In the midst of a record-breaking heatwave in Europe, the UK city of Exeter recently played host to the second international conference on “tipping points”.
The event was billed as a “call to action” to the “research community, policymakers and business to raise awareness and understanding of the importance of tipping points and to accelerate the required action”.
As human activity drives global temperatures to record highs, multiple parts of the Earth system are at risk of being pushed beyond thresholds that would see them shift irreversibly into a new state.
The conference also focused heavily on “positive tipping points”, where large-scale, self-propelling social change can reduce the impact of humans on the climate.
Hosted jointly by the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, the conference was the second event dedicated to global tipping points, following the first in 2022.
A statement issued by conference convenors – and endorsed by hundreds of delegates – warned that the window for preventing tipping points is “rapidly closing”.
It called for “immediate, unprecedented action from policymakers worldwide and especially from leaders” at the forthcoming COP30 climate talks in Brazil.
The meeting was part of a week-long Exeter Climate Forum, which also included a separate Climate Conference and a series of community and business-focused events.
In this article, Carbon Brief draws together some of the key talking points, new research and ideas that emerged from the four-day event.
Climate tipping points
As he opened the conference, Prof Tim Lenton – director of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and one of three convenors of the event – introduced tipping points and set out the direction of the upcoming four days of talks.
He explained that tipping points are caused by “amplifying feedbacks” in a system becoming “self propelling”. He said these systems are “very hard to reverse and it could be quite abrupt”.
Lenton warned that since the last tipping points conference in 2022, global temperatures have risen, bringing many Earth system tipping points closer.
However, he told the conference that not all tipping points are harmful, distinguishing between a “bad tipping point in the climate or a positive one in societies and technologies”.
Lenton told the conference that “there is a compelling case that we could accelerate out of trouble”, adding that we could “lift [many people] out of harm” by focusing on positive tipping points.
Prof Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and joint convenor of the conference, talked about the importance of considering planetary boundaries in tipping-points research. This framework sets out nine interlinked thresholds that would ensure a “safe operating space for humanity”.
Rockström told the conference that using this “whole Earth approach” can highlight that thresholds for tipping points may be lower than when only considering climate change.
For example, he said the Amazon rainforest is at risk of crossing a tipping point that could trigger “dieback” at around 3-5C of global warming above pre-industrial levels. However, he said that “transgressing” other thresholds, such as deforestation and moisture levels, could cause the system to tip sooner.
Rockström also argued that Earth system risks have now reached the “global catastrophic” level – defined by the Global Challenges Foundation as an event or process that “would kill or seriously harm more than 10% of the human population”.
He said the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the dieback of the Amazon rainforest and the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) present the greatest risk, as they have a high severity of impact and probability of occurrence.
He closed by arguing that scientists need to better communicate the risks of tipping points to encourage more action.
Prof Ricarda Winkelmann, the third convenor of the conference and professor of climate system analysis at PIK, discussed tipping of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, which together hold enough ice to raise global sea levels by 65 metres.
Winkelmann encouraged the delegates to consider timescales. She described tipping of the ice sheets as “slow-onset systems”, but highlighted that they can also “undergo quick and abrupt changes”.
To demonstrate this, she played a video of “calving” from the Ilulissat glacier in western Greenland. This was the largest calving ever caught on camera, which saw chunks of ice up to 1,000-metres thick break off the main ice sheet, she said.
Winkelmann described a “time clash” between the long-term changes in biophysical systems and short-term changes in socioeconomic systems. She concluded:
“The choices and actions implemented in this decade really have impacts now and also for the next 1,000 years.”
Also in the opening plenary session, Dr Carlos Nobre, a former Earth system scientist at the University of São Paulo, discussed tipping in the Amazon rainforest.
He said that decades of “high-level deforestation and degradation” across the Amazon have resulted in “much less water recycling”, as well as droughts and forest fires, that are creating a “tremendous health problem” for people.
Nobre noted that higher levels of deforestation push down the temperature threshold at which the rainforest could tip from lush rainforest to dry savannah.
He also discussed “nature-based solutions” and the importance of combining scientific knowledge with Indigenous knowledge and local communities.
Dr David Obura, the founding director of CORDIO East Africa and chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), highlighted the importance of the IPBES framing, which emphasises the need to connect nature and people.
He flagged the state of the world’s coral reefs, telling delegates that, as of the end of last year, 44% of the 800 coral reef species studied by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are “threatened”.
Obura added that “ocean temperatures have shot up in the last few years”. However, he warned that looking at temperature alone is insufficient, arguing that there are other physical and socioeconomic factors that need to be understood.
In the panel discussion that followed, Nobre stressed the importance of the COP30 talks in Brazil this year “looking at solutions” to the changing climate. Obura said that humanity has “extracted wealth from nature into economic systems”, arguing that this money must “come back into nature”.
When asked why the risk of tipping points is not being discussed at the UN security council, Rockström flagged an “inability to handle timescales” and said that language around uncertainty allows politicians to “kick the can down the road”.
When asked about the media, Rockström said it is “unfortunate” that humanity is allowing a media landscape that “underplays risk” and allows only “soundbites” from scientists. He added that the “media has a huge responsibility” in the current framing of climate change.
However, Winkelmann said the media “can play an incredibly important role in moving things forward”.
Broader focus
While the central themes of the 2022 conference were the two main areas of climate tipping points and positive tipping points, the 2025 event took a broader focus that encompassed social systems and governance.
Prof Winkelmann told Carbon Brief that this reflected how the tipping points “community” is much larger now than it was three years ago:
“The community has grown a lot since [2022] and it especially also includes not just the scientific community, both on the biophysical side and the social side, but also a lot of people from policy, governance and business. So I think it is really brilliant to have this community here together, thinking about tipping dynamics and the impacts in this holistic approach.”
Lenton told Carbon Brief the conference was “bigger and more diverse” than the 2022 edition. This, he said, was likely due to “demand for knowledge of the subject”, alongside a wider range of “stakeholders, voices and actors” being engaged in discussions about tipping points.
While tipping points are well-defined in natural sciences, they are less so in the social sciences, Rockström told Carbon Brief:
“I would even argue that many social scientists – even some social scientists at this conference – are even uncomfortable in using the term social tipping point, or positive tipping point, and are much more academically grounded in defining ‘social transformations’, ‘social transitions’ or ‘social change’. I have a strong respect for that. It is really important to humbly recognise that the social sciences come at this with very different methods and theories.”
In a plenary session on social-ecological tipping points, Dr Patricia Pinho – deputy science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) – argued that “we can’t really model forest resilience if we ignore the people that are on the frontline”.
According to her presentation, “Indigenous and traditional communities are already experiencing and resisting socio-ecological tipping points”.
Global warming and land-use change have led to forest degradation in 36% of the region, Pinho said. Combined with increasing forest fires, heat and drought, communities are seeing impacts on “food security, health [and] loss of biodiversity”, she added:
“So what we are seeing is loss of identity, place, attachment. People are losing their relationship [with the Amazon] and livelihoods and culture.”
Another plenary considered the positive tipping points in “socio-technical systems”.
Among the talks, Simon Sharpe, former deputy director of the UK government’s COP26 unit and now managing director of the non-profit research group S-Curve Economics, outlined the progress towards positive tipping points in the sectors of power generation, road transport and steel production.
While the power-sector transition is “going quite well” and light road transport is already seeing electric vehicles (EVs) make up “20% of new car sales globally”, the steel transition is in its “very early stages”, Sharpe explained.
