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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?

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 countries from which the UK imported food and drink in 2022, shown in the value of imports in millions of pounds. Source: Department for Environment and Rural Affairs.
The countries from which the UK imported food and drink in 2022, shown in the value of imports in millions of pounds. Source: Department for Environment and Rural Affairs.

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. 

The production to supply ratio of different food types in the UK in 2022. This compares the amount of food produced in the UK with what is consumed. Source: Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The production to supply ratio of different food types in the UK in 2022. This compares the amount of food produced in the UK with what is consumed. Source: Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

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.”

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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.

Introduce a legally binding target to enhance our food security. The target will apply UK-wide alongside our UK Food Security Index, the first of its kind, helping us determine where the best to concentrate farming funds. This will also feed into the development of the Land Use Framework.
A Conservative manifesto pledge about food security. Source: Conservative and Unionist Party Manifesto 2024.

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”.

Support British farmers.
A Labour manifesto pledge about food security. Source: Labour Party Manifesto 2024.

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.

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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. 

Muddy and waterlogged fields of brassica plants in Lancashire, England in November 2023.
Muddy and waterlogged fields of brassica plants in Lancashire, England in November 2023. Credit: Radharc Images / Alamy Stock Photo.

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 dry field in Hertfordshire, England during the 2022 record-breaking UK summer.
A dry field in Hertfordshire, England during the 2022 record-breaking UK summer. Credit: Stephen Chung / Alamy Stock Photo.

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.”

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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. 

Greenhouse gas emissions (MtCO2e).
The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions from 1990 to 2022, broken down by source: agricultural combustion (medium purple), livestock (black), agricultural soils (light purple) and other agricultural sources (dark purple). Source: Department for Energy Security & Net Zero.

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).

UK land area divided up by purpose. About 70% is devoted to agriculture, mainly livestock and livestock feed and pasture. The right-hand side of the chart, using the same scale, shows how much land is used overseas to produce food for the UK. About half of the total land use is overseas. The combined land area for rearing beef and lamb for UK consumption is larger than the UK itself. Source: National Food Strategy
UK land area divided up by purpose. About 70% is devoted to agriculture, mainly livestock and livestock feed and pasture. The right-hand side of the chart, using the same scale, shows how much land is used overseas to produce food for the UK. About half of the total land use is overseas. The combined land area for rearing beef and lamb for UK consumption is larger than the UK itself. Source: National Food Strategy.

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.”

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London talks raise hopes for green shipping deal

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A relatively ambitious deal to reduce the shipping industry’s 3% of global emissions now looks more likely after four days of closed-door talks in London, observers say.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), which oversees the negotiations, said there had been “constructive discussions” and “genuine willingness within the group to make concrete further progress”.

Em Fenton, senior director at the NGO Opportunity Green who attended the talks last week, said they “demonstrated a strong spirit of solidarity in the face of blatant attempts to undermine the credibility, ambition and equity of a hard-fought multilateral agreement”.

After several years of debate, governments provisionally agreed in April 2025 on a “Net-Zero Framework” (NZF) – a series of emissions reduction targets for shipowners aimed at incentivising them to use cleaner fuels, backed up with financial rewards for meeting the targets and fees for missing them.

But in October 2025, after a high-profile intervention by US President Donald Trump and threats of US sanctions and visa restrictions, the US convinced a majority of voting nations to postpone the adoption of the NZF for a year.

UCL analysis found that, of those who expressed a view at last week’s talks, 38 were in favour of an NZF-style solution while only 17 were against. Those opposed are “consistently composed of strongly fossil fuel-aligned governments”.

An observer of the talks, who did not want to be named, said the countries opposed include the US, Russia, India, Thailand, Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay, as well as eight oil-rich Gulf nations and shipowner-reliant Liberia and Panama. Governments that support an NZF-style deal include China, Brazil, Mexico, Türkiye, Canada, Australia, Chile, nine African nations, most European countries and small islands.

A new framework to tackle shipping emissions could be adopted if two-thirds of countries that are present and signed up to a regulation called Marpol Annex VI – endorsed by just over 100 states – vote in favour of it, as they did in April 2025.

UCL’s analysis said it was “reassuring” that governments which had taken strong positions in the media against the NZF were being more compromising in the negotiations.

