Rainforest countries from across three continents agreed at the Three Basins Summit in Brazzaville last week to work together to finance and protect their ecosystems – but failed to firm up a unified alliance.
Leaders and experts from the Amazon, the Congo basin and south-east Asia met in the Republic of the Congo’s capital to discuss their shared issues and opportunities.
At the end of the summit, countries committed to combining resources and pushing for more nature funding in a joint declaration.
But the outcome was “underwhelming”, one observer tells Carbon Brief, and the event was hindered by “quite crap” organisation.
While countries agreed to cooperate closely, “the summit did not lead to a tri-basin alliance as hoped”, conservation NGO WWF said.
According to another observer, the declaration might “inform policies and strategies at COP28” – the UN climate conference in Dubai later this month.
Below, Carbon Brief explains the Three Basins Summit, the main outcomes from the meeting in Brazzaville and the reaction from observers.
- What is the ‘Three Basins Summit’?
- What were the main outcomes of the summit?
- Road to COP28
- What was the reaction to the summit’s outcomes?
What is the ‘Three Basins Summit’?
The purpose of the Three Basins Summit, the second of its kind ever, was to enhance cooperation between countries of tropical forest basins – the Amazon, the Congo and the Borneo-Mekong.
Between them, these three river basins are home to two-thirds of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and are rich in both fossil and renewable resources.
The summit was organised by the Republic of the Congo and held in its port capital of Brazzaville.
Denis Sassou Nguesso, president of the Republic of the Congo, had called for the summit at COP27 last year.
Among the key priorities of the meeting were increasing finance for protecting natural forests in the Three Basins, outlining guidance for a carbon market and establishing a “road map” towards regional governance and cooperation.
More than 60 countries were expected to send representatives to the meeting, including 16 from the Congo basin, nine from the Amazon and five from the Mekong, as well as tropical forest countries from the Caribbean, Central America and Africa.
Morocco – convenor of the first summit – the US, EU, Association of Southeast Asian Nations and African Union were also expected to participate.
No heads of state from Amazonia and Asia were present at the meeting, Afrik21 reported – despite previous pledges to attend from Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and French president Emmanuel Macron. In the end, both chose to only send video messages for the high-level leaders’ segment on the last day of the summit.
Brazzaville was also the host of the original Three Basins Summit in May 2011, which had seen more than 35 countries participate.
That summit yielded a 13-point declaration that mandated the president of the Republic of the Congo to facilitate an agreement between all basin states to cooperate on climate, biodiversity and sustainable development.
In the 12 years since the first summit, there has been some progress towards regional climate cooperation, building alliances among basin states and securing finance for biodiversity conservation.
In 2016, three climate commissions – one each for the Congo Basin, the Sahel region and African island states – were established as part of an initiative led by the COP22 Marrakech presidency. These commissions were set up to act as the focal points to coordinate climate action in all member states of the African Union.
COP22 also saw a proposal to establish the Blue Fund for the Congo Basin, which was created in 2018 and co-financed by 16 African member states. It currently hosts a pipeline of projects amounting to $13.6bn meant to serve climate, sustainable development and regional integration goals.
In November last year, Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced an alliance on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Indonesia that campaigners dubbed the “Opec for rainforests”.
The three countries agreed to work towards negotiating “a new sustainable funding mechanism under the provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity”, while also agreeing to advocate for “results-based payments” to stem deforestation and conserve existing forest carbon stocks under a new climate finance target for 2025.
A month later, forests got their own entire section in the COP27 cover decision, a historic first. The COP27 cover text referred to reducing emissions from deforestation, but also alludes to “joint mitigation and adaptation approaches”.
Weeks later, at COP15 in Montreal, countries agreed on a global deal for reversing biodiversity loss in this decade and a financial mechanism to support tropical forest nations.
To the organisers of the Three Basins Summit, these developments “confer responsibility and legitimacy on the world’s three forest and biodiversity ecosystems to define and implement the decade’s operational roadmap for preserving forests and biodiversity”.
In the wake of these meetings, Nguesso announced that his country would host a summit to provide a “space to encourage richer countries to contribute financially” to protect basin regions, Reuters reported earlier this year.
What were the main outcomes of the summit?
Financing
Finance for climate action and conserving biodiversity was one of the central pillars of the summit.
Tropical forest nations have historically and collectively demanded that their countries be paid for reducing deforestation and maintaining their forests as carbon sinks, while calling for existing and new funding mechanisms to support this.
The final declaration, which listed seven commitments (highlighted in the image below), included that the countries would “encourage financial mobilisation and the development of traditional and innovative financing mechanisms”.
It said that developed countries must “urgently” meet their international finance commitments, including to provide $100bn per year in “new, additional, predictable and adequate resources” for climate finance and to mobilise $200bn per year for biodiversity action by 2030.
The declaration also reiterated the need for both a loss-and-damage fund to help global-south countries deal with the impacts of climate change and a commitment from developed countries to provide 0.7% of their gross national income in official development assistance.
Oscar Soria, the campaign director at Avaaz, notes that the declaration marks the “first time that countries of these basins, in a united front” are calling on developed countries to realise their commitments to climate and biodiversity finance. He tells Carbon Brief that the “encouragement of financial mobilisation” was one of the “crucial steps” made at the summit. He adds:
“The big question is how the nations of the Three Basins will use that declaration, which is very specific on calling for funding, but very general on what are the actions that will take place to protect their forests.”
