Global warming of 2C would see “extensive, long-term [and] essentially irreversible” losses from the Earth’s ice sheets and glaciers, warns a new report.
It would also lead to polar oceans that are “ice-free” in summer and suffering “essentially permanent corrosive ocean acidification”, the report says.
The 2023 “state of the cryosphere” report from the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) lays out the impacts on Earth’s frozen land and seas from sustained warming at 2C and the “catastrophic global damage” that would result.
These impacts would include “potentially rapid, irreversible sea level rise from the Earth’s ice sheets”, the report says, with a “compelling number of new studies” all pointing to thresholds of sustained ice loss for both Greenland and parts of Antarctica at well-below 2C.
This would commit the world to “between 12 and 20 metres” of sea level rise “if 2C becomes the new constant”.
Holding global warming of 2C would also not be enough to “prevent extensive permafrost thaw”, the authors say, bringing additional warming from the resulting CO2 and methane emissions. A 2C world would also see “widespread negative impacts on key fisheries and species” in polar and near-polar oceans.
First published in 2021, the focus of this year’s annual review on how 2C of warming is “too high” shows that the aspirational limit of 1.5C in the Paris Agreement “is not merely preferable to 2C”, but “the only option”, the report says.
The ICCI’s Dr James Kirkham, chief science advisor at the Ambition on Melting Ice high-level group, tells Carbon Brief that the conclusion that 2C is too high for the cryosphere “won’t come as a surprise at all” to most scientists.
With COP28 in Dubai coming later this month, Kirkham says it is time to make “crystal clear” that “2C must now be seen as an unacceptable outcome for the world because of the impacts from the cryosphere”.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief unpacks the report’s findings for the world’s ice sheets, mountain glaciers, permafrost, sea ice and polar oceans.
- How can ‘very low’ emissions slow impacts on the cryosphere?
- Is the ‘true guardrail’ for preventing dangerous sea level rise actually 1C?
- Is today’s climate already too warm to preserve some mountain glaciers?
- What impact could permafrost emissions have on the carbon budget?
- What are the prospects for sea ice at the Earth’s poles?
- What do rising temperatures and CO2 mean for the polar oceans?
How can ‘very low’ emissions slow impacts on the cryosphere?
Past emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) have “pushed the planet into a risk zone”, the report warns, with very visible impacts on the cryosphere:
“Today’s 1.2C above pre-industrial already has caused massive drops in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice; loss of glacier ice in all regions across the planet; accelerating loss from both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets; extensive permafrost thaw; and rising polar ocean acidification.”
The implications of these changes stretch beyond the Earth’s poles and mountain regions, the authors note, from accelerating sea level rise and disturbed ocean currents to declining water resources and greater carbon emissions.
Nearly all of these changes “cannot be reversed on human timescales”, the authors warn, and they will continue to grow with each additional 10th of a degree of temperature rise.
Kirkham likens the way the cryosphere responds to warming to a “bowling ball once thrown”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“The changes will continue to roll on long after its initial climatic push because the system has momentum.
“[This means] that many of the long-term challenges associated with the cryosphere are on the cusp of being locked in by decisions made by policymakers in the next few years, and the awareness in the policy world of this ‘lock in’ appears lost right now.”
While the aim of restricting global warming to “well-below” 2C is set out in the Paris Agreement, the report says the “physical reality” of the cryosphere’s response to warming means these changes “would become devastating” well before 2C is reached.
However, warming of 2C is not a “predetermined outcome”, the authors say, arguing that “only a strong, emergency scale course-correction towards 1.5C…can avert higher temperatures, to slow and eventually halt these cryosphere impacts within adaptable levels”.
A “very low” future emissions pathway that would keep warming within, or very close to, 1.5C – the more stringent part of the Paris goal – remains “physically, technologically and economically feasible”, the report says.
This is the “SSP1-1.9” pathway from the set of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) used in the sixth assessment report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Under this pathway (see table below), fossil fuel emissions decline 40% by 2030 and global warming peaks at 1.6C before declining to around 1.4C by the end of the century.
| Emissions pathway | Pathway name | Median global warming in 2100 | CO2 levels in 2100 (parts per million) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very low | SSP1-1.9 | 1.4C (after brief 1.5C overshoot) | 440 ppm |
| Low | SSP1-2.6 | 1.8C (and declining) | 450 ppm |
| Intermediate | SSP2-4.5 | 2.7C (and rising) | 650 ppm |
| High | SSP3-7.0 | 3.6C (and rising) | 800 ppm |
| Very high | SSP5-8.5 | 4.4C (and rising) | 1,000+ ppm |
IPCC AR6 emissions pathways. Credit: ICCI (2023)
Under very low emissions, the Earth’s cryosphere would “generally [begin] to stabilise in 2040-80”, the report says:
“Slow CO2 and methane emissions from permafrost continue for one-two centuries, then cease. Snowpack stabilises, though at lower levels than today. Steep glacier loss continues for several decades, but slows by 2100; some glaciers still will be lost, but others begin to show regrowth. Arctic sea ice stabilises slightly above complete summer loss. Year-round corrosive waters for shelled life are limited to scattered polar and near-polar regions for several thousand years.”
In addition, while “ice sheet loss and sea level rise will continue for several hundred to thousands of years due to ocean warming”, the authors say, it will “likely not exceed three metres globally and occur over centuries”.
