China’s central and local governments, as well as state-owned enterprises, are busy preparing for the next five-year planning period, spanning 2026-30.
The top-level 15th five-year plan, due to be published in March 2026, will shape greenhouse gas emissions in China – and globally – for the rest of this decade and beyond.
The targets set under the plan will determine whether China is able to get back on track for its 2030 climate commitments, which were made personally by President Xi Jinping in 2021.
This would require energy sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall by 2-6% by 2030, much more than implied by the 2035 target of a 7-10% cut from “peak levels”.
The next five-year plan will set the timing and the level of this emissions peak, as well as whether emissions will be allowed to rebound in the short term.
The plan will also affect the pace of clean-energy growth, which has repeatedly beaten previous targets and has become a key driver of the nation’s economy.
Some 250-350 gigawatts (GW) of new wind and solar would be needed each year to meet China’s 2030 commitments, far above the 200GW being targeted.
Finally, the plans will shape China’s transition away from fossil fuels, with key sectors now openly discussing peak years for coal and oil demand, but with 330GW of new coal capacity in the works and more than 500 new chemical industry projects due in the next five years.
These issues come together in five key questions for climate and energy that Chinese policymakers will need to answer in the final five-year plan documents next year.
Five-year plans and their role in China
1. Will the plan put China back on track for its 2030 Paris pledge?
2. Will the plan upgrade clean-energy targets or pave the way to exceed them?
3. Will the plan set an absolute cap on coal consumption?
4. Will ‘dual control’ of carbon prevent an emission rebound?
5. Will it limit coal-power and chemical-industry growth?
Five-year plans and their role in China
Five-year plans are an essential part of China’s policymaking, guiding decision-making at government bodies, enterprises and banks. The upcoming 15th five-year plan will cover the years 2026-30, set targets for 2030 and use 2025 as its base year.
The top-level five-year plan will be published in March 2026 and is known as the five-year plan on economic and social development. This overarching document will be followed by dozens of sectoral plans, as well as province- and company-level plans.
The sectoral plans are usually published in the second year of the five-year period, meaning they would be expected in 2027.
There will be five-year plans for the energy sector, the electricity sector, for renewable energy, nuclear, coal and many other sub-sectors, as well as plans for major industrial sectors such as steel, construction materials and chemicals.
It is likely that there will also be a plan for carbon emissions or carbon peaking and a five-year plan for the environment.
During the previous five-year period, the plans of provinces and state-owned enterprises for very large-scale solar and wind projects were particularly important, far exceeding the central government’s targets.
The five-year plans create incentives for provincial governments and ministries by setting quantified targets that they are responsible for meeting. These targets influence the performance evaluations of governors, CEOs and party secretaries.
The plans also designate favoured sectors and projects, directing bank lending, easing permitting and providing an implicit government guarantee for the project developers.
Each plan lists numerous things that should be “promoted”, banned or controlled, leaving the precise implementation to different state organs and state-owned enterprises.
Five-year plans can introduce and coordinate national mega-projects, such as the gigantic clean-energy “bases” and associated electricity transmission infrastructure, which were outlined in the previous five-year plan in 2021.
The plans also function as a policy roadmap, assigning the tasks to develop new policies and providing stakeholders with visibility to expected policy developments.
1. Will the plan put China back on track for its 2030 Paris pledge?
Reducing carbon intensity – the energy-sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per unit of GDP – has been the cornerstone of China’s climate commitments since the 2020 target announced at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference.
Consequently, the last three five-year plans have included a carbon-intensity target. The next 15th one is highly likely to set a carbon-intensity target too, given that this is the centerpiece of China’s 2030 climate targets.
Moreover, it was president Xi himself who pledged in 2021 that China would reduce its carbon intensity to 65% below 2005 levels by 2030. This was later formalised in China’s 2030 “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.
Xi also pledged that China would gradually reduce coal consumption during the five-year period up to 2030. However, China is significantly off track to these targets.
China’s CO2 emissions grew more quickly in the early 2020s than they had been before the Coronavirus pandemic, as shown in the figure below. This stems from a surge in energy consumption during and after the “zero-Covid” period, together with a rapid expansion of coal-fired power and the fossil-fuel based chemical industry. as shown in the figure below.
As a result, meeting the 2030 intensity target would require a reduction in CO2 emissions from current levels, with the level of the drop depending on the rate of economic growth.
Xi’s personal imprimatur would make missing these 2030 targets awkward for China, particularly given the country’s carefully cultivated reputation for delivery. On the other hand, meeting them would require much stronger action than initially anticipated.
Recent policy documents and statements, in particular the recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party for the next five-year plan, and the government’s work report for 2025, have put the emphasis on China’s target to peak emissions before 2030 and the new 2035 emission target, which would still allow emissions to increase over the next five-year period. The earlier 2030 commitments risk being buried as inconvenient.
