China has seen a series of temperature records broken this summer, as heatwaves have struck various regions across the country.
Between mid-March and mid-July 2025, it was hit by an unprecedented number of “hot days” – where temperatures reach or exceed 35C – according to the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) .
In both May and June, heatwaves swept across northern regions, with temperatures in Xinjiang reaching as high as 46.8C.
Such a record-breaking summer is becoming increasingly common, with the CMA’s annual Climate Bulletins showing that hundreds of local heat records have been surpassed over the past decade.
The CMA says that “extreme high temperatures” have shown an “increasing trend” in China since its records began in 1961.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that heatwaves strongly affect public health, agricultural output and economic activity.
They also put significant strain on the electricity system.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief looks at how heat extremes are changing in China, the role of climate change in making these worse and how the country is adapting to the impacts.
How are heat extremes changing in China?
The latest science report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that it is “virtually certain” that “the frequency and intensity of hot extremes have increased” across the world since 1950.
The IPCC adds that it is “virtually certain” that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are “the main driver”.
China is no exception. In a press release for its latest 2025 “blue book on climate change in China”, the CMA says China is “susceptible to the impacts of global climate change”, noting:
“[China’s] warming rate is higher than the global average…and extreme weather and climate events are becoming more frequent and intense.”
Data from the CMA’s Climate Bulletins show how the average annual temperature in China is rising and how 2024 was the hottest year on record, as shown in the chart below.
While 2024 was the hottest year on record overall, this was a result of consistently high temperatures throughout the seasons.
At a CMA press conference in 2025, Chan Xiao, deputy director of the CMA commented:
“Temperatures were consistently high throughout the year, with significant fluctuations in temperature during winter. Spring, summer and autumn temperatures were all record highs for the same period.”
In contrast, more heat records were broken during 2022, even though it was not quite as hot overall. Explaining this, Prof Yang Chen from Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, which falls under the CMA, tells Carbon Brief:
“[For] the annual mean air temperatures, every day counts. So even if the 2022 was exceptional for its large number – actually also very long duration-consecutive days and high-magnitude – of hot extremes, mainly during summer and in the Yangtze River Valley, it does not mean the remaining days were hotter than the counterparts in 2024.”
The CMA defines a “hot day” or “high temperature day” as one that reaches or exceeds 35C. It adds that “high temperatures for several consecutive days constitute a heatwave”.
As the global climate has warmed, the number of “hot days” that China is experiencing has been on the rise, shown in the figure below.
The year 2022 set a new record, with meteorological stations in China recording an average of 16.4 hot days. This was 7.3 more than the average for 1991-2020. The year 2024 came close to this record, with 15.6 hot days. These two years have also seen China’s hottest summers on record.
In 2022, more than 1,000 meteorological stations in China reported heatwaves, with 441 breaking “historical records”. For 2024, 74 stations reported “consecutive high temperature days” and 81 of them broke records.
Xiao said at a press conference in 2023 that “continuous high temperatures” in China’s central and eastern regions lasted for 79 days in the summer of 2022. The provinces of Gansu and Xinjiang in north-west China, Hubei in central China and Sichuan in south-west China all reported their “highest temperatures since 1961”.
In addition, the “maximum daily temperature [in the summer of 2022] at 361 national meteorological stations – accounting for 14.9% of the total number of stations in the country – reached or exceeded historical extremes”, Xiao added.
The CMA has also highlighted that summer is arriving earlier for much of China. In 2024, for example, summer in regions including most of Hainan province in south China, central Yunnan province in south-west China as well as central and southern Xinjiang province in north-west China arrived more than 20 days earlier than average.
“If a year’s spring and summer are longer, the potential heatwaves…will also be longer,” Prof Wenjia Cai, from the department of earth system science of Tsinghua University, tells Carbon Brief.
Cai notes that there are more ways to define heatwaves than CMA’s absolute threshold of 35C.
For example, a heatwave can also be defined by how long the hot weather persists, or based on “the daily maximum temperature, daily average temperature, or even nighttime temperature”, she tells Carbon Brief.
However, regardless of the definition used, the “number of heatwave days is definitely increasing as a result of climate change”, she adds.
What role does human-caused climate change play?
A field of climate science called “attribution” has emerged over the past two decades to establish the role that human-caused warming plays in individual extreme weather events, including heatwaves, floods, droughts and storms.
