Here at Climate Home News we tell you what happens inside the air-conditioned boardrooms, government ministries and negotiating halls where people in suits discuss the politics of climate change – but we also like to take a step back and look at the effects their decisions have on the real world.
As the year comes to an end, we have made a list of the stories we feel embody that spirit, published during 2024. If you’d like to receive stories like this in your inbox every Friday in 2025, subscribe to our free weekly newsletter. And if you want to stay up to date with our work, follow us on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.
- On beaches of Gaza and Tel Aviv, two tales of one heatwave
- Germany uses funding to pressure climate groups on Israel-Gaza war
- Saudi visa crackdown left heatwave-hit Hajj pilgrims scared to ask for help
- Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation
- Indonesia turns traditional Indigenous land into nickel industrial zone
- Greenpeace Africa in disarray as restructuring meets resistance
- In Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s net zero vision clashes with legacy of war
- World Bank climate funding greens African hotels while fishermen sink
- From cyclone to drought, Zimbabwe’s climate victims struggle to adapt
1. On beaches of Gaza and Tel Aviv, two tales of one heatwave
As 2023 became 2024, the biggest international story was Israel’s invasion, and continued bombing of, the Palestinian territory of Gaza after Hamas militants targeted an Israeli music festival, killing more than 1,100 people. That incident unleashed ongoing attacks by Israel that have caused the deaths of more than 46,000 Palestinians.
But larger numbers have died as an indirect result of the war – for example, when many Gazans were left without shelter or cooling during a climate change-fuelled heatwave that struck in April and May.
Our reporter in Gaza, Taghreed Ali, spoke to two fathers in refugee camps who had lost children to the heat – against which the flimsy protection of their nylon tents, where they waved food containers as makeshift fans, was no match.
Just north of there, our reporter in Israel – Jessica Buxbaum – spoke to beachgoers in Tel Aviv. With their homes still intact, their main concerns were the cost of air-conditioning, the threat of power cuts and drooping house plants.
Climate change affects everyone, but it doesn’t affect everyone equally.
Beaches in Gaza (left) and Tel Aviv (right) in May 2024 (Photos: Taghreed Ali and Jessica Buxbaum)
2. Germany uses funding to pressure climate groups on Israel-Gaza war
Many climate activists continued to speak out against the Israeli government’s role in the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza but came under pressure to stay quiet on the issue from one of the Israeli government’s biggest political backers – Germany.
The German government funds many climate campaign groups in the Global South and, we revealed, used this financial leverage to try to silence criticism of Israel’s offensive. Some activists complied, but others didn’t and suffered financially when contracts were put on hold or their funding was cut.
Veteran British climate activist Asad Rehman said climate justice activists were questioning their partnerships with German civil society, as well as the government. “How can we ally and work together with German organisations that are not prepared to stand up against their own government?” he asked.
Protesters at COP28 in Dubai (Photos: Cop28/Christopher Pike)
3. Saudi visa crackdown left heatwave-hit Hajj pilgrims scared to ask for help
Another reminder that climate change hits some people harder than others came in June, as 1.5 million Muslims descended on Mecca for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
As temperatures soared to an unusually high 52C, wealthy pilgrims travelled from air-conditioned hotels to the holy sites by bus and were offered medical help if they needed it.
Poorer pilgrims, however, who had snuck in to the city without the expensive proper visa avoided public transport and cooling centres for fear of deportation. Instead, they walked 19 kilometres in the extreme heat. Over 1,300 died – more than 80% of whom did not have official Hajj permits.
Instead of promising to look after irregular pilgrims better, Saudi Arabia and other governments have reacted by cracking down on the travel agents who organise unofficial trips. We’ll find out next June if that approach has worked or not.
Muslim worshippers make their way to cast stones as part of a symbolic stoning of the devil ritual on June 18, 2023. (Photo: Medhat Hajjaj/apaimages)
4. Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation
Governments may have agreed to “transition” away from fossil fuels at COP28 in Dubai last year, but the building of fossil fuel infrastructure continues, harming the planet and sometimes local communities.
Our reporter – who did not want to be named due to fears of government retaliation – travelled to the spot in Tanzania where a 1,400 km-long new pipeline will meet the sea so that the oil it is due to transport from Uganda can be shipped abroad.
Climate Home found that people evicted from their homes to make way for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) – a joint venture between the two countries, French firm TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation – and its port had been warned off talking to journalists but they complained to us about the terms of their compensation nonetheless.
“I am angry that the government took advantage of our ignorance of legal matters and gave us a bad deal that we couldn’t argue against,” said one.
Land by the ocean has been closed off to the public (Photo: Climate Home News)
5. Indonesia turns traditional Indigenous land into nickel industrial zone
Green energy projects can hurt locals too though. The world needs nickel to make electric vehicles, preventing the climate change and air pollution caused by fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
Indonesia has the world’s largest reserves of the silvery white metal. But one of its mines on the island of Sulawesi has displaced Indigenous people, with police arresting those who resist. Nature-rich forests, meanwhile, have been chopped down by politically-connected nickel bosses.