All other emissions pathways, including “low” emissions where warming peaks at 1.8C, would “result in far greater committed global loss and damage from [the] cryosphere, continuing over several centuries”, the report warns.
Is the ‘true guardrail’ for preventing dangerous sea level rise actually 1C?
The Earth’s ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica together hold enough ice to raise global sea levels by 65 metres. The risks of significant amounts of this ice being lost irreversibly on human timescales “increase as temperature and rates of warming rise”, the authors say.
When the ice sheets are in equilibrium, melting ice and the breaking off of icebergs are balanced by mass gain through snowfall. However, “observations now confirm that this equilibrium has been lost” on Greenland, West Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula and potentially for portions of East Antarctica, the report says.
This is illustrated in the maps below, which show the gain (blue) and loss (red) in ice on Greenland (left) and Antarctica (right) between 2003 and 2019.
Today, the loss of ice from Greenland is “three times what it was 20 years ago”, the report notes, while Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise is “six times greater than it was 30 years ago”.
The report paints a bleak picture for the future of both ice sheets. It notes that a “compelling number of new studies” all point to thresholds where irreversible melt becomes inevitable for both Greenland and parts of Antarctica at well below 2C of warming.
This means that were 2C of warming to become “the new constant Earth temperature”, the planet would be committed to between 12 and 20 metres of sea level rise.
For example, evidence from proxy data suggests that, in Earth’s distant past, such thresholds have occurred at around 1C for West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula and between 1.5C and 2C for Greenland, the report says. (These contain enough ice to raise sea levels by around five and seven metres, respectively.) It adds:
“It should be noted that changes around past thresholds were driven by slow increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, but were paced by slow changes in Earth’s orbit – unlike today’s rapid, human-caused rates of change.”
As a result, “many ice sheet scientists now believe that by 2C, nearly all of Greenland, much of West Antarctica, and even vulnerable portions of East Antarctica will be triggered to very long-term, inexorable sea level rise”.
This occurs because a warmer ocean “will hold heat longer than the atmosphere”, in addition to “a number of self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms, so that it takes much longer for ice sheets to regrow (tens of thousands of years) than to lose their ice”.
This means that “once ice sheet melt accelerates due to higher temperatures, it cannot be stopped or reversed for many thousands of years” – even if temperatures stabilise or even decrease should the world reduce carbon emissions to net-zero, the authors warn.
Lowering sea level rise from newly reached highs would thus “not occur until temperatures go well below pre-industrial, initiating a slow ice sheet regrowth”, the report says:
“Overshooting the Paris Agreement [goal] would therefore cause essentially permanent loss and damage to the Earth’s ice sheets, with widespread impacts that are not reversible on human timescales.”
The report includes the chart below from a 2023 study, which highlights the long-term consequences of global warming. It shows projected global temperature change (top) and the implications for sea level rise (bottom) out to 2150 under four different SSPs.
Under “intermediate” emissions (SSP2-4.5, pink line), which most closely matches the path that the world is on today, sea levels continue to rise. Only “very low” emissions (SSP1-1.9, blue line) would slow and stabilise sea level rise, the report says, “preserving many coastal communities and giving others time to adapt”.
In the face of this evidence, “for a growing number of ice sheet experts”, the true “guardrail” to prevent dangerous levels and rates of sea level rise is “not 2C or even 1.5C, but 1C above pre-industrial”, the report concludes.
Staying as close as possible to the 1.5C limit will “allow us to return more quickly to the 1C level”, the authors say, “drastically slowing global impacts from ice sheet loss and especially West Antarctic ice sheet collapse”.
This would “reduce the risk of locking in significant amounts of long-term, irreversible sea level rise”, the report says. It would also “provide low-lying nations and communities more time to adapt through sustainable development, although some level of managed retreat from coastlines in the long-term is tragically inevitable”.
For world leaders, not committing to reducing emissions in line with the 1.5C limit is “de facto making a decision to erase many coastlines, displacing hundreds of millions of people – perhaps much sooner than we think”, the authors warn.
Is today’s climate already too warm to preserve some mountain glaciers?
Nearly all glaciers in the north Andes, east Africa and Indonesia – along with most mid-latitude glaciers outside the Himalaya and polar regions – could disappear if the 2C warming threshold is breached, the report warns.
Many of these glaciers are “disappearing too rapidly to be saved” even in the present climate and could be gone by 2050, while those large enough to survive the century have “already passed a point of no return”, according to the report’s latest projections.
The figure below shows projections of how much ice glaciers in tropical regions would retain, on average, over the next few centuries under different warming levels in 2100. The lines show the impact of warming by 10ths of a degree between 1.4C and 3C.
At 2C, even the Himalayas are slated to lose around half of today’s ice on average, the report estimates. In a very high emissions scenario, 70-80% of the current glacier volume in the Hindu Kush Himalaya could disappear by 2100, the report says, while low emissions would limit glacier loss to 30%.
Without human-induced warming, glaciers in the northern Andes could have served as a reliable source of water for “hundreds of thousands” of years, the report states. Their loss stands to particularly impact villages in northern Peru, Chile and Bolivia and major cities such as La Paz.
This threat to water security is “one of the greatest challenges posed by a melting cryosphere in a 2C world”, Dr Kirkham tells Carbon Brief, “especially in Asia where freshwater sourced from snow and ice provides a lifeline to over 2 billion people”. He adds:
“This loss of water will even impact some downstream countries that do not contain any snow and ice at all, such as Bangladesh, especially in years when the timing of the monsoon is unreliable.”
