After lengthy and heated negotiations, diplomats have largely agreed on a draft framework for a new UN fund to help nations recover from the “loss and damage” caused by climate change.
Last year’s COP27 summit in Egypt marked a victory for developing nations when they secured agreement on this fund – an idea many had been advancing for decades.
A transitional committee composed of members from developed and developing countries was tasked with discussing everything from who would pay into this fund to where it would be located, ahead of a final decision due to be taken at COP28 in Dubai next month.
Meetings overran this year as members clashed over long-standing grievances. Developing countries did not want to see the fund based at the US-dominated World Bank and wanted to ensure it was accessible for as much of the global south as possible.
Developed countries wanted to see funds coming from sources besides their public coffers, including those of the wealthiest developing nations, such as China and Saudi Arabia.
In the end, the final committee meeting held last weekend in Abu Dhabi settled on a draft proposal that would see the new fund housed at the World Bank for at least four years.
Neither developed countries nor anyone else would be obliged to pay into the fund.
This proposal will now form the basis of a final decision by leaders at COP28.
While the committee’s recommendations were adopted by consensus, a last-minute objection from the US provides an early indication that those talks at the UN’s upcoming climate summit may not progress smoothly.
- What is ‘loss and damage’ and what was agreed at COP27?
- What progress has been made in setting up a loss-and-damage fund since COP27?
- Why are countries divided over the new fund?
- How much money is needed to deal with loss and damage?
- What options are being considered to raise money for loss and damage?
- How could countries claim money from the loss-and-damage fund?
What is ‘loss and damage’ and what was agreed at COP27?
“Loss and damage” is a term used to describe how climate change is already causing serious and, in many cases, irreversible impacts around the world – particularly in vulnerable communities.
For example, more intense and frequent extreme weather events are causing the loss of human life and damages to properties and cropland.
The issue is recognised in Article 8 of the Paris Agreement, which says parties “recognise the importance of averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change”. However, the Paris text did not commit countries – developed or otherwise – to providing funds for loss and damage.
At UN climate talks, the term is often used by nations and organisations to argue for developed, high-emitting nations to be held responsible for losses incurred in poorer regions, which are the least responsible for climate change. (Because of this, the term “loss and damage” is sometimes described as meaning “climate reparations”.)
At the COP27 climate summit, all countries agreed to set up a fund to pay for loss and damage. This came after a 30-year fight for such a fund led by small island states and developing countries.
After much back and forth between developed countries and the G77 and China – a major group of developing countries representing six out of every seven people in the world – a text was produced close to the end of the summit that “decided” to establish a new loss-and-damage fund.
This same text said that a “transitional committee” should be established, dedicated to coming up with a plan for how the fund would work in practice.
It added that a decision “related to the new funding arrangements” should be adopted “no later than at COP28”.
It was also decided that the committee should be composed of 24 members, including 14 members from developing countries and 10 from developed nations.
What progress has been made in setting up a loss-and-damage fund since COP27?
The transitional committee held four scheduled meetings and two workshops in Egypt, Germany, Thailand and the Dominican Republic during March-October 2023.
After the failure of the fourth meeting to reach consensus, it also held an emergency fifth meeting in Abu Dhabi from 3-4 November 2023.
The committee’s task was to come up with a series of recommendations for the loss-and-damage fund that could then be approved by leaders at COP28.
This included establishing which financial sources would feed into the fund, what kind of activities it could support and how it would work alongside existing funds. The recommendations also covered where the fund would be located and how it would be structured and governed.
Over the course of these meetings, nations and civil society groups submitted proposals for the fund. These ideas were assessed by the committee and, ultimately, fed into a series of documents that were subject to further scrutiny and debate.
As talks entered extra time in Abu Dhabi, the committee co-chairs presented members with what one of them, Outi Honkatukia of Finland, called a “take it or leave it package”. This attempted to distil all the competing views into a viable set of recommendations that could form the basis of a COP28 decision.
After passing up opportunities to object earlier on, US committee member Christina Chan raised a last-minute concern about language “urg[ing]” developed countries to support the fund.
Throughout the talks, the US had consistently pushed back against any language that compelled developed countries to pay into the fund. (While “urge” is towards the stronger end of the lexicon of UN legal drafting, it does not, in fact, imply compulsion.)
Chan asked for this text to be bracketed, indicating it had not been resolved.
The co-chairs reasoned that all members had objections to the final text for various reasons, but the committee had already reached consensus and it was too late to reopen negotiations. “Once we start bracketing, that doesn’t stop,” Honkatukia told the meeting.