For the steel industry, the “tipping point that we have to cross is in terms of risk perception”, Sharpe said:
“You have to get to the point where industry feels that actually it’s no longer the ‘first-mover risk’ that is the biggest risk – it’s the ‘late-mover risk’ that’s the biggest risk.”
Sharpe argued that this was best achieved by a clean-steel subsidy, noting that “we’ve seen for the brief period where the US had its [Inflation Reduction Act] and was strongly subsidising clean industrial production”. He continued:
“That resulted in a big shift of industry lobbying in Japan and the EU, where all the steel companies suddenly said, ‘Oh, can we have clean-steel subsidies as well, please?’”
Focusing specifically on EVs, Dr Jean-Francois Mercure from the University of Exeter described his forthcoming study on the tipping point “that is unfolding now”.
This has been driven by a feedback loop between the falling cost of EVs and the rise in how many are being purchased, Mercure explained:
“The cost coming down helps people buy more electric vehicles; more electric vehicles [being bought] causes the cost to come down.”
While there is “exponential growth” in EV sales, Mercure showed how the sales market share in conventional cars has been “plunging” in “Germany, UK, France and especially China” since 2019:
“So we’re kind of saying, yes, the system has started to tip into this new electric vehicle regime.”
However, Mercure added, “it’s fragile” as it could be bogged down by policy reversals. He also noted that there are barriers, such as China’s dominance in producing batteries, which is “becoming problematic” and led to tariffs in the EU and US.
From the audience, Prof Joyeeta Gupta of the University of Amsterdam questioned whether EVs are seeing a “long-term” tipping point when the global south is considered:
“Electric cars are going up the global north, but the old petrol cars are going south. Basically, what you’re seeing is that when certain things improve in the global north, the older stuff just gets dumped on the global south.”
Governance
The conference also emphasised the importance of governance, with multiple breakout sessions and a plenary dedicated to the topic.
In one breakout session, author Herb Simmens explained that governance is a “system of rules, processes and practices by which public institutions are managed and controlled”, which aim to “establish how decisions are to be made, and then to ensure that those responsible for making them do so”.
He argued that setting out to limit tipping points should be considered policymaking, not governance. However, he said that strong global governance is needed in order to oversee the implementation of policies to stop global warming. He also added that local governance is needed in many instances – for example, to stop deforestation in the Amazon in order to prevent the rainforest from tipping.
Dr Manjana Milkoreit – a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo – chaired a plenary session on governance. She told delegates that the 2023 tipping points report identifies “two major domains of governance involved” in managing global tipping points. These are “prevention” and “reorganisation”, she said.
Sandrine Dixson-Decleve, co-president of the not-for-profit Club of Rome, stressed the importance of discussing how to “integrate planetary emergency at the top level into constitutional law”. She concluded:
“If we can’t get the governance to work right now, we have to think about other types of governance frameworks at the local level, community level, that start to create the feedback loop all the way back up to the international level.”
Durwood Zaelke, founder and president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, highlighted the success of the Montreal Protocol – an agreement signed in 1987 by nearly 200 countries to limit emissions of “ozone-depleting substances” in an effort to stem the damage to the ozone layer.
He argued that governance on cutting emissions must be binding, as the Montreal Protocol was, rather than voluntary.
He also argued that cutting CO2 emissions is “essential, but a slow process” and advocated for more emphasis on cutting emissions of “short-lived super-pollutants”.
Prof Per Olsson, deputy science director at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said there has been a “deeply problematic” backlash in the past five years, in the form of “political polarisation”, “war”, “democratic backsliding” and the “dehumanisation of people that think differently from you”. He warned that these “threaten to derail many processes”.
Oliver Morton is a senior editor at the Economist and serves on the board of trustees of the Degrees Initiative – a non-government organisation that focuses on promoting expertise on solar radiation management in the global south. (However, he said at the start of his talk that he was not speaking in these capacities.)
Morton argued for a greater emphasis on solar geoengineering in the tipping points community.
Morton told delegates that the lengthy 2023 global tipping points report featured only a few paragraphs on solar geoengineering, stating that the technology “might” help limit temperature rise, he said:
“I would really be interested in that ‘might’. But that’s not, in fact, what this community does. It’s not what people particularly seem to want to talk about.”
Morton noted that many delegates of the recent Arctic Repair Conference, which was held in Cambridge in June, were present at the tipping points conference, highlighting the “overlap” between the two fields.
He recognised the challenges with the governance of solar geoengineering, but added that there are challenges “for all governance”. He also emphasised that “everyone in the solar geoengineering community” says that the technology would “complement, not replace, mitigation”.
Morton emphasised the need for expertise on solar geoengineering in the global south. He concluded that “sidelining” research on geoengineering, which potentially could reduce harm, opens up the tipping-points community to criticism for not considering all options. He referred to this as “choice-editing”.
Finally, Prof Joyeeta Gupta, spoke about the divide between the global north and global south.
She said that she is working to introduce a global constitution “to try to understand how to regulate the public and private sector” and she invited the audience to participate by sending in submissions.
When asked whether the phrase “tipping points” has been watered down, Sandrine said that words like “regenerative” and “sustainable development” are overused and agreed that we “can’t keep playing with the language until it becomes nonsensical”. She called on conference delegates to come together to define key terms.
At a breakout session, Prof Karen Morrow, a professor of environmental law at Swansea University, explained that the legal system currently does not deal well with any issue at the planetary scale, as global problems cannot be reduced to a “nice, tidy jurisdictional issue”.
She said that the irreversibility of Earth system tipping points is “horriffic”. However, she noted that the language of uncertainty in science can make it hard to “find a foothold” legally, arguing that the irreversibility may help with this by providing more certainty.
She added that there are currently laws around “obligation to prevent harm”, but said that there are “not enough”, arguing that we need laws that dictate a “substantive restraint on human activities”.
Positive tipping points
A significant portion of the conference was dedicated to “positive tipping points” – described to Carbon Brief by Rockström as “social transformations” that generate “feedbacks that are self-enforcing”, making them difficult to reverse.
Examples of these social transformations that featured in plenaries and research sessions included the rapid rollout of EVs in Norway, tree-planting schemes in Uganda, investments in “regenerative” cotton farming and the falling costs and rising adoption of solar energy around the world.
In a breakout session, Dr Jean-Francois Mercure said the “positive tipping point narrative is good because it changes the policy narrative”. He explained:
“We used to have this narrative, which goes – ‘we tax [and] we price the externality because prices need to reflect costs’. This is demanding because it is politically difficult to tax and subsidies need to be justified. [That narrative says] we are pushing a thing that gets harder the more we do it – so there is a limit to climate action.
“This is not how it really works. When you look at the solar revolution, we had to push up to a certain point, after which it went off on its own. Electric vehicles, too. This [narrative] changes what policymakers need to do and think. They need to work to push over the initial hurdle.”
In a plenary session, Kate Raworth, an ecological economist at the University of Oxford, highlighted how a growing number of states, cities and regions around the world had adopted her “doughnut” theory of economics.
“Doughnut economics” is a framework which imagines a global economy which prioritises meeting the needs of people without overshooting planetary boundaries.
Raworth highlighted how more than 50 municipal governments had publicly adopted the framework since 2019 – and added there are “another 50 doing it behind the scenes”. She said that “peer-to-peer inspiration” has been a powerful force in driving momentum behind the framework’s popularity.