Mid-latitude glaciers in the Alps, the Rockies, the southern Andes, Patagonia, Scandinavia and New Zealand are also seeing severe losses.
The report quotes new findings in 2023 showing that the Swiss Alps lost 10% of its glacial ice in just two years over 2022-23, attributed especially to heatwaves, while the Andes witnessed “what may have been the most extreme heatwave on the planet in 2023” in winter.
Warmer temperatures at higher altitudes mean what should be snow is now falling as hazardous extreme rainfall, while other mountain areas face “snow droughts”.
The report finds that most glacier-covered regions outside the Himalaya and the poles have already passed a period of “peak water”, a point at which water availability will only decline each season.
Recovering lost glaciers could take hundreds to thousands of years and temperatures well below the records being set today, the authors note.
However, a low emissions scenario could limit glacier loss in the Himalaya to 30%, with steeper emission cuts stabilising high mountain Asia’s snowpack and glaciers. Some glaciers could eventually even begin to return, the report says.
Rapid cuts consistent with 1.5C of warming could preserve twice as much ice in Central Asia and the southern Andes, the report estimates.
This could benefit vulnerable communities that depend most on glacial water runoff for drinking water and subsistence agriculture while buying them time to adapt to dangerous climate impacts. For instance, one study cited by the report estimates that 15 million people across the world and especially in high mountain Asia and Peru are at risk of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).
A very low emissions pathway could have benefits for cities and economies beyond agriculture, the report notes. The megacities of Delhi, Los Angeles, Marrakech and Kathmandu are all dependent on meltwater, to a degree, while new research shows growing climate-driven threats to hydropower projects in high mountain Asia due to retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, GLOFs, avalanches and landslides.
Dealing with the changing water supply from glaciers and snow “may render many of these investments defunct before some of the projects are completed”, warns Kirkham.
Countries including Japan, the US and Switzerland also stand to lose significant revenues from snow-based tourism, while also being exposed to increased risk of wildfires and mudslides linked to the lack of snow cover.
The figure below contrasts the state of Switzerland’s Great Aletsch glacier today – the largest glacier in the Alps – with projections under current emissions and very low emissions scenarios in 2060 and 2100.
However, if warming were limited to 1.5C, the annual snowpack could stabilise – even if at a lower average amount than today. It adds:
“This visible snow and ice preservation, and its benefits for freshwater resources, may be one of the earliest and visible signs to humanity that steps towards low emissions have meaningful results.”
Dr Miriam Jackson, senior cryosphere specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and author on the mountain glaciers chapter of the report, tells Carbon Brief:
“This latest cryosphere report shows, more clearly than ever, that we have a choice. We can continue as we are now and see 80% of glacier loss by the end of this century. Or we can follow a very low emissions pathway, where glaciers and snow cover in high mountain Asia stabilise and eventually begin to return. Millions of people’s livelihoods depend on us making the second choice.”
What impact could permafrost emissions have on the carbon budget?
A global temperature rise of 2C – “and even 1.5C” – is too high to prevent the widespread thawing of an icy layer spread across more than one-fifth of the northern hemisphere’s land, the report says.
Permafrost is a mixture of soil, rock and other materials on or under the Earth’s surface that has been frozen for at least two years. It stores a huge amount of ancient, organic carbon.
Research shows that permafrost areas are rapidly warming and, as a result, thawing. This process releases some of the stored carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 and methane, further fuelling global warming. This is known as a “positive feedback”.
“These emissions are irreversibly set in motion”, the report says, and will not slow for one-to-two centuries even if permafrost re-freezes at a later point.
This means that permafrost emissions can further diminish the remaining global “carbon budget” – the amount of CO2 that can still be released while keeping warming below global limits of 1.5 or 2C.
The report says that carbon budget calculations “must take these indirect human-caused emissions from permafrost thaw into account…not just through [to] 2100, but well into the future”. It adds:
“Permafrost emissions today and in the future are on the same scale as large industrial countries, but can be minimised if the planet remains at lower temperatures.”
The chart below shows the impact of permafrost emissions (pink shaded areas) on the remaining carbon budget (red bars) to stay within 1.5C and 2C of warming. Taking permafrost emissions into account significantly reduces the budget estimates, the report says.
Prof Julie Brigham-Grette, the geosciences graduate programme director at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author on the report, says she is “very concerned” about permafrost thaw. She tells Carbon Brief:
“The bottom line is that we must reduce fossil fuel use urgently to slow down the demise of glaciers, ice sheets, permafrost, snow cover, sea ice…The climate crisis is real and it’s a threat-multiplier to social and political systems around the world.”
Currently, at 1.2C of warming, the annual emissions from permafrost are about the same as Japan – the sixth largest emitting country, based on 2019 figures, the report says.
Keeping temperatures below 1.4C would prevent “most additional new thaw”, the report says. But even at 1.5C, scientists predict a 40% loss of near-surface permafrost areas by 2100.
At a 2C global temperature rise, permafrost thawing and associated emissions would continue to climb.
At temperatures of 3C or higher by the end of this century, “much of the Arctic, and nearly all mountain” permafrost would reach the “thawed state”, where it would produce the equivalent of the combined annual GHG emissions of the US and the EU in 2019, for centuries, the report says.
As much as half of recent permafrost thaw occurred during extreme temperature events that were up to 12C above average, the authors say.
But the report notes that current global climate models do not include these “abrupt thaw” processes in their predictions. Scientists are “still working on these phenomena and what it means for emission rates”, Brigham-Grette says.
