So-called “debt-for-nature swaps” have regained prominence in recent years as part of efforts to raise finance for conservation efforts across biodiverse developing countries.
These “swaps” are financial agreements in which a conservation organisation or government reduces, restructures or buys a developing country’s debt at a discount in exchange for investment in local conservation activities.
Despite a biodiversity “finance gap” estimated at $700bn per year, little finance has been forthcoming from developed countries to help debt-distressed lower-income countries meet their biodiversity and climate targets.
One expert, who helped Ecuador negotiate a debt conversion deal in 2023, tells Carbon Brief that these swaps are “a very tangible strategy that is starting to be proven”.
He adds that they are one of the “big sustainable financing tools that can help” support global-south countries in following through on international treaties.
However, critics are less optimistic about the feasibility of debt-for-nature swaps.
Another expert tells Carbon Brief that the swaps are “far too small to have any impact at all” on the debt of developing countries and that they are “not even marginal to a solution at the current level of their size”.
Additionally, she says, “there’s no evidence that they have worked for nature”.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief examines how debt-for-nature swaps work, the criticism they have received and whether they can alleviate biodiversity loss and climate change in developing countries.
- Where did the idea of debt-for-nature swaps come from?
- How do debt-for-nature swaps work?
- How are they gaining traction in nature finance and conservation policy?
- What are some of the chief criticisms of debt-for-nature swaps?
- Can debt-for-nature swaps be done better?
Where did the idea of debt-for-nature swaps come from?
The idea of debt swaps emerged in response to the global debt crisis of 1982-83 brought on by multiple shocks to the world economy.
The 1979-80 “oil shock”, for example, more than doubled the real price of oil for the oil-importing developing countries, raising interest rates on debt and reducing how much foreign exchange they could raise to service their debts.
This mushrooming crisis led to the creation of a secondary market for developing country debt in 1982, where loans to developing countries could be traded at a market-determined price.
This paved the way for “swaps” of various kinds, where banks could trade their foreign debt at a discount and reduce their financial exposure to precarious loans, while private investors could gain a foothold in new markets that were otherwise closed off to them.
In 1984, ecologist Dr Thomas Lovejoy – then a vice president of science at WWF – wrote a column in the New York Times advocating for swaps where the local currency raised would go towards conservation.
Unlike previous debt swaps driven by a profit motive and giving multinationals “equity” in a country, debt-for-nature swaps were supposed to benefit the debtor country. Lovejoy’s column is widely recognised as one of the “catalysts” for debt-for-nature swaps.
Three years later, in 1987, US-based Conservation International entered into the first-ever debt-for-nature agreement with Bolivia.
In exchange for the Bolivian government’s commitment to grant maximum legal protection to nearly 4m hectares in the Amazon Basin, Conservation International bought $650,000 worth of debt from a swiss bank for $100,000. Bolivia also agreed to provide $250,000 in local currency for management activities in the Beni Reserve.
Even early proponents of debt-for-nature swaps acknowledged that they were “no panacea” for environmental issues in the least-developed countries. Nevertheless, they continued to be popular and have seen a resurgence in the post-Covid era.
How do debt-for-nature swaps work?
In its simplest sense, a debt-for-nature swap involves:
- An indebted, biodiverse developing country.
- A creditor or a group of creditors, such as other governments or private bondholders.
- International conservation organisations, to buy back the debt.
- Local conservation organisations, to implement the swap.
International conservation organisations or private foundations based in the global north have initiated or brokered most debt-for-nature swaps.
Other actors and intermediaries involved in swaps can include commercial banks, multilateral development banks, private finance institutions, insurance companies and legal and financial advisors.
Today, there are many different kinds of debt-for-nature deals in progress, but swaps can broadly be classified as “private”, involving commercial debt, or “public”, involving the debt between governments.
Private debt swaps
In private debt swaps, NGOs offer to buy back part of a government’s commercial debt from private creditors at a significant discount compared to the debt’s face value.
The indebted country then commits to repaying this debt – in whole or in part and generally in local currency. The amount generated by this payment – the difference between the price paid in local currency and the discounted price the NGO buys the debt for – is then put into an environmental protection fund administered by the conservation NGO.
While this was the model for most debt-for-nature swaps until 2008, arrangements have grown more complex in recent years.
The “buy-back” of debt claims by NGOs, for instance, has grown to take the form of various kinds of bonds – essentially, an IOU or loan issued by a government or company, whereby the issuer promises to pay back the face value of the loan on a set date, with regular interest.
For example, the Nature Conservancy set up a trust fund in 2015 which issued a $15.2m “blue bond” that private philanthropic funds paid into. This sum was then lent to the Seychelles government, which used it to buy back $21.6m of debt from the Paris Club of developed country creditors.
In exchange, Seychelles pledged to protect 30% of its marine area and 15% of high-biodiversity regions, along with upgrading its marine mapping and fisheries policies.
Despite a total debt reduction of only $1.4m, the island state committed to investing $5.6m in marine conservation and $3m towards an endowment trust fund.
Public debt swaps
Swaps of debt between countries in exchange for conservation commitments are known as “public debt-for-nature swaps”.
Here, the indebted, biodiverse country restructures or buys back debt from a lender country at a reduced price. The interest or a percentage of the buy-back price then goes toward environmental protection.
The first such swap took place in 1988 between Costa Rica and the Netherlands to finance a 4,000-hectare reforestation programme.
These bilateral debt-for-nature swaps have seen a resurgence in the past year or so.
In January 2023, for instance, Portugal signed an agreement to swap up to $140m of Cape Verde’s debt for investments in a special environmental and climate fund, with more debt relief determined by how its former colony meets key climate and nature goals.
In September last year, the US and Peru entered into a swap agreement covering more than $20m of Peru’s debt to the US. The money will go towards a conservation fund to protect three priority areas in the Amazon rainforest and provide grants to local communities and NGOs.
How are swaps gaining traction in nature finance and conservation policy?
Since the 1980s, 145 debt-for-nature swaps worldwide have written off $3.7bn from the face value of debt globally, according to a 2022 report by the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Most of the debt swaps – $2.4bn of the total – have occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Carbon Brief has compiled a list of debt swaps that have taken place around the world. This is based on data from the African Development Bank report, along with reports from governments, conservation organisations and the media. It is not an exhaustive list.
The map below shows where swaps have taken place. The circles indicate the financial size of the debt involved in the swap, while the colours show the decade in which the swap was completed.
Debt-for-nature swap deals around the world over 1987-2023. The size of the circles corresponds to the face value of debt being swapped for conservation investments by countries, while the colour of the circles corresponds to the decade in which the swaps took place. Source: Carbon Brief analysis of African Development Bank (2022) and media and conservation organisations reports (2022), WWF Center for Conservation Finance (2003) and Eurodad (2023). Debt values not adjusted for inflation.
At the COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, debt-for-nature swaps featured at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change for the first time. They were included in the negotiating text after Indonesia introduced “external debt swap/relief” as a source of finance.
At COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022, the Sustainable Debt Coalition Initiative was established with the support of 16 countries. It asked for debt swaps and other mechanisms to tackle both climate change and financial stability concerns.
At COP28 in Dubai last year, eight multilateral development banks, including the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility, announced a working group to boost the effectiveness, accessibility and scalability of sustainability-linked sovereign finance, including debt-for-nature swaps.