Still, the State Council’s plan for controlling carbon emissions, published in 2024, says that carbon intensity will be a “binding indicator” for the next five-year period, meaning that a target will be included in the top-level plan published in March 2026.
China is only set to achieve a reduction of about 12% in carbon intensity from 2020 to 2025 – a marked slowdown relative to previous periods, as shown in the figure below.
(This is based on reductions reported annually by the National Bureau of Statistics until 2024 and a projected small increase in energy-sector CO2 emissions in 2025. Total CO2 emissions could still fall this year, when the fall in process emissions from cement production is factored in.)
A 12% fall would be far less than the 18% reduction targeted under the 14th five-year plan, as well as falling short of what would be needed to stay on track to the 2030 target.
To make up the shortfall and meet the 2030 intensity target, China would need to set a goal of around 23% in the next five-year plan. As such, this target will be a key test of China’s determination to honour its climate commitments.
A carbon-intensity target of 23% is likely to receive pushback from some policymakers, as it is much higher than achieved in previous periods. No government or thinktank documents have yet been published with estimates of what the 2030 intensity target would need to be.
In practice, meeting the 2030 carbon intensity target would require reducing CO2 emissions by 2-6% in absolute terms from 2025, assuming a GDP growth rate of 4.2-5.0%.
China needs 4.2% GDP growth over the next decade to achieve Xi’s target of doubling the country’s GDP per capita from 2020 to 2035, a key part of his vision of achieving “socialist modernisation” by 2035, with the target for the next five years likely to be set higher.
Recent high-level policy documents have avoided even mentioning the 2030 intensity target. It is omitted in recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party for the next five-year plan, the foundation on which the plan will be formulated.
Instead, the recommendations emphasised “achieving the carbon peak as scheduled” and “promoting the peaking of coal and oil consumption”, which are less demanding.
The environment ministry, in contrast, continues to pledge efforts to meet the carbon intensity target. However, they are not the ones writing the top-level five-year plan.
The failure to meet the 2025 intensity target has been scarcely mentioned in top-level policy discussions. There was no discernible effort to close the gap to the target, even after the midway review of the five-year plan recognised the shortfall.
The State Council published an action plan to get back on track, including a target for reducing carbon intensity in 2024 – albeit one not sufficient to close the shortfall. Yet this plan, in turn, was not followed up with an annual target for 2025.
The government could also devise ways to narrow the gap to the target on paper, through statistical revisions or tweaks to the definition of carbon intensity, as the term has not been defined in China’s NDCs.
Notably, unlike China’s previous NDC, its latest pledge did not include a progress update for carbon intensity. The latest official update sent to the UN only covers the years to 2020.
This leaves some more leeway for revisions, even though China’s domestic “statistical communiques”, published every year, have included official numbers up to 2024.
Coal consumption growth around 2022 was likely over-reported, so statistical revisions could reduce reported emissions and narrow the gap to the target. Including process emissions from cement, which have been falling rapidly in recent years, and changing how emissions from fossil fuels used as raw materials in the chemicals industry are accounted for, so-called non-energy use, which has been growing rapidly, could make the target easier to meet.
2. Will the plan upgrade clean-energy targets or pave the way to exceed them?
The need to accelerate carbon-intensity reductions also has implications for clean-energy targets.
The current goal is for non-fossil fuels to make up 25% of energy supplies in 2030, up from the 21% expected to be reached this year.
This expansion would be sufficient to achieve the reduction in carbon intensity needed in the next five years, but only if energy consumption growth slows down very sharply. Growth would need to slow to around 1% per year, from 4.1% in the past five years 2019-2024 and from 3.7% in the first three quarters of 2025.
The emphasis on manufacturing in the Central Committee’s recommendations for the next five-year plan is hard to reconcile with such a sharp slowdown, even if electrification will help reduce primary energy demand. During the current five-year period, China abolished the system of controlling total energy consumption and energy intensity, removing the incentive for local governments to curtail energy-intensive projects and industries.
Even if the ratio of total energy demand growth to GDP growth returned to pre-Covid levels, implying total energy demand growth of 2.5% per year, then the share of non-fossil energy would need to reach 31% by 2030 to deliver the required reduction in carbon intensity.
However, China recently set the target for non-fossil energy in 2035 at just 30%. This risks cementing a level of ambition that is likely too low to enable the 2030 carbon-intensity target to be met, whereas meeting it would require non-fossil energy to reach 30% by 2030.
There is ample scope for China to beat its targets for non-fossil energy.
However, given that the construction of new nuclear and hydropower plants generally takes five years or more in China, only those that are already underway have the chance to be completed by 2030. This leaves wind and solar as the quick-to-deploy power generation options that can deliver more non-fossil energy during this five-year period.
Reaching a much higher share of non-fossil energy in 2030, in turn, would therefore require much faster growth in solar and wind than currently targeted. Both the NDRC power-sector plan for 2025-27 and China’s new NDC aim for the addition of about 200 gigawatts (GW) per year of solar and wind capacity, much lower than the 360GW achieved in 2024.