Studies analysed in the report found that, overall, permafrost thaw will have a number of “cascading impacts” with “severe” effects already being felt in the Arctic. The report adds:
“Thawing permafrost is causing the loss of Arctic lands, threatening cultural and subsistence resources, and damaging infrastructure, like roads, pipelines and houses, as the ground sinks unevenly beneath them.”
The “only means available” to reduce the problem is to “keep as much permafrost as possible in its current frozen state” and limiting global warming to 1.5C, according to the report.
What are the prospects for sea ice at the Earth’s poles?
Sea ice at the Earth’s poles undergoes an annual cycle of melting and regrowth. In the Arctic, sea ice melts during the warmer summer months towards its September minimum, before regrowing in the colder winter months. However, as the planet warms, sea ice extent at the September minimum is declining.
The area of Arctic sea ice that “survives” the summer has declined by at least 40% since 1979, the report says. Furthermore, it says, the Arctic ocean has “become dominated by a thinner, faster moving covering of seasonal ice, which typically doesn’t survive the summer”, as opposed to thick, multiyear sea ice.
The authors add:
“Ninety percent of Arctic sea ice loss can be directly attributed to anthropogenic emissions. A threshold has now been crossed in which ice-free conditions in the month of September will occur at times even with very low emissions, and with much slower and later surface freeze-up.”
There is widespread public and scientific interest in when the Arctic might see its first “ice-free” summer. The report highlights a recent study that suggests Arctic sea ice is more sensitive to GHG emissions than was described in the IPCC AR6 report.
The figure below shows projections of September Arctic sea ice area for different emissions scenarios. The different coloured lines indicate different models and the horizontal red line shows the threshold for a “practically ice-free” Arctic, which is one million square kilometres of ice. The lowest emission scenario is shown on the left and the highest emission scenario on the right.
The graphic shows that only the SSP1-1.9 scenario results in “sea ice recovery above ice-free conditions”. At 2C warming, the Arctic Ocean will be sea ice-free in summer “almost every year”, the report says.
The report concludes that the occurrence of the first ice-free Arctic summer is “unpredictable”, but “inevitable”, adding that it is likely to occur at least once before 2050 even under a “very low” emissions scenario.
Dr Zachary Labe is a postdoctoral research associate at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program at Princeton University, and was not involved in writing the report.
He praises the report, but adds:
“There are countless studies that have evaluated future Arctic sea ice trajectories using models and emergent constraint-like methods, so I advise caution in overly relying on mostly one new study.”
At the Earth’s other pole, Antarctic sea ice saw record-breaking melt in 2023 setting a summer minimum in February 2023. “The unprecedented reduction in Antarctic sea ice extent since 2016 represents a regime shift to a new state of inevitable decline caused by ocean warming,” the authors say.
According to the report, sea ice projections around Antarctica are “considerably less certain” than those in the Arctic. However, the authors say the record-low conditions in 2023 “indicate that its threshold for complete summer sea ice loss might be even lower than for the Arctic”.
The authors also highlight recent research that found thousands of emperor penguin chicks died because of the early breakup of Antarctic sea ice in 2022.
“Perhaps more so than for any other part of the cryosphere, 2C is far too high to prevent extensive sea ice loss at both poles, with severe feedbacks to global weather and climate,” the authors conclude.
What do rising temperatures and CO2 mean for the polar oceans?
The world’s oceans absorb around one-quarter of all human-produced CO2, which reacts with seawater to produce a weak acid in a process called ocean acidification.
Rates of ocean acidification are currently faster than they have been at any point in the past 300m years, the report finds. Polar waters in the Arctic and Southern oceans have absorbed up to 60% of the carbon taken up by the world’s oceans so far, because colder and fresher waters can hold more carbon, it notes, adding:
“The Arctic Ocean appears to be most sensitive: already today, it has large regions of persistent corrosive waters.”
In 2008, a group of scientists identified atmospheric CO2 levels of 450 parts per million (ppm) as an important threshold for “serious global ocean acidification”, according to the report. This atmospheric CO2 threshold corresponds to around 1.5C warming, it says.
However, it says that current national pledges to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement – even if completely fulfilled – will result in CO2 levels above 500ppm, resulting in temperatures of around 2.1C.
The maps below show ocean acidification in scenarios of 3-4C (top) and a 1.5C (bottom) of warming by 2100. Red shading shows “undersaturated aragonite conditions” – a measure of ocean acidification meaning that shelled organisms have difficulty building or maintaining their shells. Darker red indicates greater levels of ocean acidification.
“There is currently no practical way for humans to reverse ocean acidification,” the authors warn, adding that it will take some 30-70,000 years to bring acidification and its impacts back to pre-industrial levels.
As polar oceans become more acidic, they are also warming at an “unusually rapid” rate, the report warns. The authors note that since 1982, summer surface water temperatures in the Arctic have increased by around 2C – mainly due to sea-ice loss that allows the sun’s rays to hit the water, and an inflow of warmer water from lower latitudes.
The map below shows the change in sea surface temperature over 1993-2021. Red indicates warming and blue indicates cooling, while the white at the highest polar latitudes is due to incomplete data for this period.
The map shows that near-polar waters such as the Barents Sea have warmed “extensively” over the past two decades. The colder patch in the south of Greenland is an exception which is partly due to cold freshwater being added as the Greenland ice sheet melts, it adds.