Attribution studies can also be used to find the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change in longer-term trends, such as the gradual increase in surface temperatures over multiple decades.
Heat is the most-studied extreme event in attribution literature, as it is mainly driven by thermodynamic influences – in other words, it is relatively easy to study.
In contrast, storms and droughts are more strongly affected by complex atmospheric dynamics and, as such, can be trickier to simulate in a model. Cai tells Carbon Brief:
“High temperature is the most obvious trend against the background of climate change. Heatwaves, in comparison to events such as rainfall and typhoons, are also more predictable.”
Carbon Brief has produced an interactive map showing every attribution study published up to November 2024. In total, 114 extremes and trends in China have been the subject of an attribution study, including more than 20 relating specifically to extreme heat.
One study included on the map looks at the change in the intensity and frequency of extreme temperatures across China over 1951-2018. The authors say that, over this time period, “more intense and more frequent warm extremes” were observed across “most regions” in China – and that “greenhouse gas forcing plays a dominant role” in this.
Looking at individual extreme events, one analysis by the “rapid attribution” group World Weather Attribution investigates the then-record-breaking heat across China in July 2023. The analysis says that temperatures exceeded 50C in north-west China, adding that Sanbao, in Xinjiang, hit 52.2C on 16 July of that year.
The study finds that, in a world without climate change, such an extreme heat event would have been “extremely rare” and would only have happened once every 250 years. However, in today’s climate, as a result of human-caused climate change, a heatwave of this intensity is now expected once every five years.
This means China’s extreme heat of July 2023 was 50 times more likely due to climate change. The study also finds that in a world without climate change, the heatwave over China would have been 1C cooler.
A separate study finds that human-caused climate change also caused a more than 60-fold increase in the likelihood of the extremely warm 2013 summer, compared to the early 1950s.
It adds that other factors such as urbanisation and changes in atmospheric circulation patterns can also make heat extremes more intense and frequent.
What impact are these heatwaves having?
Heatwaves have a wide variety of impacts on human activities, such as public health, crop yields and economic output.
Older people are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat. The 2024 report from the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change found that, in 2023, demographic changes alone could have driven a 65% increase in heat-related deaths among over-65s, compared to the 1990-99 average.
Cai, who is also the lead author of the Lancet Countdown’s China report, tells Carbon Brief that older people are the “most commonly mentioned vulnerable group” and that the number of people affected by heatwaves will grow as societies age.
However, heatwaves also “affect outdoor activities” regardless of age group, she adds, as well as having impacts on sleep and allergies:
“We don’t want anyone to think they are in a group of people unaffected by heatwaves.”
Cai says that heat exposure can increase the incidence of certain dangerous behaviours, such as domestic violence, as well as a wide range of diseases – including cardiovascular diseases and respiratory diseases – and mental health disorders.
In 2023, more than 30,000 deaths were related to heatwaves in China – 1.9 times higher than the average over 1986-2005, according to Cai and her colleagues’ China report.
This was a result of increased heat exposure – the average number of “heatwave exposure days” per person reached 16 days in 2023, more than three times the historical average (1986-2005), the report adds.
A 2022 attribution study on China notes that extreme heat can also increase the risk of preterm births. The authors find that over 2010-20, an average of 13,262 premature births were recorded in China due to heatwave exposure. The study linked one-quarter of these early births to climate change.
Another profound impact of heatwaves is that they can exacerbate droughts, with knock-on impacts for agriculture.
Reuters reported last June that “China’s agriculture ministry said…searing temperatures have adversely impacted summer planting and that fighting drought and protecting summer planting were arduous tasks”.
Droughts in 2024 hit more than 11 million people in China, with more than 1.2m hectares of affected crops and direct economic losses topping nearly 8.4bn yuan ($1.2bn), the Ministry of Emergency Management said in early 2025.
Heat-related economic losses could reach nearly 5% of China’s GDP by 2060, according to a recent guest post for Carbon Brief. Authors Prof Guan Dabo and doctoral student Sun Yida from Tsinghua University wrote:
“By 2060, China’s heat-induced economic losses could total about 1.5% of total GDP under 1.5C of global warming, 3% under 2C of warming and 4.9% under 2.5C of warming.”