If China continued to add capacity at similar rates, going beyond the government’s targets and instead installing 250-350GW of new solar and wind in each of the next five years, then this would be sufficient to meet the 2030 intensity target, assuming energy demand rising by 2.5-3.0% per year.
All previous wind and solar targets have been exceeded by a wide margin, as shown in the figure below, so there is a good chance that the current one will be, too.
While the new pricing policy for wind and solar has created a much more uncertain and less supportive policy environment for the development of clean energy, provinces have substantial power to create a more supportive environment.
For example, they can include clean-energy projects and downstream projects using clean electricity and green hydrogen in their five-year plans, as well as developing their local electricity markets in a direction that enables new solar and wind projects.
3. Will the plan set an absolute cap on coal consumption?
In 2020, Xi pledged that China would “gradually reduce coal consumption” during the 2026-30 period. The commitment is somewhat ambiguous.
It could be interpreted as requiring a reduction starting in 2026, or a reduction below 2025 levels by 2030, which in practice would mean coal consumption peaking around the midway point of the five-year period, in other words 2027-28.
In either case, if Xi’s pledge were to be cemented in the 15th five-year plan then it would need to include an absolute reduction in coal consumption during 2026-30. An illustration of what this might look like is shown in the figure below.
However, the commitment to reduce coal consumption was missing from China’s new NDC for 2035 and from the Central Committee’s recommendations for the next five-year plan.
The Central Committee called for “promoting a peak in coal and oil consumption”, which is a looser goal as it could still allow an increase in consumption during the period, if the growth in the first years towards 2030 exceeds the reduction after the peak.
The difference between “peaking” and “reducing” is even larger because China has not defined what “peaking” means, even though peaking carbon emissions is the central goal of China’s climate policy for this decade.
Peaking could be defined as achieving a certain reduction from peak before the deadline, or having policies in place that constrain emissions or coal use. It could be seen as reaching a plateau or as an absolute reduction.
While the commitment to “gradually reduce” coal consumption has seemed to fade from discussion, there have been several publications discussing the peak years for different fossil fuels, which could pave the way for more specific peaking targets.
State news agency Xinhua published an article – only in English – saying that coal consumption would peak around 2027 and oil consumption around 2026, while also mentioning the pledge to reduce coal consumption.
The energy research arm of the National Development and Reform Council had said earlier that coal and oil consumption would peak halfway through the next five-year period, in other words 2027-28, while the China Coal Association advocated a slightly later target of 2028.
Setting a targeted peak year for coal consumption before the half-way point of the five-year period could be a way to implement the coal reduction commitment.
With the fall in oil use in transportation driven by EVs, railways and other low-carbon transportation, oil consumption is expected to peak soon or to have peaked already.
State-owned oil firm CNPC projects that China’s oil consumption will peak in 2025 at 770m tonnes, while Sinopec thinks that continued demand for petrochemical feedstocks will keep oil consumption growing until 2027 and it will then peak at 790-800m tonnes.
4. Will ‘dual control’ of carbon prevent an emission rebound?
With the focus on realising a peak in emissions before 2030, there could be a strong incentive for provincial governments and industries to increase emissions in the early years of the five-year period to lock in a higher level of baseline emissions.
This approach is known as “storming the peak” (碳冲锋) in Chinese and there have been warnings about it ever since Xi announced the current CO2 peaking target in 2020.
Yet, the emphasis on peaking has only increased, with the recent announcement on promoting peaks in coal consumption and oil consumption, as well as the 2035 emission-reduction target being based on “peak levels”.
The policy answer to this is creating a system to control carbon intensity and total CO2 emissions – known as “dual control of carbon” – building on the earlier system for the “dual control of energy” consumption.
Both the State Council and the Central Committee have set the aim of operationalising the “dual control of carbon” system in the 15th five-year plan period.
However, policy documents speak of building the carbon dual-control system during the five-year period rather than it becoming operational at the start of the period.
For example, an authoritative analysis of the Central Committee’s recommendations by China Daily says that “solid progress” is needed in five areas to actually establish the system, including assessment of carbon targets for local governments as well as carbon management for industries and enterprises.
The government set an annual target for reducing carbon intensity for the first time in 2024, but did not set one for 2025, also signaling that there was no preparedness to begin controlling carbon intensity, let alone total carbon emissions, yet.
If the system is not in place at the start of the five-year period, with firm targets, there could be an opportunity for local governments to push for early increases in emissions – and potentially even an incentive for such emission increases, if they expect strict control later.
Another question is how the “dual” element of controlling both carbon intensity and absolute CO2 emissions is realised. While carbon intensity is meant to be the main focus during the next five years, with the priority shifting to reducing absolute emissions after the peak, having the “dual control” in place requires some kind of absolute cap on CO2 emissions.
The State Council has said that China will begin introducing “absolute emissions caps in some industries for the first time” from 2027 under its national carbon market. It is possible that the control of absolute carbon emissions will only apply to these sectors.