In the announcement, the development banks acknowledged that the burden of debt owed by the developing countries “greatly hinder[s] their ability to meet their global climate and nature commitments”.
The debt issue is also being addressed in other international meetings.
During the April 2024 World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings, the Vulnerable Twenty Group (V20) – made up of 68 heavily indebted, climate-vulnerable countries – called for additional reforms to the international financial system. They proposed several measures, including increased representation in the global financial system and greater access to concessional finance, or finance provided at lower interest rates than commercial finance, including debt-for-nature swaps.
Eva Martínez, a human rights lawyer and programme officer at the Centre for Economic and Social Rights (CEDES) in Ecuador, tells Carbon Brief that swaps will also feature at this year’s G20 summit in Brazil. She explains:
“There is a working document on the new financial architecture…There are [also] references to [debt swaps] for food sovereignty, debt-for-health swaps. The spectrum is broadening.”
What are some of the chief criticisms of debt-for-nature swaps?
Since their inception, debt-for-nature swaps have attracted considerable concern over whether they are effective for either debt relief or conservation.
As with biodiversity offsets and nature-based solutions, debt-for-nature swaps have been criticised for putting a price on nature and “reducing” it to a financial commodity.
Another complication is that “biodiversity is really cheap”, Dr Rebecca Ray from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center tells Carbon Brief. As a result, creating and maintaining new protected areas is often a small fraction of a country’s sovereign debt. She adds:
“This means a little bit of debt swapped goes a really long way to fund new natural protected areas, but it doesn’t go very far on the debt. And so it’s not the most efficient way to discharge debt, even though countries are particularly facing debt stress right now.
”Repaying debt is hard for countries all around the world due to problems that are not their fault.”
These countries need “immediate debt relief that is fast and large”, Ray points out, but biodiversity conservation projects “tend to cost a lot less money and take a lot more time”.
The following sections provide an overview of some of the other criticisms of debt-for-nature swaps.
Conditionality, sovereignty and additionality
The earliest controversy around debt-for-nature swaps was a perceived fear of foreign interference, sovereignty and a “return to the colonial system”.
The first swap in Bolivia in 1987, for instance, “unilaterally titled” the land to be protected in the Amazon before Indigenous communities could obtain land tenure claims. In 1989, Brazil’s then-president Jose Sarney rejected debt-for-nature swaps stating: “[The] Amazon is ours… [a]fter all, it is situated in our territory.”
Entering into a debt-swap agreement “immediately results in a loss of autonomy and sovereignty” over the resolution of public debt, argues Mae Buenaventura, senior programme manager on debt and green economy at the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD). She tells Carbon Brief:
“Lenders determine the terms of the swap, meaning that they can impose conditions on borrowing governments on how they should invest the freed-up funds and can work towards privileging the lender and private corporations.”
This, Mae and other critics say, gives lenders in the global north “more control” in a developing country than if the debt were to be cancelled outright.
They point out that debt-for-nature swaps also inherently come with conditions attached for conservation measures and can, thus, be described as conditional debt relief.
Others fear that swaps could open the door to “tied-aid” methods, where aid must be spent on services from the lending country, such as swaps being coupled with carbon credits.
However, Ray sees significant evolution in governments’ and creditors’ understanding of the need to put traditional communities that depend on biodiversity front and centre in the planning process.
She cites the success of the 2015 Seychelles debt-for-nature swap, where the Seychelles government undertook a multi-year “deep consultation” process to understand threats to the livelihoods of small fishing communities living on remote islands. Ray says:
“This was a way that got community buy-in, obviously, because this was protecting the livelihoods of those fishing communities, but also recognising that traditional communities frequently don’t just live off of biodiversity, but they have to help protect the biodiversity in order to survive.”
Another criticism of swaps is that they do not create new, “additional” biodiversity funds from the global north. They also run the risk of being “double counted”, if the original loan being restructured in a swap had already been counted towards meeting aid targets.
Frederic Hache, co-founder of the independent thinktank of the EU Green Finance Observatory, tells Carbon Brief:
“The reality is that no global-north country has any intention of dispersing significant amounts of new grant money…All you get is these conditional financial instruments designed to benefit primarily global private investors.”
Scale, fees and forgiveness
The biggest criticism of debt swaps from all the experts Carbon Brief spoke to is their size relative to the looming sovereign debt of biodiversity-rich countries.
The graphic below compares the size of debt swaps (small, dark blue circle) to the amount that indebted developing countries have paid to service their debts (large, light blue circle) over the past three decades.
Between 1987 and 2023, low- and middle-income countries paid more than US$7.6tn in debt service versus $8.4bn treated through debt-for-nature swaps. Source: World Bank International Debt Report (2023) and Eurodad calculations based on the data from the World Bank International Debt Statistics.
The Seychelles marine biodiversity swap, for instance, was considered “one of the largest in history at the time”, but only amounted to $23m. Ray says:
“That’s pennies, in comparison to the billions of dollars that countries like Sri Lanka are currently negotiating for debt restructuring…[Swaps] only make sense as part of a broader package of debt relief to meet the current crisis.”
According to Prof Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, while debt swaps imply debt reduction, they “are far too small to have any impact at all” on countries’ debt. Sometimes, she says, swaps are not even a reduction, but instead allow countries some leeway in rescheduling their debt payments. Ghosh adds:
“It’s not even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s pretending to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, with big creditor countries refusing to really make the kinds of interventions that would make a difference in reducing the sovereign debt while pretending to do something about climate and conservation finance. And they’re not.”
According to Carbon Brief analysis, among all the debt-for-nature swaps that have taken place, Poland’s 1992 swap allocated the highest amount of resources to nature conservation, totalling over $500m. Ecuador’s 2023 swap, which saw the largest amount of debt swapped at $1.1bn, had the second-highest investment in conservation, allocating more than $400m for this purpose.
The chart below shows the 20 countries that have been the target of the largest debt swaps (light blue) and the amount of that money earmarked for conservation funds (dark blue).
High transaction costs, which are driven up by lengthy, complex, multilateral negotiations, the number of agents involved and intermediary fees, also eat into conservation savings.
Others point out that other real-world challenges, such as unstable exchange rates along with high inflation, can “erode and undermine the real value” of a country’s conservation commitments. For example, in Zambia, funds generated by a $2.2m debt swap in 1989 were exhausted in a year “due to the rapid devaluation” of the local currency.
Human rights
Sandra Guzmán, founder and general coordinator of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC), tells Carbon Brief that it is not possible to generalise the impacts of debt-for-nature swaps. She adds:
“A swap with the World Bank, a swap with the IDB [Inter-American Development Bank] or a swap with a commercial bank is very different. Not all swaps are done in the same way because it depends on the institutions involved.”
The 2007 debt-for-nature swap between Costa Rica and the US is an example of a swap where public information on its activities in Indigenous and local communities is available.
This swap involved more than 200 rural communities. One of the projects in the KéköLdi Indigenous territory, in south-eastern Costa Rica, helped the community reintroduce native iguanas and transmit ancestral knowledge to youth. Guzmán tells Carbon Brief:
“It has been said to be one of the most effective [swaps] because of the size of the debt cut and the conservation programme that Costa Rica promoted.”
However, not all debt-for-nature swaps have been so clear about the impacts on Indigenous and local communities.