Those predicted losses include “indirect economic losses”, which “could be due to changes in production, consumption or employment” in the global supply chain, including crop failures and labour slowdowns, they explained.
The figure below, based on their study, shows Chinese GDP losses under three different scenarios of future emissions, called “shared socioeconomic pathways” (SSPs).
The SSP1-1.9, SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios project average global temperature rises of around 1.5C, 2C and 2.5C by mid-century, respectively.
Economic losses are split into indirect losses (dark blue), labour losses (blue) and health losses (light blue).
Sectors such as the extractive industries, construction and non-metallic manufacturing “could see the highest losses” of about 4.6-6.4% of their “value-added” – the increase in worth of a product or service as it moves through different stages of production – largely because they are in Chinese “regions with significant warming”, according to Guan and Sun.
Those industries also have close business connections with south-east Asia, Africa and South America, which are “expected to face heightened exposure to production volatility caused by high temperatures”, they add.
The total economic loss globally could reach up to 4.6% by 2060, according to their study, and manufacturing-heavy countries such as China and the US, in particular, could be “strong[ly] hit”.
Other than manufacturing, electricity supplies in China have also been frequently reported to be affected by hot days.
Chinese news outlet China Business Network reports that China’s National Energy Administration said last year that summer was the hardest time to ensure sufficient electricity supply during a year and that extreme weather would make the supply even harder.
For 2025, China’s State Grid Corporation expected maximum electricity demand to exceed 1,200 gigawatts (GW), a new record.
Dr Muyi Yang, senior energy analyst at thinktank Ember, tells Carbon Brief that “when temperatures soar, electricity demand spikes – mainly due to air conditioning – and that can stretch the grid, especially in already tight systems”.
Biqing Yang, energy analyst at Ember, adds:
“In the third quarter of last year, for example, China’s residential electricity consumption rose significantly, by 17.8% year-on-year, largely due to elevated temperatures…It is clear that we are now entering an era [w]here climate change is having a real-time impact on our energy system.”
China’s electricity demand reached a new record in July 2025 after year-on-year growth of 8.6%, consuming more power in one month than Japan did in all of 2024, according to David Fishman, Shanghai-based principal at consultancy the Lantau Group.
The “staggering” July 2025 figures – including another 18% year-on-year rise in residential demand, partly due to rising household incomes, as well as air conditioning use – illustrates the impact of climate change on China’s power sector, Fishman writes on LinkedIn:
“We know it’s hot out and everyone knows every summer the intense heat seems to last for longer and longer. But these power consumption numbers are telling a story about China’s climate patterns like few other datasets can…and it’s a scary story.”
Yang, Chen and Cai tell Carbon Brief that it is important for China to adapt to the rising temperature and intensive heatwaves.
Chen specifically describes “successful” forecasts and early warnings as “critical” , saying that they are the “very first step toward adaptation”.
In his LinkedIn post, Fishman notes that the rapidly rising demand for electricity, including as a result of growing air conditioning use, also poses a “considerable challenge to China’s ability to meet rising demand solely with clean power sources”.
How is China adapting to heatwaves?
In recent years, China has implemented more and more policies aimed at adapting to heatwaves.
For example, weather forecasts and heatwave alerts have been provided.
Central and local governments have also issued labour policies aimed at protecting workers against extreme heat.
Under a policy from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, for instance, outdoor works are not expected to be undertaken when temperatures exceed 40C. In addition, outdoor working hours should be shorter than six hours when the temperature is 37-40C.
Similarly, school students in some cities, such as Wuhan and Chengdu, have been advised to study from home during hot days in recent years.
Since 2021, the city of Tianjian has been sending text warnings of heatwaves to its residents, reminding people of the health risks it poses. The messages, according to Southern Metropolis Daily, warn that strokes might be triggered in the coming hot days and advises people to avoid outdoor activities and take medication if needed.
These text reminders have “significantly” reduced the number of hospitalised people in Tianjin, saving the city 140m yuan ($19.5m) since being introduced, adds the outlet.
In 2013, the central government published its first “national climate change adaptation strategy” – an attempt to implement the “clear requirement” of “enhancing our ability to adapt to climate change” included in the 12th “five-year plan” (2011-15).
In the latest version for 2035, heatwaves appear in sections related to the power sector, as well as agriculture and health.