The authors add that increased run-off from glaciers, ice sheets and rivers is also affecting global ocean circulation, which could stall ocean currents such as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
The report also warns that the dual impacts of ocean acidification and warming could have severe impacts for polar biodiversity, adding that “polar waters contain some of the world’s richest fisheries and most diverse marine ecosystems”.
Over the past decade, many polar species have experienced “lethal” temperatures which have caused mass-die offs, the report warns.
It also highlights the dangers of ocean acidification, including harm to key ocean-dwelling organisms which could “cascade” up the food chain. “Compound events combining marine heatwaves and extreme acidification have already caused population crashes even at today’s 1.2C,” the authors say.
The report concludes:
“2C will result in year-round, essentially permanent corrosive conditions in extensive regions of Earth’s polar and some near-polar seas; with widespread negative impacts on key fisheries and species.”
The post Q&A: Warming of 2C would trigger ‘catastrophic’ loss of world’s ice, new report says appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: Warming of 2C would trigger ‘catastrophic’ loss of world’s ice, new report says
Several major banks that helped set up the UN’s now-defunct Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) in 2021 have since continued to lend money to coal companies, a new report has revealed.
Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Santander were heavily involved in the NZBA and the associated Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) when it was launched by Mark Carney, then a UN climate envoy and now Canada’s leader, in the run-up to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Despite their involvement, data released this week shows those banks and some others did not reduce the amount of money they lent, nor the value of their underwriting, to coal activities between 2022 and 2025. Around half of the NZBA members who were engaged in coal financing over that time increased it and half cut it, according to the report by German environmental research group Urgewald.
Ana Botín, executive chair of Santander, was a member of the GFANZ CEO principals’ group and said at the time of the NZBA launch that her Spanish bank was “proud to be part of the founding members of this new alliance and to accelerate progress towards net zero”.
Since then, the report’s data documents that Santander has provided loans and underwriting worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year to coal companies, particularly American coal-power plant operators Duke Energy and the Southern Company. Santander did not respond to a request for comment.
Urgewald’s research adjusts the value of loans and underwriting provided to coal companies based on how much of a company’s revenues come from the most polluting fossil fuel. So a hypothetical $100 million loan to German utility RWE is valued at $21 million, as 21% of RWE’s revenue is from coal.
The research does not take account of whether companies are expanding their coal business or phasing it out for greener alternatives. Some banks have said their coal clients need to put in place transition plans by a certain date. Some also say that, by a certain date, they will stop lending money to clients that get more than a set percentage of their revenue from coal.
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What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026?
Brazilians are heading to the polls, diplomats are gathering in the Pacific for Pre-COP, and it’s crunch time for the IPCC -
UN chief urges countries to adopt fossil fuel transition plans with timelines
In his last speech to the UN General Assembly, António Guterres for the first time called on every nation to deliver a plan to phase out coal, oil and gas while protecting workers
Most companies expanding coal are in Asian nations like China, India and Indonesia and are largely financed by banks from their own countries. But there are examples of NZBA founding members supporting companies that are actively prolonging the life of their coal businesses.
For example, Glencore, a Switzerland-based multinational that gets 4% of its revenue from coal, has just won preliminary regulatory approval to keep on coal mining in Australia’s Hunter Valley until 2045. Last year, the company was supported by loans and underwriting from Bank of America, Citigroup, Santander, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered.
Good and bad news
Some NZBA founding members like Swiss giant UBS have reduced their loans and underwriting for coal companies, the data suggests. Others – like Triodos and Kenya Commercial Bank – have provided no support for coal companies since at least 2021.
Urgewald researcher Hannah O’Neill told Climate Home News that “the banking sector is not moving in one direction. There is a growing divide between banks that are tightening their coal policies and reducing their exposure, and those where coal policies remain weak or where financing continues.”
Unlike the UN’s Race to Zero campaign, with which it partnered, the NZBA did not require its members to end financing for fossil fuels like coal, leading to accusations by climate campaigners that its rules were too weak.
Despite this, after Donald Trump’s re-election as US president in November 2024, several North American banks quit the alliance and the NZBA’s requirements were diluted in April 2025. After further withdrawals, the group shut itself down in October 2025.
Globally, the Urgewald report found that many banks in the European Union, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Taiwan have reduced their coal finance since governments agreed at COP26 to phase down coal power.
But with Chinese, American, Indonesian and South Korean banks increasing their support, total bank financing for the coal industry has remained broadly the same each year since 2022.
“Coal financing is not disappearing – but it is concentrating in banks and markets where coal policies are either missing or weak,” said Heffa Schücking, director of Urgewald.
Urgewald’s definition of coal companies includes firms and their subsidiaries that explore for, process, trade, transport and mine coal, or burn it in power plants to produce electricity, or manufacture equipment for the coal industry. It does not include companies that use coal to make cement or steel – and an adjustment is made to account for how much of the business model is coal-related.
Banks defend delays
At the time of publication, most of the banks named in the report for increasing their coal finance had not responded to requests for comment. But a spokesperson for Deutsche Bank pointed Climate Home News to its May 2026 announcement that it was delaying its requirement for existing clients to present it with transition plans and cut their coal exposure.
Instead of having to present these plans by the end of 2025, the bank has given them until the end of 2027. They will also have to ensure that their revenue share from thermal coal falls below half by then, the bank added. New clients need energy transition plans to access finance.
