court ruling that ordered it to reduce the tax motorists pay on public chargers to the current household rate of 5%.
Further measures will be the responsibility of Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Miatta Fahnbulleh, who is relatively new to politics after a career at left-wing, pro-climate think tanks the IPPR and the New Economics Foundation.
Michael Jacobs, political economy professor at Sheffield University and former adviser to UK Labour prime minister Gordon Brown, said Fahnbulleh would be a “climate advocate” who would continue the “progressive climate agenda” of her predecessor Ed Miliband.
“She’s a very creative policy wonk so I expect there to be lots of policy innovation under her,” he said, “I think she will be looking at new ways to encourage take-up of heat pumps and domestic batteries.”
Aid budget in Miliband’s hands
Despite reports he could be made finance minister, Miliband has been appointed Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Miliband has attended many climate COP meetings over several decades, most recently representing the UK at COP29 and COP30, and has been targeted by the right-wing media for his support for climate action and opposition to new oil and gas drilling in the UK’s part of the North Sea.
In his new role, Miliband will be responsible for the UK’s overseas aid budget including its international climate finance, which the Starmer government had slashed to fund increases in defence spending.
UK cuts support for climate action abroad to fund military instead
Jacobs said he expected Miliband to prioritise climate and development in the UK’s foreign policy and to push Burnham and new finance minister John Healey to reverse Starmer’s aid cuts.
But there are fears Healey could try to cut the aid budget further to fund the military. Healey was a surprise pick for Chancellor of the Exchequer and grabbed headlines when he resigned as Starmer’s defence minister in June over what he saw as insufficient defence spending.
The post Will new UK PM’s green measures at home cause climate finance pain overseas? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Will new UK PM’s green measures at home cause climate finance pain overseas?
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, 22 July 2026 – Greenpeace Netherlands has launched legal proceedings against a multi-billion-dollar global expansion plan by the biggest meat producer in Australia, JBS, in an escalation of climate litigation against the livestock industry.
Greenpeace petitioned a Dutch court to compel the meat giant to disclose information in order to challenge its business policies in court, including a US$6 billion global expansion, for which almost half is earmarked for Nigeria.
Elizabeth Atieno, Food Campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, said: “JBS’ meat empire expanded hand-in-glove with Amazon destruction, colossal emissions, human rights and corruption scandals, all with barely a semblance of transparency. This is the business model it wants to export to sub-Saharan Africa. JBS promises food security, but its expansion in Nigeria risks causing irreversible environmental damage and the displacement of smallholder farmers to line the pockets of wealthy global elites.
“Nigerians know well from the legacy of companies like Shell the destructive impact wrought by unchecked corporate power. As Greenpeace Africa has argued before the African Court of Human Rights, states with jurisdiction over multinationals must hold those corporate actors accountable – wherever they operate in the world. We welcome this bold legal action: the Netherlands and other European states must not be safe havens for corporations like JBS seeking to evade their responsibilities.”
In light of JBS’ longstanding failure to publish accurate and reliable information on its climate, nature and human rights impacts or its expansion plans, Greenpeace Netherlands views accessing this data as a necessary precursor to formal litigation in order to support its case. The case has the potential to be the first climate litigation of this scale against the livestock industry. This could set a major precedent for future legal challenges against the industrial agriculture sector, a major source of global emissions, particularly of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, responsible for 0.5°C of warming since the Industrial Revolution.[1]
JBS, via its subsidiary JBS Foods Australia, is the largest meat and food processing company in Australia. With a weekly processing capacity of over 50,000 cattle, it accounts for almost a quarter of all beef processing in the country, as well as a significant presence in the lamb, pork and farmed fish markets. [2] In 2022, ABC’s Four Corners accused the company of ‘repeatedly failing to protect its workers from horrific injuries.’ [3]
Marieke Vellekoop, Executive Director at Greenpeace Netherlands, said “In a month where JBS has thrown its flagship environmental commitments onto the scrap heap, JBS’ disdain for basic transparency only adds to the impression that this meat giant has something to hide and is desperate to prevent its expansion plans from going public. We were hoping we wouldn’t have to trouble a judge with this matter, but JBS has left us no choice but to seek our right to information through the Dutch courts.