The strategy aims to “improve” and “reinforce” nationwide “labour protection standards”, as well as “work system[s] that adapt to change and reduce agricultural disasters”. Its purpose is also to ensure the energy and electricity sectors’ abilities to “withstand extreme weather and climate events” in relation to heatwaves.
The strategy says that “health-risk assessment guidelines” and public health-related “implementation plans for adaptation under major extreme weather and climate events”, such as heat and heatwaves,in “various regions”, will be developed.
Last year, following the release of the latest overall adaptation strategy, China published the “national climate change health adaptation action plan (2024-30)”.
Cai calls the document a “very very important” blueprint for health risk management, bringing together a range of organisations, including hospitals, to form a “system related to climate change and health” that has “monitoring and early warning capabilities”.
She adds that this plan will also see heat-health alerts being issued nationwide:
“It is worth mentioning that the National Administration of Disease Control and Prevention and the China Meteorological Administration signed a joint agreement [in May 2025] on issuing [nationwide] health alerts – and that the first product is related to heatwaves.”
Ember’s Yang says that in terms of electricity, China is moving toward building a “‘new electricity system (新型电力系统)’ that is more compatible with high shares of renewables”. But, he adds, the old “planning psychology” needs to change so that it can better cope with extreme heat:
“Traditionally, the mindset has been very supply-driven – just keep adding enough generation and network capacity to meet demand…[With the new system] the demand side has to become an active player – a prosumer – that can actually support grid reliability.
“For example, during extreme heat, instead of just ramping up supply, we should also be encouraging users to reduce or shift their electricity use during peak hours, using price signals or incentives…This is the essence of what we call ‘coordinating generation, grid, load, and storage’ (源网荷储一体化) – a system that works together [and works] more efficiently and flexibly.”
The post Q&A: How China is adapting to ‘more frequent and intense’ heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: How China is adapting to ‘more frequent and intense’ heat extremes
The “undervaluing” of nature by businesses is fuelling its decline and putting the global economy at risk, according to a major new report.
An assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) outlines more than 100 actions for measuring and reducing impacts on nature across business, government, financial institutions and civil society.
A co-chair of the assessment says that nature loss is one of the most “serious threats” to businesses, but the “twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it”.
The “business and biodiversity” report says that global “finance flows” of more than $7tn (£5.1tn) had “direct negative impacts on nature” in 2023.
The new findings were put together by 79 experts from around the world over the course of three years, in what IPBES described as a “fast-track” assessment.
IPBES is an independent body that gives scientific advice to policymakers about biodiversity and ecosystems.
This is the “first report of its kind” to provide guidance on how businesses can contribute to 2030 nature goals, says IPBES executive secretary Dr Luthando Dziba in a statement.
Below, Carbon Brief explains four key findings from the “summary for policymakers” (SPM), which outlines the main messages of the report.
The full report is due to be released in the coming months after final edits are made.
- Businesses both depend on, and harm, nature
- Current practices ‘do not support’ efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss
- Businesses can act now to address their impacts on nature
- Government policies can drive a ‘just and sustainable future’ for nature and people
1. Businesses both depend on, and harm, nature
Businesses of all sizes rely on nature in one way or another, says the report.
The SPM outlines that biodiversity provides many of the goods and services businesses need, such as raw materials from the environment or controlled water flows to reduce flooding during wet seasons and provide water in dry seasons.
Biodiversity also “underpins genetic diversity” that informs the development of products in many industries, including pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
Individual businesses often do not address their impacts and dependencies on nature, “in part due to their lack of awareness”, the SPM says.
They also often do not have the data or knowledge to “quantify their impacts on dependencies on biodiversity and much of the relevant scientific literature is not written for a business audience”, the report claims. It adds:
“Lack of transparency across value chains, including of the risks and opportunities related to the sustainability of resource extraction, use, reuse and waste management, is a further barrier to action.”
The report says it is well established that businesses depend on biodiversity, but also that the actions of businesses “continue to drive declines in biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people”.
It adds that the size of a business “does not always reflect the magnitude of its impacts”, with companies in sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fishing, electricity, energy and mining having “relatively high” direct impacts on nature.
A “failure” to account for nature as the economy has expanded over the past two centuries has “led to its degradation and unprecedented rates of biodiversity loss”, the SPM says. It adds:
“The decline in biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people has become a critical systemic risk threatening the economy, financial stability and human wellbeing with implications for human rights.”