The State Council also said that the market would cover all “major emitting sectors” by 2027, but absolute caps would only apply to sectors where emissions have “stabilised”.
5. Will it limit coal-power and chemical-industry growth?
During the current five-year period, China’s leadership went from pledging to “strictly control” new coal-fired power projects to actively promoting them.
If clean-energy growth continues at the rates achieved in recent years, there will be no more space for coal- and gas-fired power generation to expand, even if new capacity is built. Stable or falling demand for power generation from fossil fuels would mean a sharp decline in the number of hours each plant is able to run, eroding its economic viability.
Showing the scale of the planned expansion, researchers from China Energy Investment Corporation, the second-largest coal-power plant operator in China, project that China’s coal-fired power capacity could expand by 300GW from the end of 2024 to 2030 and then plateau at that level for a decade. The projection relies on continued growth of power generation from coal until 2030 and a very slow decline thereafter.
The completion of the 325GW projects already under construction and permitted at the end of 2024, as well as an additional 42GW permitted in the first three quarters of 2025, could in fact lead to a significantly larger increase, if the retirement of existing capacity remains slow.
In effect, China’s policymakers face a choice between slowing down the clean-energy boom, which has been a major driver of economic growth in recent years, upsetting coal project developers, who expect to operate their coal-fired power plants at a high utilisation, or retiring older coal-power plants en masse.
Their response to these choices may not become clear for some time. The top-level five-year plan that will be published in March 2026 will likely provide general guidelines, but the details of capacity development will be relegated to the sectoral plans for energy.
The other sector where fossil fuel-based capacity is rapidly increasing is the chemical industry, both oil and coal-based. In this sector, capacity growth has led directly to increases in output, making the sector the only major driver of emissions increases after early 2024.
The expansion is bound to continue. There are more than 500 petrochemical projects planned by 2030 in China, of which three quarters are already under construction, according to data provider GlobalData.
As such, the emissions growth in the chemical sector is poised to continue in the next few years, whereas meeting China’s 2030 targets and commitments would require either reining it in and bringing emissions back down before 2030, or achieving emission reductions in other sectors that offset the increases.
The expansion of the coal-to-chemicals industry is largely driven by projects producing gas and liquid fuels from coal, which make up 70% of the capacity under construction and in planning, according to a mapping by Anychem Coalchem.
These projects are a way of reducing reliance on imported oil and gas. In these areas, electrification and clean energy offer another solution that can replace imports.
Conclusions
The five-year plans being prepared now will largely determine the peak year and level of China’s emissions, with a major impact on China’s subsequent emission trajectory and on the global climate effort.
The targets in the plan will also be a key test of the determination of China’s leadership to respect previous commitments, despite setbacks.
The country has cultivated a reputation for reliably implementing its commitments. For example, senior officials have said that China’s policy targets represent a “bottom line”, which the policymakers are “definitely certain” about meeting, while contrasting this with other countries’ loftier approach to target-setting.
Depending on how the key questions outlined in this article are answered in the plans for the next five years, however, there is the possibility of a rebound in emissions.
There are several factors contributing to such a possibility: solar- and wind-power deployment could slow down under the new pricing policy, weak targets and a deluge of new coal- and gas-power capacity coming onto the market.
In addition, unfettered expansion of the chemical industry could drive up emissions. And climate targets that limit emissions only after a peak is reached could create an incentive to increase emissions in the short term, unless counteracted by effective policies.
On the other hand, there is also the possibility of the clean-energy boom continuing so that the sector beats the targets it has been set. Policymakers could also prioritise carbon-intensity reductions early in the period to meet China’s 2030 commitments.
Given the major role that clean-energy industries have played in driving China’s economic growth and meeting GDP targets, local governments have a strong incentive to keep the expansion going, even if the central government plans for a slowdown.
During the current five-year period, provinces and state-owned enterprises have been more ambitious than the central government. Provinces can and already have found ways to support clean-energy development beyond central government targets.
Such an outcome would continue a well-established pattern, given all previous wind and solar targets have been exceeded by a wide margin.
The difference now is that a significant exceedance of clean-energy targets would make a much bigger difference, due to the much larger absolute size of the industry.
To date, China’s approach to peaking emissions and pursuing carbon neutrality has focused on expanding the supply and driving down the cost of clean technology, emphasising economic expansion rather than restrictions on fossil-fuel use and emissions, with curbing overcapacity an afterthought.
This suggests that if China’s 2030 targets are to be met, it is more likely to be through the over-delivery of clean energy than as a result of determined regulatory effort.
The post Q&A: Five key climate questions for China’s next ‘five-year plan’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: Five key climate questions for China’s next ‘five-year plan’
The African continent’s hopes for a legally binding agreement to combat drought have been dashed again, as UN land restoration talks in Mongolia passed the issue onto the next set of talks in Egypt in two years’ time.