Martínez, of CEDES Ecuador, tells Carbon Brief that the Galapagos debt-for-nature swap – signed last year to cancel $1.1bn of Ecuador’s debt in exchange for investing $450m to protect Galapagos islands – did not undergo a consultation process with Indigenous peoples and local communities. This could impact the economic, social, cultural and environmental rights of these communities, Martínez said.
The Climate Bonds Initiative published a report in 2023 analysing debt-for-nature swaps in the Seychelles, Belize, Barbados and Ecuador.
Daniel Costa, senior sustainability debt analyst at Climate Bonds Initiative, tells Carbon Brief that most of the analysed swaps do not mention how they involve local communities. He adds:
“This is what we would like to see further as these transactions are developed.”
Governance
Other criticisms of debt-for-nature swaps are the inadequate governance conditions that debtor countries may have. Governance refers to how swaps are implemented in the countries, the institutions and stakeholders involved and the structure of negotiations.
For example, the 2023 Galapagos swap had “serious limitations” in monitoring and enforcement, lack of transparency and accountability and “little clarity on potential fiscal risks for Ecuador”, according to recent analysis by the Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice (Latindadd) and other organisations.
The analysis also revealed a lack of public information on the conservation fund and whether these actions have contributed to capacity-building at the local level.
The decision on which conservation activities will be implemented with a debt-for-nature swap varies from transaction to transaction, notes Costa, of Climate Bonds Initiative. These activities are often managed by funds, whose members include conservation organisations in addition to the government, he adds.
Carola Mejía, climate justice, transitions and Amazon coordinator at Latindadd, tells Carbon Brief that while swaps may be potentially scalable, they need to be improved in many ways. She says swaps must be built on principles such as transparency, respect for sovereignty and fairness in negotiation.
Guzmán, of GFLAC, tells Carbon Brief:
“Not all countries will have the same capacities in terms of governance, structures, human, financial and institutional capacities. There are severely indebted countries that need [debt] cancellation; there are countries that can do swaps because they have economies that can move towards those scenarios; and there are countries with greater financial capacity that may not [need] swaps, but other types of financing.”
Greenwashing
Civil society organisations and researchers have also raised concerns about the potential for “greenwashing” in some debt-for-nature swaps.
Mejía says countries in the global north are not meeting their climate finance and biodiversity commitments, but are promoting swaps as “the big solution”. This carries the risk of greenwashing, Mejía adds, as rather than creating positive action for the environment, swaps are generating more loans and debt.
For example, the $30m swap between Indonesia and the US made in 2009 in exchange for conserving rainforests on the island of Sumatra had several shortcomings, according to a 2011 study. The swap did not free up additional resources for the Indonesian government and was “too insignificant to create indirect (positive) economic effects”, the study says.
In the 2023 Galapagos swap, although the IDB provided an $85m guarantee to support the debt agreement for 18.5 years, the Latindadd report found that “there have been no additional international commitments or disbursements so far”.
Debt-for-nature swaps have also been questioned for not directly benefiting citizens and for transferring power over the management of the funds and the implementation of conservation projects to creditors.
The Gabon Blue Conservation was created as part of the swap where Gabon received $500m in exchange for protecting 30% of its oceans. This foreign-owned conservation organisation receives a 20% administration fee, which “immediately reduces the savings for the country by a [fifth]”, a report by the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements says.
Moreover, the report adds, “it is hard to see evidence that” the marine spatial plan, mandated by the Nature Conservancy for this swap, empowers marginalised groups, including fishers, for decision-making around coastal management.
Hache tells Carbon Brief:
“From a geopolitical perspective, swaps are great. It’s a way to gain access and control to land resources that will prove possibly precious in the future. This is…diplomacy by other means.”
Can debt-for-nature swaps be more effective?
Debt-for-nature swaps are being reviewed for their effectiveness again at a time when biodiverse, developing countries struggling with debt payments are having to find the financial resources to meet biodiversity and climate targets.
According to the latest World Bank debt report, low- and middle-income countries owed their foreign lenders $9tn in 2022. The same year, these countries paid a record $443.5bn to pay down these debts, with these payments diverting government spending away from critical development priorities, as well as climate and nature spending.
A 2023 study found that 67 countries at risk of defaulting on their loans collectively host 22% of global “biodiversity priority areas”, such as relatively intact but vulnerable forests, grasslands, deserts and mangroves. For 35 of these countries, it estimated that all of their unprotected biodiversity priority areas could be protected for a fraction of their national debt.
Debt-for-nature swaps and debt-for-climate swaps could free up more than $100bn of debt in developing countries, according to a recent analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Ray, from Boston University, says that swaps can help create space for countries to make climate-adaptation plans that also help preserve livelihoods that depend on biodiversity, such as fishing or collecting forest produce.
She adds that this can “interrupt a vicious cycle between natural capital and volatile financial capital”, where economic crises and extreme weather events drastically reduce climate adaptation and biodiversity budgets.
But, in order to create this breathing room for biodiversity, swaps need to accomplish multiple things, she tells Carbon Brief:
“You need a lot of time. You need political capital and institutional capacity to centre the communities who have traditionally been the stewards of biodiversity and find a way to make sure that not only is their access to biodiversity uninterrupted, but that they are accountable for that job and rewarded for it. And a real commitment to accountability from everyone involved to make sure these projects actually help support biodiversity and communities.”
Ray points to the case of “blue bonds” for marine conservation, a label that multinational bank Barclays called “misleading” in 2023. According to Barclays, while “the point of a green bond is that 100% of the proceeds raised are spent on” marine projects, in blue bonds floated, each extra party “takes a cut from the proceeds”.
Other experts Carbon Brief spoke to had differing views, suggesting that debt-for-nature swaps would not just require improvements in governance, but in reforming the architecture of international finance.
Guzmán says:
“[Swaps] are initially going to open up your fiscal space, but are not going to solve the financing problem for countries. What we need to fundamentally change is the operation of financial institutions and the type of loans and the conditions they give for those loans, i.e., lower interest rates and much more appropriate treatment. That is really what is going to help sustainable financing.”
To Ghosh, creditors are often “unwilling to make very large commitments of debt reduction”. She adds:
“You have to do something about sovereign debt on its own, which means you have to be serious about the debt reductions. That’s independent of whether you’re linking this conditionality with nature, because without dealing with the sovereign debt, you are not going to generate a green transition in any of these countries. They simply can’t afford it.”
Ghosh suggests solutions that could change the “landscape of debt”, including a standstill on debt during debt negotiations – where the amount of debt stays the same instead of accruing interest while parties come to a resolution – and involving all creditors: private, public and multilateral.
To Hache, the “devil lies in the details” of debt-for-nature swaps. He says:
“It’s about the proportion of the budget allocated to conservation. It’s about the real amount of debt forgiveness compared to where the debt was trading, compared to its nominal value earlier…Ultimately, you also have to compare it to the real alternative, which is debt forgiveness, and you kill any chances of debt forgiveness, loss and damages by endorsing or accepting these deals.”
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Q&A: Can debt-for-nature ‘swaps’ help tackle biodiversity loss and climate change?
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 11 February 2026: Aftershocks of US withdrawals | Biodiversity and business risks | Deep-sea mining tensions
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here. This is the last edition of Cropped for 2025. The newsletter will return on 14 January 2026.
Key developments
Economic risks from nature loss
RISKY BUSINESS: The “undervaluing” of nature by businesses is fuelling its decline and putting the global economy at risk, according to a new report covered by Carbon Brief. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) “business and biodiversity” report “urg[ed] companies to act now or potentially face extinction themselves”, Reuters wrote.