“It’s not to say that nickel mining can’t take place in Indonesia. But it has to be done in a way that’s a lot more careful,” one campaigner said.
Stories like this and others in our Clean Energy Frontiers series are having an impact. This year, the United Nations Secretary-General backed a report calling for human rights, the environment and nature to be respected by those digging up these minerals the world needs for the energy transition.
Road to the SCM nickel mine in southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, which holds one of the world’s largest reserves of nickel. (Photo: Franco Bravo Dengo)
6. Greenpeace Africa in disarray as restructuring meets resistance
At Climate Home News, we aim to hold the powerful to account. That means governments and corporations but also large international campaign groups – and there’s no bigger name than Greenpeace.
We spoke to former staff and consulted leaked documents to reveal turmoil at its African branch. A restructuring led by a new boss has resulted in mass job losses, court cases, a retreat from the Democratic Republic of Congo and heated debates over strategies on LGBT+ issues and government relations.
Legal proceedings against lay-offs continue in South Africa and Senegal while, in Amsterdam, parent organisation Greenpeace International has stayed silent.
A Greenpeace activist protests against a coal plant in Kenya, on June 12, 2019. (Photo: Baz Ratner/Reuters)
7. In Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s net zero vision clashes with legacy of war
Oil and gas-reliant Azerbaijan and the rest of Central Asia have stayed under the climate radar for a long time. But that changed as Azerbaijan’s capital Baku hosted COP29 in 2024, thrusting the authoritarian regime and its energy policies into the limelight.
Azerbaijan’s government spent big money taking journalists, including our own Matteo Civillini, to see its new “smart villages”, hydropower plants and solar energy installations in the conflict-torn region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
What they didn’t draw attention to – but Climate Home reported anyway – was that Armenians had been chased out of these villages less than a year before our visit. “It’s greenwashing of an ethnic cleansing,” one analyst said.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev tours the “smart” village of Aghali in an electric cart. (Photo: Azerbaijan Presidency)
8. World Bank climate funding greens African hotels while fishermen sink
COP29 was Azerbaijan’s COP – but also the “finance COP”. Figures of millions, billions and trillions of dollars shot around in press releases, while journalists struggled to differentiate between verbs like “mobilise” and “provide”.
But what exactly is counted in the figures that make up climate finance? How about when you help Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and a huge hotel corporation buy up a chain of African hotels and spruce them up to luxury standard in an energy-efficient manner? If you ask the World Bank Group – which has ambitious targets to increase climate finance – this makes the cut.
Our reporter Jack Thompson hung out at one of these five-star hotels in Senegal (not the worst assignment) and then spoke to local fishermen just down the coast, who said they’d rather the money was spent helping them protect the beaches that are their workplace from rising sea levels.
With wealthy nations pledging at COP29 to increase their climate finance to $300 billion a year by 2035 – much of it coming from development institutions like the World Bank – this story, an award finalist, shows the importance of questioning the top-line numbers.
Le Lamantin Hotel, in Saly, Senegal, where a standard room costs about $220 a night. (Photo: Jack Thompson)
9. From cyclone to drought, Zimbabwe’s climate victims struggle to adapt
And in Zimbabwe we found more evidence that quantity isn’t all that matters. You can spend all you want on a climate project but if it’s badly-designed, it’s no use.
That’s what Matteo Civillini learned from a visit to the country’s eastern highlands, where cyclone victims have been moved out of a storm-prone area and into a drought-prone one where the authorities lack the money to build a planned dam. Out of the frying pan into the fire, you might say.
People in the resettled community said that, despite the cyclone risks, they miss their old home and its bountiful water supply. “We’d never run out of water – we could always access fresh food,” one said. “Here it’s more difficult.”
Tambudzai Chikweya stands in front of her home in Runyararo. Photo: Matteo Civillini
(Writing by Joe Lo, editing by Megan Rowling)
The post Nine of our best climate change stories from 2024 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Dr. Stacy Jupiter is the Executive Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Global Marine Program. Melissa Wright is Bloomberg Ocean Initiative Lead at Bloomberg Philanthropies.
For years, the dominant story on coral reefs has been one of inevitable loss, with news headlines focusing on mass bleaching, ecosystem collapse, and catastrophic tipping points. As ocean temperatures continue to rise, many people have come to see the decline of the world’s reefs as unavoidable.
The threats are real and urgent, but new evidence points to a more complicated and useful conclusion: some reefs still have a meaningful chance to survive and recover, provided they are protected.
A major new analysis, published today with the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, identifies more than 165,000 square kilometers of coral reefs, across 71 countries and 100 territories and jurisdictions, with the strongest potential to withstand and recover from climate impacts.
Drawing on more than 45,000 coral surveys, along with decades of climate and ocean data, the research finds that three times more reefs may be capable of surviving the climate crisis than previously understood. That has major implications for reef-dependent communities, food security, coastal protection, fisheries, tourism, and national economies.