For over a decade, Africa has pushed for a UN protocol on drought risk management that would acknowledge drought as an issue requiring a regional and global – not just a national – response, potentially paving the way for more finance to help ensure water is available when drought hits.
A formal protocol would enable countries to transition from reacting to drought once it hits to “a proactive enabling mechanism to address drought and its effects such as migration”, said a Tunisian negotiator on behalf of the African Group of countries last week. Once land is regularly too dry and infertile to grow crops or graze animals, people often leave to seek a living elsewhere.
But this effort to adopt a protocol, led by Africa, has been resisted at successive land restoration COPs under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), mainly by developed countries, which argue that a legally weaker alternative – a framework – would be faster and cheaper to set up.
Governments at the previous COP in Saudi Arabia in 2024 failed to reach agreement despite talks running past midnight, while this year’s saw African officials coordinate a walkout from negotiating rooms on Wednesday morning, according to two sources at the talks.
Drought deal delayed until 2028
The IISD’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin, a non-governmental organisation which unlike the media is allowed to watch and report on closed-door talks, said a call to suspend negotiations on Wednesday showed negotiations had reached “boiling point” and “made some jaws drop”.
Negotiations resumed after a lunchtime meeting with the Mongolian COP presidency although governments were only eventually able to agree that they could not find consensus in Ulaanbaatar and should resume talks on an instrument to deal with drought in 2028.
Christine Colvin, WWF’s head of freshwater policy, told Climate Home News that, with droughts hitting from Honduras to the English region of Hampshire, something concrete – whether a protocol or a framework – is needed urgently “rather than the can being kicked down the road for another two years as will now happen with the protocol procrastination”.
But, in a closing press conference on Friday, the Mongolian minister presiding over talks celebrated that governments had reached consensus on several “contentious” issues and that agenda items blocked at this year’s COP17 would be put on the agenda for COP18 in Egypt.
US blocks agenda items
Other agenda items that divided countries were on measuring land degradation’s effects on women, enhancing the involvement of civil society and women in land COPs, and the UNCCD working more closely and effectively with the UN’s climate and nature conventions.
On the COP’s opening day two weeks ago, the US representative said the Trump government objects to these agenda items “on their premise and no amount of negotiation will allow us to join consensus on these items. As such we request that they be struck from the agenda at which time we will then be able to approve it, saving us valuable negotiating time.”
A US State Department spokesperson later told Climate Home News that the US wants the UN “to get back to basics by refocusing on its core mandate, eliminating overlap, and reducing competition for scarce resources”.
The spokesperson added, “that means prioritising the concrete work member states created [the UN] to do – rather than diverting limited time, attention, and resources toward social and political agendas, including gender-related initiatives.”
On COP’s first day, the European Union and Brazil pushed back against the blocking of these agenda items, with a Brazilian negotiator saying his country attaches “great importance” to them. But the Mongolian presidency directed governments to adopt the rest of the agenda without the controversial items, which were discussed privately with countries throughout the two weeks.
An EU statement, read out later by Irish minister Timmy Dooley, accused “some parties” (meaning national governments) of having adopted a “less constructive approach” and preventing “discussions on important matters from even commencing”.
The agenda items the US refused to engage with were never discussed and were only placed onto the agenda for the next COP on the last day. Those talks will take place in Egypt in two years’ time, with Donald Trump due then to be in his last year as US president.
No restoration without women
The blocking of the gender agenda item has stymied attempts, agreed on by governments at the last COP, to develop gender-specific indicators for the UNCCD’s next overall framework and to facilitate more women delegates at COPs. Women made up only about a quarter of delegates to COP15 in 2022, UNCCD analysis with the latest data shows
Criticising the move to keep gender off the agenda, the EU said in a statement that it welcomes “the attention being given at COP17 to women pastoralists and herders, recognising their contribution to sustainable land management and resilient rural livelihoods”.
The head of the UNCCD, former Egyptian environment minister Yasmine Fouad, said on Friday that “regardless that the agenda item was blocked”, she was proud that she and COP17 President Batmunkh Battsetseg had led the COP as women and attended the gender caucus (a meeting of groups supporting women at the talks).
“Without the women,” she told the closing press conference on Friday, “we will not be able to restore land, restore hope, restore life or restore even our children and grandchildren. And we will keep on pushing that agenda.”
The civil society agenda item aimed to allow NGOs to attend land COP negotiations, as they do at climate COPs, and included terms of reference for an Indigenous Peoples Caucus.
A representative of Indigenous Peoples told the COP’s closing plenary meeting that the group had “deep disappointment that the agenda of this COP has removed the dedicated space for indigenous peoples”. “We cannot restore the land while removing the voices of those who care for it,” she said.
On Tuesday, the UNCCD’s deputy head Andrea Meza was asked about Indigenous Peoples’ participation. She said that the blocking of “one agenda item” is “generating uncertainty in the progress” towards creating caucuses for Indigenous Peoples and for Local Communities within the talks.