BUSINESS ACTION: The report was agreed at an IPBES meeting in Manchester last week. Speaking to Carbon Brief at the meeting, IPBES chair, Dr David Obura, said the findings showed that “all sectors” of business “need to respond to biodiversity loss and minimise their impacts”. Bloomberg quoted Prof Stephen Polasky, co-chair of the report, as saying: “Too often, at present, what’s good for business is bad for nature and vice-versa.”
Tensions in deep-sea mining
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JAPAN’S TAKEOFF: Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, announced on 2 February that the country became the first in the world to extract rare earths from the deep seabed after successful retrievals near Minamitori Island, in the central Pacific Ocean, according to Asia Financial. The country hailed the move as a “first step toward industrialisation of domestically produced rare earth” metals, Takaichi said.
URGENT CALL: On 5 February, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) secretary general, Leticia Reis de Carvalho, called on EU officials to “quickly agree on an international rule book on the extraction of critical minerals in international waters”, due to be finalised later this year, Euractiv reported. The bloc has supported a proposed moratorium on deep-sea mining. However, the US has “taken the opposite approach”, fast-tracking a single permit for exploration and exploitation of seabed resources, and “might be pushing the EU – and others” to follow suit, the outlet added.
CAUTIONARY COMMENT: In the Inter Press Service, the former president of the Seychelles and a Swiss philanthropist highlighted the important role of African leadership in global ocean governance. It called for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining due to the potential harmful effects of this extractive activity on biodiversity, food security and the economy. They wrote: “The accelerating push for deep-sea mining activities also raises concerns about repeating historic patterns seen in other extractive sectors across Africa.”
News and views
- ARGENTINE AUSTERITY: The Argentinian government’s response to the worst wildfires to hit Patagonia “in decades” has been hindered by president Javier Milei’s “gutting” of the country’s fire-management agency, the Associated Press reported. Carbon Brief covered a new rapid-attribution analysis of the fires, which found that climate change made the hot, dry conditions that preceded the fires more than twice as likely.
- CRISIS IN SOMALIA: The Somali government has begun “emergency talks” to address the drought that is gripping much of the country, according to Shabelle Media. The outlet wrote that the “crisis has reached a critical stage” amid “worsening shortages of water, food and pasture threatening both human life and livestock”.
- FOOD PRICES FALL: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s “food price index” – a measure of the costs of key food commodities around the world – fell in January for the fifth month in a row. The fall was driven by decreases in the price of dairy, meat and sugar, which “more than offset” increasing prices of cereals and vegetable oil, according to the FAO.
- HIGH STANDARDS: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol launched a new standard for companies to measure emissions and carbon removals from land use and emerging technologies. BusinessGreen said that the standard is “expected to provide a boost to the expanding carbon removals and carbon credit sectors by providing an agreed measurement protocol”.
- RUNNING OUT OF TIME: Negotiators from the seven US states that share the Colorado River basin met in Washington DC ahead of a 14 February deadline for agreeing a joint plan for managing the basin’s reservoirs. The Colorado Sun wrote: “The next agreement will impact growing cities, massive agricultural industries, hydroelectric power supplies and endangered species for years to come.”
- CORAL COVER: Malaysia has lost around 20% of its coral reefs since 2022, “with reef conditions continuing to deteriorate nationwide”, the Star – a Malaysian online news outlet – reported. The ongoing decline has many drivers, it added, including a global bleaching event in 2024, pollution and unsustainable tourism and development.
Spotlight
Aftershocks of US exiting major nature-science body
This week, Carbon Brief reports on the impacts of the US withdrawal from the global nature-science panel, IPBES.
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the US from the world’s main expert panel that advises policymakers on biodiversity and ecosystem science “harms everybody, including themselves”.
That’s according to Dr David Obura, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES.
IPBES is among the dozens of international organisations dealing with the fallout from the US government’s announcement last month.
The panel’s chief executive, Dr Luthando Dziba, told Carbon Brief that the exit impacts both the panel’s finances and the involvement of important scientists. He said:
“The US was one of the founding members of IPBES…A lot of US experts contribute to our assessments and they’ve led our assessments in various capacities. They’ve also served in various official bodies of the platform.”
Obura told Carbon Brief that “it’s very important to try and keep pushing through with the knowledge and keep doing the work that we’re doing”. He said he hopes the US will rejoin in future.
Carbon Brief attended the first IPBES meeting since Trump’s announcement, held last week in Manchester. At the meeting, countries finalised a new “business and biodiversity” report.
For the first time in the 14-year history of IPBES, there was no US government delegation present at the meeting, although some US scientists attended in other roles.
Cashflow impacts
Dziba is still waiting for official confirmation of the US withdrawal, but impacts were being felt even before last month’s announcement.
Budget information [pdf] from last October shows that the US contributed the most money to IPBES of any country in 2024 – around $1.2m. In 2025, when Trump took office, it sent $0, as of October.
Despite this, IPBES actually received around $1.2m extra funding from countries in 2025, compared to 2024, as other nations filled the gap.
The UK, for example, increased its contribution from around $367,000 in 2024 to more than $1.7m in 2025. The EU, which did not contribute in 2024 but tends to make multi-year payments, paid around $2.7m last year. These two payments made up the bulk of the increase in overall funding.
Wider effects of US exit
Dziba said IPBES is looking at other ways of boosting funds in future, but noted that lost income is not the only concern:
“For us, the withdrawal of the US is actually much larger than just the budgetary implications, because you can find somebody who can come in and increase the contribution and close that gap.
“The US has got thousands of leading experts in the fields where we undertake assessments. We know that some of them work for [the] government and maybe [for] those it will be more challenging for them to continue…But there are many other experts that we hope, in some way, will still be able to contribute to the work of the platform.”
One person trying to keep US scientists involved is Prof Pam McElwee, a professor of human ecology at Rutgers University. She told Carbon Brief that “there are still a tonne of American scientists and other civil society organisations that want to stand up”.
McElwee and others have looked at ways for US scientists to access funding to continue working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which the US has also withdrawn from. She said they will try and do the same at IPBES, adding:
“It’s basically a bottom-up initiative…to make the message clear that scientists in the US still support these institutions and we still are part of them.
“Climate science is what it is and we can’t deny or withdraw from it. So we’ll just keep trying to represent it as best we can.”
Watch, read, listen
UNDER THE SEA: An article in bioGraphic explored whether the skeletons of dead corals “help or hinder recovery” on bleached reefs.
MOSSY MOORS: BBC News covered how “extinct moss” is being reintroduced in some English moors in an effort to “create diverse habitats for wildlife”.
RIBBIT: Scientists are “racing” to map out Ecuador’s “unique biological heritage of more than 700 frog species”, reported Dialogue Earth.
MEAT COMEBACK: Grist examined the rise and fall of vegan fine dining.
New science
- Areas suitable for grazing animals could shrink by 36-50% by 2100 due to continued climate change, with areas of extreme poverty and political fragility experiencing the highest losses | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- The body condition of Svalbard polar bears increased after 2000, in a period of rapid loss of ice cover | Scientific Reports
- Studies projecting the possibility of reversing biodiversity loss are scarce and most do not account for additional drivers of loss, such as climate change, according to a meta-analysis of more than 55 papers | Science Advances
In the diary
- 9-12 February: Climate and cryosphere open science conference | Wellington, New Zealand
- 18 February: International conservation technology conference | Lima, Peru
- 22-27 February: American Geophysical Union’s ocean sciences meeting | Glasgow, UK
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 11 February 2026: Aftershocks of US withdrawals | Biodiversity and business risks | Deep-sea mining tensions appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The UK government has secured a record 7.4 gigawatts (GW) of solar, onshore wind and tidal power in its latest auction for new renewable capacity.