Tweaks are probable

While there is majority support for the NZF, UCL said adopting it would be difficult politically. “The process from here could therefore be as much about producing what appears to be a new package, but one that broadly ends up with similar outcomes in relation to objectives,” UCL argued.

But tweaking the NZF, which resulted from years of negotiations, comes with risks, it warned. For example, changes could reduce the new system’s planned support for low-income countries, turning them against it. Fenton said compromising should not mean “abandoning the principle of justice in the maritime transition”.

UCL said the speed at which shipowners must reduce their ships’ emissions or face fees is likely to be reduced in the short-term but raised in the long-term to meet a goal of net zero emissions by mid-century.

    This was a compromise put forward by NZF-supporter Brazil. However, an analysis by the the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) has found that this change would lead to more overall emissions than the original NZF trajectory.

    UCL has warned it could incentivise liquefied natural gas as a shipping fuel over greener options, which include hydrogen-based methanol and ammonia.

    Analysis by UCL and the Rocky Mountain Institute suggests that, while a slower start to the NZF would reduce transport costs in the short term, it would increase them later due to the costs involved in switching the industry over from more polluting fuel to cleaner fuel.

    NZF won’t meet emissions goals

    IMarEst’s analysis finds that even in its current form – the most ambitious deal on the table – the NZF will not be sufficient for shipping to meet its emissions reduction goals.

    It says that only a Pacific proposal to place a levy on ships’ total emissions – rather than just those above a certain level – would meet the industry’s targets to reduce emissions 20% between 2008 and 2030, 70% by 2040 and then reach net zero “by or around, i.e. close to 2050”. This is highly unlikely to be adopted.

    Additional talks will be held from November 23-27 and from November 30-December 3 before a potentially final round of official negotiations begins on December 4.

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    At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance

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    At a key leaders’ summit in Palau, Pacific island nations burdened by worsening climate change impacts and costly fossil fuel imports called for November’s COP31 climate summit to deliver finance to help the region transition to renewable energy and build more resilient communities.

    Heads of government from the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) – which includes COP31 co-president Australia – met in Palau’s capital Koror for a week-long summit, where they demanded access to climate finance, ocean action and a regional boost for renewables at COP31.

    Palau’s president Surangel Whipps Jr. said during a plenary session that the Pacific must focus on delivering climate and ocean commitments. “It will require greater regional leadership, stronger regional coordination and, above all, unity of purpose,” he said.

    The meeting, which ended last Friday, was marked by the absence of some leaders – among them the heads of state of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, which will host a preparatory session for COP31 in October (referred to as the pre-COP31). There were also tensions over Taiwan’s participation, with China objecting to its presence as an observer.

    The forum’s final declaration, published after it ended and signed by all its members, reaffirms that climate change is the “single greatest threat to the security, livelihoods and wellbeing of Pacific peoples”, and notes “the importance of a focused, high-level declaration” at the pre-COP31 to build “political momentum towards COP31”.

      Australia and Pacific islands have invited world leaders to attend the pre-COP31 gathering, which will be held in Fiji and Tuvalu from October 5 to 8. While usually a technical meeting for negotiators, the island nations aim to issue a political declaration at the gathering calling for strong outcomes in Türkiye.

      Chris Bowen, Australia’s climate minister and COP31 president of negotiations, said in a speech during the Pacific forum that his country is “determined to use COP31 to progress the agenda to make it easier for countries to access the climate finance they need”.

      “We won’t miss the opportunity to ensure COP31 is a Pacific COP. Not just because of the location of pre-COP but because of the agenda we are shaping through the Action Agenda at COP31,” he said.

      The Action Agenda is a large portfolio of climate initiatives and coalitions uniting governments, businesses and civil society outside of the formal negotiations on everything from health to methane emissions.

      Renewable energy investment plan

      Announced a year ago, the island nations launched a $14-billion investment plan for a “100% Renewable Blue Pacific” at the forum in Palau. The plan lists strategic projects that would reduce the region’s high dependence on fossil fuel imports, whose soaring costs have become a major burden since the Iran war.

      The projects include a $52-million programme managed by Australia to develop off-grid renewables in remote communities across the Pacific, as well as a $100-million blended finance fund aimed at supporting private-sector investments in wind and solar, among others.