“JBS appears to believe that despite moving to the Netherlands, our rules do not apply to it. This legal action aims to prove it wrong – and lay the ground for a first major climate and nature lawsuit against the dangerous expansion of the global meat industry.“
At the centre of the dispute is JBS’ planned US$ 2.5 billion investment in industrial livestock production in Nigeria.[2] Civil society groups in Nigeria have raised urgent warnings that the aggressive expansion will threaten local food security, drive regional instability, and accelerate ecological degradation. There is no available evidence that JBS has conducted any impact assessments or community consultations in Nigeria, and local efforts to gather more information via Freedom of Information requests have reportedly been ignored.[3]
The escalation to the courts follows the refusal of JBS, the world’s largest meat company, to comply with a formal disclosure demand delivered by Greenpeace Netherlands in April. The environmental group is utilising new Dutch legislation, which grants parties with a legitimate interest the right to demand access to specific corporate data necessary to build litigation against Dutch companies.[4]
Greenpeace Netherlands’ lawyers allege that JBS’ historic business practices and future expansion plans are inconsistent with the company’s climate and biodiversity obligations and represent a breach of its Dutch duty of care, which requires companies to act in line with international human rights law.[5]
If the court rules in favor of Greenpeace Netherlands, it is entitled to seek the required information in the form of documents and from senior JBS figures under oath, raising the prospect of the Batista brothers being forced to testify in Dutch court. JBS reincorporated as a Dutch entity (JBS N.V.) last year to facilitate a dual listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
In April, JBS was forced to temporarily suspend its first annual general meeting since moving its headquarters to Amsterdam after it was disrupted by dozens of Greenpeace Netherlands activists.
Last week, JBS scrapped two flagship commitments to reach Net Zero emissions by 2040 and eradicate deforestation from its supply chain. It also removed any explicit reference to Indigenous lands from all of its current policies. Greenpeace Netherlands is concerned this indicates JBS is seeking to expand unconstrained by the climate, nature and human rights impacts of its business.
–ENDS–
Notes:
[1] The livestock sector is estimated to be responsible for 31% of global methane emissions (more than oil and gas operations). In comparison to CO2, methane is shorter lived (around 12 years) but has a much stronger ability to trap heat in the atmosphere over its lifetime: it has approximately 80 times more climate impact than CO2 when measured over 20 years. This means that changes in methane emissions have a more rapid effect on the climate than changes in CO2. See Greenpeace Netherlands letter to JBS dated 30 April 2026.
[2] JBS Foods Australia, Our Business
[3] ABC, Australia’s biggest meat company JBS is repeatedly failing to protect its workers from horrific injuries, 25 April 2022
[4] JBS announcement
[5] Experts raise concerns over the risks of industrial animal farming (The Sun Nigeria)
[6] Simplification and modernisation of Dutch evidence law (Fieldfisher)
[7] Greenpeace Netherlands petition to Dutch court available here. Media briefing with further details on JBS expansion plans, including in Nigeria, available here.
Greenpeace launches legal challenge against Australia’s biggest meat company
Climate Change
“Next year is too late for regulations”: Beetaloo Energy’s 2GW gas-powered AI data centre a “disaster proposal” destined to cause climate chaos
SYDNEY, Wednesday 22 July 2026 — Beetaloo Energy has secured land from the NT Government for a massive $40 billion “hyperscale” AI data centre near Darwin, which would be powered by 2 gigawatts (GW) of gas power fracked directly from the Beetaloo basin, prompting calls from Greenpeace for urgent federal legislation.
The proposal marks a dangerous escalation in the AI data centre industry’s expansion, which threatens to entrench fossil fuel infrastructure for decades and put immense pressure on the region’s fragile water resources — while continuing to be unregulated.
Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This disaster proposal for a 2GW gas-powered AI data centre in the NT is a shocking example of the unchecked expansion of hyperscale data centres in Australia. It is also, critically, more evidence for the urgent need for a moratorium on all new data centres until strong, binding regulations are put in place to protect our communities and climate.
“This proposal mirrors the frenzied, unchecked expansion currently wreaking havoc on communities in the US. We are seeing cowboy data centre operators treat Australia like a playground, steam-rolling ahead with projects that would lock down precious water resources and spike emissions, despite the overwhelming community opposition.
“Every day, more councils, communities and environmental groups are joining Greenpeace’s call for a moratorium on data centres, yet as of today there is still no system of safeguards or rules in place to regulate these companies.
“While Beetaloo Energy and the NT Government prepare to bulldoze ahead with this climate and water disaster, the Prime Minister is asleep at the wheel, promising to legislate a vague set of standards next year.
“Next year is too late, and anything less than mandating data centres cover their own energy demand, and then some, with new renewable energy is not enough.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lucy.keller@greenpeace.org
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