The World Bank has scrapped its headline climate finance target under pressure from the Trump administration, but experts believe the survival of its wider climate programme should preserve support for clean energy and resilience in developing nations.

Following tense negotiations between its government shareholders, the global lender announced this week it would extend its Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) while “retiring” its commitment to direct 45% of its financing to projects with climate benefits – a target it has already met.

“It could have been a lot worse,” said Danny Scull, a senior policy advisor at think-tank E3G. “I would have loved to see the most ambitious outcome possible, but it is far less likely we’ll see a scenario where the bank all of a sudden reverses its current trajectory and starts delivering less on climate,” he added. 

Introduced in 2021, the CCAP has been credited with overhauling the World Bank’s approach to climate finance after years of criticism over the development finance institution’s lukewarm support for cutting planet-heating emissions and building resilience to extreme weather and rising seas.

Since the CCAP began, the World Bank’s climate finance nearly doubled to $39.2 billion in 2025, with 48% of its financing showing climate “co-benefits” and exceeding the target first set at COP28. 

US attack partially rebuffed

With the CCAP due to lapse at the end of June, the US – the World Bank’s largest shareholder – mounted a campaign for the lender to axe the programme entirely. Last April, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly welcomed the plan’s upcoming expiration, urging the bank to “shift its myopic focus on climate” and abandon its “distortionary” 45% climate finance target. 

But Washington was left increasingly isolated during protracted negotiations in recent months as both European governments and a wide-ranging coalition of developing countries held firm on the plan’s extension, sources with knowledge of the discussions told Climate Home News.

In May, executive directors representing a bloc of nearly 100 countries, including China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Russia, sent a letter to the World Bank’s board requesting the CCAP be extended and calling for an independent review of the programme.

While the US had previously seemed unwilling to compromise with its European counterparts, that intervention got it to “back off from its most extreme positions”, E3G’s Scull said.

Focus on “outcomes”

In its statement on Monday, the World Bank Group said it would place less weight on the amount of money flowing into projects with climate benefits and shift its focus to “outcomes”, including indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions avoided and the number of people better shielded from climate risks.

The UK’s international development minister, Jenny Chapman, said in a post on LinkedIn this week that the extension of the CCAP is “a critical step forward”, adding that the stronger emphasis on results “is essential to ensure maximum impact, and the UK will hold the Bank to account to ensure delivery”.

Despite ditching its headline goal, the international lender is still expected to keep counting the volumes of climate finance for the vast majority of its activities. That’s because the individual entities belonging to the group continue to have their own climate targets embedded in their current mandates. 

World Bank climate funding greens African hotels while fishermen sink

For example, the International Development Association (IDA), which supports the world’s poorest nations, has committed to providing 45% of its funding to climate-related activities until 2028. And its larger lending arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), should keep aiming for 30% of its financing to have climate benefits. 

Joe Thwaites, a climate finance expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said these targets “can be a backstop against the bottom falling out”. “Client countries are emphasising that they want to see more investments in clean energy and resilience,” he added. 

No major change expected

The World Bank’s provision of climate finance is also crucial for wealthy countries’ efforts to meet a commitment to provide $300 billion a year for developing countries by 2035 under the new UN climate goal agreed at COP29 in 2024. 

That year, multilateral development banks (MDBs) accounted for around half of all climate finance provided by developed countries under the previous $100-billion-a-year goal, according to calculations by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 

UK development minister Chapman said this week that the bank “must continue to meet the expectations of the wider international community, including those set out at COP29”. There, MDBs said that by 2030, their annual joint climate financing for low- and middle-income countries would reach an estimated $120 billion.

Fractious COP29 lands $300bn climate finance goal, dashing hopes of the poorest

Rajneesh Bhuee, just transition lead at campaign group Recourse, said it was a “blow” that the World Bank’s headline target had been dropped, but she doesn’t expect to see climate financing reducing – at least in the short term. 

“This is the [bank] management’s way of alleviating pressure from the US and ensuring they can have some sort of calm internally,” she told Climate Home News.

Thwaites said shareholder countries should hold the bank’s leadership accountable for delivering what countries have “agreed and need” on climate action.

“If World Bank climate finance does start to fall, donors should focus their support on other international financial institutions that continue to prioritise climate,” he added.

IMF also steps back from climate focus

Regional development banks outside of the Americas may be under less pressure to water down their climate mission. But the World Bank’s sister institution – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – has seen its enthusiasm for climate action ebb, according to a report released in June by its official watchdog, the Independent Evaluation Office.

The report said that in 2021, the fund placed great emphasis on tackling climate change, as shown by its flagship climate strategy published that year and the establishment of the Resilience and Security Trust in 2022.

But in the last year or so, it found “decreasing emphasis on climate-related issues” which coincided with IMF cost-cutting, “emerging geopolitical challenges” and reduced support for climate action from some unnamed IMF member countries.

Last year, US finance minister Bessent accused the IMF of “mission creep”, accusing it of spending too much time on climate action, gender and social issues. 

The evaluation report found that the focus on climate change among the IMF’s management and executive board has weakened, and its flagship reports have not included any climate-related chapters since 2023. IMF head Kristalina Georgieva and other managers mentioned climate-related terms in speeches and statements to the board far less in 2025 than the preceding years, it noted. 