Jameela Mahmood, executive director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University in Kuala Lumpur, described how her organisation’s advocacy had led to the Malaysian government’s adoption of a planetary health framework in its forthcoming economic development plan. She also said planetary health would become a mandatory part of the nation’s undergraduate curriculum from 2026.
Túlio Andrare, chief strategy and alignment officer for the COP30 presidency, described the Brazilian government’s plans to convene a “global mutirão”, which encourages individuals, communities and organisations to make self-determined commitments to take actions to tackle climate change. (Mutirão is a word from the Indigenous Tupi-Guarani language family that refers to collective action). He said:
“The global mutirão is about inviting people to think about who they are and what they can offer. It is also about designing potential positive tipping points. Because if we have different initiatives that are self-organised, we can integrate those local initiatives in a global framework.”
In a separate plenary session on tipping points within food systems, Rune Baastrup, director of development at Democracy X, a private foundation focused on deliberate democracy, presented on a project to shift eating habits in Denmark.
The project, which he said is grounded in “sociological literature”, is to encourage a push towards plant-based eating from a local level, by funding and coordinating communal meals that citizens arrange for and with each other. Baastrup explained:
“It’s not about politicians going out pointing fingers at citizens. It is about citizens engaging and then mobilising each other – not necessarily because they want to save the world, but because they want to do interesting and cool things with their neighbours.”
According to Democracy X’s theory of change, reaching “one in 10 Danes” through this work would be enough to galvanise a “profoundly more deep green transition” in the Scandinavian country, Baastrup said.
In the same session, journalist and author George Monbiot said it was “questionable” whether the global food system could achieve a “positive tipping point”.
However, he said there were a number of actions that could be taken to create a food system which maintains high yields, reduces environmental impacts while remaining diversified and leaving space for nature restoration and recovery. He argued that these included: switching away from an animal-based diet to a plant-based diet; the embrace of perennial grain and arable crops; and production of food outside the farming system, including through precision fermentation.
Monbiot said the conversation around food systems was “going backwards”, pointing to the growing popularity of “simple living, grow-your-own soul food” tropes on social media:
“There is this complete confusion between what looks nice – between the bucolic, romantic, aesthetic and cottagecore that you can post up on Instagram – and what we actually need in order to intervene effectively in this huge Leviathan of a system which is going to crush us into dust.”
In his closing remarks, Lenton mused that the research community was on a quest to discover the “recipe” behind positive tipping points. He explained:
“We’re passionate as researchers to seek out the early opportunity signals that systems we want to get rid of might be able to get tipped out of.”
Having a toolkit for identifying the “generic” signals of when an incumbent system is showing signs of destabilising could guide efforts from activists, policymakers and investors to drive positive change for the planet, he said.
Lenton said upcoming research, set to be published in Sustainability Science, represented a “first attempt” at a methodology “for anyone who wants to ask whether a system has the potential for a positive tipping”. The methodology in question would also seek to answer the following questions, he said:
“If [a system] has [the potential to tip], how close is it? What factors would influence it? In particular, what could bring it forward? And then what actions could influence those factors to tip other systems?”
Lenton urged scientists at the conference to help him “refine and apply” the methodology. He also urged colleagues to keep “documenting” evidence of positive tipping over the years ahead. He explained:
“There is a theory of change here. We have got to enable each other to learn faster [and] to spread these initiatives better.”
New science
Modelling projects
Along with the main plenaries, the conference included around 50 breakout meetings, split between “research sessions” and “action workshops”.
Among the new research being presented at these sessions were early results from the “TIPMIP” international modelling project.
Rockström told Carbon Brief the “biggest change” in tipping-points science since the first conference in 2022 is the launch of TIPMIP. He said:
“The most solid scientific basis in the IPCC are all the ‘MIPs’, the modelling comparison programmes. The biggest one is CMIP [the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project], which gives us the data and the scenarios to be able to deliver the Paris Agreement.
“Now, we finally have a MIP for tipping points – and the tipping point comparison community is here at the conference, as well as [scientists from] the big Earth system models. Big tipping modelling analysis [is underway] on AMOC risks, on the Amazon rainforest, on permafrost and the ice sheets. That is a major advancement.”
Dr Jeremy Walton, who leads the software engineering team for the UK Earth System Model at the Met Office Hadley Centre, kicked off one research session by unpacking the Earth system modelling “experiment protocol” within TIPMIP. This is a “framework for the modelling and investigation of climate overshoot and tipping points”, he explained, which sets out a consistent set of “idealised” – or simplified – experiments for scientists to conduct in order to build up a large dataset of results from lots of climate models.
The figure below illustrates these experiments, which include control runs with no global warming (black line), runs where warming is stabilised, such as at 2C or 4C (green lines) and further runs where warming is subsequently reduced via carbon removal (blue lines).
In all cases, warming first “ramps up” at a rate of 0.2C per decade “because that matches the observed rate in recent years”, Walton said.
Antarctica
Prof Colin Jones from the University of Leeds presented some initial results from the idealised experiments for the Antarctic ice sheet, carried out by Dr Sophy Oliver of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.
The analysis focuses on the massive Ross and Filchner-Ronne ice shelves, which float on the ocean and hold back land ice behind them. At the moment, Jones explained, they are both “cold-water cavities”, in that the ocean water beneath the shelves is “below the freezing point of sea ice”. However, if they “tip” to “switch to being warm-water cavities, then there’s a risk for rapid loss of ice”, he said.
The switch happens because melting of Antarctic ice adds freshwater beneath the ice shelves. This reduces the “density barrier” between the cavity and warmer open ocean, said Jones, reaching a “sudden point where the salinity is sufficiently low that the density has changed and it allows open ocean water” to get into under the ice shelves.
Their model runs suggest that there is a “danger zone” for the Ross ice shelf of around 3.5-4C, Jones said:
“If you go more than 4C, it will always tip [in model runs]…If you stay below about 3C, it will never tip.”
For the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf, “it is basically the same mechanism, but it happens at a higher warming level”, noted Jones, with a “danger zone” around 5-5.5C.
Also focusing on Antarctica, Sacha Sinet from Utrecht University presented analysis on the interactions between AMOC and the polar ice sheets, with results suggesting that the loss of the Antarctic ice sheet could actually stabilise the AMOC and prevent it from collapsing.
Sinet’s research is currently being reviewed before potential publication.
Another study on Antarctica was published on the opening day of the tipping points conference. The research, led by Dr Alessadro Silvano from the National Oceanography Centre, uses satellite data to reveal a marked increase in surface salinity across the Southern Ocean since 2015, coinciding with a “dramatic decline” in Antarctic sea ice.
The findings suggest that the Southern Ocean “might have entered a new system”, Silvano said. He explained how he has been observing an increase in salinity in the top 100 metres of the ocean. This is “counterintuitive”, he said, as “you think the more melting of ice, then you should freshen the ocean instead”.
The increase is because the ocean is becoming “less stratified”, meaning that warm water – which is also more salty – is “able to reach the surface of the ocean more”, making is harder for sea ice to regrow. he explained:
“And this is circumpolar. So it’s happening everywhere you see the increase in salinity.”
This has the potential to drive a self-reinforcing feedback loop, Silvano wrote in an article for the Conversation:
“We may have passed a tipping point and entered a new state defined by persistent sea ice decline, sustained by a newly discovered feedback loop.”
When asked by an audience member whether solar geoengineering could help, Silvano noted: “The problem for Antarctica is that melting is driven by the ocean. You cannot stop warming in the ocean, so that, to me, is an impossible task.”