Deutsche Bank said at the time it was delaying its requirements because of the “increasingly complex regulatory environment as well as differing speeds of energy transition in various regions beyond what was anticipated by Deutsche Bank in 2023”.
Big banks’ lending to coal backers undermines Indonesia’s green plans
A spokesperson for Barclays told Climate Home News: “Many companies in this report are diversified energy or mining companies. We do not provide financing to companies that generate more than 30% of revenues from thermal coal mining or power generation, and we will phase out all financing by 2035.”
The Barclays spokesperson added: “Barclays is financing an energy sector in transition, providing finance to meet current energy needs and also financing the scaling of clean energy. Over the past three years, we have facilitated more than $300 billion of sustainable and transition finance, including billions to cleaner energy projects, and invested millions into climate tech.”
The post Big banks behind “net zero” alliance continued lending to coal firms appeared first on Climate Home News.
Big banks behind “net zero” alliance continued lending to coal firms
Harjeet Singh is the global convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign and founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. Julie-Anne Richards is strategic campaign lead for the Make Big Polluters Pay campaign in Australia.
This year, a glacier collapse in Nepal’s Himalayan valleys swept away the lives of at least 1,500 people, with recovery costs of US$5 billion, or 10% of national GDP. But this was not a tragedy for which no one can be blamed. This was a crime with a balance sheet – one whose costs are paid by people who did nothing to cause it, and whose profits are booked by polluting corporations that did everything.
Across the Pacific, the calculation of injustice is now brutally clear. According to Oxfam Australia, the average yearly GDP loss of Pacific countries from climate disasters has increased four-fold over the last decade, reaching 14.3% of GDP. The number of Pacific people battered by climate disasters has risen by 700% in a decade. Whole villages are being packed up and moved as the sea takes the land beneath them.
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What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026?
Brazilians are heading to the polls, diplomats are gathering in the Pacific for Pre-COP, and it’s crunch time for the IPCC
Let’s look at the other ledger. This year, as climate change and an oil shock drove up the cost of living for ordinary families, Woodside – touted as “one of Australia’s biggest winners” from the war in the Middle East – reported revenues jumping nearly 30% to AUD$6 billion in just three months.
In Australia, Oxfam finds that in 2023-2024, fossil fuel corporations paid only AUD$22.8 billion in corporate income tax – just 5% of their AUD$436 billion in total reported income – while 26 out of 80, or one in every three large fossil fuel corporations, did not pay corporate income tax at all.
The polluters are not struggling to pay for the damage they cause. They are choosing not to.
This is the moral obscenity at the heart of the climate crisis: the money exists. It is simply flowing in the wrong direction. And nowhere is that clearer than in the funds the world built to protect the vulnerable, now left to languish.
Funds struggle to fill their coffers
The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) has received US$2.8 billion in requests from 119 countries. And Nepal has sought an urgent US$20 million for immediate needs. Yet the Fund has only US$342 million in total to give.
The Pacific Resilience Facility – a fund the Pacific designed for itself, to prepare its own communities – sits well short of even its modest US$500 million capitalisation target. And the Adaptation Fund is running on empty. While adaptation needs in developing countries could reach US$387 billion a year by 2030, according to the latest UNEP Adaptation Gap report, the Fund’s resource mobilisation target of a modest US$300 million for 2025 fell far short, with only US$135 million pledged.
This is a matter of priorities, not of resources. For decades, the world has accepted a simple principle – the polluter pays principle – whether through the OECD, of which Australia is a member, or Europe’s carbon pricing. New York and Vermont have already passed laws to make Big Oil pay into climate superfunds, and ten more US states are moving to follow.
The idea is neither radical nor new. It’s time to make big polluters pay.
Comment: After Hormuz, Nepal and wildfires, people want action to make polluters pay
What is urgently needed is the courage to apply it to the fossil fuel corporations that have spent decades avoiding it. In November, Australia takes up the presidency of the COP31 negotiations, committing to stand shoulder to shoulder with its Pacific neighbours.
Australia, together with the Turkish COP31 Presidency, must guide and inspire progress at the upcoming climate conference, including on new climate finance pledges by developed countries (which agreed to mobilise at least $300 billion by 2035) and triple the funds available to the FRLD, the Adaptation Fund and the other UN climate funds.
Rich countries agreed to these goals two years ago at COP29. Yet, the reality is that developing countries’ need for climate finance is in the trillions annually, while developed countries continue to delay providing even what they have already committed. A clear signal recognising the importance of delivering the promised climate finance must come at next week’s Pre-COP in the Pacific, and COP31 in Antalya must go on to deliver against existing promises or risk an irreparable breakdown in trust.
Time for a climate pollution levy
Countries must also ensure funding for loss and damage takes its rightful place as the third pillar of climate finance, alongside mitigation and adaptation, in negotiations regarding the UNFCCC climate finance work programme and Article 9 on shifting finance flows towards a low-carbon, resilient world.
Australia, as President of Negotiations and as a Pacific nation, cannot ask the world to fill these funds while it lets its own coal and gas giants off the hook. Australia should not only stop approving new and expanded coal and gas mines, it should also introduce a Climate Pollution Levy on big coal, oil and gas corporations – a charge on every tonne of carbon pollution they extract and profit from. Independent analysis shows such a levy could raise tens of billions of dollars a year, and can be designed so the cost falls on the corporations, not on households.
This is not charity – it is compensation. It is the beginning of accountability. And the public is far ahead of its leaders: eight in 10 people worldwide, and a clear majority of Australians, want fossil fuel firms taxed to pay for the damage they cause.
Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn
The money must go where the harm lands. A Climate Pollution Levy should feed the funds frontline communities are relying on – fully capitalising the Pacific Resilience Facility this year, replenishing the Adaptation Fund, and delivering the billions the loss and damage fund needs.
It is essential for these funds to be able to provide grant-based finance that reaches communities directly, not more loans that push drowning nations deeper into debt. With Nepal’s recovery costs estimated at around 10% of the country’s GDP, if we leave it to fend for itself without loss and damage funding, Nepal will likely be saddled with debt and could fail to recover adequately, increasing poverty and inequality.
We have heard enough empty pledges. We have watched enough funds announced with fanfare, only then to be starved in silence. The era of asking polluters politely is over. Australia, as COP31 president, has a rare chance to prove that the polluter pays principle means something and apply it to those who have profited the most.
The post As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage appeared first on Climate Home News.
As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage
This is a republication of October’s edition of The Climate Agenda – a subscriber-only newsletter designed to keep you informed of the key events, negotiations and announcements happening every month. If you want to receive The Climate Agenda straight to your inbox at the start of each month, sign up as a subscriber today.
This month, we’ll be on the ground reporting from the Convention on Biological Diversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia later this month and following all the developments as we build towards COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye next month. Here’s what you need to know for October, why it matters and what to expect.
Brazilian Election
First round: Sunday 4 October – Second round: Sunday 25 October
This poll is being closely watched by Brazilian environmentalists as it’s likely to make a big difference to Brazil’s international climate politics and the health of the Amazon rainforest.
The two clear front-runners are current left-wing President Lula and right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro. Flávio is the son of Jair Bolsonaro, who ruled from 2019 to 2023 but was declared ineligible to hold public office because of his attacks on the electoral system and is now under house arrest.
In the unlikely event that either candidate wins more than half the votes in the first round, they will be elected as the country’s leader. Latest polls have Lula on 39% and Bolsonaro on 35% (though the numbers are shifting) with several minor candidates in the single-digits. If none of them get a majority, there will be a one-on-one run-off on October 25.
The Latin American nation is set to record its lowest-ever level of deforestation, as efforts to rein in illegal clearing and restore Indigenous rights progressed under Lula. But Brazilian experts are warning that the huge agribusiness lobby in Congress, whose interests shape what happens in the Amazon, will be emboldened if Bolsonaro takes power, with the Supreme Court also risking a turn to the right.
As for climate politics, some seasoned watchers fear that Flávio – a climate change denier like his dad – could even try to pull Brazil out of the Paris Agreement. That would leave other countries to take forward Brazil’s COP30 global roadmaps on transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF) and ending deforestation – both of which are due to be delivered by COP31.
For Brazil’s own TAFF roadmap – commissioned earlier this year but so far nowhere to be seen – the election may have less of an impact, given Lula is as keen as any other politician to extract oil and gas from the Amazon, amid cross-party support for fossil fuel production.
Read more: Brazil leads “encouraging” decline in global rainforest destruction in 2025
Pre-COP
Monday 5 October – Thursday 8 October – Fiji and Tuvalu
The annual Pre-COP meeting is usually a business-like gathering of government negotiators, sounding out each other’s positions and laying the groundwork for deals at the main COP summit. But this year’s “pre” has been jazzed up by Australia’s partnership with Pacific governments keen to elevate their climate issues on the international stage.
“We will bring the eyes of the world to our region, highlight the threat that climate change poses to it, and show how Pacific voices are shaping global action to counter it,” Australian PM Anthony Albanese said of the event.
On Monday, before the Pre-COP officially starts, a group of senior government figures – including a handful of leaders – will visit the world’s second lowest-lying nation Tuvalu, as UN boss Antonio Guterres did in 2019.
They will visit areas affected by sea level rise, see climate resilience projects and meet local communities before flying 2.5 hours south to Fiji to join up with the Pre-COP – which starts on Tuesday – and speak at a “Leaders’ plenary session” that evening.
The Pre-COP runs until Thursday. Governments are expected to try to advance on some kind of a roadmap for protecting oceans from climate change, while Fiji says Pacific nations will emphasise the need to follow science and step up efforts to limit warming to 1.5C.
Australia is also due to present an action plan to improve access to climate finance for small island nations and least-developed countries, so that governments, development banks and climate funds can endorse it ahead of the Antalya summit.
Alongside the official Pre-COP discussions, a “green zone” will host talks organised by civil society on topics like public transport, carbon markets and the International Court of Justice advisory opinion. Unfortunately, these events won’t be available to follow online.
Read more: Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood
Read more: At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance
Article 6.4 Supervisory Body
Monday 5 October – Friday 9 October – Bonn, Germany
The UN carbon market’s rule-making body meets for one last jam-packed session ahead of COP31, with decisions pending on several high-stakes issues that could shape the future of the new crediting mechanism.
Top of the agenda is a rulebook for clean cooking projects, which aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by distributing more efficient cookstoves. These projects generate some of the most popular carbon credits but have also drawn some of the heaviest criticism for overstating their climate benefits through lax accounting.
Technical experts have recommended the Supervisory Body tighten the rules compared to existing crediting programmes, including by forcing cookstove project developers for the first time to guard against the risk of the climate benefits of their credits – the trees saved from becoming cooking fuel – being wiped out by fire, drought or logging.