Prof Simon Lewis, a global-change scientist at the University of Leeds and University College London, tells Carbon Brief:
“The complexity here is that countries are quite different, for example, with Democratic Republic of the Congo losing 500,000 hectares of forest a year, but driven by poverty, which is a very different situation compared to Brazil or Indonesia.
“Politically, the main sticking point is, as ever, on finance, and how to generate sufficient funds and get them on the ground in countries to protect forests while helping to eliminate poverty, improve livelihoods [and] bring income to central governments.”
Carbon markets
One of the summit’s key objectives was to put in place the architecture “for the creation of a sovereign carbon market on a global scale” to allow “fair remuneration for the ecosystem services produced by the Three Basins”.
A “sovereign” carbon market is one that allows countries to trade carbon credits generated from projects reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, known as REDD+. The UN developed REDD+ in the late 2000s as a way to help developing countries preserve their forests and is part of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
The Coalition for Rainforest Nations has pushed for such a “sovereign carbon” market at COP27 and at other international meetings.
However, UN REDD+ credits are currently excluded from Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, which allows countries to voluntarily trade “mitigation outcomes” for use towards their Paris pledges.
Several observers tell Carbon Brief that carbon and biodiversity offset and credit markets “dominated” the summit.
In a draft version of the summit declaration, “sovereign” carbon markets were the only option for financial mobilisation explicitly mentioned.
The draft called for countries to turn to the private sector to “develop” such a market, account for biodiversity restoration as an activity that could generate “premium sovereign carbon” credits and support compliance to make such a market “bankable”.
It suggested the creation of a carbon market based on the “polluter pays” principle, where the party responsible for emissions pays for damage to the natural environment. The draft set out a floor price of $30 per tonne for REDD+ credits and $70 per tonne for internationally traded mitigation outcomes, which was subsequently missing in the final version of the declaration.
Savio Carvalho, the global campaign leader for food and forests at Greenpeace International, tells Carbon Brief that a “sovereign” system to set carbon credit rules between basin countries and trade collectively with other countries around the world could be a “path to hell” without international accountability. He adds:
“If there is any mechanism required, they need to have an architecture that has scrutiny at the highest level and not just some countries having this deal among themselves.”
However, Carvalho tells Carbon Brief that there were some dissenting voices – “even the World Bank”, which spoke out against relying too much on carbon markets. He adds:
“There was also David Cooper [acting executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity], who also said that there are other options also on financing and we need to look at the other options, too.”
In the final version of the declaration, all explicit mentions of a sovereign carbon market were removed. The document instead alludes to developing “innovative financing mechanisms” and a “sustainable system of remuneration for ecosystem services provided by the Three Basins”.
Deforestation
Deforestation is a widespread issue for tropical forests in the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asian regions.
The Brazzaville summit “provided a good start on important discussions about the future of these forests” and finding solutions to issues such as deforestation, the WWF global forests lead, Fran Price, said in a statement. She added:
“Going forward, it will be important to have more robust representation and high-level leadership from all three regions and a more structured discussion on topics such as how to collectively tackle drivers of deforestation, [and] promote restoration and sustainable forest management.”
In the Three Basins Summit declaration, countries reaffirmed their commitment to “combat deforestation”, with an added caveat that this does not remove the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.
More than 140 countries previously pledged to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030” at the UN climate summit COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were among the signatories.
However, one year on from the pledge, there have been no major meetings to make progress on the pledge nor any organisation set up to push it forward, Climate Home News reported.
At COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh last year, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Brazil and Indonesia were not among the 26 countries that committed to an initiative to build on the 2030 pledge.
A recent report from the Forest Declaration Assessment found that the world is off track to halt deforestation by the end of this decade.
On the sidelines of the Brazzaville summit, the European environment commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, signed a roadmap for the implementation of the EU-Congo forest partnership. This is an EU initiative aimed to help forested countries protect their forests and ensure sustainable trade under the requirements of the EU’s deforestation law.
In a statement, Sinkevičius said the roadmap will progress talks in “addressing deforestation and forest degradation in Congo and working towards a sustainable forest economy”.
Soria tells Carbon Brief that “increased awareness about the significance of tropical forests and the urgent need for their protection” was one of the main positive takeaways from the summit. He adds:
“Additionally, the focus on inclusive governance involving Indigenous peoples, youth, and civil society indicated a holistic and inclusive approach to forest conservation.”
South-south cooperation
The Three Basins Summit was supposed to define and adopt how regional governance and cooperation across the Three Basins on climate and biodiversity would work and to set up a roadmap and work programme to get there.
Arlette Soudan Nonault, the Republic of the Congo’s environment minister, said at the summit that “joining forces is an absolute necessity”.
Au terme de leurs travaux, les Chefs d’Etat et de Gouvernement s’engagent à persévérer la biodiversité des 3 bassins forestiers tropicaux de la planète. #S3B2023 #Sommet3bassins@summitof3basins pic.twitter.com/54BtVVdQfV
— Présidence de la République du Congo – Officiel (@PR_Congo) October 29, 2023
The final declaration recognised the need to “pool and capitalise on existing knowledge, experience, resources and achievements in each of the basins”. It also “recognise[d] the value of enhanced cooperation between the Three Basins” and called for the development of solutions together at “the institutional, diplomatic, legal, scientific, technical and technological levels”.
Lewis says that “scientific cooperation was one important strand of the talks”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Very positively, on the margins of the summit, scientists from the region launch[ed] the Congo Basin Science Initiative, inspired by the successes of Brazilian science, to drive investment into the region’s science and scientists. This could, in time, end some of the major data deficits in this crucial part of the world.”