Ecological shifts
Away from Antarctica, Dr Bette Otto-Bliesner of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research introduced another “MIP” – the What If Modeling Intercomparison Project (WhatIfMIP), which aims to investigate the consequences of what happens if a tipping point is crossed.
In particular, the programme will look at the cascading effects of one tipping element on another, including Amazon dieback, shifts in boreal forests, AMOC collapse, permafrost loss and the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, Otto-Bliesner explained.
One area of focus will be on the potential implications of “Sahel greening”, Otto-Bliesner said:
“We don’t think the Sahara is going to green in the next few centuries. But there is a project in the Sahel region called the Great Green Wall Initiative, where they’re actually planting trees. They’ve already started this…So what are the consequences of that, in terms of precipitation, drought, but also…heatwaves?”
In another talk, Caroline Wallington – from the Centre for Sustainability Transitions at Stellenbosch University in South Africa – presented a global analysis of ecosystems and people at risk of 21 different ecological “regime shifts”.
The findings show that 26% of the global land area is at risk of at least one ecological shift, covering 3.4 billion people, or 43% of the global population.
Around 31% of corals are at risk of a regime shift, Wallington said, while 30% of tundra is at risk from a transition to boreal forest and 28% of tropical forests are at risk of tipping into savannah.
The regions of the world at highest risk include the south Pacific, south-east Asia and central America, Wallington noted. Some of the most populous countries in the world are at risk from these regime shifts, she added, including China, India, the US and Indonesia.
Paris limits
Dr Nico Wunderling, from the Center for Critical Computational Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, presented on how tipping point risks are affected by “overshooting” temperature goals, such as the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit.
His work indicates that “tipping risks are even non-negligible now at global warming levels of 1.3-1.5C”, while overshooting 2C would mean “entering a very high risk zone for climate tipping elements”.
Wunderling presented some early results – currently undergoing peer review – on how the risk of Amazon dieback depends on both the levels of warming and deforestation.
When only warming is considered, current pathways to 2.7-2.8C above pre-industrial levels “seem to still relatively keep the Amazon rainforest at a safe level”, he said. However, he added, when deforestation is included, tipping risks become much closer – “to levels that are well within the Paris Agreement, so about 1.5-2C”.
Wunderling recently wrote a Carbon Brief guest post on “cascading” tipping points, indicating that the “majority of interactions between tipping elements will lead to further destabilisation of the climate system”.
Where next?
In the closing plenary, Rockström confirmed that PIK would host a tipping points conference in Berlin in 2027.
He also revealed that plans were afoot to host a tipping points conference in 2026 in Malaysia, following discussions with Jameela Mahmood of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health in Kuala Lumpur.
Rockström said this reflected the need to host the conference in the global south and the importance of “building momentum” around tipping point risks and opportunities.
He added that the Malaysia-hosted conference could be held “in connection” with the COP31 climate summit, should Australia’s bid to host the UN talks in 2026 prove successful.
Meanwhile, a second global tipping points report is earmarked for the latter half of 2025.
(Carbon Brief covered the first global tipping point report in 2023).
Lenton told Carbon Brief the upcoming report will be “tighter” than its predecessor and “major” on governance issues.
Explaining the rationale for giving governance top billing in the report, Lenton said:
“We want to lead on the things we need. We clearly need some improvements in governance and institutions to get on top of both the tipping point risks and, arguably, the opportunities. Everyone can see that – it has been repeated several times already at this meeting. So, it is important to be clear what differences [governance] makes and what different kinds of governance we are calling for.”
The report will also offer an “update on tipping point risks and opportunities”, Lenton said, and include three case studies looking at Earth system tipping points – the shutdown of AMOC, Amazon dieback and coral die-off. It will also feature one “localised” example of a glacier tipping point and its consequences.
The case studies are designed to provide “more specific and concrete guidance” on how to avoid tipping risks, according to Lenton.
In addition, Ricarda Winkelmann told Carbon Brief that she and her colleagues will be answering a “call on the scientific community to put together a robust risk assessment on tipping dynamics”. This will involve “creating a first global atlas of tipping financial risks”, she explained – in time to feed into the seventh assessment report (AR7) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Discussing AR7 with Carbon Brief, Rockström said he was “very disappointed” that, at a meeting last year, countries decided not to include a special report on tipping points in the IPCC’s AR7 cycle.
This happened because the topic “makes policymakers and some member countries around the world very uncomfortable”, Rockström said.
Despite the “illogical” decision, the AR7 assessment reports will “see much more tipping-point science”, added Rockström, “for the simple reason that we have TIPMIP [and] we have a much broader community now – it’s entering the mainstream of Earth system modelling”.
This is “so important” in order to narrow uncertainty ranges in projections of tipping points, Rockström argued:
“I am of the view that one reason why we’re not acting faster on the climate crisis – one of many reasons – one fundamental reason is that we in the scientific community are not able to communicate precision on risk.
“Science on tipping point risk is so important because so many actors are using the uncertainty ranges as an excuse for not acting. So, as long as the AMOC continues to have medium confidence, then you can go on forever kicking the can down the road.”
The Exeter meeting comes against a backdrop of cuts to climate science funding in the US, including to the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Lenton said the tipping-point community was “traumatised” by the developments – “especially [on behalf] of colleagues in the US” who had lost their jobs. He added:
“It is already influencing things. If we lose NOAA and we lose our state-of-the-art assessment of the state of the oceans – these are dangerous erosions of our ability to sense whether the Earth system is destabilising or not. This is a fundamental loss.”
During the conference, the convenors drafted a conference statement, which they encouraged delegates to endorse.
With global warming approaching the Paris Agreement 1.5C limit, the statement warns that this places “humanity in the danger zone where multiple climate tipping points pose catastrophic risks to billions of people”.
It says that the “window for preventing these cascading climate dynamics is rapidly closing”, adding:
“We join the COP30 presidency in calling on governments to enact policies that help trigger positive tipping points in their economies and societies, which generate self-propelling change in technologies and behaviours towards zero emissions.”
The statement concludes by arguing that “decisive policy and civil society action” is needed for the world to “tip its trajectory from facing unmanageable climate tipping point risks to seizing positive tipping point opportunities”.
The post Tipping points: Window to avoid irreversible climate impacts is ‘rapidly closing’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Tipping points: Window to avoid irreversible climate impacts is ‘rapidly closing’
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
‘Lukewarm’ end to COP30
BYE BELÉM: The COP30 climate talks in Belém ended last weekend with countries agreeing on a goal to “triple” adaptation finance by 2035 and efforts to “strengthen” climate plans, Climate Home News reported. The final deal “fell short on the global transition away from oil, gas and coal”, the outlet said, as Brazil announced that it would bring forward voluntary roadmaps to phase out fossil fuels and deforestation, before the next COP. It was a “frustrating end” for more than 80 countries who wanted a roadmap away from fossil fuels to be part of the formal COP agreement, BBC News said.
WHAT HAPPENED?: Carbon Brief published its in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes from COP30, spanning everything from negotiations on adaptation, just transition, gender and “Article 6” carbon trading through to a round-up of pledges on various issues. Another Carbon Brief article summed up outcomes around food, forests, land and nature. Also, Carbon Brief journalists discussed the COP in a webinar held earlier this week.