It is the second and final part of the seventh auction round for “contracts for difference” (CfDs), known as AR7a.
In the first part, held in January 2026, the government agreed contracts for a record 8.4GW of new offshore wind capacity.
This makes AR7 the UK’s single-largest auction round overall, with its 14.7GW of new renewable capacity being 50% larger than the previous record set by AR6 in 2024.
In AR7a, 157 solar projects secured contracts to supply electricity for £65 per megawatt hour (MWh) and 28 onshore wind projects were contracted at £72/MWh.
This means they will help cut consumer bills, according to multiple analysts.
Energy secretary Ed Miliband welcomed the outcome of the auction, saying in a statement that the new projects would be “50% cheaper” than new gas:
“These results show once again that clean British power is the right choice for our country, agreeing a price for new onshore wind and solar that is over 50% cheaper than the cost of building and operating new gas”.
In addition to cutting costs, the new projects will help reduce gas imports.
In total, AR7 will cut UK gas demand by around 90 terawatt hours (TWh) per year, enough to cut liquified natural gas (LNG) imports by two-thirds, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Below, Carbon Brief looks at the seventh auction results for onshore wind, solar and tidal, what they mean energy for bills and the impact of the UK’s target of “clean power by 2030”.
- What happened in the latest UK renewable auction?
- What does the solar and onshore wind auction mean for bills?
- What does it mean for energy security, jobs and investment?
- What does the auction mean for clean power by 2030?
What happened in the latest UK renewable auction?
The latest UK government auction for new renewable capacity is the second and final part of the seventh auction round, known as AR7a.
It secured a record 4.9GW of new solar capacity across 157 projects, as shown in the figure below, as well as 1.3GW of onshore wind across 28 projects.
In addition, four tidal energy projects totalling 21 megawatts (MW) secured contracts, included within “other” in the figure below.
Most of the solar that secured a contract has a capacity of less than 50MW. This is the cut-off point for projects to be approved by the local council. Larger schemes must instead go through the “nationally significant infrastructure project” (NSIP) process, subject to approval by the secretary of state for energy.
For the first time, one 480MW solar project – approved via this NSIP process – won a CfD in AR7a. The West Burton Solar NSIP is being developed in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire by Island Green Power. It is named after the grid connection it will use, freed up by the shuttering of the coal-powered West Burton plant.
However, Nick Civetta, project leader at Aurora Energy Research notes on LinkedIn that this site was only one of four eligible solar NSIPs to secure a contract.
Civetta adds that “wrangling these large projects into fruition is proving more painful than expected”.
Solar projects secured a “strike price” of £65/MWh in 2024 prices, some 7% cheaper than the £70/MWh agreed in the previous auction round.
In previous auction rounds CfD contracts were expressed in 2012 prices. For comparison, AR6 and AR7a solar contracts stand at £50/MWh and £47/MWh in 2012 prices, respectively.)
Alongside solar, 28 onshore wind projects secured contracts in the latest CfD auction, with a total capacity of 1.3GW.
This includes the Imerys windfarm in Cornwall, which at nearly 20MW is the largest onshore wind farm in England to secure a contract in a decade.
(Shortly after taking office in 2024, the current Labour government lifted a decade-long de facto ban on onshore wind in England.)
Overall, Scotland still dominated the auction for onshore wind, with 1,093MW of projects in the country in comparison to 38MW in England and 185MW in Wales.
This includes the Sanquhar II windfarm in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland, which will become the fourth-largest onshore wind farm in the UK at 269MW.
In total, Wales secured contracts for 20 renewables projects in AR7a, with a capacity of more than 530MW. This is the largest ever number of Welsh projects to get backing in a CfD auction, according to a statement from the Welsh government.
Onshore wind secured a strike price of £72/MWh, up slightly from £71/MWh in the previous auction in 2024.
The prices for solar and onshore wind were 13% and 21% below the price cap set by Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) for the auction, respectively.
In its press release announcing the results, the government noted that the results for solar and onshore wind were less than half of the £147/MWh cost of building and operating new gas power stations.
Finally, four tidal energy projects secured contracts with a total capacity of 21MW at a strike price of £265/MWh, up from £240/MWh in 2024.
In total, taken together with the 8.4GW of offshore wind secured in the first part of the auction, AR7 secured a total of 14.7GW of new clean power, as shown in the chart below.
This is enough to power the equivalent of 16 million homes, according to the government. It also makes AR7 the single-largest auction round by far, at more than 50% larger than the previous record set by AR6 in 2024.
This means that the two auction rounds held since the Labour government took office in July 2024 – AR6 and AR7 – have secured a total of 24GW of new renewable capacity. This is more than the 22GW from all previous auction rounds put together.
However, several analysts noted that the AR7a results did not include any old onshore windfarms looking to replace their ageing turbines with new equipment – so-called “repowering projects” – despite the auction being open to them for the first time.
What does the solar and onshore wind auction mean for bills?
Onshore wind and solar are widely recognised as the cheapest sources of new electricity generation in almost every part of the world.
The latest auction shows that the UK is no exception, despite its northerly location.
The prices for onshore wind and solar in the latest auction, at £72/MWh and £65/MWh respectively, are comfortably below recent wholesale power prices, which averaged £81/MWh in 2025 and £92/MWh in January 2026.
This means that the new projects will cut costs for UK electricity consumers, according to multiple analysts commenting on the auction outcome.
The government lauded the results of AR7a for securing “homegrown energy at good value for billpayers – once again proving that clean power is the right choice for energy security and to meet rising electricity demand”.
In a statement, Miliband added:
“By backing solar and onshore wind at scale, we’re driving bills down for good and protecting families, businesses, and our country from the fossil fuel rollercoaster controlled by petrostates and dictators. This is how we take back control of our energy and deliver a new era of energy abundance and independence.”
As noted in Carbon Brief’s coverage of the offshore wind results under AR7 in January, electricity demand is starting to rise as the economy electrifies and many of the UK’s existing power plants are nearing the end of their lives.
Therefore, new sources of electricity generation will be needed, whether from renewables, gas-fired power stations or from other sources.
In his statement, quoted above, Miliband said that the prices for onshore wind and solar were less than half the £147/MWh cost of electricity from new gas-fired power stations.
(This is based on recently published government estimates and assumes that gas plants would only be operating during 30% of hours each year, in line with the current UK fleet.)
Trade association RenewableUK also pointed to the cost of new gas, as well as the £124/MWh cost of the Hinkley C new nuclear plant, in its response to the auction results.
In a statement, Dr Doug Parr, policy director for Greenpeace UK, said:
“These new onshore wind and solar projects will supply energy at less than half the cost of new gas plants. Together with the new offshore wind contracts agreed last month, these cheaper renewables will lower energy bills as they come online.”
Strike prices for solar dropped by 6% compared to last year and while onshore wind prices rose, this was by less than 2% despite a “difficult environment for wind generation”, according to Bertalan Gyenes, consultant at LCP Delta.