Given this, Chan said the US did not view the final decision as reaching consensus. Teresa Anderson, global lead on climate justice at ActionAid International, tells Carbon Brief that the US’s “forceful objections to the transitional committee’s recommendations suggest that this text might not sail smoothly through COP28”.
Why are countries divided over the new fund?
Tensions ran high throughout the five transitional committee meetings as long-standing arguments between representatives from developed and developing nations were revisited.
Developing country committee members reportedly threatened to walk out, accusing a small group of nations – particularly the US – of pushing them into a “Faustian bargain”, involving many compromises, in order to make progress on the loss-and-damage fund.
Below are some of the key areas that sparked divisions within the committee.
Who would receive money from the fund?
At COP27, nations agreed to create the fund to assist “developing nations, especially those that are particularly vulnerable” to climate change. However, the interpretation of “particularly vulnerable” remained a point of contention.
EU committee members, for example, suggested that the fund should only serve least developed countries (LDCs), small-island states and “other particularly vulnerable countries based on specific eligibility criteria”.
Members of the G77 and China resisted what they perceived as efforts to narrow the focus of the fund. In a statement released towards the end of the fourth meeting, Cuban G77 chair Pedro Pedroso Cuesta said:
“We must ensure that the administrative arrangements of the fund do not impede direct access to all developing countries particularly vulnerable to climate change.”
Sherry Rehman, former climate minister of Pakistan and G77 chair at COP27, told a press conference that the fund should be “more inclusive” – citing flood-struck Pakistan and Libya as middle-income nations that might not be able to access it, should more limited criteria be adopted.
The final text agreed by the committee does not specify which countries would be eligible to receive funds. Instead, it says the fund’s board would develop a “resource allocation system”, based on the available evidence and with a minimum percentage allocated to LDCs and small islands.
Who would contribute to the fund?
Currently, only a small group of “Annex II” countries, which were deemed “developed” when the original UN climate treaty was agreed in 1992, are obliged to provide climate finance.
These parties have consistently failed to meet their existing climate-finance pledges to developing countries.
However, neither the 1992 climate convention nor the Paris Agreement say who should give money to pay for climate change loss and damage.
The US and European nations have stressed the need to share the burden with wealthier emerging economies – specifically singling out China and Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia. UK climate minister Graham Stuart told a UN ministerial meeting in September:
“It will simply not be possible to deliver what is needed if we stay trapped in outdated categories from decades ago and we must break out of this to get a positive outcome at COP28.”
Developed countries also say that scaling up the fund sufficiently would mean opening it up to contributions from non-government sources, including the private sector and humanitarian groups. (See: What options are being considered to raise money for loss and damage?)
Developing countries are not entirely opposed to drawing finance from this “mosaic” of funding sources. However, as one joint submission by committee members from developing countries states, they want to keep the focus primarily on grant-based finance from developed countries.
Referencing climate finance more broadly, the Saudi Arabian government voiced its concerns in a statement delivered at the pre-COP event in Abu Dhabi and seen by Carbon Brief. The statement said Saudi Arabia expected “those who have clear obligations to own up to them and not attempt to pass on the baton to other countries or entities outside the process”.
Brazilian diplomat Matheus Bastos, representing the G77 and China, called for language reflecting the “principles and provisions” of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.
He said the function of this would be to make it clear, as those treaties do, that developed countries are obliged to provide climate finance. In the view of the G77, this extended to the “full costs incurred” in developing countries, including not only mitigation and adaptation but also loss and damage, Bastos added. The US said it would not accept this text.
Ultimately, the final recommendations would not oblige developed countries to pay into the fund. They also mention a “wide variety of sources of funding”.
Developed countries are asked to “take the lead” in providing start-up finance for the fund, rather than loss-and-damage relief.
In addition, the recommended text “urge[s]” developed countries to “continue to provide support”, while other countries would be subject to a weaker exhortation “enourag[ing]” them to do the same “on a voluntary basis”. (This is the element that the US raised its last-minute objection to as the meeting came to a close.)
Where would the fund be located?
One major issue blocking progress was the location of the loss-and-damage fund.
The US and the EU wanted to see the fund hosted by the US-based World Bank, a proposal that G77 and China members strongly opposed.
They argued that World Bank finance is based not on grants but on loans, which are not desirable for debt-burdened countries in the global south. They also said the bank is not set up to allow fast, direct access of the kind required when dealing with climate disasters.
In addition, they said it would not be accountable to all parties, due to the dominance of the US – its largest shareholder – and other major donors in decision-making.