The summit was “a good initiative” to coordinate between the states of the Three Basins, says Bonaventure Bondo, a youth climate activist and the coordinator of the Democratic Republic of the Congo-based advocacy group Youth Movement for Environmental Protection (MJPE-RDC). But, he adds:
“The absence of some of the people from Amazonia and south Asia certainly had an impact on the quality of the collaboration. We wanted to see all the leaders from the Three Basins gathered around a table to reflect on a common position to defend and to build a real coalition to protect the ecosystems of the three forest massifs in the world.
“This attitude leads us to believe that the resolutions of the Three Basins Declaration will be difficult to implement.”
Soria tells Carbon Brief that “while there was enthusiasm for international collaboration…there was also frustration due to the lack of a formal alliance and specificity in shared goals.” He continues:
“Clearly, there’s no shared understanding on the specific direction and goals of this coalition, although there’s a political will to work together, at least in the rhetoric.”
According to Africanews, participants at the summit “expressed their desire for these meetings to occur regularly”.
In a speech on the final day of the summit, Kenyan president William Ruto announced that his country will end visa requirements for all African countries by the end of the year. Ruto also called on other African nations to work to similarly reduce barriers to cooperation, trade and travel.
Fossil-fuel extraction
In the days leading up to the summit, the environmental research and advocacy group Earth InSight released a report highlighting the dangers that fossil-fuel extraction poses to tropical forests.
The report, based on official government publications, satellite observations and field data, found that nearly 20% of intact tropical forests across the Three Basins overlap with “active and potential” fossil-fuel concessions. Nearly one-quarter of the intact forests are within mining concessions.
The report stressed the need to end deforestation and degradation, adding:
“Without a halt to extractive activities – and adequate protection and enforcement, the remaining forests and the Indigenous and local communities that depend on them will continue to be severely impacted.”
More than 60 environmental, human-rights, youth and Indigenous advocacy groups signed a joint statement ahead of the summit welcoming cooperation between the basins. However, it added, the groups were “deeply concerned” with the summit’s focus on carbon markets and a lack of attention paid to Indigenous peoples and environmental defenders.
The statement included a call to “halt and reverse” ecosystem degradation due to “large-scale agriculture, mining, extractives and other industries, such as through a global moratorium on industrial activities in primary forests as well as priority forests”. Additionally, it highlighted the need for a just energy transition and low-carbon development in tropical forest nations.
Ultimately, no mention was made of the impacts of fossil fuel extraction in the summit’s final declaration.
Bondo, whose group MJPE-RDC was one of the signatories of the open letter, tells Carbon Brief:
“Our message has never been well received, because we denounce those companies that violate the rights of communities and destroy our planet for their own selfish interests…We deplore the fact that the African states have not taken clear and concrete decisions to stop all industrial and extractive activities in the forests of the Three Basins.”
Indigenous rights
The crucial role of Indigenous peoples and local communities in protecting forests was cited by many observers as a key part of any discussions and outcomes at the summit.
Indigenous peoples’ territories and protected areas play a “vital role” in forest conservation in the Amazon. Indigenous peoples protect as much as 80% of the world’s biodiversity and manage or have tenure rights to more than one-quarter of the world’s land.
A statement from Greenpeace in the lead-up to the summit said that recognising the “fundamental role” of Indigenous peoples and local communities in maintaining forests “is of the utmost importance”. It added:
“Any proposal to conserve these forests that does not integrate the recognition and protection of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in Africa, Latin America and Indonesia cannot succeed.”
A letter signed by different Indigenous and frontline organisations called on the Three Basins governments to make a number of commitments, including greater recognition of forest communities’ lands and upholding the right of communities to “fully and effectively” take part in decisions for planned developments.
The final declaration from the summit committed to involving “all states and national authorities, including Indigenous peoples” and others such as local communities, young people and non-governmental organisations “in an inclusive manner”.
The role of Indigenous peoples, women and youth in ecosystem management was also discussed at panels during the summit.
The declaration failed to secure “concrete actions” around the “rights and livelihoods” of Indigenous peoples and local communities, Greenpeace said in a statement after the summit.
Soria says that the emphasis on the involvement of Indigenous peoples and local communities “could pave the way for more inclusive and sustainable forest management practices”.
However, Carvalho tells Carbon Brief that he feels Indigenous peoples and youth voices were not sufficiently included in discussions over the three days.
He says there should be “fewer closed doors or more listening and conversation spaces” at future summits. He adds:
“Governments need to ensure that young people and Indigenous communities are not just sitting there, but they are actually involved in the conversations and in the solutions.”
Similar discussions arose at the Amazon Summit in Belém, Brazil in August. The Belém Declaration, which resulted from that summit, said that the active participation and respect of the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities is crucial to advancing a new common agenda for the Amazon.
It established an “Amazon Mechanism for Indigenous Peoples” to “strengthen and promote dialogue between governments and Indigenous peoples in the Amazon region”.
Road to COP28
Reuters reported that experts and policymakers at the Three Basins Summit “discussed shared priorities” ahead of the upcoming UN climate summit COP28, due to begin later this month in Dubai.
The concept of using ”nature-based solutions” to mitigate and adapt to climate change has entered the forefront of discussions around meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement in recent years.
One target of the Kunming-Montreal agreement reached at the COP15 biodiversity summit last December aims to restore 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030. Ecosystems – such as forests, wetlands and rivers – are natural carbon sinks.
At the climate summit COP27 last November, several countries put forward new global initiatives aimed at stopping deforestation and restoring ecosystems.