ART OF THE DEAL: The “compromise” COP30 deal – known as the “global mutirão” – “exposed deep rifts over how future climate action should be pursued”, Reuters noted. The “last-ditch” agreement was reached after fossil-fuel wording negotiations between the EU and Saudi Arabia, according to the Guardian. Meanwhile, Carbon Brief revealed the “informal” list of 84 countries said to have “opposed” the inclusion of a fossil-fuel roadmap in the mutirão decision, but analysis of the list exposed contradictions and likely errors.
UNITY, SCIENCE, SENSE: The final agreement received “lukewarm praise”, said the Associated Press. Palau ambassador Ilana Seid, who chaired the coalition of small-island nations, told the newswire: “Given the circumstances of geopolitics today, we’re actually quite pleased…The alternative is that we don’t get a decision and that would have been [worse].” UN climate chief Simon Stiell said that amid “denial, division and geopolitics”, countries “chose unity, science and economic common sense”, reported the Press Trust of India.
Around the world
- Floods and landslides killed more than 200 people in Thailand and Indonesia this week, reported Bloomberg. At least 90 people also died in recent floods in Vietnam, said Al Jazeera.
- New measures to cut energy bills and a “pay-per-mile” electric-vehicle levy were among the announcements in the UK’s budget, said Carbon Brief.
- The Group of 20 (G20) leaders signed off on a declaration “addressing the climate crisis” and other issues, reported Reuters, which had no input from the US who boycotted last week’s G20 summit in South Africa.
- Canadian prime minister Mark Carney signed a deal with the province of Alberta “centred on plans for a new heavy oil pipeline”, said the Guardian, adding that Canadian culture minister and former environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, resigned from cabinet over the deal.
- Greenpeace analysis, covered by Reuters, found that permits for new coal plants in China are “on track to fall to a four-year low” in 2025.
27
The number of hours that COP30 talks went over schedule before ending in Belém last Saturday, making it the 11th-longest UN climate summit on record, according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- The risk of night-time deaths during heatwaves increased “significantly” over 2005-15 in sub-Saharan Africa | Science Advances
- Almost half of climate journalists surveyed showed “moderate to severe” symptoms of anxiety | Traumatology
- Lakes experienced “more severe” heatwaves than those in the atmosphere over the past two decades | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The key COP30 agreement – termed the “global mutirão” – contained 69 inactive verbs, which require no action from countries, compared to 32 active ones. “Recognises”, “recalls” and “acknowledges” were used far more often than more active verbs, such as “decides”, “calls” and “requests”, showed Carbon Brief analysis.
Spotlight
Nine warnings from a UK climate and nature ‘emergency’ briefing
This week, Carbon Brief’s Orla Dwyer reports from an event where experts and campaigners sounded the alarm bell on climate change and nature loss.
Naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham urged attendees at a climate and nature “emergency briefing” in London yesterday to “listen to the science” on climate change amid a “dangerous wave of misinformation and lies”.
The “first-of-its-kind” event heard from nine experts on the links between climate change, nature loss, health, food production, economics and national security.
Event host, Prof Mike Berners-Lee from Lancaster University, called for a “World War II level of leadership” to tackle the interconnected crises.
Hundreds of people showed up, including Green Party, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, leader of the Greens Zack Polanski, musician Brian Eno and actress Olivia Williams.
Here is a snapshot of what the nine speakers said in their short, but stark, presentations.
Prof Kevin Anderson, professor of energy at University of Manchester
Anderson focused on the risks of a warmer world and the sliver of emissions left in the global carbon budget, noting:
“We have to eliminate fossil fuels or temperatures will just keep going up.”
He urged a “Marshall-style” plan – referencing the 1948 post-war US plan to rebuild Europe – to ramp up actions on retrofitting, public transport and electrification.
Prof Nathalie Seddon, professor of biodiversity at University of Oxford
Nature is not a “nice to have”, but rather “critical national infrastructure”, Seddon told attendees. She called for the “need to create an economy that values nature”.
Prof Paul Behrens, British Academy global professor at University of Oxford
Behrens discussed the food security risks from climate change. Impacts such as poor harvests and food price inflation are “barely acknowledge[d]” in agricultural policy, he said.
He also emphasised the “unsustainable” land use of animal agriculture, which “occupies around 85% of total agricultural land” in the UK.
Prof Tim Lenton, chair in climate change and Earth system science at Exeter University
Lenton outlined the “plenty” of evidence that parts of the Earth system are hurtling towards climate tipping points that could push them irreversibly into a new state.
He discussed the possibility of the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which he said could cause -20C winters in London. He also noted positive tipping points, such as momentum that led the UK to stop burning coal for electricity last year.
Prof Hayley Fowler, professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University
One in four properties in England could be at risk of flooding by 2050, Fowler said, and winters are getting wetter.
She discussed extreme weather risks and listed the impacts of floods in recent years in Germany, Spain and Libya, adding:
“These events are not warnings of what might happen in the future. They’re actually examples of what is happening right now.”
Angela Francis, director of policy solutions at WWF-UK
Francis factchecked several claims made against climate action, such as the high cost of achieving net-zero.
She noted that the estimated cost for the UK to achieve net-zero is about £4bn per year, which is less than 0.2% of GDP.
Lieutenant general Richard Nugee, climate and security advisor
Discussing the risks climate change poses to national security, Nugee said:
“Climate change can be thought of as a threat multiplier, making existing threats worse or more frequent and introducing new threats. Climate shocks fuel global instability.”
Tessa Khan, environmental lawyer and executive director of Uplift
Khan said the rising cost of energy in the UK is “turning into a significant political risk for the energy transition”.
She discussed the cost of fossil-fuel dependency and the fact that these fuels cost money to burn, but renewable “input[s], sun or wind [are] free forever”.
Prof Hugh Montgomery, professor of intensive care medicine at University College London
Montgomery discussed the health and economic benefits of climate actions, such as eating less meat and using more public transport, noting:
“The climate emergency is a health emergency – and it’s about time we started treating it as one.”
Watch, read, listen
WATER WORRIES: ABC News spoke to three Iranian women about the impacts of Tehran’s water crisis amid the “worst drought in 60 years”.
CLIMATE EFFORT: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast looked at the main outcomes from COP30 and discussed the “future of climate action” with a team of panelists.
CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR:New Scientist interviewed criminal psychologist Julia Shaw about the psychology behind environmental crimes.
Coming up
- 24 November-5 December: COP20 on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 29-30 November: First part of global youth environment assembly, Nairobi, Kenya
- 3-4 December: Second round of Egyptian parliamentary elections
- 5 December: World soil day, global
Pick of the jobs
- Aldersgate Group, head of policy | Salary: £56,650-£66,950 per year. Location: London
- Ofgem, climate resilience expert | Salary: £61,446-£86,547. Location: Cardiff, Glasgow or London
- Green Climate Fund, integrity risk management lead | Salary: $171,200. Location: Incheon, South Korea
- Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust, project manager – seabird recovery | Salary: Up to £45,000 per year. Location: Isles of Scilly, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event
Greenhouse Gases
Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents
A confused – and, at times, contradictory – story has emerged about precisely which countries and negotiating blocs were opposed to a much-discussed “roadmap” deal at COP30 on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.
Carbon Brief has obtained a leaked copy of the 84-strong “informal list” of countries that, as a group, were characterised across multiple media reports as “blocking” the roadmap’s inclusion in the final “mutirão” deal across the second week of negotiations at the UN climate summit in Belém.