It is well established that nature loss as a result of “unsustainable use” threatens the “ability of businesses, local economies and whole sectors to function”, the report details.
These risks and others – such as extreme weather events and critical changes to Earth systems – are “among the highest-ranked global risks over the next 10 years”, it adds.
The SPM notes further that it is well established that risks around climate change and biodiversity loss “may interact to amplify social and economic impacts”.
These risks have “disproportionate impacts on developing countries whose economies are more reliant on biodiversity and have more limited technical and financial capacity to absorb shocks”, the report adds.
2. Current practices ‘do not support’ efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss
The SPM says that it is well established that current political and economic practices “perpetuate business as usual and do not support the transformative change required to halt and reverse biodiversity loss”.
These practices have “commonly ignored or undervalued biodiversity, creating tension between business actions and the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity”, the report continues.
For example, the report says there is established but incomplete evidence that “time pressures on decision-making and timescales for investment returns and reporting by businesses – with an emphasis on quarterly earnings or annual reporting – are shorter than many ecological cycles”.
This prevents businesses from “adequately” considering nature loss in decision-making, says the SPM.
There is well established evidence that businesses fail to assign adequate value to “biodiversity and many of nature’s contributions to people, such as filtration of pollutants, climate regulation and pollination”, it continues.
As a result, “businesses bear little or no financial cost for negative impacts and may not generate revenue from positive impacts on biodiversity”, leading to “insufficient incentives for businesses to act to conserve, restore or sustainably use biodiversity”.
Prof Stephen Polasky, co-chair of the assessment and a professor of ecological and environmental economics at the University of Minnesota, said in a statement:
“The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business. Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it. Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points.”
It is well established that policies from governments can “further accelerate biodiversity decline”, the SPM says.
It notes that, in 2023, global public and private financial spending with direct negative impacts on nature was estimated at $7.3tn.
This figure includes public subsidies that are harmful to nature (around $2.4tn) and private investment in high-impact sectors ($4.9tn), says the report.
Industries harmful to nature include fossil-fuel extraction, mining, deforestation and large-scale meat farming and fishing.
In contrast, just $220bn in public and private finance was directed to activities that contribute to protecting and sustainably using nature in 2023, adds the report.
(In recognition of the need to address public spending on activities that are destructive to nature, countries agreed to reduce biodiversity-harming subsidies by at least $500bn by 2030 as part of a global pact made in 2022.)
There are additional “barriers to action” facing businesses, ranging from challenging social norms to a lack of capacity, data or technology. These are summarised in the table below.
“These barriers do not affect all actors equally and may disproportionately affect small and medium-sized businesses and financial institutions in developing countries,” adds the report.
3. Businesses can act now to address their impacts on nature
The SPM says it is well established that the “transformative change” required to halt and reverse biodiversity loss requires action from “all businesses”.
However, the report continues that it is also well established that the current level of business action is “insufficient” to deliver this “transformative change”. This is, in part, because the “enabling environment is missing”, it says.
IPBES says all businesses have a responsibility to act, even if this responsibility is not shared “evenly”.
“Priority actions” that businesses should take differ depending on the size of the firm, the sector in which it operates in, as well as the company structure and its “relationship with biodiversity”, the report notes.
The exact actions businesses should pursue also depends on companies’ “degree of control and influence over stakeholders”, it says.
According to the report, firms can act across four “decision-making levels” – corporate, operations, value chain and portfolio – to measure and address impacts on biodiversity.
(“Corporate” refers to decisions focused on overarching strategy, governance and direction of the business; “operations” to day-to-day activities; “value chain” to the system and resources required to move a product or service from supplier to customer; and “portfolio” to investments and business assets).
The SPM sets out a series of examples for how businesses can act across all four levels. These are summarised in the table below.
At a corporate level, the report notes that firms can establish ambitious governance and frameworks that can then have a ripple effect across the other levels, according to the report. This includes the integration of biodiversity commitments and targets into corporate strategy.
The SPM says that corporate biodiversity targets are “most effective” when they are aligned with “national and global biodiversity objectives” and “take into consideration a business’s impacts and dependencies on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people”.
At an operations level, businesses should focus on ensuring that their operations are located and managed in a way that benefits biodiversity, IPBES says. Environmental and social impact assessments and management plans that are supported by “credible monitoring of both actions and biodiversity outcomes” can underpin this effort, the SPM notes.