      Currently, some countries in the Pacific are spending up to a quarter of their GDP importing diesel to power electricity generation, according to a new report by the University of New South Wales in Australia. The investment plan launched at the forum aims to reduce these costs by adding 2.2 gigawatts of renewable generation and around 9 gigawatt hours of electricity storage.

      To channel funds into the region, the plan also highlights the role of the recently established Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), a regional fund that seeks to swiftly disburse funds to climate-vulnerable communities at the local level. Bowen said he would promote the facility to world leaders attending COP31 and “ask for their support”.

      Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese at the Pacific Islands Forum plenary in Palau.
      Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese at the Pacific Islands Forum plenary in Palau. (Photo: PIF Secretariat)

      Call to transition away from fossil fuels

      Separately, the forum endorsed the Belau Declaration which emphasises the need to keep the 1.5C Paris Agreement temperature goal alive. A UN report last week showed that overshooting this limit is now inevitable, but deep emissions cuts could still bring global temperatures back down by the end of the century.

      Pacific nations expect to rally support for this declaration at the pre-COP, with Fiji’s climate minister Lynda Tabuya saying in a statement: “Palau is where we build the political mandate. Pre-COP is where we take it to the world.”

      The political declaration also says that countries must accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels “towards a renewable energy future”, and calls for greater recognition of the importance of ocean health in addressing climate change.

      UN sets out narrow path back to 1.5C warming after inevitable overshoot

      As part of the forum’s outcomes in Palau, countries also noted Tuvalu’s efforts to host the second global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, which will gather government representatives in April next year to follow up on this year’s inaugural conference in Santa Marta, Colombia.

      Speaking to journalists at the forum, Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu questioned Australia’s role in talks about phasing out fossil fuels at COP31, adding that “the very least a country like Australia should be doing is stopping future expansion, and it’s not doing that”. During the PIF, the country approved the extension of a major mine that digs and exports coal for steel-making, giving it permission to keep producing until 2055.

      Rising seas trigger “development emergency”

      As leaders met in one of the world’s regions most threatened by sea-level rise, UN Secretary-General António Guterres released a new report warning that rising seas are now “one of the most profound threats to populations around the world in developed and developing states alike”.

      Presenting the report at UN headquarters in New York, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development Navid Hanif said rising sea levels are not a “future risk any more” but an accelerating “development emergency” that could hinder progress in vulnerable regions like the Pacific and least developed countries.

      The report warns that seas are rising “faster than at any point in recorded history”, with 2024 setting a new record of 5.9 millimetres. This has been driven by human-induced climate change mainly through a process known as thermal expansion – where rising heat causes the ocean to expand – as well as the melting of ice sheets.

      Pacific islands seek backing for new regional fund ahead of COP31

      The report notes that about 1.2 billion people around the world are exposed to coastal flooding, and says some low-lying islands in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Fiji are already facing forced relocations. Globally, rising seas could cost more than $1 trillion every year by 2050, it adds.

      “We cannot stop sea level rise this century but we can determine how much worse it becomes. About half a metre of sea level rise is already locked in in this century because of warming that has already occurred, but beyond that our choices matter enormously,” Hanif told journalists.

      Bill Hare, CEO of think-tank Climate Analytics, said the report was a “wake-up call” to the leaders of high-emitting countries that their failure to cut carbon emissions is “creating major risks for the future alongside the impacts we can already observe around us”.

      Guterres is set to host a high-level meeting on addressing the threat of sea level rise this month during the UN General Assembly, where countries are expected to adopt a declaration that calls for stronger action, expanded access to finance and “ongoing dialogue” to tackle the issue.

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      Palestine: Israel’s bombing has left Gaza vulnerable to climate change

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      Israel’s bombardment of Gaza during the conflict that broke out in October 2023 has wrecked progress towards adapting the enclave to climate change and left two million Gazans vulnerable to heatwaves, drought and disease, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said in a new climate plan submitted to the United Nations.

      Palestine’s third nationally determined contribution (NDC), uploaded to the UN climate body’s website this week, says that while “the aggression on the Gaza Strip did not make the climate worse”, “it removed the housing, water and sanitation systems, health facilities, energy networks, roads and livelihoods through which people absorb a climate they were already struggling with.”