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Essential natural infrastructure for communities
The findings make clear that reefs will not all respond to climate impacts in the same way. Some are located in rare underwater cool spots that can help shield them from extreme heat. Some show greater resistance to bleaching and other climate-related stress. Others recover more quickly after severe disturbances. These differences matter because they show where protection can have the greatest long-term impact.
More than 500 million people depend on reefs for food, livelihoods, and coastal protection. For those communities, climate-resilient reefs are not an abstract conservation priority. They are essential natural infrastructure. They help protect coastlines, sustain fisheries, support local economies, and reduce climate risk. Because ocean currents move coral larvae and marine life between reef systems, some of these reefs may also help regenerate wider reef ecosystems after climate shocks.
This should change how governments, funders, and conservation partners prioritize action.
Climate change remains the greatest long-term threat to coral reefs. At the same time, many of the pressures pushing reefs closer to collapse are immediate and local. Sewage pollution, deforestation, agricultural runoff, destructive fishing practices, and poorly managed coastal development continue to damage reefs that are already under stress. Recent research shows that water pollution and fishing pressure are now among the leading local threats affecting nearly two-thirds of the world’s coral reefs.
These pressures can be reduced. Governments and local partners are already working to improve reef management, cut pollution, strengthen enforcement, and protect critical ecosystems. Those efforts need to move faster, alongside much stronger action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Prioritising climate-resilient reefs
The new maps of climate-resilient reefs give governments, communities, and reef managers a clearer basis for action. They show where reefs have the strongest potential to persist over time, and where protection can deliver the greatest benefits for people, coastlines, and economies.
Right now, only around 28 percent of the identified climate-resilient reefs fall within protected or conserved areas. If these reefs are among the most capable of surviving climate impacts and helping regenerate broader reef systems, they should be prioritized for protection, management, and investment.
The case for action is practical as well as ecological. Healthy reefs can reduce wave energy by up to 97 percent, helping protect coastlines from storms, flooding, and erosion. They support fisheries that feed millions of people, sustain tourism jobs and local economies, and help reduce climate risk for vulnerable coastal communities.
For many families, a healthy reef means food, income, and protection when storms hit. For Indigenous Peoples and coastal communities, reefs are also tied to culture, heritage, identity, and traditional knowledge systems.
Ocean conservation must catch up
Governments are beginning to recognize the urgency of protecting climate-resilient reefs. At last year’s UN Ocean Conference in Nice, 11 countries signed a declaration committing to stronger protection of these reefs, including action to address destructive fishing, pollution, and unsustainable coastal development.
As leaders meet in Kenya this week to discuss the challenges facing the world’s ocean, more governments should join the declaration and help build a broader coalition committed to safeguarding these critical ecosystems.
As coral reefs pass tipping point, ocean protection rises up political agenda
Some countries are already showing what this leadership can look like. Brazil has included corals in its national climate plans. The Bahamas is embedding reef protection into national policy and local stewardship systems. The declaration offers a way to build on these efforts and scale them globally.
But commitments will not be enough. Success will depend on implementation. That means stronger protection and management, reduced local pressures, increased investment, and meaningful support for the Indigenous Peoples and local communities stewarding these ecosystems.
The science is clear. Many reefs still have the capacity to persist and recover. The question is whether policy and investment will move quickly enough to protect them, so they can continue sustaining communities, economies, and coastlines for generations to come.
The post Coral reefs are not doomed – but policy must catch up with the science appeared first on Climate Home News.
Coral reefs are not doomed – but policy must catch up with the science
Climate Change
Months After a Jet Fuel Leak, No Agency Tested Waters Downstream of Piscataway Creek. So Community Groups Are Doing It Themselves.
Authorities that manage the Potomac River tributary did not sample the stretch where residents fish and recreate. One Indigenous leader sees the lack of response as part of a pattern of ongoing neglect.
In the five months after jet fuel started leaking from Joint Base Andrews into Piscataway Creek, no agency tested the water or sediment some 20 miles downstream, where the creek empties into the Potomac River and the shoreline community and anglers gather to fish and boat along the riverbank.
Climate Change
Trump Administration Abandons Fight Against Wind Energy as Clean Energy Output Surges
The clean energy sector is showing resilience despite challenges thrown at it by a hostile White House, a recent report found. A string of legal victories has further dampened the Trump administration’s efforts to halt wind and solar power.
The Trump administration has abandoned its effort to halt wind energy projects across the United States and dropped its challenge to the court ruling that tossed President Donald Trump’s order freezing federal permitting and leasing for wind projects. States that challenged the order hailed the development as one of the most significant legal victories against the Trump White House’s campaign against the energy transition.
Trump Administration Abandons Fight Against Wind Energy as Clean Energy Output Surges
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Months After a Jet Fuel Leak, No Agency Tested Waters Downstream of Piscataway Creek. So Community Groups Are Doing It Themselves.
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