It says it is well established that using the “mitigation hierarchy” framework can help businesses deliver “lasting outcomes on the ground”. (The framework guides users towards limiting as far as possible the negative impacts on biodiversity from development projects by first avoiding, then minimising, restoring and offsetting impacts.)
Next, the report notes there are actions businesses can take to drive change within its broader spheres of influence, including suppliers, retailers, consumers and peers within industry. This is important, the SPM notes, as significant impacts and dependencies on biodiversity and nature “accrue” across the lifecycle of products or services, especially those that rely on raw materials.
The report notes there is established but incomplete evidence that efforts to “map” company value chains and improve traceability by linking products and materials to suppliers, locations and impacts can help “identify risks and prioritise actions”.
While noting that “mapping” beyond direct suppliers “often remains challenging” for businesses, the report adds:
“Examples at the corporate and value chain levels exist, such as companies in the chocolate industry that have made advances in recording biodiversity dependencies to improve business decisions through full traceability of materials and improved supplier control mechanisms.”
Elsewhere, the SPM notes that there is also established but incomplete evidence that consumer-focused measures – such as product labelling, education and incentives – can “shape behaviour and improve transparency”. However, it cautions that the effectiveness of these strategies is “constrained by consumer scepticism, certification costs and business models reliant on unsustainable consumption”.
The SPM also highlights that, at a “portfolio” level, financial institutions can shift finance away from harmful activities – for instance, companies whose products drive deforestation – and towards business activities with positive impacts for biodiversity and nature.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Matt Jones, co-chair of the report, explains the rationale behind including options for how businesses can address biodiversity impacts in the document:
“Businesses and governments in different countries are coming at this from a very different perspective. So we can’t present a set of really prescriptive ‘how tos’…but we can present a huge number of options for action that businesses, governments, financial institutions and civil society and other actors can all take.”
Elsewhere, the report says it is well established that “robust, transparent and credible reporting of actions and outcomes” is required to “inspire others”.
4. Government policies can drive a ‘just and sustainable future’ for nature and people
Both governments and financial institutions can set policies and create incentives to protect biodiversity and stem its decline, says the SPM.
According to the report, the types of policies that governments can put in place that have an influence over business include:
- Fiscal policies, such as subsidies and taxes.
- Land use or marine spatial planning and zoning, such as designating new national parks or areas protected for nature.
- Permitting for business activities that affect nature – for example, by requiring environmental impact assessments.
- Public procurement policy (rules for how governments purchase goods and services).
- Controls on advertising and the creation of standards to prevent “greenwashing”.
Governments can also promote action through paying for ecosystem services, creating environmental markets and through “multilateral benefit-sharing mechanisms”, which set out rules for ensuring profits from nature are shared equally, says the SPM.
It says this includes the Cali Fund, a fund that businesses can voluntarily pay into after reaping benefits from genetic resources found in biodiverse countries.
(The fund was agreed in 2024 with expectations that it could generate up to billions of dollars for conservation, but it has so far only attracted $1,000.)
Governments could also promote action by phasing out or reforming subsidies that are harmful for nature, as well as fostering positive incentives, according to the report.
Overall, governments can work with other actors to create an “enabling environment” to “incentivise actions that are beneficial for businesses, biodiversity and society for a just and sustainable future”, says the SPM. It adds:
“Creation of an enabling environment that provides incentives for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people could align what is profitable with what is good for biodiversity and society.
“Creating this enabling environment would result in businesses and financial institutions being positive agents of change in transforming to a just and sustainable economic system, by addressing their impacts on biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution, which are all interconnected.”
The post IPBES: Four key takeaways on how nature loss threatens the global economy appeared first on Carbon Brief.
IPBES: Four key takeaways on how nature loss threatens the global economy
Countries responsible for climate change could be required to pay “full and prompt reparation” for the damage they have caused, under a new United Nations resolution being pursued by the Pacific island state of Vanuatu, an initial draft shows.
The resolution seeks to turn into action last year’s landmark advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found that states have a legal obligation to prevent climate harm and that breaches of this duty could expose them to compensation claims from affected countries.