Participants told the Brazzaville conference that they hoped the three regions would share unified views at COP28, according to Africanews. Bondo, the youth climate activist, tells Carbon Brief that the summit was useful to “consolidate collaboration” between countries across the Three Basins. He adds:
“It was important for the basin states that make the world breathe to have the same message for the next COP28, and to ensure that the forests they use to save the world bring benefits to the local and Indigenous communities that depend on them.”
He says he hopes that COP28 results in “less talk and more action in favour of the protection of forests and the communities that live in them and depend on them”.
Lewis tells Carbon Brief that “cooperation across Amazon and Congo basin countries was an important stepping stone to COP28 and the vision of tropical forest-rich countries having common policy positions” – although he notes that there was a lack of participation from south-east Asian countries. He adds:
“Common positions would give forest-rich countries more leverage in international negotiations.”
But Carvalho from Greenpeace does not believe that the tropical forest countries will share “one voice” in Dubai. He tells Carbon Brief:
“They have done the groundwork, they have garnered support…They now need to build on that foundation between now and COP30 [so that] at least by the time we are heading towards Brazil [the expected host of COP30 in 2025], this initiative is strong and it’s based on a different paradigm.”
Soria says aspects of the Brazzaville declaration around financial mobilisation and payments for ecosystem services “will likely emerge in the COP28 negotiations”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“The discussions and commitments made in Brazzaville can inform policies and strategies at COP28. The disappointment from the lack of a formal alliance might serve as a catalyst, prompting nations to work harder toward consensus.”
What was the reaction to the summit’s outcomes?
The summit’s outcome was “underwhelming”, with “no major breakthroughs” achieved, Carvalho says. He tells Carbon Brief:
“There was lots of pomp and all that goes with it, lots of grandstanding and laughter and fun. But, at the end of the day, where do we go from here? Do we have a concrete pathway? There was a lack of clarity on that.”
One success from the summit is that it “managed to garner pan-Africanism in the space”, he adds, especially around forests and nature conservation. Around a dozen African heads of state attended the summit. He says:
“While they haven’t got horizontal Three Basins collaboration, they’ve got quite a horizontal and vertical pan-African buy-in that we need to save the forests and we need to invest in nature protection.”
Soria echoes that sentiment, telling Carbon Brief that “the absence of all heads of state of the Amazon basin and the Borneo Mekong basin countries made this summit an African summit in essence”. He adds:
“While it’s a positive step for the region to start a dialogue to build common positions on biodiversity, climate and land, it lacks that global geopolitical appeal that could build enthusiasm among donor and developed nations.”
The fact that the summit was unable to achieve a “formal alliance” highlights “the complexities involved in aligning the diverse interests and policies of the participating nations”, Soria says.
In a statement released after the summit, Greenpeace called out the final declaration, saying it “fails to commit to any concrete actions for the protection and restoration of nature”.
Greenpeace continued by pointing out that the focus on “controversial” carbon markets “will only reinforce the commodification of nature and human rights violations if they become the primary such mechanism” for funding conservation.
In addition to the lack of concrete outcomes, the summit itself had a very full schedule and the “logistics were quite crap”, Carvalho says. Many parts of the summit were “utter chaos” with poor organisation and “no space” for civil society to meet, he says.
Another observer tells Carbon Brief that the organisation of the summit was “a mess”.
Ultimately, Soria says, the summit can be regarded with a “mix of hope and disappointment”. He adds:
“Despite the limitations, the summit initiated crucial discussions and commitments for future forest preservation efforts. The declaration, which includes a seven-point plan, disappoints in specificity of actions and commitments from the countries that are part of the Three Basins.”
The post Q&A: What the ‘underwhelming’ Three Basins Summit means for tropical forests appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What the ‘underwhelming’ Three Basins Summit means for tropical forests
What happens when a love of marine life meets a playful imagination?
Sydney artist, illustrator and children’s author Sha’an d’Anthes, better known as Furry Little Peach, has teamed up with Greenpeace to create Happy Ocean Happy Planet: a joyful celebration of the extraordinary creatures that call our oceans home.
Sha’an felt inspired to create an illustration celebrating the beauty and resilience of marine life. Its hopeful message, A Happy Ocean is a Happy Planet, sparked a special collaboration with Greenpeace and a limited-edition t-shirt designed to help protect the oceans that inspired it.
The exclusive Furry Little Peach tee is available as a gift to new regular Greenpeace donors who give $30 or more and make at least three donations. By becoming a regular giver, you’ll help Greenpeace campaign for ocean protection.
ARTIST INTERVIEW: Sha’an d’Anthes (Furry Little Peach)
Sha’an shares the story behind the artwork, the local marine creatures featured in the design and why hope can be such a powerful force for action.
Hi Sha’an! Can you tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
My name is Sha’an d’Anthes, I also go by the pseudonym Furry Little Peach and I’m an illustrator, artist and children’s author based in Sydney, Australia. I love creating joyful, vibrant and nostalgic art that looks at the world through the lens of childlike wonder.
What do you love about drawing animals and nature?
I love all of the different shapes, colour and narrative you get to explore when drawing animals and nature. I’m also a city-slicker these days, and so I think that my work is a sort of escapism (for myself and hopefully for my audience).
How did the Greenpeace collaboration come about?
I went to the premiere of David Attenborough’s documentary Ocean, and felt compelled to create something to share the message of the film. This t-shirt is actually based off of that illustration including the tagline in I included when I shared it “A Happy Ocean is a Happy Planet”. I’m so grateful Greenpeace approached me for the project – it was a blast.