In a post on LinkedIn, he noted that “extending the contract length [for onshore wind projects] by five years seems to have helped keep this increase low”.
The January offshore wind round secured 8.4 GW at £91/MWh, as such, the onshore and solar projects are 25% cheaper per unit of generation.
(The offshore wind projects secured in January are nevertheless expected to cut consumer bills relative to the alternative, or at worst to be cost neutral.)
Parr added that while the AR7a auction results “show we’re getting up to speed” ahead of the clean power 2030 target (see below), “an even faster way for the government to make a really big dent in bills would be to change the system that allows gas to set the overall energy price in this country”. He adds:
“That would allow us to unshackle our bills from unreliable petrostates and get off the rollercoaster of volatile gas markets once and for all.”
What does it mean for energy security, jobs and investment?
The onshore wind and solar projects secured in the latest auction round will generate an estimated 9 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
This is equivalent to roughly 3% of current UK electricity demand.
Combined with the estimated 37TWh from offshore wind secured during the first part of the auction, AR7 projects will be able to generate 46TWh of electricity, 14% of current demand.
If this electricity were to be generated by gas-fired power plants, then it would require around 90TWh of fuel, because much of the energy in the gas is lost during combustion.
This is several times more than the 25TWh of extra gas that could be produced in 2030 if new drilling licenses are issued, according to thinktank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU). As such, AR7 will significantly cut UK gas imports, ECIU says, reducing exposure to volatile international gas markets.
Furthermore, ECIU says that the impact of renewables in driving down gas demand – and subsequently electricity prices – is already being seen in the UK.
Five years ago, gas was setting the wholesale price of power in the UK 98% of the time due to the way the electricity market operates.
This price-setting dominance is being eroded by renewables, with recent analysis from the UK Energy Research Centre showing that gas set power prices 90% of the time in 2025.
A further effect of new renewables is that they push the most expensive gas-fired power plants out of the system, reducing prices. This is known as the “merit-order effect”.
Recent analysis from ECIU found that large windfarms cut wholesale electricity prices by a third in 2025.
Lucy Dolton, renewable generation lead at Cornwall Insight, said in a statement that the AR7a results will provide a “surge in momentum as [the UK] pushes toward secure, homegrown energy”, adding:
“These investments ultimately strengthen the UK’s position against volatile gas markets. If the past few years have shown us anything, it’s that remaining tied to international energy markets comes with consequences.”
The projects that secured CfDs will help the UK avoid burning significant quantities of gas, “the bulk of which would have been imported at a cost which the UK cannot control”, said RenewableUK in its statement.
Together with previous CfD auction rounds, the latest new renewable projects are expected to generate some 155TWh of electricity once they are all operating, according to Carbon Brief analysis. This is around half of current UK demand.
Generating the same electricity from gas would require some 316TWh of fuel, which is similar to the 339TWh of gas produced by the UK’s North Sea operations in the most recent 12-month period for which data is available. This figure can also be compared with the 130TWh of gas that was imported by ship as liquified natural gas (LNG) in the same period.
The government added that the AR7a projects will support up to 10,000 jobs and bring £5bn in private investment to the UK.
(In total, the new projects secured via AR7 are expected to bring investments worth around £20-23bn to the UK, according to Aurora.)
Additionally, the onshore wind projects are expected to generate over £6.5m in “community benefit” funds for people living near them, according to RenewableUK.
The AR7a results were released alongside the publication of the Local Power Plan by the government and Great British Energy.
This is designed to provide £1bn in funding for communities to own and control their own clean energy projects across the UK.
What does the auction mean for clean power by 2030?
The AR7a results put the UK “on track for its 2030 clean power target”, according to the government.
Over AR6 and AR7, several changes have been made to the CfD process to help facilitate more projects to secure contracts.
A total of 24GW has been secured over the last two auction rounds – which have taken place under the current Labour government – compared to 22GW across the five auction rounds previously.
As part of its goal for clean power to meet 100% of electricity demand by 2030 and to account for at least 95% of electricity generation, the UK government is aiming for 27-29GW of onshore wind and 45-47GW of solar by the end of the decade.
As of September 2025, the UK had 16.3GW of installed onshore wind capacity and more than 21GW of solar capacity. Taken together, the onshore technologies therefore need to double in operational capacity over the next four years to reach the 2030 targets.
Analysis by RenewableUK suggests that the government will need to procure between 3.85GW to 4.85GW of onshore wind in the next two auctions for the 2030 goal to remain possible.
Writing on LinkedIn, Aurora’s Civetta said that the onshore clean power 2030 targets “remain a long way off”.
He continued that the gap for solar to reach its 45-47GW target is still a “whopping 18GW”, but added that there may be other ways for new capacity to be secured, beyond the CfD auctions.
He said these included a growing market for corporate “power purchase agreements” (PPAs), economic incentives for homes and businesses to install solar and the government’s recently released “warm homes plan”, all of which “should drive further procurement”.
Dolton from Cornwall Insight adds that “the challenge now is delivery”, continuing:
“2.5GW of the winners have a delivery year of 2027/28, and over half – 3.7GW – have a delivery year of 2028/29, which brings them very close to the government’s 2030 clean power target.
“Historically, renewable projects in the UK have faced delays, often due to grid connection backlogs and planning holdups. With AR7 and some of AR8 representing the only realistic pipeline for pre-2030 capacity, keeping to schedule will be essential.”
When built, the projects announced today will help to bring the total capacity of CfD-supported wind and solar to 50.6GW, according to Ember.
While solar and onshore wind are expected to play an important role in decarbonising the electricity system, offshore wind is set to be the “backbone”.
The government is targeting 43-50GW of offshore wind by 2030, up from around 17GW of installed capacity today.
This leaves a gap of 27-34GW to the government’s target range.
Prior to the AR7 auction, a further 10GW had already secured CfD contracts, excluding the cancelled Hornsea 4 project.
The 8.4GW secured in January brings the gap to reach the minimum of 43GW over the four years to just 7GW.
The post Q&A: New UK onshore wind and solar is ‘50% cheaper’ than new gas appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: New UK onshore wind and solar is ‘50% cheaper’ than new gas
Greenhouse Gases
IPBES chair Dr David Obura: Trump’s US exit from global nature panel ‘harms everybody’
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the US from the intergovernmental science panel for nature “harms everybody, including them”, according to its chair.
Dr David Obura is a leading coral reef ecologist from Kenya and chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the world’s authority on the science of nature decline.
In January, Donald Trump announced intentions to withdraw the US from IPBES, along with 65 other international organisations, including the UN climate science panel and its climate treaty.
In an interview with Carbon Brief, Obura says the warming that humans have already caused means “coral reefs are very likely at a tipping point” and that it is now inevitable that Earth “will lose what we have called coral reefs”.
A global goal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 will not be possible to achieve for every ecosystem, he continues, noting that a lack of action from countries means “we won’t be able to do it fast enough at this point”.
Despite this, it is still possible to reverse the “enabling drivers” of biodiversity decline within the next four years, he adds, warning that leaders must act as “our economies and societies fully depend on nature”.
The interview was conducted at the sidelines of an IPBES meeting in Manchester, UK, where governments agreed to a new report detailing how the “undervaluing” of nature by businesses is fuelling biodiversity decline and putting the global economy at risk.
- On US leaving IPBES: “Any major country not being part of it harms everybody, including themselves.”