Because of the “complex geopolitical situation” making it hard to obtain consensus, coalitions of the willing have become more important, she added.
Mining out, money in
Outside the formal negotiations, the summit was marked by a focus on the strongly Mongolian issues of the role played by pastoralists and rangelands like grasslands, as well as mining, in both degrading and restoring land.
Part of the conference was sponsored by Australian mining company Rio Tinto and its local partner Oyu Tolgoi. Their presence was protested by campaigners wearing T-shirts calling on the companies to “stop wasting drinking water” and to “get out of Mongolia”.
The UNCDD and others praised the success of the summit in raising more finance for land restoration. The COP saw institutions like the Asian Development Bank and Global Environment Facility pledge money to combat land degradation, with the UNCCD estimating that $645 million of new commitments were made.
An estimated $355 billion a year is needed through 2030 to meet global land restoration commitments, compared with around $77 billion currently invested. Private finance accounts for only around 6% of global investment, according to the UNCCD.
UNCCD chief scientist Baron Orr told a press conference that many of the announcements were public-private partnerships that use government money to “even the playing field” for companies that want to protect land, in a bid to ensure they are not disadvantaged compared with those that do not.
Such partnerships are a “huge opportunity”, he said, especially as “we’re not in a moment of public finance – public finance is tight in every country.”
The post Despite African walkout, fractious land COP ends without drought deal appeared first on Climate Home News.
Despite African walkout, fractious land COP ends without drought deal
Burdened by rising fuel import costs and an “ocean crisis” of record-breaking heat, Pacific island nations are seeking to build support for a new regional fund ahead of COP31, intended to channel investment into renewable energy, community resilience and ocean protection, experts said.
Leaders from the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), including Australia and New Zealand, are expected to issue a call for global pledges to the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF) at a high-level meeting this coming week in Palau, seeking to build a new model for financing climate action.
The new regional fund was formally launched in May this year and is meant to “serve communities at a community level”, swiftly channelling investments for their projects on the ground, according to Fiji’s assistant minister for foreign affairs, Lenora Qereqeretabua.
“We are expecting pledges for the PRF, and these funds will go to communities that apply,” she told journalists at an online briefing. “We have organised it in such a way that it makes our application processes much, much easier than applying for global funding.”
Qereqeretabua added that she expects that PRF funds will be “utilised by communities to protect themselves from climate change and the effects of climate change.”
The Pacific Islands Forum meeting is expected to shape the region’s priorities ahead of this year’s pre-COP, hosted by Fiji and Tuvalu, and COP31, which will be co-led by Australia and Türkiye.
At COP31, a dedicated session on the climate finance needs of small island states will seek to drive pledges into the PRF. The fund has so far received about $172 million in capital – with about $67 million coming from Australia – and aims to close the year with $500 million.
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Ocean heat and fossil fuel shocks
Leaders from the Pacific will meet in Palau from Sunday amid an “ocean crisis” of record-breaking ocean heat caused by this year’s “super El Niño”, according to Kevin Chand, Pacific ocean policy director at National Geographic’s Pristine Seas conservation project.
Leaders at the PIF are expected to put forward commitments towards new marine protected areas, which will be key for shielding ecosystems from future climate extremes, Chand said. The forum is expected to issue a statement on the need for ocean action at COP31, and announce commitments towards reaching the global goal of protecting 30% of the planet’s land and sea ecosystems by 2030.
Rising ocean heat could lead to food insecurity and lost government earnings in the region, as key fish stocks like tuna start migrating away from their coastline in search of colder waters, said Coral Pasisi, director of climate change and sustainability at the Pacific Community (SPC).
Climate shocks are deepening existing economic pressures, as Pacific nations have spent up to a quarter of their GDP on fossil fuel imports due to the war in Iran, according to a recent report by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia.
Wesley Morgan, one of the study’s authors, told journalists that partner nations “ought to be putting their money where their mouth is”, and should support the energy transition in the Pacific by covering the upfront costs of switching from polluting diesel to solar power, batteries and electricity grid upgrades.
China keeps Indonesia’s battery dream afloat but future less certain
Given the increase in climate-related shocks and sea-level rise, the PIF should also mention the need to phase out fossil fuel extraction and consumption, said Sindra Sharma, international policy lead at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN).
Last year’s COP30 failed to deliver a global roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels, which led to a group of countries – including several Pacific island nations – pursuing their own fossil fuel phase-out summit in Santa Marta, Colombia. Next year’s conference will be hosted by Tuvalu and co-chaired by Ireland, which should also receive backing from the PIF, Sharma said.
Both the chairs of the Santa Marta coalition and the Australian COP31 co-presidency have vowed to continue a push for this topic to be discussed at COP31.
New fund to test allies
As local communities in the Pacific struggle to access global climate funds, the PRF’s planned model for quick, direct disbursements has “very solid and good” intentions, Sharma said, but it will need political and financial backing from donor countries.