Under the “zero draft” of the resolution seen by Climate Home News, the UN’s General Assembly, its main policy-making body, would also demand that countries stop any “wrongful acts” contributing to rising emissions, which may include the production and licensing of planet-heating fossil fuels.
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Countries would also be called upon to respect their legal obligations by enacting national climate plans consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5C and by adopting appropriate policies, including measures to “ensure a rapid, just and quantified phase-out of fossil fuel production and use”, the document shows.
End of March vote targeted
The draft, meant as a starting point for negotiations, was circulated last week by the government of Vanuatu following discussions with a dozen nations, including the Netherlands, Colombia and Kenya.
Countries are expected to take part in informal consultations between February 13-17 aimed at agreeing on wording that would secure broad support among UN member states, according to a statement from Vanuatu, which also led the diplomatic drive for the ICJ’s advisory opinion. A vote on the follow-up resolution could take place by the end of March, it added.
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Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate minister, said respecting the court’s decision is “essential for the credibility of the international system and for effective collective action”.
“At a time when respect for international law is under pressure globally, this initiative affirms the central role of the International Court of Justice and the importance of multilateral cooperation,” he added in written comments.
New damage register and reparation mechanism
If adopted in its current form, the draft resolution would also create an “International Register of Damage”, which is described as a comprehensive and transparent record of evidence on loss and damage linked to climate change.
It would also ask the UN secretary-general to put forward proposals for a climate reparation mechanism that could coordinate and facilitate the resolution of compensation claims and promote financial models to help cover climate-related damage.
The fledgling Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) – set up under the UN climate change regime – is set to hand out money to the first set of initiatives aimed at addressing climate-driven destruction later this year. However, the just-over $590 million currently in the fund’s coffers is dwarfed by the scale of need in developing countries, with loss and damage costs estimated to reach up to $400 billion a year by 2030.
Like other small island nations, Vanuatu is among the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, while having contributed the least to global warming. Last year’s ICJ decision stemmed from a March 2023 resolution led by the Pacific nation asking the world’s top court to define countries’ legal obligations in relation to climate change.
Regenvanu said in September 2025 that it was important to follow up the ICJ ruling with a new UNGA resolution because it could be approved by a majority vote, while progress can be blocked in other fora like the UN climate negotiations that require consensus for decisions.
The post Vanuatu pushes new UN resolution demanding full climate compensation appeared first on Climate Home News.
Vanuatu pushes new UN resolution demanding full climate compensation
Even the busiest streets of Shanghai have become noticeably quieter as sales of electric vehicles (EVs) skyrocketed in China, with charging points mushrooming in residential compounds, car parks and service stations across the megacity.
Many Chinese drivers have upgraded their conventional vehicles to electric ones – or already replaced old EVs with newer models – incentivised by the government’s generous trade-in policies, or tempted by the latest hi-tech features such as controls powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
“Different from conventional cars, EVs are more like fast-moving consumer goods, like smartphones,” explained Mo Ke, founder and chief analyst of Tianjin-based battery-research firm, RealLi Research. Their digital systems can become outdated quickly, so Chinese people typically change their EVs after five or six years while a conventional car can be driven much longer, he told Climate Home News.
EV sales surpassed 16 million in China last year. Roughly 10% of all vehicles on the road were electric, and half of all new vehicles sold carried a green EV number plate, with an average of 45,000 EVs rolling off the production lines each day.
But while fast-growing EV uptake is good news for Chinese EV and battery manufacturers, it is creating a huge volume of spent batteries.
Tsunami of spent batteries
Last year, China generated nearly 400,000 tonnes of old or damaged power batteries, largely consisting of vehicle batteries, according to government data. That is projected to rise to one million tonnes per year in 2030, officials forecast.
The growing waste problem has spurred the government to launch a series of new policies aimed at regulating the country’s battery recycling industry, which though well-established is marked by a high degree of informality – especially in the lucrative repurposing sector where discarded EV batteries are given a new lease of life in less energy-intensive uses, such as power storage.
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China is determined to build a “standardised, safe and efficient” recycling system for batteries, Wang Peng, a director at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told a press conference as the government launched a recycling industry push in mid-January.
A policy paper published by the government last month detailed Beijing’s plans to mandate end-of-life recycling for EVs together with their batteries to prevent them from entering the grey, informal market, and establish a digital system to track the lifecycle of every battery manufactured in the country. Under the plans, EV and battery makers will be held responsible for recycling the batteries they produce and sell.