Where did you start when creating the Happy Ocean Happy Planet design?
The Happy Ocean tee starts the same as all of my work – with a brainstorm/braindump and really loose concept sketches.
How did you choose the animals for the illustration?
I actually asked Greenpeace to help me with the research of local marine life and they were so accommodating. They very quickly delivered me a huge list of local species of fish, mammals and coral and I just went through and looked up each creature and curated a little group of sea life that I thought would look sweet together – a mix of sizes, types, colours, textures and shapes.
What did you use to create the artwork?
So much of my work is traditional, but when it comes to things like t-shirts I always use digital drawing programs because I like to draw each colour in a separate layer which requires me to jump in and out of layers because it allows me to control colour and printing. When working digitally I always sketch in Procreate (an Australian digital art app), and then with this project I created final art in Adobe Fresco because it called for a vector graphic (an image that can be blown up to any size).
Do you have a favourite creature in the design?
I love painting Humpback Whales and always have, but I also have a soft spot for the sweet little Jelly Blubber jellyfish.
What did you want people to feel when they saw the artwork?
I specifically wanted to focus on the outcome that all of us want to see – a happy, thriving ocean where creatures are given the time and space to balance themselves. I feel that even when tackling tough subjects, leaning into hope is my natural inclination. As long as we have hope that things can be better, we will continue to take action.
What was the most fun part of creating it?
I actually documented the entire process of this project in a studio vlog on YouTube – and you can see how much fun I’m having doing final art jumping between layers and building the image. I had just come off completing final art for two books which are multi-year long projects, so being able to do a project that from start to finish in just a few days was really freeing at the time.
What does a “happy ocean” mean to you?
An ocean that given the time and space to repair and balance itself. Something I really took away from David Attenborough’s Ocean is that ocean ecosystems are actually really good at repairing themselves if we just let them do their thing.
How can people get their hands on the t-shirt?
The shirt is a reward for regular givers to Greenpeace – those who commit to at least 3 months of donations will receive the tee as a gift. Read about how at http://act.gp/flp-tee
How is Greenpeace helping to make our oceans happier places?
They have a deep focus on the health and happiness of our oceans through advocating for the set up of marine sanctuaries, holding big ocean polluters to account and calling for a ban on deep sea mining.
What are you working on next?
I will be jumping headfirst into Peachtober – an annual daily art challenge I run each year in October, if there are any artists reading this it’s a great time so please come join! In terms of publications my next picture book The Late Bird will be out in February 2027 (published by Harper Collins US) and then I have an creative activity book for adults coming out next August with Chronicle US and Penguin Australia. Otherwise you can always check out what I’m tinkering away with in my studio on Instagram and YouTube.
Climate Change
AI giant Anthropic’s first Australian data centre deal an “egregious” example of Big Tech double talk
SYDNEY, Thursday 17 September 2026 — Greenpeace Australia Pacific has slammed AI giant Anthropic’s deal for its first Australian site in Queensland’s Western Downs, the heart of coal seam gas country, saying the project will entrench gas and turbocharge climate pollution.
The expected electricity demand from the data centre site, situated in the middle of the Western Downs coal seam gas fields, is comparable to 1.5 million Australian households. Greenpeace’s report Energy Vampires: The AI data centres draining Australia called for a moratorium on frenzied data centre development until appropriate guardrails are in place.
Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is an egregious example of Big Tech giants being given carte blanche to drain energy and water, and use polluting gas to fuel their hyperscale data centres.
“AI and Big Tech corporations claim to bring new renewable energy to the grid, while blatantly planning to power their operations with polluting fossil fuels.
“Planning documents show the first stage of this behemoth project could be powered by ‘behind the metre’ gas — the same playbook AI companies have used in the US, leading to a 20% increase in climate pollution from electricity. Now these companies want to bring their cowboy plans to Australia and the Federal Government is allowing it.
“If they plugged into the local grid, the power required would increase Queensland’s electricity grid emissions by around 6.6 million tonnes — an 18% rise. If they build their own gas-fired power plants, this will drive up Queensland’s emissions even more.
“Billions of dollars are now pouring into a massive pipeline of proposed new data centres, of unprecedented size, being built at incredible speed across the country. Australians should be worried about the extreme lack of scrutiny being applied to these projects, and the corporations leading the data centre charge.
“The data centre build-out is happening without the endorsement of the Australian people, yet we are the ones who will pay the price. We can not allow unchecked data centre expansion to derail our renewable energy transition, entrench gas and turbocharge climate pollution — that’s why Greenpeace has called for an urgent moratorium until appropriate guardrails are in place.”
ENDS
Media contact: Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
Climate Change
Analysis: India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge
A surge in clean energy has kept carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in check across India’s power sector, with no growth from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026.
This guest post is by:
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA)
Anubha Aggarwal, India analyst at CREA
This is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in India’s coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall.
At the same time, both oil and gas consumption have fallen across the nation for two years in a row, helping alleviate the shock of the Hormuz crisis.
Nevertheless, the new six-monthly analysis for Carbon Brief shows that India’s emissions grew by 3.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, due to increases from steel, cement and other sectors.
Other key findings for the first half of 2026 include:
- India’s power-sector emissions flatlined at 2024 levels, after a 2.2% decline in the first half of 2025 and a 2.3% rise in the same period this year.
- Clean energy met all of the 7% rise in India’s electricity demand over the two years, adding 63 terawatt hours (TWh), equivalent to the total demand of Switzerland.