- On reversing nature loss by 2030: “We won’t be able to do it fast enough at this point.”
- On the value of biodiversity: “Nature is really the life support system for people. Our economies and societies fully depend on nature.”
- On coral reefs: “We will lose what we have called coral reefs up until this point.”
- On nature justice: “The places that are most vulnerable don’t have the income, or the assets, to conserve biodiversity.”
- On IPBES’s latest report: “One of the key findings is all businesses have impacts and dependencies on nature.”
- On the next UN nature summit: “We need acceleration of activities and impact and effectiveness, more than anything else.”
Carbon Brief: Last month Trump announced plans for the US to exit IPBES and dozens of other global organisations. You described this at the time as “deeply disappointing”. What are your thoughts on the decision now and what will be the main impacts of the US leaving IPBES?
David Obura: Well, part of the reason that I’ve come to IPBES is because, of course, I believe in the multilateral process, because we bring 150 countries together, we’re part of the UN and the multilateral system and we’re based on knowledge [that provides] inputs to policymaking. We have a conceptual framework that looks from the bottom up on how people depend on nature. I’m also doing a lot of science on Earth systems at the planetary level, how our footprint is exceeding the scale of the planet. We have to make decisions together. We need the multilateral system to work to help facilitate that. It has never been perfect. Of course, I come from a region [Kenya] that hasn’t been, you know, powerful in the multilateral process.
But we need countries to come together, so any major country not being part of it harms everybody, including themselves. It’s very important to try and keep pushing through with the knowledge and keep doing the work that we’re doing, so that, over time, hopefully [the US will] rejoin. Because, in the end, we will really need that to happen.
CB: This is the first IPBES meeting since Trump made the announcement. Has it had an impact so far on these proceedings and is there any kind of US presence here?
DO: This plenary is like every plenary that we have had. The current members are here. Some members are not. And, of course, we have some states here as observers working out if they’re going to join or not. And then we have a lot of private sector observers and universities and so on. The impact of a country leaving – the US in this case – has no impact on the plenary itself, because they’re not here making decisions on the things that we do.
We, of course, don’t have US government members attending in technical areas, but we do have institutions and universities and academics here attending as they have in the past. So, in that sense, the plenary goes on as it goes on – the science and the knowledge is the same. The decision-making processes we have here are the same. And, as I said earlier, what has an impact is the actual action that takes place afterwards, because a lot of the recommendations that we make are based on enabling conditions that governments put in place, to bring in place sustainability actions and so on. When governments are not doing that, especially major economic drivers, then the whole system suffers.
CB: When you were appointed as chair of IPBES more than two years ago, you said that your aim was to strengthen cohesion and impact and also get the findings of IPBES in front of more people. So how would you rate your progress on this now that it’s been about a couple of years?
DO: Well, like any intergovernmental process, we have a certain amount of inertia in what we do and it takes a few years to consult on topics for assessments and then to do them and to improve them and get them out.
One of the main things we’re discussing right now is we have had a rolling work programme from when IPBES started until 2030 and we need to decide on the last few deliverables and how we work in that period. We are asking for a mandate to spend the next year really considering the multiple options that we have in proposing a way forward for the last few years of this work programme. I feel that the countries are very aligned. We have done a lot of work, produced a lot of outputs. It is challenging for governments and other stakeholders to read our assessments and reach into them to find what’s useful to them. They make constant calls for more support, in uptake, in capacity building and in policy support.
The second global assessment in 2028 will be our 17th assessment [overall]. We would like to focus on really bringing all this knowledge together across assessments in ways that are relevant to different governments, different stakeholder groups, different networks to help them reach into the knowledge that’s in the assessments. And I think the governments, of course, want that as well, because many of them are calling for it. Many of the governments that support us financially, of course, want to see a return of investment on the money that they have put in.
CB: Nations agreed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Back in 2023 we had a conversation for Carbon Brief and you said that you were “highly doubtful” this goal could be achieved for every ecosystem by that date. Where do you stand on this now?
DO: I work on coral reefs and part of the reason I’ve come to IPBES platform is because the amount of climate change we’re committed to with current fossil fuel emissions and the focus on economic growth means that corals will continue to decline 20, 30, 40 years into the future. I think of that there’s no real doubt. The question is how soon we put in place the right actions to halt climate change. That will then have a lag on how long it takes for corals to cope with that amount of climate change.
We can’t halt and reverse the decline of every ecosystem. But we can try and bend the curve to halt and reverse the drivers of decline. So, that’s some of the economic drivers that we talk about in the nexus and transformative change assessment, the indirect drivers and the value shifts we need to have. What the Global Biodiversity Framework [GBF, a global nature agreement made in 2022] aspires to do in terms of halting and reversing biodiversity decline – we absolutely need to do that. We can do it and we can put in place the enabling conditions for that by 2030 for sure. But we won’t be able to do it fast enough at this point to halt [the loss of] all ecosystems.
We’re now in 2026, so this is three years plus after the GBF was adopted. We still need greater action from all countries and all stakeholders and businesses and so on. That’s what we’re really pushing for in our assessments.
CB: Biodiversity loss has historically been underappreciated by world leaders. As the world continues to be gripped by geopolitical uncertainty, conflict and financial pressures, what are your thoughts on the chances of leaders addressing the issue of biodiversity loss in a meaningful way?
DO: What are the chances of addressing biodiversity loss? I mean, we have to do it. It’s really our life support system and if we only focus on immediate crises and threats and don’t pay attention to the long-term threats and crises, that only creates more short-term crises down the line, we make it harder and harder to do that. I hope that what I’m hoping we get to understand better through IPBES science, as well as others, is that we’re not just reporting on the state of biodiversity because it’s nice to have it, but it’s [because] diversity of nature is really the life support system for people. Our economies and societies fully depend on nature. If we want them to prosper and be secure into the long-term future, we have to learn how to bring the impact and dependencies of business, which is a focus of this assessment, in line with nature. And until we do that, we will just continue to magnify the potential for future crises and their impacts.
CB: You mentioned already that your expertise is in coral reefs. A report last year warned that the world has reached its first climate tipping point, that of widespread dying of warm water coral reefs. Do you agree with that statement and can you discuss the wider state of coral reefs across the world at this present moment?
DO: The report that came out last year in 2025 was a global tipping point report and it’s actually in 2023 the first one of those [was published]. I was involved in that one and we basically took what the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has produced, which [is] compiled from the [scientific] literature [which said] that 1.5-2C was the critical range for coral reefs, where you go from losing 70-90% to 90-99% of coral reefs around the world. [It is] a bit hard to say exactly what that means. What we did was we actually reduced that range from 1.5C-2C to 1-1.5C, based on observations we’ve already made about loss of corals. In 2024, the world was 1.5C above historical conditions for one year. The IPCC number requires a 20-year average [for 1.5C to be crossed]. So, we’re not quite at the IPCC limit, but we’re very close. Also, with not putting in place fast enough emission reductions, warming will continue.
Coral reefs are very likely at a tipping point. And, so, I do agree with the statement. It means that we lose the fully connected regional, global system that coral reefs have been in the past. There will still be some coral reefs in places that have some natural protection mechanisms, whether it’s oceanographic or some levels of sedimentation in green water from rivers can help. And there’s resilience of corals as well. Some corals will be able to adapt somewhat, but not all – and not all the other species too. We will lose what we have called coral reefs up until this point. We’ll still continue to have simpler coral ecosystems into the future, but they won’t be quite the same.