      The 91-page document lists the types of infrastructure it says Israel has destroyed and notes how the destruction will worsen the impacts of climate change. It says the bombing of hospitals and rising hunger have make it harder for Gazans to cope with the health impacts of climate-driven heatwaves and waterborne diseases.

      On beaches of Gaza and Tel Aviv, two tales of one heatwave

      The destruction of water tanks, boreholes and desalination plants, meanwhile, have left Gazans struggling with the effects of water shortages and drought, while mass unemployment reduces people’s ability to afford climate-driven price rises. The erasure of most of the Strip’s homes makes it more difficult for people to avoid the sun’s increasing heat, the NDC said.

      Many Gazans are now living in the ruins of collapsed buildings or in makeshift shelters and tents that offer little or no protection from high temperatures.

      A displaced Palestinian child fills water containers on July 2, 2026 in Gaza City, Gaza. (Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)

      Palestine’s previous goals to cut emissions and adapt to climate change in Gaza, expressed in its last NDC five years ago, were based on a pre-war baseline that “no longer describes anything that exists”, the NDC says. Progress made since 2021 has now been destroyed, it adds.

      Green reconstruction of Gaza

      Instead of continuing to aim for these adaptation and emissions-reduction goals, the PA is now calling for the green reconstruction of Gaza. It says buildings should be constructed again in an energy-efficient manner with solar panels and served with modern water, waste and transport systems.

      While the PA, controlled by the Fatah political party, continues to claim legitimate control of Gaza, the strip was effectively governed by Fatah’s rival Hamas between 2007 and the recent war. Control is now split between Israel and the political wing of Islamist militant group Hamas, after a US-backed ceasefire took effect in October 2025, although a UN-backed committee plans to take over.

        The United Nations, European Union and World Bank have jointly estimated that Gaza needs $71.4 billion of investment in the next two years to recover and build back. This process should be Palestinian-led, they said in April.

        But US President Donald Trump has said the US should “take over” and “own” Gaza and redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Israel’s right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel should control the territory with civil administration managed by Palestinians favourable to Israel.

        With occupation, targets conditional

        In the other part of Palestine, the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority carries out some government functions, but ultimate control rests with Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

        Because Israel controls planning in most of the West Bank, the NDC argues that the PA cannot pursue all the climate projects it wants. In addition, Israel restricts the movement of PA officials, making data collection difficult, and controls the West Bank’s electricity supply meaning that the PA cannot control whether it comes from dirty or clean sources of energy.

        Given this situation, the NDC says that all of Palestine’s new climate targets are conditional but it will aim to reduce emissions 12.8% below a business-as-usual baseline by 2035 and 17.1% by 2040. If the Israeli occupation ends and Palestine regains full sovereignty over its land and resources, it will aim for reductions of 15.1% and 19.1% by 2035 and 2040 respectively under an “independence pathway”.

        That could allow, for example, for greater electrification and reducing emissions per unit of growth, the document said.

        To achieve the 2035 emissions-reduction target and adapt to the impacts of climate change, the PA says it needs $8.6 billion in total. This funding would be spent on measures like encouraging solar farms and rooftop solar and scaling up solar water heating to cover four-fifths of households. To complement the planned increase in solar power, the authority wants to modernise the electricity grid and install battery storage.

        In the transport sector, it aims to promote the uptake of electric vehicles, develop bus rapid transit corridors and scrap old polluting trucks and buses. In Gaza in particular, it wants to deploy 66 electric buses when the conflict ends.

        A bus rapid transit system in Sao Paulo (Flickr/EMBARQ BRASIL)

        To adapt to climate-driven drought, the NDC includes initiatives to reuse wastewater through treatment plants, build desalination plants in Gaza to remove salt from seawater, and promote irrigation for farmers.

        The new climate plan was prepared by Palestine’s Environment Quality Authority, with support from the United Nations Development Programme and the governments of Britain and Spain.

        The United Nations recognised Palestine’s statehood in 2012 and it joined the UN’s climate convention and signed the Paris climate agreement – which requires countries to submit more ambitious NDCs every five years – in 2016.

        The Israeli foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. But in late 2024, then Israeli climate envoy Gideon Behar told Climate Home News that the war and the resulting environmental destruction in Gaza was the fault of Hamas.

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