During the fraught closing hours of the summit, Carbon Brief understands that the Brazilian presidency told negotiators in a closed meeting that there was no prospect of reaching consensus on the roadmap’s inclusion, because there were “80 for and 80 against”.
However, Carbon Brief’s analysis of the list – which was drawn up informally by the presidency – shows that it contains a variety of contradictions and likely errors.
Among the issues identified by Carbon Brief is the fact that 14 countries are listed as both supporting and opposing the idea of including a fossil-fuel roadmap in the COP30 outcome.
In addition, the list of those said to have opposed a roadmap includes all 42 of the members of a negotiating group present in Belém – the least-developed countries (LDCs) – that has explicitly told Carbon Brief it did not oppose the idea.
Moreover, one particularly notable entry on the list, Turkey – which is co-president of COP31 – tells Carbon Brief that its inclusion is “wrong”.
Negotiating blocs
COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, had finalised the first “global stocktake”, which called on all countries to contribute to global efforts, including a “transition away from fossil fuels”.
Since then, negotiations on how to take this forward have faltered, including at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, where countries were unable to agree to include this fossil-fuel transition as part of existing or new processes under the UN climate regime.
Ahead of the start of COP30, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a surprise call for “roadmaps” on fossil-fuel transition and deforestation.
While this idea was not on the official agenda for COP30, it had been under development for months ahead of the summit – and it became a key point of discussion in Belém.
Ultimately, however, it did not become part of the formal COP30 outcome, with the Brazilian presidency instead launching a process to draw up roadmaps under its own initiative.
This is because the COP makes decisions by consensus. The COP30 presidency insisted that there was no prospect of consensus being reached on a fossil-fuel roadmap, telling closed-door negotiations that there were “80 for and 80 against”.
The list of countries supporting a roadmap as part of the COP30 outcome was obtained by Carbon Brief during the talks. Until now, however, the list of those opposed to the idea had not been revealed.
Carbon Brief understands that this second list was drawn up informally by the Brazilian presidency after a meeting attended by representatives of around 50 nations. It was then filled out to the final total of 84 countries, based on membership of negotiating alliances.
The bulk of the list of countries opposing a roadmap – some 39 nations – is made up of two negotiating blocs that opposed the proposal for divergent reasons (see below). Some countries within these blocs also held different positions on why – or even whether – they opposed the roadmap being included in the COP30 deal.
These blocs are the 22-strong Arab group – chaired in Belém by Saudi Arabia – and the 25 members of the “like-minded developing countries” (LMDCs), chaired by India.
For decades within the UN climate negotiations, countries have sat within at least one negotiating bloc rather than act in isolation. At COP30, the UN says there were 16 “active groups”. (Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has not sat within any group.)
The inclusion on the “informal list” (shown in full below) of both the LMDCs and Arab group is accurate, as confirmed by the reporting of the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), which is the only organisation authorised to summarise what has happened in UN negotiations that are otherwise closed to the media.
Throughout the fortnight of the talks, both the LMDCs and Arab group were consistent – at times together – in their resistance to proscriptive wording and commitments within any part of the COP30 deal around transitioning away from fossil fuels.
But the reasons provided were nuanced and varied and cannot be characterised as meaning both blocs simply did not wish to undertake the transition – in fact, all countries under the Paris Agreement had already agreed to this in Dubai two years ago at COP28.
However, further analysis by Carbon Brief of the list shows that it also – mistakenly – includes all of the members of the LDCs, bar Afghanistan and Myanmar, which were not present at the talks. In total, the LDCs represented 42 nations in Belém, ranging from Bangladesh and Benin through to Tuvalu and Tanzania.
Some of the LDC nations had publicly backed a fossil-fuel roadmap.
‘Not correct’
Manjeet Dhakal, lead adviser to the LDC chair, tells Carbon Brief that it is “not correct” that the LDCs, as a bloc, opposed a fossil-fuel roadmap during the COP30 negotiations.
He says that the group’s expectations, made public before COP, clearly identified transitioning away from fossil fuels as an “urgent action” to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal “within reach”. He adds:
“The LDC group has never blocked a fossil-fuel roadmap. [In fact], a few LDCs, including Nepal, have supported the idea.”
Dhakal’s statement highlights a further confusing feature of the informal list – 14 countries appear on both of the lists of supporters and opposers. This is possible because many countries sit within two or more negotiating blocs at UN climate talks.
For example, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu are members of both the “alliance of small island states” (AOSIS) and the LDCs.
As is the case with the “informal list” of opposers, the list of supporters (which was obtained by Carbon Brief during the talks) is primarily made up of negotiating alliances.
Specifically, it includes AOSIS, the “environmental integrity group” (EIG), the “independent association of Latin America and the Caribbean” (AILAC) and the European Union (EU).
In alphabetical order, the 14 countries on both lists are: Bahrain; Bulgaria; Comoros; Cuba; Czech Republic; Guinea-Bissau; Haiti; Hungary; Kiribati; Nepal; Sierra Leone; Solomon Islands; Timor-Leste; and Tuvalu.
This obvious anomaly acts to highlight the mistaken inclusion of the LDCs on the informal list of opposers.
The list includes 37 of the 54 nations within the Africa group, which was chaired by Tanzania in Belém.
But this also appears to be a function of the mistaken inclusion of the LDCs in the list, many of which sit within both blocs.
Confusion
An overview of the talks published by the Guardian this week reported:
“Though [Brazil’s COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago] told the Guardian [on 19 November] that the divide over the [roadmap] issue could be bridged, [he] kept insisting 80 countries were against the plan, though these figures were never substantiated. One negotiator told the Guardian: ‘We don’t understand where that number comes from.’
“A clue came when Richard Muyungi, the Tanzanian climate envoy who chairs the African group, told a closed meeting that all its 54 members aligned with the 22-member Arab Group on the issue. But several African countries told the Guardian this was not true and that they supported the phaseout – and Tanzania has a deal with Saudi Arabia to exploit its gas reserves.”
Adding to the confusion, the Guardian also said two of the most powerful members of the LMDCs were not opposed to a roadmap, reporting: “China, having demurred on the issue, indicated it would not stand in the way [of a roadmap]; India also did not object.”
Writing for Climate Home News, ActionAid USA’s Brandon Wu said:
“Between rich country intransigence and undemocratic processes, it’s understandable – and justifiable – that many developing countries, including most of the Africa group, are uncomfortable with the fossil-fuel roadmap being pushed for at COP30. It doesn’t mean they are all ‘blockers’ or want the world to burn, and characterising them as such is irresponsible.
“The core package of just transition, public finance – including for adaptation and loss and damage – and phasing out fossil fuels and deforestation is exactly that: a package. The latter simply will not happen, politically or practically, without the former.”
Carbon Brief understands that Nigeria was a vocal opponent of the roadmap’s inclusion in the mutirão deal during the final hours of the closed-door negotiations, but that does not equate to it opposing a transition away from fossil fuels. This is substantiated by the ENB summary:
“During the…closing plenary…Nigeria stressed that the transition away from fossil fuels should be conducted in a nationally determined way, respecting [common, but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities].”
The “informal list” of opposers also includes three EU members – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
The EU – led politically at the talks by climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, but formally chaired by Denmark – was reportedly at the heart of efforts to land a deal that explicitly included a “roadmap” for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Carbon Brief understands that, as part of the “informal intelligence gathering” used to compile the list, pre-existing positions on climate actions by nations were factored in rather than only counting positions expressed at Belém. For example, Hungary and the Czech Republic were reported to have been among those resisting the last-minute “hard-fought deal” by the EU on its 2040 climate target and latest Paris Agreement climate pledge.