- India has added 77 gigawatts (GW) of solar in this two-year period, helping meet 60% of the rise in electricity demand overall.
- While fossil-fuel generation stagnated, generators added 8.5GW of new coal capacity, leading to fewer running hours and increased costs to electricity consumers.
- CO2 emissions from oil and gas fell by 7% year-on-year, extending a reduction that began in 2025, despite higher demand for road transport fuels.
- Steel and cement emissions grew by 8% year-on-year, reaching a 23% share of India’s total CO2 in the first half of 2026.
If the pace of India’s clean-energy expansion is to continue, it will need to upgrade its electricity grid, rapidly build out energy storage and boost the flexibility of coal power.
While clean-energy expansion is covering most or all of India’s power-demand growth, the fossil-fuel industry continues to pursue major capital investments.
This includes large amounts of new coal-power capacity, ambitious plans for the conversion of coal-to-chemicals and efforts to boost domestic coking coal production for the steel sector.
While CO2 output from the power sector is flat, with oil and gas in decline, India’s emissions still went up due to the contribution from industry.
India lags behind its competitors – including most large emerging economies – when it comes to electrifying its industrial sector.
Faster progress would enable clean electricity to substitute for fossil fuels in industry, as well as for power, offering the potential for India to cut its emissions overall.
Flatlining fossils
Last year, India’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement grew at their slowest pace in two decades, according to previous analysis for Carbon Brief.
This sharp slowdown was due to rapid clean-energy growth and flat oil demand, combined with rising emissions from steel and cement.
The first half of 2026 marks a continuation of these trends.
Most strikingly, the ongoing surge in clean-energy generation means that emissions have flatlined in India’s power sector for two years, as shown in the figure below.
Power-sector CO2 was the same in the first half of 2026 as two years earlier, with a small decline in 2025 having been reversed over the same period this year.
Beyond electricity generation, India’s key emitting sectors continued to see divergent trends in the first half of 2026, as some saw ongoing decline while others reached new heights.
This is shown in the figure below, which compares year-on-year changes in emissions during the first half of 2026 with the same periods in 2025, 2024 and the average for 2021-23.
Specifically, emissions grew by 2.3% in the power sector, reversing last year’s decline, while demand for gas and oil products fell for another year.
The biggest increases were for steel and cement, where emissions growth accelerated to 8% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, well above the recent trend.
Clean-energy growth matches power demand
The period from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2026 saw the largest increase in non-fossil power generation on record in India.
This enabled fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from the sector to stay flat, even as electricity consumption increased.
Indeed, this is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall, as shown below.
Over this two-year period, India’s total power generation increased by 7%, some 63TWh, equal to the total consumption of Singapore or Switzerland.
The additional power requirement of 63TWh was met entirely by clean energy. Solar grew by 44TWh, alongside growth from wind (13TWh), nuclear (7TWh) and hydro (8TWh).
Together, clean-energy sources added 70TWh over two years, more than the net increase in demand.
(For comparison, China’s nuclear, wind and solar output increased by 485TWh in 2025.)
The figure below shows that new investments are more than sufficient to maintain this trend, as added power generation from new clean power capacity has stayed above average demand growth for the past 18 months.
Over the past two years, India added 77GW of new solar capacity, 11GW of wind, 5GW of hydro and 0.6GW of nuclear capacity.
Solar power continues to dominate clean-energy growth, but, collectively, the other non-fossil sources still contributed 40% of the overall increase in generation.
One factor in electricity demand growth in 2026 is the El Niño, which delayed the monsoon and intensified heatwaves, driving up cooling demand.
India is accelerating investment in energy storage, which will support further growth in clean power. The National Electricity Plan projected a requirement of 82 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy storage capacity by 2026-27 and 411GWh by 2031-32.
As of May 2026, the government has issued tenders for around 272GWh of energy storage capacity, including 142GWh of pumped hydro and 133GWh of battery storage systems. Current capacity is 7.5GWh of battery storage and around 60GWh of pumped hydro.
Which states led the clean-power shift?
The fall in power generation from fossil fuels from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026 was concentrated in a few states.
Gujarat saw both the largest reduction in fossil-fuel generation and the largest expansion in clean power, as shown in the figure below.
After Gujarat, the largest increases in clean-power generation were seen in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, which also saw reductions in power generation from fossil fuels.
Several other states saw declines in fossil-fuel generation due to higher net imports, rather than local clean power. These included Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Punjab.
Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh also succeeded in increasing clean-power generation faster than power demand, thereby contributing to keeping fossil fuel-based power generation stable nationwide across the two-year period. However, they exported much of the increase and consequently saw local increases in power generation from fossil fuels.
The two states with the largest increases in power demand, Maharashtra and Telangana, managed to almost match the rise with growth in clean-power generation.
Fall in oil and gas consumption continues
India’s oil consumption continued to fall during the first half of 2026, dropping 1.3% year-on-year, a slight acceleration from the 0.7% reduction in the same period last year.
While diesel and petrol consumption continued to grow, oil consumption was pulled down overall by declines in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), petcoke (a solid derivative of oil used in the cement industry) and industrial feedstocks. Growth of aviation fuel use eased.
Diesel consumption growth accelerated from 1.8% to 4.1% in the first half of the year, supported by higher freight movement and increased agricultural demand, as the delayed monsoon led to greater use of diesel-powered irrigation.
Petrol consumption returned to growth, increasing 6.9% year-on-year after zero growth in the same period in 2025, reflecting sustained growth in passenger and two-wheeler mobility.
