Promises to improve the UK’s food security feature in the election manifestos that have been published ahead of the vote on 4 July.
The Conservatives say they can provide a future where “national, border, energy and food security are put first”. Labour says that “food security is national security”.
Food supplies have been impacted by geopolitical conflicts, extreme weather events and rising costs around the world in recent months.
The UK government recently described its food security situation as “broadly stable”, but that it is facing “longer-term risks” from climate change.
Food security is “very low on the political agenda”, a food policy expert tells Carbon Brief, adding that “politicians really don’t yet get how important and how fragile the food system is”.
Below, Carbon Brief examines the range of factors tying into the UK’s food security, how they are impacted by climate change and how some of the biggest parties discuss these issues.
- How food secure is the UK?
- What have UK political parties pledged on food security?
- How does climate change impact food security?
- How can the UK food system better prepare for shocks?
How food secure is the UK?
In a broad sense, food security refers to people in a particular country or region having enough access to food.
This is achieved when “all people, at all times” have access to enough “safe and nutritious food” to meet their needs and preferences for an “active and healthy life”, according to a definition agreed at a 1996 World Food Summit.
Sufficient “access” to food depends on a number of different factors, including costs, supply, types of food, nutritional needs and where the food comes from. These factors vary on a national and local level.
Food security in the UK is “broadly stable”, according to the government’s first food security index released last month. However, this follows a “challenging period of global supply chain shocks”.
The government says that this stability should also be taken in the context of “longer-term risk from climate change”. (See: How does climate change impact food security?)
In terms of food supply, it says that the ratio of food produced in the UK to food imported from other countries was “broadly stable” in 2022, which is the most recent data available.
The UK produced 60% of its own food and 73% of “indigenous foods” that are natively grown, such as carrots and onions. This was a drop of 1% in each case compared to 2021.
Overall, the UK imports around 40% of its food, the government notes. As the chart below shows, these imports come from a range of countries, including the Netherlands, France and Ireland.
The UK produces most of the cereals, meat, dairy and eggs eaten by people across the country. It is much more reliant on imported fruit and vegetables than any other type of food, which is a similar situation to Ireland.
The chart below outlines the “production to supply ratio” of raw foods. The figures indicate, as a percentage, how much of each of the consumed food types are produced in the UK. So, for example, the UK produces 17% of the fruit and 55% of the vegetables it consumes. In contrast, the UK produces more lamb and milk than it consumes.
Different foods are imported from different countries around the world, such as citrus fruits from Spain, tomatoes from the Netherlands and India, and rice from Pakistan.
Supplies can, therefore, be hit by extreme weather abroad. This has happened numerous times, including when cold weather in Spain and Morocco led to severe shortages of lettuce, tomatoes and other crops in the spring of 2023.
In terms of production, the balance between home-grown and imported food is “integral to UK food security” as the country’s climate is unsuitable for products such as rice, bananas and tea, the government index says.
It adds that the government is “not complacent” about food security risks, especially from global “volatility”, climate change and biodiversity loss – all of which have “intensified” in recent years, it notes.
Another key aspect of food security is affordability. Food prices have risen substantially around the world in recent years.
Carbon Brief recently spoke to a range of scientists and policy experts about the reasons for this, which include geopolitical conflicts, extreme weather events, high input costs and increased demand.
In the UK, the overall cost of food and non-alcoholic drinks increased by 25% between January 2022 to January 2024, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Around half of the respondents to a Food Standards Agency survey of the general public said they are “highly concerned” about the affordability of food. This figure doubled over the course of three years – from 26% in 2020 to 51% in 2023.
The percentage of survey respondents classified as “food insecure” stood at 25% by January 2023. Food insecurity means having limited or uncertain access to adequate amounts of food, the FSA says.
These results show that “the majority of people are worried about food prices”, the FSA chief Emily Miles said in a statement.
Prof Tim Lang, an emeritus professor of food policy at City University of London, says that food security is “very low on the political agenda” in the UK. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Politicians really don’t yet get how important and how fragile the food system is and its reliance on not just fossil fuels, but over half a century of investment into a particular model of efficiency which has all been about cutting options, cutting slackness, or perceived slackness, in the food system.”
What have UK political parties pledged on food security?
In an interactive manifesto tracker, Carbon Brief recently examined the pledges made by the UK’s main political parties ahead of the election.
Both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition have been criticised by farming and food industry groups for not going far enough in their plans on food and agriculture.
The Conservatives say they can provide a future where “national, border, energy and food security are put first”. They pledge to introduce a legally binding target to enhance the UK’s food security.
They also pledge to deliver the goal for at least half of the money spent on food in schools, hospitals and other public sector services to be used for food produced locally or to “higher environmental production standards”.
This proposal from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs defined “locally produced” as food that is grown or made in the same region, or a neighbouring county, as it is consumed.
These “higher” standards of production include organic farms or farmlands showing integrated management of natural habitats and biodiversity, soil management, pollution control and nature conservation.
Queries from Carbon Brief to the Conservative press office asking for more detail on their food security policies were left unanswered.
Labour’s manifesto says that “food security is national security” and that the party will “champion British farming whilst protecting the environment”.
Similar to the Conservative goal, the party will set a target to produce half of food purchased in the public sector either locally or in a way that is “certified to higher environmental standards”.
Carbon Brief’s request for more detail on this policy from the Labour press office also went unanswered.