“The volume of the Chinese market is too big, so it has to take actions ahead of other countries,” Mo said, adding that he expected the government to release more details about implementation of the plans in the near future.
Critical minerals choke point
China’s strategy for the battery recycling sector could also prove a boon for the world’s largest battery producer by bolstering its supply of minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese.
Along with the looming large-scale battery retirement, policymakers’ focus on battery recycling also reflects concern about critical minerals supplies, said Li Yifei, assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University Shanghai. “The government also felt the increasing pressure of securing resources,” he told Climate Home News.
“When you set up an efficient battery-recycling system, you essentially secure a new source for critical minerals, and that can help you enhance economic security. That’s why the industry is so important,” Lin Xiao, chief executive of Botree Recycling Technologies, a Chinese company offering battery-recycling solutions, told Climate Home News.
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China dominates global refining of several minerals critical for producing EV batteries, but it still relies on imports of the raw materials – a choke point Beijing is acutely aware of, industry experts say.
China imports more than 90% of its cobalt, nickel and manganese, which are important ingredients for EV batteries, Hu Song, a senior researcher with the state-run China Automotive Technology and Research Centre, told China’s CCTV state broadcaster in June 2025. For lithium, the figure was around 60% in 2024, according to a separate report.
“If [those] resources cannot be recycled, then we will keep facing strangleholds in the future,” Hu said.
Big players gain ground
Spent EV batteries can be reused in settings that have lower energy requirements, such as in two-wheelers or energy-storage systems. When they become too depleted for repurposing, they can be scrapped and shredded into “black mass”, a powdery mixture containing valuable metals that can be recovered.
Reflecting the size of China’s EV market, the country already dominates global battery recycling capacity. It is home to 78% of the world’s battery pre-treatment capacity, which is for scrapping and shredding, and 89% of the capacity for refining black mass, according to 2025 forecasts by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a UK firm tracking battery supply chains.
A number of large corporate players have emerged in the sector in recent years.
Huayou Cobalt, a major producer of battery minerals, has built a business model for recycling, repurposing and shredding old batteries, as well as refining black mass and making new batteries using recovered materials.
It recently signed a deal with Encory, a joint venture between BMW and Berlin-based environmental service provider Interzero, to develop cutting-edge battery-recycling technologies, with their first joint factory set to open in China this year.
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Suzhou-based Botree Recycling Technologies has developed various solutions to turn retired power batteries into new ones. Meanwhile, Brunp Recycling, the recycling arm of Chinese battery giant CATL, has built large factories to recycle lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, a type of lithium battery that does not use nickel or cobalt, as well as nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries, which are more popular outside of China.
But Mo, of RealLi Research, said much remains to be done to regulate and formalise the battery recycling industry.
Underground workshops
Across China, small underground workshops plague the repurposing sector, rebundling depleted batteries for sale without following industry standards or complying with health and safety requirements.
Because these operators have lower operational costs, they are able to offer higher prices to EV owners to buy their old batteries, undercutting formal recycling companies.
“This creates distortions in the market where legitimate players, who invest in proper detection, hazardous waste treatment and compliance, struggle to compete purely on price,” a spokesperson at CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, told Climate Home News.
Despite such challenges, CATL’s Brunp subsidiary produced 17,100 tonnes of lithium in 2024 from the 128,700 tonnes of depleted batteries it recycled that year, according to CATL’s annual report.
Recycling expertise in demand
Since it was founded in 2019, Botree has formed partnerships with several major clients, which together recycle about half of China’s power batteries, the company’s CEO Lin said.
As other countries grapple with rising volumes of spent batteries, Chinese recyclers are also finding new foreign markets for their know-how.
Botree has joined forces with Spanish consulting firm ILUNION and renewable energy company EFT-Systems to build a factory to recycle LFP batteries in Valladolid.
The plant, scheduled to start operation in 2027, will be able to recycle 6,000 tonnes of LFPs annually when it opens, accounting for roughly 15% of demand in the Spanish market.
“(The companies) tell us what batteries they recycle and what battery materials they want to regenerate,” Lin said. “We can design a complete process for them.”
The post China maximises battery recycling to shore up critical mineral supplies appeared first on Climate Home News.
China maximises battery recycling to shore up critical mineral supplies
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