“The proof is going to be when the fund actually starts operating and delivering to communities,” she added. “If there is too much bureaucracy in being able to access the funds, for example. These things will have to be scrutinised.”
The facility aims to deliver funds in two categories: one for climate adaptation and “disaster resilience”, and another for social and community resilience that includes areas like community capacity-building, education, data analytics and financial management, among others. It will launch its first call for proposals at the PIF.
Morgan added that Australia will need to “leverage global interests” so that funding is directed to the Pacific Resilience Facility “or else the Pacific won’t be able to trust Australia as a partner”. The country ratified the PRF treaty in May, triggering its entry into force.
“The perception [of Australia] in the region is genuinely divided, and it’s worth being honest about it,” Sharma said, adding that the pre-COP31 in Fiji, which is usually limited to a technical space for negotiations, will determine how meaningful Australia’s advocacy for the Pacific can be.
This time, Pacific nations want to use the pre-COP in early October as an opportunity to demonstrate the challenges their largely low-lying islands face and to advocate for their political priorities, including a renewed global effort to limit global warming to 1.5C by cutting emissions faster and deeper. World leaders are due to visit Tuvalu to experience the frontline of rising sea levels, although Australia and Fiji have yet to confirm who will attend.
“In Bonn, Australia was largely missing on the negotiated outcomes that we so urgently need to see. It’s not enough to get Pacific priorities on the agenda. Agenda placement is not delivery,” Sharma added.
The post Pacific islands seek backing for new regional fund ahead of COP31 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific islands seek backing for new regional fund ahead of COP31
Climate Change
Climate change exposes 580 million children to 20 extra ‘heat-stress days’ every year
More than 40% of children under the age of 10 globally are already experiencing at least 20 additional “heat-stress days” due to climate change.
This is according to a new attribution study, published in Science Advances, which combines climate models with demographic data to assess the age groups and regions that are exposed to the most hot, humid days.
The study finds that children up to the age of nine already face more additional heat-stress days globally as a result of climate change than any other age group.
It adds that south Asia and west Africa are recording the greatest childhood exposure to dangerous levels of humid heat – largely because these regions have a rapidly growing population with the highest proportion of young children.
As the climate warms, children will continue to be more exposed to heat stress than any other age group, the paper warns.
The lead author of the study tells Carbon Brief that the findings should inform discussions about climate justice, noting that children in developing countries “have contributed the least to historical greenhouse gas emissions”.
Humid heat
High temperatures can be deadly. For example, the heatwaves that swept across Europe in the summer of 2026 have been linked to tens of thousands of “excess deaths”.
A prominent 2021 study found that children born in the 21st century will be exposed to more extreme weather events in their lifetimes than their parents and grandparents.
Four years later, a study conducted by scientists from the same team found that more than half of children born in 2020 – around 62 million people – will experience “unprecedented lifetime exposure” to heatwaves, even if warming is limited to 1.5C.
Now, the latest research from the same team finds that children already face greater exposure to dangerous levels of humid heat than adults as a result of human-caused climate change.
Extreme heat is particularly dangerous when combined with high humidity. In hot weather, the human body produces sweat to cool itself down. However, as humidity increases, sweating becomes less effective.
The study uses wet-bulb globe temperature – a measure of temperature that takes humidity and wind into account – to calculate heat stress. It defines a “heat-stress day” as any day with a wet-bulb globe temperature above 28C, as this is considered the threshold for “moderate heat stress”
The authors then use climate models to simulate global temperature patterns in the present-day climate. (The authors use the climate of 2023, in which human activity has caused 1.3C of warming, to represent the “present-day”.)
They then count the number of heat-stress days that each country records on average, per year. The authors then repeat this exercise, simulating a pre-industrial climate without human-caused warming.
By comparing the number of heat-stress days in the present-day climate with the number in a pre-industrial climate, the authors can determine how many extra heat-stress days were driven by climate change. They refer to these as “extra” or “attributable” heat-stress days.
The authors find that “low-latitude” countries, located in the tropics, record the most extra heat-stress days.
For example, the paper finds that people living in Côte d’Ivoire currently face 112 heat-stress days every year. It adds that around half of these are due to human-caused climate change.
In contrast, Germany sees only 0.1 heat-stress days per year in today’s climate on average, which is largely attributable to human-caused climate change.
Rosa Pietroiusti, a PhD student at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and lead author on the study, explains why this number may seem lower than expected.
She tells Carbon Brief that the paper “really focuses on humid heat, at levels that are relatively rarely felt in Europe”. She adds:
“Our data also doesn’t capture the urban heat island effect, due to the resolution of the data we use, which also would lead to underestimations of heat stress locally, and lead to a mismatch with what people are experiencing at local scales, particularly in cities.”
Inequality
Extreme heat affects some people more severely than others. Children, people over 65 and those with pre-existing medical conditions or certain disabilities are among the most vulnerable. This is because their bodies are less able to regulate their temperature.