A letter from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), the British Retail Consortium and other groups to the leaders of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties criticised the lack of focus on food security in their manifestos, the Guardian reported last week.
The letter said the groups “heard very little about food security” compared to defence and energy security in recent weeks, the newspaper said. It added:
“The lack of focus on food in the political narrative during the campaigns demonstrates a worrying blind spot for those that would govern us.”
The Conservative manifesto pledges to increase the UK’s farming budget by £1bn over the term of the next parliament.
Labour committed to maintaining England’s post-Brexit funding programme, the Environmental Land Management Schemes (read Carbon Brief’s Q&A here), but did not explicitly mention the UK’s agricultural budget.
NFU president Tom Bradshaw described this as “concerning”, the Daily Express reported. He told the outlet:
“Looking at the profitability of the farming sector, it’s on a knife edge.”
The Scottish National Party does not directly mention food security in its manifesto. It discusses agricultural funding, saying that the devolved Scottish government has received “no commitment from Westminster on any future funding for farming after 2025”.
The SNP calls for the UK government to increase farm funding and provide “certainty through multi-annual funding frameworks”.
The Liberal Democrats has pledged to introduce a “holistic and comprehensive national food strategy to ensure food security” alongside tackling food prices, ending food poverty and improving health and nutrition.
The party also promises to put an extra £1bn per year towards England’s Environmental Land Management Schemes.
How does climate change impact food security?
Extreme weather can harm food supply and production, therefore impacting food security.
Heatwaves destroy crops and endanger agricultural workers. Heavy rainfall floods fields. Drought reduces crop yields. Climate change is a key driver in the increasing frequency and severity of these extremes.
Farmers in the UK have recently been affected by “soggy and turbulent weather”, Bloomberg reported.
The UK had its eighth-wettest winter on record last year and a wetter-than-normal spring. Carbon Brief analysis shows that UK winters have become 1C warmer and 15% wetter in the past century.
Earlier this year, the Guardian reported that there could be food shortages and price rises due to this extreme weather.
This could lead to more shipments from abroad, but the newspaper said that “similarly wet conditions in European countries such as France and Germany, as well as drought in Morocco, could mean there is less food to import”.
In 2022, the heatwave which saw UK temperatures hit 40C for the first time pushed farmers “closer to the brink”, the Daily Telegraph reported at the time.
The hot, dry weather in July left farmers “watering crops which wouldn’t normally need watering such as sugar beet and maize”, the newspaper said, while “industry chiefs warned that very hot and sunny days were starting to stress apple trees and scorch fruit”.
It added that “fears that high temperatures will damage this year’s harvest in Britain, Europe and North America sent crop prices 7% higher last week, the biggest jump since the early days of the conflict in Ukraine”.
A rapid attribution analysis suggested that human-caused climate change had made the UK’s record-breaking heatwave at least 10 times more likely. A separate study found that climate change had made the droughts across the northern hemisphere in 2022 at least 20 times more likely.
Speaking to Carbon Brief for a recent article, Prof Andy Challinor, a professor of climate impacts at the University of Leeds, said that “climate change is beginning to outpace us because it is interacting with our complex interrelated economic and food systems”.
He added that the way food systems have been set up “has huge implications for stability and resilience – or lack thereof”.
Lang tells Carbon Brief that there is some “lip service [and] some good initiatives” to address risks from climate change and biodiversity loss, but he adds:
“There are great things going on, but they are small compared to the enormous change that needs to happen.”
How can the UK food system better prepare for shocks?
Lang says the next UK government has a “horrendous task” in tackling issues such as extreme weather, global shocks and other impacts negatively affecting food production.
He has been working on a report about UK food security and preparing for food shocks for the National Preparedness Commission, an independent body that promotes policies to prepare the UK for shocks. This is due to be released by the end of this summer.
Lang believes that a system change is necessary to deal with the range of different shocks and to tackle the food system’s contribution to climate change.
The global food system is responsible for around one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Within this, as much as half of those emissions come from rotted or otherwise wasted food, a 2023 study found.
In the UK, 12% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. Livestock is by far the biggest contributor to these emissions, as shown in the chart below.
Around 70% of the UK’s land is used for agriculture. Globally, half of all liveable land is used for agriculture.
England’s National Food Strategy, published a few years ago, called for a rural land-use strategy to figure out the best ways to use land for nature, carbon sequestration, agriculture and other purposes.
The UK is due to release its delayed land-use report for England later this year. Before the general election was called, a conservative peer said the report would be published before the parliament’s summer recess.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs declined to comment on the current status of this report as it is an issue for the next government.
Food security should be a “central tenet” of this framework, the UK parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee said in December 2023.
The chart below highlights how land is currently allocated in the UK (left) and how much overseas land is used to produce food for the UK (right).
On next steps, Lang says that he would like to see a number of actions from the next government on food security. He tells Carbon Brief:
“We need a national council of food policy. We need to have high priority to agri-food reform. We have got to actually start a programme of educating and teaching people better how to do things. We have got to get a grip on the runaway food manufacturing industry.
“At the moment, the politics of food is just blame. And blame doesn’t get political change.”
The post Q&A: The state of the UK’s ‘food security’ in a fast-warming world appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: The state of the UK’s ‘food security’ in a fast-warming world
Greenhouse Gases
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.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
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