(Note that EU members Poland and Italy did not join the list of countries supporting a fossil-fuel roadmap at COP30.)
The remaining individual nations on the informal list either have economies that are heavily dependent on fossil-fuel production (for example, Russia and Brunei Darussalam), or are, like the US, currently led by right-leaning governments resistant to climate action (for example, Argentina).
Turkey is a notable inclusion on the list because it was agreed in Belém that it will host next year’s COP31 in Antalya, but with Australia leading the negotiation process. In contrast, Australia is on the 85-strong list of roadmap supporters.
However, a spokesperson for Turkey’s delegation in Belem has told Carbon Brief that it did not oppose the roadmap at COP30 and its inclusion on the list is “wrong”.
Media characterisations
Some media reporting of the roadmap “blockers” sought to identify the key proponents.
For example, the Sunday Times said “the ‘axis of obstruction’ – Saudi Arabia, Russia and China – blocked the Belém roadmap”.
Agence France-Presse highlighted the views of a French minister who said: “Who are the biggest blockers? We all know them. They are the oil-producing countries, of course. Russia, India, Saudi Arabia. But they are joined by many emerging countries.”
Reuters quoted Vanuatu’s climate minister alleging that “Saudi Arabia was one of those opposed”.
The Financial Times said “a final agreement [was] blocked again and again by countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia”.
Bloomberg said the roadmap faced “stiff opposition from Arab states and Russia”.
Media coverage in India and China has pushed back at the widespread portrayals of what many other outlets had described as the “blockers” of a fossil-fuel roadmap.
The Indian Express reported:
“India said it was not opposed to the mention of a fossil-fuel phaseout plan in the package, but it must be ensured that countries are not called to adhere to a uniform pathway for it.”
Separately, speaking on behalf of the LMDCs during the closing plenary at COP30, India had said: “Adaptation is a priority. Our regime is not mitigation centric.”
China Daily, a state-run newspaper that often reflects the government’s official policy positions, published a comment article this week stating:
“Over 80 countries insisted that the final deal must include a concrete plan to act on the previous commitment to move beyond coal, oil, and natural gas adopted at COP28…But many delegates from the global south disagreed, citing concerns about likely sudden economic contraction and heightened social instability. The summit thus ended without any agreement on this roadmap.
“Now that the conference is over, and emotions are no longer running high, all parties should look objectively at the potential solution proposed by China, which some international media outlets wrongly painted as an opponent to the roadmap.
“Addressing an event on the sidelines of the summit, Xia Yingxian, deputy head of China’s delegation to COP30, said the narrative on transitioning away from fossil fuels would find greater acceptance if it were framed differently, focusing more on the adoption of renewable energy sources.”
Speaking to Carbon Brief at COP30, Dr Osama Faqeeha, Saudi Arabia’s deputy environment minister, refused to be drawn on whether a fossil-fuel roadmap was a red line for his nation, but said:
“I think the issue is the emissions, it’s not the fuel. And our position is that we have to cut emissions regardless.”
Neither the Arab group nor the LMDCs responded to Carbon Brief’s invitation to comment on their inclusion on the list.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency did not respond at the time of publication.
While the fossil-fuel roadmap was not part of the formal COP30 outcome, the Brazilian presidency announced in the closing plenary that it would take the idea forward under its own initiative, drawing on an international conference hosted by Colombia next year.
Corrêa do Lago told the closing plenary:
“We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues at hand…As president Lula said at the opening of this COP, we need roadmaps so that humanity, in a just and planned manner, can overcome its dependence on fossil fuels, halt and reverse deforestation and mobilise resources for these purposes.
“I, as president of COP30, will therefore create two roadmaps, one on halting and reverting deforestation, another to transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner. They will be led by science and they will be inclusive with the spirit of the mutirão.
“We will convene high level dialogues, gathering key international organisations, governments from both producing and consuming countries, industry workers, scholars, civil society and will report back to the COP. We will also benefit from the first international conference for the phase-out of fossil fuels, scheduled to take place in April in Colombia.”
Fossil-fuel roadmap
‘Supporters’
Both ‘supporter’ and ‘opposer’
‘Opposers’
Additional reporting by Daisy Dunne.
The post Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents
Greenhouse Gases
China Briefing 27 November 2025: COP30 wraps; Climate and critical minerals at G20; Coal use up
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
China called for ‘strengthened’ climate cooperation
‘URGENT ACTION’: As the COP30 climate talks in Brazil drew to a close (see today’s spotlight below), world leaders gathered in South Africa for the G20 summit, where China’s premier Li Qiang urged countries to “strengthen ecological and environmental cooperation”, “take urgent action” on climate issues and “accelerate” implementation of COP30’s outcomes, state news agency Xinhua said. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said that, due to the US being a “no-show”, “China and its allies drove the consensus” leading to the final G20 leaders’ declaration, adding that it “delivered major wins for African countries on debt, climate and critical minerals processing”.
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MINERALS REGIMES: The G20 declaration included a call to ensure critical mineral value-chain resilience, highlighting “geopolitical tensions, unilateral trade measures inconsistent with [World Trade Organization] rules, pandemics or natural disasters” as potential risks, Bloomberg reported, in a “seemingly veiled reference to China’s sweeping export curbs”. Bloomberg also quoted Li defending China’s need to “cautiously manage” critical-mineral exports for military use, adding that China launched a “green mining initiative with 19 nations” at the summit.
MINING TIES: Meanwhile, China and South Africa agreed an “initiative for supporting Africa’s modernisation” pledging to “assist Africa in achieving a fair, just, open and inclusive green and low-carbon transition”, according to the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily. The text also “encourages countries to strengthen international cooperation on green infrastructure and green mining”, including in “building responsible, transparent, stable and resilient critical mineral value chains”. Reuters said that, in a meeting between the Chinese and German government, Li “pitched stronger ties” in the face of tensions over rare-earth minerals. The UK has “rolled out a critical minerals strategy designed to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers by 2035”, Reuters also reported.
‘SPECIAL’ CONNECTION: Li highlighted China and Russia’s “special, strategic” cooperation in the “oil, gas, coal and nuclear sectors” in talks with Russia’s prime minister, Reuters said. However, at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Moscow, Li said governments “should work together to advance green and low-carbon transformation”, the People’s Daily reported. Executive vice-premier Ding Xuexiang also said at the China-Russia energy business forum that the two countries should “deepen cooperation on energy transition”, the People’s Daily also said. Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom is “pushing ahead with plans” for the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, according to the Financial Times, which added that Chinese officials have yet to confirm the project.
Coal covered October’s power surge
COAL BACKUP: A heatwave in southern China in October caused a surge in power demand, with “coal-power plants picking up the slack amid slow growth in renewables”, Bloomberg reported. This could “make it difficult” for the country to see a plateau or reduction in carbon emissions this year, it added. David Fishman, principal at the consultancy Lantau Group, theorised on Twitter that this could have been due to the rigidity of China’s power-purchasing mechanisms, availability of coal power on spot markets and poor wind-power generation in October.
SLOWING APPROVALS: China’s permitting for new coal-fired power units is on track to hit its lowest level since 2021, according to new research from Greenpeace East Asia. Around 42 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity was permitted in the first three quarters of 2025, it said, noting that the amount of new coal power approved between 2021-2025 was still “more than twice the total permitted” between 2016-2020. Separately, Swiss bank UBS estimated that power demand in China will grow 8% between 2028 and 2030, said finance outlet Yicai.