The authors use gridded demographic data to determine the age structure of each country. From this, they calculate how many people from each age cohort are exposed to extra heat days as a result of climate change.
The research finds that globally, 583 million children under the age of 10 already live through at least 20 attributable heat days every year. This accounts for 44% of all children in this age bracket.
In comparison, 190 million people aged 60-69 face at least 20 attributable heat days per year, accounting for 30% of this age cohort.
The authors find that children face the greatest exposure to humid heat for two main reasons.
First, there are more young people alive today than older people, with 1.3 billion children aged under 10 in the world, compared to 0.6 billion people aged 60-69.
Second, they find that countries in Africa and Asia typically have rapidly growing populations with more young children. In contrast, many countries in the northern hemisphere – which are typically cooler – have older populations.
The map below shows how many extra stress heat days each country currently faces as a result of human-caused climate change. Darker reds indicate a higher number of attributable heat days. The blue circles show the percentage of the population under the age of 10, with larger circles indicating a higher percentage.
Warming world
The authors also repeat their analysis for a 1.5C and 2C warmer world. They use population estimates from the SSP2 scenario, which projects that the world’s population will peak at more than nine billion in the second half of the 21st century, with most growth occurring in low-latitude regions – especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
The research finds that, in today’s climate, 11% of all under 10s currently experience 100 or more extra heat-stress days per year due to climate change. In worlds warmed by 1.5C and 2C, the percentage rises to 13% and 23%, respectively.
In contrast, only 6% of all people aged 60-69 currently face 100 or more extra heat-stress days each year due to climate change. This number rises to 9% and 17% for 1.5C and 2C worlds, respectively.
These results are shown in the plot below. The three rows represent the climates of 2023 (top), a 1.5C world (middle) and a 2C world (bottom). The columns show different age cohorts, from the oldest on the left to the youngest on the right.
Each circle contains 100 coloured dots, with each dot representing 1% of the age cohort.
The colour of the dot represents exposure to annual heat-stress day, with darker dots indicating more heat-stress days. Grey dots mean that people experience fewer than one extra heat-stress day per year due to human-caused climate change, while black dots mean more than 150 extra heat-stress days due to climate change.
The figure shows that higher warming levels expose more people to heat stress and that younger cohorts tend to be worst affected.
For example, the top-right circle represents heat stress for under 10s in the present-day climate. Three of these dots are coloured black, indicating that 3% faced at least 150 attributable heat-stress days in 2023.
Pietroiusti tells Carbon Brief the study uses wet-bulb temperature because it is a “well-established heat stress metric”. However, she notes that it was not “explicitly defined to focus on children”. She continues:
“A really important step forward in the research community would be to link up climate science and health science experts to do research on what metrics are really most representative of, for example, health impacts and educational impacts that children will be suffering.”
Vulnerability
Dr Qinqin Kong, a postdoctoral researcher at the departments of medicine and health policy at Stanford University, who was not involved in the study, praises its “robust” methodology.
He tells Carbon Brief that the research provides “a timely quantitative evidence for discussions of climate justice, children’s rights and intergenerational equity”.
However, Kong suggests that the paper “may overstate the contrast between children and the elderly and underestimate the relative burden of older adults”.
He says:
“The elderly may also be more vulnerable due to their social circumstances. Children often benefit from parental supervision and caregiving, whereas many older adults live alone, have limited mobility and face barriers to accessing cooling or emergency assistance during heat events.”
Kong also notes that “people and societies in the mid-latitudes [for example, across much of Europe and North America] are less adapted to heat”, which may make them vulnerable to its impacts.
For example, he says that Europe “shows substantially stronger relative risk of heat mortality likely due to less heat-acclimatised populations, lower air conditioning prevalence and urban designs that don’t favour heat dissipation”.
Similarly, Dr Daniel Vecellio – a researcher at the University of Nebraska, who was not involved in the study – tells Carbon Brief that children are an “understudied cohort”.
However, he says there is “reason for hope” because “children are typically pretty good behavioural adapters to extreme heat” and because people who are “chronically exposed to extreme heat” will “have a better chance at better acclimatisation”.
Pietroiusti tells Carbon Brief that global reporting on heatwaves is often skewed towards wealthier nations.
For example, she notes that large-scale databases of disasters, such as EM-DAT, often underrepresent heatwaves in Africa, due in part to a lack of news coverage and formal reporting. She adds:
“Studies like this, which start from the climate data, can start to fill some of these gaps.”
She adds that the paper should inform discussions about climate justice, noting that children in developing countries, who are most severely affected by the increase in heat-stress days, “have contributed the least to historical greenhouse gas emissions”.
Pietroiusti, R. et al. (2026) Age-specific exposure to human-induced increases in humid heat, Science Advances, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aeb3232
The post Climate change exposes 580 million children to 20 extra ‘heat-stress days’ every year appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate change exposes 580 million children to 20 extra ‘heat-stress days’ every year
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