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Climate change was responsible for just over one-third of the simultaneous soya bean crop failures across Argentina, Brazil and the US in 2012, according to a new attribution study.
The research, published in Communications Earth & Environment, analyses the impact of hot and dry extreme weather that hit the three countries in 2012.
Although soya beans are an important crop for global food supplies most often in the form of animal feed – their production is concentrated in just three countries, leaving them susceptible to weather-related disruption.
Using climate and crop models, the researchers determine what the yield of the crop would have been in a world without warming.
They find that the impact of climate change – through warmer temperatures and drier soils – accounted for 35% of the yield reduction in 2012.
Furthermore, they warn, the impacts of similar events will only become stronger as the world continues to warm.
One researcher, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the novel application of existing methods in the study is “new and noteworthy”.
Soya bean shock
Soya is one of the “big four” staple crops – along with maize, rice and wheat – that together comprise almost 65% of global calories consumed and 45% of the world’s planted farmlands.
In 2021, the world produced nearly 365m tonnes of soya beans. Less than 4% of this harvest fed humans directly, with the vast majority of it being processed into animal feed, vegetable oil or biofuel.
Just three countries – Argentina, Brazil and the US – grow nearly three-quarters of the world’s supply of soya beans, the study says. The concentration of production in these three countries “makes the global soybean supply vulnerable to regional production shocks” – and especially those due to extreme weather events, the authors write.
Such was the case in 2012, when hot and dry extremes across the Americas caused a 10% drop in global production. This production drop was accompanied by record-high price spikes.
The strength of the 2012 simultaneous failure was a primary reason for studying it, despite the fact that the event happened more than a decade in the past, says lead author Dr Raed Hamed, a climate scientist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Another reason is that the selected soya-growing regions have well-understood links to El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the large-scale climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean that influences global weather patterns and crop yields.
The low yield in 2012 came at the end of a three-year La Niña event. La Niña is the “cold phase” of ENSO, marked by cooler temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, but it is known to cause hotter- and drier-than-normal conditions in south-eastern South America and the US, respectively. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the 2012 La Niña was the third-warmest such event on record.
The charts below show the annual global production of soya as absolute totals (left) and relative to a baseline adjusted for the long-term production trend over 1980-2014 (right).
Soya storylines
In order to tease out the effects of climate change on the 2012 growing season, the researchers use a “storyline” approach.
Many attribution studies take a “probabalistic” approach, running climate models both with and without warming thousands of times to determine how climate change affected the duration, likelihood or intensity of an event.
By contrast, the storyline approach imposes a fixed atmospheric circulation – in this case, the 2012 La Niña event – on top of three different levels of warming: a pre-industrial world, the factual 2012 world and a world that has warmed by 2C. Hamed explains:
“So we remove the question of how likely it is, but we say: ‘Given a similar event in a warmer climate, what would the impact be like?’”
This approach was necessary, Hamed says, because “there is a big question mark” around how further warming will impact ENSO and, in particular, the atmospheric circulation.
Then, the researchers use the temperature and soil moisture outputs from each warming scenario to calculate the soya bean yield in three major growing regions: the US, central Brazil and south-eastern South America, which encompasses parts of Brazil and Argentina. By comparing the actual yield changes in 2012 to those from the pre-industrial model runs, they quantify how much of the lower yield can be attributed to climate change.
They find that, overall, climate change – in the form of warmer temperatures and drier soils – was responsible for 35% of the “production deficit” during the 2012 failure.
However, the impact of the hot-and-dry event differed significantly between regions. In the US, warming caused a 3.5% decrease in production, compared to a world with no climate change, while in south-east South America, production fell by 222%. In central Brazil, climate change actually improved production by 14%.
While this type of approach is not necessarily “novel”, the “application is new and noteworthy”, says Dr Dáithí Stone, a climate scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. Stone, who was not involved in the study, adds:
“Soya bean is one of the [main] staple crops on the planet and one that’s very much growing in demand. So it’s very important and there are susceptibilities. We do have these sensitivities, these risks, if we have production concentrated in these three areas.”
Future yields
In addition to comparing the event to one in a pre-industrial climate, the researchers use the same approach to project the potential impacts of the same event occurring in a world with 2C of warming above pre-industrial temperatures.
While the effects of the 2012 event were mainly concentrated in the south-east South America region, the impacts are felt in each of the three regions. Furthermore, at higher temperatures, the impact of the interactions between temperature and soil moisture becomes more significant, particularly in the south-east South America region.
The chart below shows the soya bean production anomaly for each region under (left to right) the pre-industrial climate, the actual climate in which the event occurred and the climate with 2C of warming.
The “simple” setup of the analysis means there are many caveats to the study, Hamed says. For example, there is no consideration of adaptation, such as the possibility of farmers planting a larger area or implementing an irrigation system.
It also does not consider future improvements to technology and yields. (Global soya bean yield has been steadily climbing since the 1960s, although, Stone points out, “you can only increase the yield so much”.)
Stone tells Carbon Brief:
“These sorts of studies which look at the impacts of extreme weather in the context of climate change are very useful.
“The impacts of climate change tend to be in these extreme events. They’re the things that stress test us normally, so they’re stress testing us more. And so understanding these events and how their impacts cascade down the system as well…is becoming increasingly important as we enter a warmer world.”
The post ‘One-third’ of 2012 soya crop failure in the Americas was due to climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
‘One-third’ of 2012 soya crop failure in the Americas was due to climate change
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.
The 2026 global carbon budget report also estimates that:
- Fossil emissions are projected to fall in China (-0.9%), the US (-1.3%) and the EU (-1.5%) in 2026, but rise by 4.4% in India.
- Oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region, with the largest drop in China (-4.6%).
- Land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, around 21% lower than the decade before.
- Total CO2 emissions (fossil and land-use) grew by an average 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over the decade before.
- The remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is 150GtCO2, or less than four years of current emissions.
- The land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, rebounding after being weakened during the 2023-24 El Niño. The current El Niño is expected to weaken the land sink in 2027.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels.
(For more on previous editions of the Global Carbon Project’s annual report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in 2025, 2024,