RENEWABLES RISE: Meanwhile, 13GW of new solar capacity was added in October, as well as 9GW of wind and 8GW of thermal power, reported Bloomberg. According to energy news outlet BJX News, from January to October 2025, China added 253GW of solar, 70GW of wind and 65GW of thermal power, mostly coal.
Managing industry emissions
MARKETS EXPAND: China has approved plans to expand its national carbon market “via a test system” some time this year, reported Bloomberg, effectively confirming that steel, aluminum and cement will be covered in the mechanism by the end of 2025. The government has also released its third batch of methodologies for its voluntary carbon market, all of which are projects related to the country’s oil and gas sector, according to energy news outlet China Energy Net.
SUPER-POLLUTANT PLAN: Separately, the government issued two plans restricting the manufacturing of products using the potent greenhouse gases known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and a particular type of hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC), such as refrigerators, freezers and insulation foam boards, reported state news agency Xinhua. An interview with an environment ministry official on the state-run China Environment News noted that the policies “clarify” that the HFC controls “include exported household refrigerators and freezers”, although it “excludes vehicle-mounted refrigerators”. Experts had previously told Carbon Brief that exported products were not covered by an action plan to enhance China’s HFC controls published in April that governs these two policies.
ALL-IN ON HYDROGEN: “Green hydrogen” capacity is being “ramp[ed] up”, said Bloomberg, with several projects coming online in the past few months “after Beijing signaled its continued support” for the sector. The government has “backed [hydrogen] tech with several pilot projects this year” and allowed the sector to access “carbon credits to help with funding”, it added. China has also developed its first “coal-to-chemicals project integrating green hydrogen”, which is forecast to produce 71m cubic metres of hydrogen per year, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, the hydrogen industry has also launched its first “anti-involution” initiative, pledging to avoid or prohibit actions such as “below-cost bidding”, “false planning” and “blind pessimism”, said economic news outlet Jiemian.
Spotlight
How China approached COP30 endgame
As negotiations at COP30 entered their final stages, China’s positions in several of the debates proved to be central to discussions.
Below is an excerpt of our coverage of what China said, wanted and got at COP30. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
Climate finance
One of China’s key priorities – the provision of “financial resources” from developed to developing countries under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement – proved to be a significant sticking point in negotiations.
With discussions on climate finance looming large, China proposed during the second week the development of a “practical roadmap for implementation”, predominantly by developed countries, of the $300bn per year “NCQG” climate-finance goal.
China delegation head Li Gao said this would help “avoid blame-shifting…and prevent further erosion of trust” on climate finance.
In the end, while COP30 resulted in a plan within the mutirão decision to develop a “two-year work programme on climate finance” that included a mention of Article 9.1, it was situated within the “context of Article 9…as a whole”. This means that developing countries’ contributions also fall under its scope.
“The EU needed to spend its biggest leverage [at COP30] to adjust the adaptation-finance goal,” Kate Logan, director of the China climate hub and climate diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), told Carbon Brief.
EU-China non-alignment
There was a marked lack of EU-China coordination at COP30 overall, despite efforts to develop a united stance in July.
Multiple observers told Carbon Brief that early negotiations featured a rancorous back-and-forth between the two on the ambitiousness of their respective 2035 emissions reduction targets.
Another point of contention between the two was the role of “unilateral trade measures” (UTMs), which the “like-minded” bloc of developing countries (LMDCs, of which China is a member) asked to be included on the agenda.
Japan, the EU and others argued that other fora would be “more appropriate” for discussions. The EU also implied that China’s critical-mineral export restrictions could also fall into the scope of discussion, should the item be included.
Ultimately, China and others secured its inclusion in the mutirão text and agreement on three annual dialogues on UTMs, culminating in a “high-level event” and report in 2028.
China was also among the countries present for the COP30 presidency’s launch of an integrated forum on climate change and trade, although Carbon Brief understands that it has not formally joined the platform.
Meanwhile, a mention of critical minerals in a draft just-transition text – a potential first for COP – was deleted by the final version.
Joseph Dellatte, head of energy and climate studies at the Institut Montaigne, told Carbon Brief: “Even though the EU is worried about China’s trade measures on [critical materials], it still wants to strike a deal with Beijing.”
Fossil-fuel fracas
China also faced significant pressure on its approach to mitigating emissions.
It was not among countries supporting the idea of a roadmap away from fossil fuels as part of the COP30 outcome. It also opposed calls to emphasise the 1.5C temperature limit, instead “requesting the entire Paris Agreement temperature goal [which includes “well-below” 2C]…be mentioned”.
While the final mutirão text does emphasise the 1.5C limit, fossil fuels were not explicitly mentioned.
Arguments by China that the UAE dialogue should not become a “mini-GST [global stocktake]” also seem to have been considered, with no mention of an annual agenda item in the final outcomes.
The mutirão text “sends a red alert” on the consensus on fossil fuels, Greenpeace East Asia’s global policy advisor Yao Zhe told Carbon Brief.
But Li Shuo, director of ASPI’s China climate hub, said that, despite this, China’s prior agreement to transition away from fossil fuels would “guide its domestic energy reforms”.
Watch, read, listen
VISUALISING CHANGE: Greenpeace East Asia published its work with Chu Weimin, who has used drone photography to document how China’s clean-energy transition is reshaping “landscapes, communities and people’s everyday lives”.
CLIMATE ENVOY’S DEBRIEF: Climate envoy Liu Zhenmin explained why China felt a fossil-fuel roadmap was “unfeasible”, in a wide-ranging interview with the Paper held at the end of COP30.
NDC AMBITION: The Outrage + Optimism podcast spoke with Wang Yi, vice-chair of China’s expert panel on climate change, among others, during week two of COP30.
MISCONCEPTIONS: Wang Binbin, founding director of the Climate Future Global Innovation Lab, explained the thinking behind China’s climate strategy – and how mistranslations underplay its ambition – for China News.
60
The number of nuclear reactor units in China, once the newest unit at Fujian Zhangzhou nuclear power plant – the world’s “largest Hualong One nuclear power base” – completes final checks, Jiemian reported. The unit began delivering power to the grid on 22 November.
New science
Climate warming and forest expansion significantly enhance China’s forest methane sink
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
China’s forest methane sink “significantly increased” over 1982-2020, according to new research. The paper used a database of “forest methane fluxes” to produce a map of changes in forest methane uptake, finding that rising temperatures, decreasing soil moisture and forest expansion were the main drivers of the increased methane sink. The authors said their study “highlights the positive contribution of climate warming-drying and afforestation to methane sink enhancement”.
Quantifying global climate change impacts on daily record-breaking temperature events in China over the past six decades
International Journal of Climatology
A new study found that summer record-breaking high-temperature events occurred more frequently in China than “theoretically predicted”, while winter record-breaking low-temperature events occurred less frequently. The authors carried out statistical analysis of record-breaking events, using daily surface-air temperature data, collected over 1960-2023 from around 2,300 meteorological stations across China. They found a “more pronounced acceleration” in the frequency of high-temperature record-breaking events after the year 2020.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 27 November 2025: COP30 wraps; Climate and critical minerals at G20; Coal use up appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 27 November 2025: COP30 wraps; Climate and critical minerals at G20; Coal use up
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