Diann Black-Layne, a committee member representing the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) said the World Bank would charge a hosting fee of 17%, which she described as “highway robbery…pure gangster behaviour”:
“[That] means that the biggest beneficiary of this fund will be the World Bank. The 10,000 employees of the World Bank will get more money from this fund than the 63 million people of the population of AOSIS countries.”
(This sum, which others have placed at 24%, refers to administration costs taken from the fund’s secretariat and is, therefore, not a portion of the total money flowing into the fund. According to the Loss and Damage Collaboration, it would amount to 1-2% of total funds.)
A coalition of nearly 70 US NGOs wrote an open letter to the US negotiating team stating that “the world does not need yet another channel for international finance that is donor-driven and unaccountable to communities in the global south”.
The World Bank issued a statement pushing back against such criticism and emphasising that it could be flexible in how it allowed countries to access loss-and-damage funds.
(This dispute recalls arguments at the 2009 COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen. There, the so-called “Danish text” – which was never adopted – would have “hand[ed] effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank”, the Guardian reported at the time.)
Developing countries argued instead for a new, independent entity operating under the financial mechanism of the UN climate convention itself.
This would be similar to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which is overseen by a 24-person board that includes an equal number of developed and developing country representatives.
After this dispute prevented consensus at the fourth committee meeting, developing countries came to the final meeting stating that they would accept the World Bank as the host on an “interim” basis. Committee members stressed that they were making a “huge concession” in doing so.
Some developed country members also said they wanted to see a clear pathway to move the fund out of the bank within two years.
In the end, the committee agreed to a text that would establish the World Bank as an interim host of the fund for four years. It included conditions such as allowing communities to access small grants and providing access to countries that are not World Bank members.
Laura Schäfer, a senior advisor in climate risk management at Germanwatch, tells Carbon Brief that while these elements are promising, they should also be “basic conditions” for a loss-and-damage fund.
She says there remain concerns that the World Bank will end up being the fund’s permanent home, an issue that has faced other funds that were meant to be housed there temporarily:
“There is no exit strategy defined in the text, so this basically means if the World Bank performs well and fulfils all the conditions set, it will be the host even after four years.”
One of the key demands of developing countries was that, wherever the loss-and-damage fund ended up being based, it would have the status of a standalone entity under the UNFCCC. However, civil-society groups said the final language on this in the text was unclear.
The GCF, seen by some as a model for the new fund, is clearly designated as an “operating entity” under the UN climate convention’s financial mechanism. By contrast, the proposed text for the World Bank-based loss-and-damage fund describes it only as being “entrusted with the operation of the financial mechanism”.
This “somewhat murky” language is expected to face legal scrutiny in the weeks ahead of COP28.
Other issues
In an earlier draft text released at the fourth meeting, developing-country committee members disputed a line stating that the fund “does not involve liability or compensation”.
This has long been a fundamental issue for the US, in particular, because it does not want to be held legally accountable for its high historical emissions.
US committee member Chan told other members it was “absolutely unacceptable” that this was viewed as “a point of contention”:
“This was a key piece of the understanding that led to the agreement for this agenda item at Sharm el-Sheikh.”
She said that if this text was removed, “we don’t see a pathway to an outcome” on the fund overall. This language remained in the final recommendations.
Civil society groups also raised concerns about the removal of language committing to human-rights protections from the final recommendations.
How much money is needed to deal with loss and damage?
Developing-country transitional committee members made a submission in September calling for “at least” $100bn a year in loss-and-damage funding by 2030.
They cited a UN-commissioned report by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, which says “recent events suggest [costs] could be as high as $150-300bn by 2030 to cope with immediate impacts and for subsequent reconstruction”.
The expert report also emphasises the uncertainty of these figures, adding that climate models “likely underestimate” loss-and-damage costs in developing countries.
Indeed, the expert group’s figures are towards the lower end of existing estimates. Their report cites other studies as placing the costs of “residual damages” from climate hazards far higher – as much as £290-580bn annually in developing countries by 2030.
With this in mind, developing country representatives emphasised that a £100bn goal “is not meant as a ceiling, but rather as a minimum commitment.”
By contrast, US and EU submissions did not back any specific targets.
A draft of the final outcome, released at the fourth meeting in October, included a section titled “scale”, with the developing countries’ proposal in square brackets, meaning it had not yet been agreed by all parties.
However, US committee member Chan said that she would not accept such a figure in the document. “This is not part of our mandate, it’s not part of what is in the Sharm decision,” she said.