A significant increase in ethanol blending shaved a full percentage point off the growth of petrol consumption. India achieved its 20% ethanol blending target five years ahead of schedule in 2025-26. (Ethanol blending has faced public opposition.)
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption in India is also gaining momentum, with EVs adopted in a widening range of categories.
In Delhi, an EV policy was launched to accelerate electrification of the vehicle fleet, with a particular focus on two-wheelers, three-wheelers (auto rickshaws), commercial vehicles and high-mileage segments, alongside expanded charging infrastructure. Higher EV adoption rates will moderate the growth in emissions from petrol consumption in India.
In contrast, aviation fuel demand growth slowed down from 5% to 2%. The slowdown coincided with the strait of Hormuz and wider crisis, which disrupted international aviation through temporary airspace closures and flight cancellations to several Middle Eastern destinations. Elevated aviation fuel prices also increased airline operating costs, contributing to lower fuel demand.
LPG consumption contracted by 7%, after 5.7% growth in the same period last year, amid disruptions in global LPG markets following the Hormuz crisis.
Petcoke consumption fell 9.9%, more than reversing a 9.3% increase in the same period last year. Rising petcoke prices encouraged cement manufacturers to switch to coal.
Consumption of other petroleum products continued to drop, although the pace of decline moderated from 14% in 2025 to 9% in 2026.
Industrial feedstock use was affected by shortages and price increases.
Naphtha demand contracted as import prices nearly doubled and domestic prices increased by around 60%, prompting petrochemical manufacturers to reduce operating rates and suppress demand for imported naphtha.
Bitumen consumption remained subdued due to slower road construction, driven by persistent land acquisition challenges and higher bitumen costs.
Meanwhile, higher light diesel oil (LDO) prices and shortage of LPG led some industrial consumers to switch back to furnace oil in boilers and heaters, despite the higher air pollutant emissions. Supply of fuel oil to industry increased for the same reason.
Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues
Steel and cement output in India grew by 8% and 9%, respectively, year-on-year in the first half of 2026, despite rising input prices and weakening profitability.
The growth in steel and cement was supported in part by increased investment in India’s real estate sector, especially in the second quarter. Steel consumption growth outpaced production, implying that inventories built up last year were tapped.
Despite domestic demand growth, profit margins of Indian steel and cement manufacturers remained under pressure for much of the period due to elevated raw material costs – particularly imported coking coal – and higher freight costs stemming from the Hormuz crisis.
The pressure on prices could dampen growth. Cement prices are expected to rise to levels last seen in the 2021-22 financial year, when Russia’s decision to cut back gas exports to Europe drove a sharp increase in fossil-fuel prices.
Outside the steel, cement and power sectors, coal-consumption growth accelerated to 14% in the first half of 2026, up from 3% last year, as the LPG shortage prompted a shift to coal.
Gas shortages resulted in some additional burning of coal for cooking in March and April. The government officially authorised the hospitality industry to use coal, refuse-derived fuel pellets, biomass and kerosene for one month.
The ceramic and tile industry also requested that the government allow the use of coal gasifiers amid the gas shortage. State governments including Delhi NCR, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra also allowed industries to temporarily use alternative fuels, including coal.
India’s industrial energy use is dominated by fossil fuels, particularly coal. Indian industry has the second-lowest electrification rate in the G20, as shown in the figure below. The share of electricity in total energy consumption in the sector also lags the world average, in terms of both current levels and the rate of increase.
The current low rates of electricity use in Indian industry imply that there is major potential for electrification, using technologies and processes already in place in other countries.
New investments in coal
While the clean-power expansion is starting to meet most or all of India’s electricity demand growth, there are still large investment plans across the coal supply chain.
Some 43GW of coal-power capacity was under construction at the end of June. Additional coal-power capacity is seen as necessary to meet increasing peak loads, even as solar power and energy storage are already playing a role in covering daytime and evening peak demand, respectively. The expansion of energy storage will increase this contribution.
Outside the power sector, India has major ambitions to produce chemical-industry products, such as fertiliser and plastic feedstock, from coal through coal gasification, in pursuit of energy security.
The government is targeting a capacity to process 100m tonnes of coal per year in the next four years, despite the technology for coal gasification still being nascent in India. At present, the only operational use of coal gasification is at Jindal Steel Limited, which is reportedly using syngas in its steel-making process.
Meanwhile, India plans to reduce its average CO2 emissions per tonne of steel by 25% by 2025-26, mainly by reducing the share of coal-based steelmaking.
At the same time, the government is aiming to increase the use of domestic coking coal, which it notified in January this year as a “critical and strategic mineral”. Coal miners and steel companies are reportedly planning to establish additional washeries for coking coal to make it suitable for blending with imported coal for use in steel production.
India is also looking to invest in new coal mines in the near future.
These continued investments in coal gasification, domestic coking coal and new coal mining capacity could lock in coal use across industry for several decades.
Outlook for India’s emissions
Over the two-year period from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026, India has achieved its largest clean-energy expansion on record.
As a result, power-demand growth has been met entirely by clean electricity and CO2 emissions in the sector have flatlined.
This expansion of clean energy also allowed a reduction in fossil-fuel imports for power generation, with the use of imported coal falling 38% and the use of gas by 35%, supporting the energy security aims of the government and reducing exposure to the Hormuz shock.
In order to keep the clean-energy growth going, India would need to overcome multiple obstacles, including expansion of the electricity transmission network, improvements in grid flexibility to accommodate variable renewables and the timely completion of new projects.