The proposal on the so-called reversal risk assessment has sparked a “coordinated” lobbying campaign from the industry, some conservation NGOs and UNEP, arguing that stronger protections could hike project costs and restrict the supply of credits.
Read more: Industry and NGOs lobby to weaken UN carbon credit rules in “coordinated” push
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plenary
Monday 12 October – Friday 16 October – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Scientists and government officials will try, once again, to agree on a timeline to produce the highly influential AR7 assessment report from the UN’s climate science body.
The faultlines that have blocked a deal at several previous sessions are well established: a large group of predominantly developed countries, small island and progressive Latin American states and the poorest nations want the reports to be ready in time to inform the UN’s next global assessment of climate action, due to be completed in November 2028.
A small group of primarily big emerging economies disagree, claiming this timeline would put a burden on developing countries with limited resources and restrict their ability to provide scientific input into the process.
Three options will be on the table in Addis Ababa. Two of them would see all three flagship assessment reports approved by July 2028 and September 2028 respectively, just in time to feed into the second Global Stocktake.
The third, based on proposals from Saudi Arabia and India, would deliver only the Working Group 1 report, on the physical science of climate change, by May 2028. The reports from Working Groups 2 and 3, covering climate impacts and ways to cut emissions, would not be approved until mid-2029, well after the stocktake concludes at COP33.
Delegates are also expected to discuss the IPCC’s increasingly strained budget, made worse by a funding gap left by the withdrawal of the United States. The panel has warned that, without a sustained increase in contributions, its trust fund’s cash balance would run out by the end of 2028, putting the delivery of the AR7 set of reports at risk and forcing cuts to in-person meetings, translation and outreach.
Read more: Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks
Read more: As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond
World Bank & IMF Annual Meetings
Tuesday 12 October – Sunday 18 October – Bangkok, Thailand
With their biggest shareholder – the US – resolutely opposed to climate action, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are likely to try to avoid mentioning climate change at their annual meetings in Bangkok – and there are no headline events on the subject.
But they aren’t in complete control of the agenda. Thailand will host a discussion on financing a green resilient economy and World Bank President Ajay Banga is likely to be challenged on climate at a live-streamed civil society townhall on October 12.
With tricky negotiations on the World Bank’s climate finance target concluded earlier this year (it was dropped), talks are moving on to the sustainability framework of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, which invests in the private sector. Civil society is calling for its rules on protecting people and the planet to be maintained and strengthened.
The IMF’s guidance note to staff – which shapes the circumstances under which climate can be included in IMF programmes – will also be negotiated. Longer term, the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, which channels funding to green projects, will be reviewed but not before 2028 at the earliest.
Read more: World Bank’s climate work can endure without finance target, experts say
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17
Monday 19 October – Friday 30 October – Yerevan, Armenia
The biodiversity COP – a sister convention to the UN climate process – will for the first time take stock of progress towards key goals in its 2022 landmark agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). These include a headline target to protect and conserve at least 30% of the planet’s land and marine ecosystems by 2030.
A draft report prepared by a scientific panel warns that “unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly, the 2030 targets and mission will not be achieved”. In fact, governments are failing on 22 out of 23 targets. The final report is expected to be published ahead of COP17, where governments are expected to react strongly.
UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker told journalists earlier this month that the most significant progress is expected to occur towards the end of the decade, as 174 countries took the first four years to develop national targets.
Finance, meanwhile, is set to become a contentious issue, as the draft report says developed countries fell short on a target to provide $20bn per year in international public finance for nature protection, reaching only about $17bn per year from 2020 to 2023. They have also yet to meet a wider goal to mobilise $200bn per year counting all kinds of finance.
Much like in climate talks, the EU has proposed to broaden the base of donors to include emerging economies who want to “voluntarily assume the obligations” of developed countries. Saudi Arabia and Qatar want nothing to do with this proposal. China has said bringing in new contributors should not weaken the obligations of developed countries. Expect a fight in Yerevan.
A preliminary meeting in Nairobi in August resulted in a heavily bracketed text that delegates will have to unravel in Armenia. One observer said countries had “overall missed the level of urgency” needed.
Keep an eye out for our webinar live from Yerevan later this month, where we’ll provide an update on the talks and how governments are responding to science’s demands for quicker action.
Read more: Mombasa ocean summit drives progress on marine protection, but threats persist
Read more: UN biodiversity talks agree finance roadmap, postponing decision on a new fund
European Climate Resilience & Risk Management Framework
Wednesday 28 October – Brussels, Belgium
Following a torrid summer beset by recurring heatwaves, drought and outbreaks of forest fires across the continent, the European Commission will present its keenly awaited climate resilience and risk management framework to help member states protect their populations from worsening climate change impacts.
As part of the policy package, the Commission will identify 100 of Europe’s most climate-vulnerable territories. And alongside an assessment of the risks, there will be guidance at which level they should be managed – regional, national or by the EU. Currently, confusion often arises over who is responsible for preventing, preparing for and managing disasters across the bloc.
The framework will also aim to make Europe a “champion in adaptation technologies” – such as drought-resistant crops, flood prevention or energy-efficient cooling – which have been described by EU President Ursula von der Leyen as “a huge emerging market”.
With only around a quarter of catastrophe losses in Europe covered by private insurance, the Commission also plans to set up a Climate Insurance Alliance to boost that figure.
READ MORE: WHO issues new guidance on heat-health action plans, as El Niño sets in
The post What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026? appeared first on Climate Home News.
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