It is a crisis point and my hope is that, in coming out from the coral reef world, I can communicate that this is, this has been a crisis for coral reefs. It’s a very important ecosystem, but we don’t want it to happen to more and more and more ecosystems that support more [than] hundreds of millions and billions of people as well. Because, if we let things go that far, then, of course, we have much bigger crises on our hands.
CB: Something else you’ve spoken about before is around equity being one of the big challenges when it comes to responding to biodiversity loss. Can you explain why you think that biodiversity loss should be seen as a justice issue?
DO: Well, biodiversity loss is a justice issue because we are a part of biodiversity and – just like the loss of ecosystems and habitats and species – people live locally as well. People experience biodiversity loss in their surroundings.
The places that are most vulnerable and don’t have the income, or the assets, to either conserve biodiversity, or need to rely on it too much so they degrade it – they feel the impacts of that loss much more directly than those who do have more assets. Also, the more assets you have, the more you can import biodiversity products and benefits from somewhere else.
So, it’s very much a justice issue, both from local levels experiencing it directly, but then also at global levels. We are part of it [biodiversity], we don’t own it. It’s a global good, or a common public good, so we need to be preserving it for all people on the planet. In that sense, there are many, many justice issues that are involved in both loss of biodiversity and how you deal with that as well.
CB: How would you say IPBES is working towards achieving greater equity in biodiversity science?
DO: One of the headline findings of our values assessment in 2022, which looked at multiple values different cultures have and different worldviews around the planet, [was that] by accommodating or considering different worldviews and different perspectives, you achieve greater equity because you’re already considering other worldviews in making decisions.
So, that’s an important first step – just making it much more apparent and upfront that we can’t just make decisions, especially global ones, from a single worldview and the dominant one is the market economic worldview that we have. That’s very important.
But, then, also in how we do our assessments and the knowledge systems that are incorporated in them. We integrate different knowledge systems together and try and juxtapose – or if they can be integrated, we do that, sometimes you can’t – but you just need to illustrate different worldviews and perspectives on the common issue of biodiversity loss or livelihoods or something like that.
We hope that our conceptual framework and our values framework really help bring in this awareness of multiple cultures and multiple perspectives in the multilateral system.
CB: When this interview is published, IPBES will have released its report on business and biodiversity. What are some of the key takeaways from this?
DO: Our assessments integrate so much information that the key messages are actually, in retrospect, quite obvious in a way. One of the key findings it will say is that all businesses have impacts and dependencies on nature.
Of course, when you think about it, of course they do. We often think, “oh, well ecotourism is dependent on nature”, but even a supermarket is dependent on nature because a lot of the produce comes from a natural system somewhere, maybe in a greenhouse or enhanced by fertiliser, but it still comes from natural systems. Any other business will have either impacts on the nature around it, or it needs tree shade outside so people can walk in and things like that.
So, that’s one of the main findings. It’s not just certain sectors that need to respond to biodiversity loss and minimise their impacts. All sectors need to. Another finding, of course, is that it’s very differentiated depending on the type of business and type of sector.
It’s also very differentiated in different parts of the world in terms of responsibilities and also capabilities. So small businesses, of course, have much less leeway, perhaps, to change what they’re doing, whereas big businesses do and they have more assets, so they can deal with shifts and changes much better.
It’s a methodological assessment, rather than assessing the state of businesses, or the state of nature in relation to businesses [and] they pull together a huge list of methodologies and tools and things that businesses can access and do to understand their impacts and dependencies and act on them. Then [there is] also guidance and advice for governments on how to enable businesses to do that with the right incentives and regulations and so on. In that sense, it helps bring knowledge together into a single place.
It has been fantastic to see the parallel programme that the UK government has organised [at the IPBES meeting in Manchester]. It has brought together a huge range of British businesses and consultancies and so on that help businesses understand their impacts on nature. There’s a huge thirst.
To some extent, I would have thought, with so much capacity already in some of these organisations, what would they learn from our assessments? But they’re really hungry to see the integration. They really want to see that this really does make a big difference, that others will do the same, that the government will really support moving in these directions. There’s a huge amount of effort in the findings coming out and I’m sure that that will be felt all around the world and in different countries in different ways.
CB: As we’re speaking now, you’re still in the midst of figuring out exactly what the report will say and going through line-by-line to figure this out. Something we’ve seen at other negotiations…has been these entrenched views from countries on certain key issues. And one thing I did notice in the Earth Negotiations Bulletin discussion of yesterday’s [4 February] negotiations was that it said that some delegations wanted to remove mentions of climate change from the report. Has this been a key sticking point here or have there been any difficulties from countries during these negotiations?
DO: The nature of these multilateral negotiations is that the science is, in a way, a central body of work that is built through consensus of bringing all this knowledge together. It’s almost like a centralising process. And, yes, different countries have different perspectives on what their priorities are and the messages they want to see or not.
We still, of course, deal with different positions from countries. What we hope to do is to be able to convene it so that we see that we serve the countries best by having the most unbiased reporting of what the science is saying in language that is accessible to and useful to policymakers, rather than not having language or not having mention of things in in the agreed text.
How it’ll work out, I don’t know. Each time is different from the others. I think one of the key things that’s really important for us is that you do have different governance tracks on different aspects of the world we deal in. So, the [UN] Sustainable Development Goals, as well [as negotiations] on climate change – the UNFCCC, the climate convention, is the governing body for that. There’s two goals on nature – the Convention on Biological Diversity and other multilateral agreements are the institutions that govern that part.
We have come from a nature-based perspective, with nature’s contributions to a good quality of life for people…We start in the nature goals, but we actually have content that relates to all the other goals. We need to consider climate impacts on nature, or climate impacts on people that affect how they use nature. The nexus assessment was, in a way, a mini SDG report. It looked at six different Sustainable Development Goals.
We try and make sure that while on the institutional mechanisms, certain countries may try and want us to report within our mandate on nature, we do have findings that relate to climate change that relate to income and poverty and food production and health systems [and] that we need to report [outwardly] so that people are aware of those and they can use those in decision-making contexts.
That’s a difficult discussion and every time it comes out a little bit differently. But we hope we move the agenda further towards 2030 in the SDGs. We have an indivisible system that we need to report on.
CB: The next UN biodiversity summit COP17 is taking place later this year. What are the main outcomes you’re hoping to see at that summit?
DO: The main outcomes I would hope to see from the biodiversity summit is greater alignment across the countries. We really need to move forward on delivering on the GBF as part of the sustainable development agenda as well. So there will be a review of progress. We need acceleration of activities and impact and effectiveness, more than anything else.
That means, of course, addressing all of the targets in the GBF. Not equally, necessarily, but they all need progress to support one another in the whole. We work to provide the science inputs that can help deliver that through the CBD [Convention on Biological Diversity] mechanisms as well. We hope they use our assessments to the fullest and that we see good progress coming out.
CB: Great, thank you very much for your time.
The post IPBES chair Dr David Obura: Trump’s US exit from global nature panel ‘harms everybody’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
IPBES chair Dr David Obura: Trump’s US exit from global nature panel ‘harms everybody’
Cropped 11 February 2026: Aftershocks of US withdrawals | Biodiversity and business risks | Deep-sea mining tensions
Cropped 11 February 2026: Aftershocks of US withdrawals | Biodiversity and business risks | Deep-sea mining tensions
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