For example, renewable power projects totalling 5.3GW missed completion deadlines and are having to pay penalties to the grid operator in order to retain network access.
Curtailment has emerged as an issue, particularly for projects relying on interstate power transmission, pointing to the need to upgrade the network. (Curtailment refers to electricity generation that is “wasted” because it cannot be accommodated by the power network.)
Another obstacle to be overcome if clean energy is to keep growing will be making coal-power plants more flexible, so they can ramp down during high renewable output.
A flexibility plan for coal-power plants has been delayed by more than a year due to persistent regulatory bottlenecks, contributing to the curtailment of renewable energy.
Expanding energy storage has the potential to ease grid and flexibility constraints, while reducing or eliminating the need for adding thermal-power capacity to meet peak loads.
The Central Electricity Authority has proposed that, after June 2027, all new government-owned solar and wind projects would have “mandatory” two-hour battery storage. (This mirrors a policy that was in place in China until early 2025 and was subsequently scrapped, in favour of more market-based approaches.)
For oil and gas, India’s consumption has been flatlining for the past two years, after half a century of continuous growth that was only briefly interrupted by Covid-19.
This has reduced the impacts of the Hormuz crisis on the country’s trade balance, helping close the gap between supply and consumption. But it has entailed disruptive shifts in many oil-dependent sectors.
For example, high prices and fuel shortages due to the Hormuz crisis led state governments to reverse their orders banning the use of dirtier fuels such as fuel oil, kerosene and coal in industries and commercial establishments.
Meanwhile, EV adoption has also begun to influence oil consumption.
Despite the progress in the power sector and reductions in oil consumption, India’s total emissions went up over the past two years due to a major increase in industrial emissions.
Low levels of electricity use in industry mean that growing industrial output results in increasing direct fossil-fuel use and emissions.
Unless the rate of industrial electrification picks up, increases in heavy industry output will continue to translate into increases in fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
About the data
This analysis is based on official monthly data for fuel consumption, industrial production and power generation from different ministries and government institutes.
Coal-power emissions are estimated by combining plant-level coal consumption from the Central Electricity Authority’s (CEA) monthly coal reports with data on the calorific value and emission factors of coal used at different power plants from the CEA’s CO2 baseline database.
For each station and month, total coal consumption is split into domestic and imported coal using the imported share of coal receipts over a trailing two-month window, found to best reproduce the actual split in data available for 2023.
Consumption is converted to CO2 using each plant’s station-specific gross calorific value from the CEA database and IPCC emission factors for domestic coal, imported coal and lignite. The national-average calorific value is used for recently added plants, for which data is not available in the baseline database.
Coal use at steel and cement plants, as well as process emissions from cement production, are estimated using production indices from the index of eight core industries released monthly by the Office of Economic Adviser, assuming that changes in total fossil-fuel use follow production volumes. These production indices were used to scale fuel use by the sectors in 2022.
To form a basis for using the indices, monthly coal-consumption data for 2022 was constructed for the sectors by combining the annual total coal and petcoke consumption reported in IEA World Energy Balances with monthly production data. This work was set out in a paper by Robbie Andrew, a researcher at Norwegian research institute CICERO, on monthly CO2 emission accounting for India. Monthly petcoke consumption was available from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, while coal consumption by the cement industry was calculated by subtracting petcoke use from total fossil-fuel use.
Annual cement-process emissions up to 2025 were also taken from Andrew’s work and scaled using the production indices. This approach better approximated changes in energy use and emissions reported in the IEA World Energy Balances, than did the amounts of coal reported to have been dispatched to the sectors, showing that production volumes are the dominant driver of short-term changes in emissions.
For other sectors – including aluminium, auto, chemical and petrochemical, paper and plywood, pharmaceutical, graphite electrode, sugar, textile, mining, traders and others – coal consumption is estimated based on data on despatch of domestic and imported coal to end users from statistical reports and monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal, as consumption data is not available.
Coal consumption by “captive” coal-power plants – those supplying power to industrial sites, not to the public electricity network – was calculated based on capacity changes from Global Energy Monitor, assuming constant utilisation, as utilisation has been very stable year-to-year, as calculated from Central Electricity Authority data.
The difference between coal consumption and dispatch is stock changes, which are estimated by assuming that the changes in the amount of coal stored at end-user facilities mirror those at coal mines, with end-user inventories excluding power, steel and cement assumed to be 70% of those at coal mines, based on comparisons between our data and the IEA World Energy Balances.
Stock changes at mines are estimated as the difference between production at and dispatch from coal mines, as reported by the Ministry of Coal.
Coal consumption is estimated in two ways for sectors beyond power, steel and cement. Consumption of domestic coal in these other sectors is taken from the monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal. Their consumption of imported coal is estimated from the total imports of thermal coal reported by consultancy Kpler, by subtracting demand for imports at coal-power plants. The basis for this assumption is that steel and cement industries use little imported thermal coal, according to Ministry of Coal data.
Product-by-product consumption data for petroleum products, as well as gas use by sector, is from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
As the fuel dispatch and consumption data is reported as physical volumes – such as tonnes or litres – calorific values are taken from IEA’s World Energy Balance and CO2 emission factors from 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.
The emissions factor for motor oil or petrol was updated, based on the blending percentage of ethanol each year. The ethanol-blending percentage is as reported by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
Calorific values are assigned separately to different fuel types, including domestic and imported coal, anthracite and coke, as well as to petrol, diesel and several other oil products.
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The post Analysis: India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge
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