Ultimately, any reference to the scale of funding was scrubbed from the final recommendations.
What options are being considered to raise money for loss and damage?
One of the transitional committee’s goals was to “take into account the landscape of institutions and solutions relevant to responding to loss and damage”.
As part of the deal that emerged from COP27, countries commissioned the UNFCCC secretariat to review existing loss-and-damage funding and identify “gaps existing within the landscape”.
The secretariat released a synthesis report summarising its findings in May 2023, which has fed into the decisions made by the committee.
It identifies a variety of existing sources that are relevant for tackling loss and damage, including adaptation funds and insurance facilities.
Meanwhile, scientists and civil society groups have proposed alternative sources for loss-and-damage funds, such as taxes or levies on fossil fuels and global shipping.
One paper suggests allocating hundreds of billions of dollars in “climate reparations” charges to fossil-fuel majors such as, for example, Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil.
Earlier versions of the transitional committee’s recommendations reflected a variety of potential sources, again in square brackets. These included private entities, NGOs and “special drawing rights (SDRs), levies, voluntary carbon market or international pricing mechanisms”.
However, the question of funding sources is contentious as, broadly speaking, developing countries have tried to keep the emphasis on grant-based finance from developed countries.
Developed countries, meanwhile, say that “innovative” new sources must be explored to raise money on a sufficient scale.
Speaking at the fourth committee meeting for the G77 and China, Brazilian diplomat Bastos told fellow committee members that they had “repeatedly asked for deletion” of language around raising money for the fund from the voluntary carbon market and other pricing mechanisms.
The final recommendation text does not include much detail on types of funding, but mentions a “wide variety of sources”, as well as saying it will be open to public, private and “innovative” contributions. It also specifies that it should be open to receiving funds from philanthropic foundations.
It says the fund’s board will prepare a strategy to “mobilise new, additional, predictable and adequate financial resources from all sources of funding”.
How could countries claim money from the loss-and-damage fund?
As with many aspects of the fund, the question of how countries could actually claim money after experiencing loss and damage is still far from being answered.
Traditionally, countries access UN climate funds by filing lengthy project proposals in a process that typically takes several years.
For the loss-and-damage fund, some countries are instead calling for a “trigger-based mechanism” to allow them to claim funds immediately in the wake of extreme weather events, explains Zoha Shawoo, a scientist working on loss and damage at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). She tells Carbon Brief:
“Something like that could work if there is an immediate recovery and relief window. But we know that developed countries have been saying that that is largely covered by humanitarian aid, so maybe the fund should focus more on medium- and long-term recovery.”
There are also still question marks around what sort of losses and damages countries would be able to claim for.
Loss and damage can be caused by immediate climate impacts, such as more intense and frequent extreme weather events, as well as impacts that gradually worsen over time, such as sea level rise and the retreat of glaciers.
The study of how climate change is affecting the likelihood and severity of extreme weather events is known as “attribution” science.
Attribution is playing an increasingly important role in proving liability in climate court cases. For example, a recent landmark court case won by young climate activists in Montana relied heavily on attribution science.
This has prompted some to question whether attribution could play a role in helping countries to make claims from the loss-and-damage fund.
However, Shawoo notes it may not be preferable for developed or developing countries to use attribution science in deciding who should access loss-and-damage funding:
“First, developed countries may not be comfortable with being held liable for particular losses. But then I think it could potentially also be a burden on developing countries to have to prove that a certain event is due to climate change. So I don’t think either side would want that.”
There still could be a role for attribution science in helping to provide evidence for the claims of developing countries however, she adds:
“Rapid attribution studies could provide additional evidence that developing countries could use to back up their claims and access funding. Not a formal requirement, but just something to give them additional leverage.”
So far, there has been little cross-talk between attribution scientists and those involved in the UN process for operationalising the loss-and-damage fund, Dr Izidine Pinto, a scientist from the World Weather Attribution initiative, tells Carbon Brief:
“Right now we’re separate because no one knows how the loss-and-damage fund is going to work.”
He adds that attribution may only be able to play a limited role in determining how much money countries should be able to claim from the loss-and-damage fund:
“Attribution studies are just one side of the coin. Attribution is saying that the amount of rainfall or heat was made more likely by climate change. But vulnerability is the other side of the coin, because the same amount of rainfall can destroy a house in region A but not B. So it’s very tricky to just focus on attribution without looking at vulnerability and exposure.”
The post Q&A: The fight over the ‘loss-and-damage fund’ for climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: The fight over the ‘loss-and-damage fund’ for climate change
Climate Change
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
-
IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
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