While most of the nearly 700 IMF’s staff surveyed welcomed the swing away from climate work, others bemoaned it and felt “self censored” when working to promote awareness of the risks of climate change to the global economy – which the IMF is tasked with protecting.

The post World Bank’s climate work can endure without finance target, experts say appeared first on Climate Home News.

World Bank’s climate work can endure without finance target, experts say

UK newspapers have already published 63 editorials this year calling for more oil and gas extraction in the North Sea, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

The national outlets, including the Sun, the Daily Telegraph and the Times, argue that the nation “needs” more North Sea drilling to provide “home-sourced oil and gas” amid a “full-blown energy crisis”.

These newspapers seek to blame energy secretary Ed Miliband’s “net-zero crusade” for curbing UK fossil-fuel production – despite supplies dwindling for decades before he took the role.

The push for North Sea drilling in newspaper editorials – considered a publication’s formal “voice” – is part of a wider rejection of net-zero policies by the UK’s right-leaning press.

Figures ranging from ex-Labour prime minister Tony Blair to hard-right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage have repeated similar arguments that more drilling will “boost” the UK economy.

Even US president Donald Trump has weighed in, attributing, in part, the resignation of Keir Starmer as UK prime minister to him “fail[ing] badly” on North Sea oil.

Despite these claims, experts say trying to extract the last barrels of domestic oil and gas would have no impact on people’s energy bills and very little effect on energy security.

More drilling

North Sea oil and gas production is a highly politically charged issue in the UK, especially under the current Labour government.

When Labour won the general election in 2024, the new government committed to a “phased and responsible” transition away from fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.

As part of this pledge, it ruled out issuing new exploration licences for oil and gas. Since then, the government has allowed some “tiebacks”, where new drilling is undertaken close to existing sites.

Roughly 90% of the fossil fuels that are likely to be extracted in the North Sea have already been burned. North Sea oil and gas extraction was, therefore, already on a clear downward trajectory long before Labour came to power, having dropped 75% between 2000 and 2024.

Nevertheless, many newspapers have relentlessly called for more oil and gas production, framing the Labour policy as “self-destructive” and compromised by “green ideology”.

This has ramped up significantly in 2026. Just six months into the year, newspapers have already published 63 pro-North Sea editorials, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. This is more than double the number published in 2025, as shown in the figure below.

Right-leaning newspapers have led this campaign, with the Sun alone publishing 25 editorials, while the Daily Telegraph and the Times have published 10 each.

‘Full-blown energy crisis’

The biggest surge in pro-North Sea drilling editorials came in March, as the Iran war escalated and a global energy crisis began to take shape. Newspapers published 24 such editorials that month, despite the crisis largely arising from the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.

The Daily Express said the UK needed more “home-sourced oil and gas” and the Daily Mail highlighted the “perverse limit on domestic fossil-fuel production”.

As the weeks progressed, the Sun lamented price rises and potential fuel shortages, proposing North Sea drilling as a solution to the “full-blown energy crisis”.

Yet, UK oil and gas is sold by private companies on the open market at international rates. This means UK consumers have no particular right to the fuels or control over the prices they are bought for.

The Sun claimed – without evidence – that if the North Sea had been prioritised, the UK “might just have the cheapest electricity in the world”. It also said net-zero “forces us to spend billions” on imports.

In fact, the UK’s high energy prices are primarily the result of its reliance on gas to generate electricity.

The nation is reliant on oil and gas imports, in part, because the North Sea is a “mature basin” that saw its output collapse long before the UK even had a net-zero target.

Renewables and low-carbon technologies – often dismissed by the same newspapers – are expected to have a far greater impact on cutting imports than new drilling ever could.

Miliband’s ‘crusade’

Much of the criticism by these newspapers of Labour’s North Sea stance is tied to their highly personal criticism of Miliband. Of the 63 editorials arguing for more drilling, nearly three-quarters also attacked him as a “net-zero zealot” on a “green crusade”.

The Times said the energy and net-zero secretary was pursuing a “masochistic policy” by not expanding North Sea drilling and that he had “cloaked his zealotry in spurious rationality”.

This all fits with a broader trend that has seen right-leaning newspapers launch frequent, personal attacks on Miliband.

In the roughly two years since Labour won the election, giving the government a clear mandate for its net-zero policies, there have been around 230 editorials criticising Miliband.

(These have redoubled in recent days, amid rumours that he may be made chancellor under Andy Burnham, if the new Makerfield MP becomes the next prime minister, as is widely expected.)

Such attacks have increasingly spilled over into politics. Conservative shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho has accused Miliband of “fanaticism” and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has even likened him to a “Nigerian military dictator”.

The newspapers have also interpreted any support for North Sea drilling as a rebuke of Miliband. Both the Sun and the Daily Telegraph welcomed an essay by Blair, in which he argued that “we must…use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources”.

The Sun heralded Blair as Labour’s “most successful election winner” and said he “nailed the chief mistakes” of the current government, including:

“Allowing Ed Miliband free rein on net-zero – especially the banning of North Sea drilling.”

Several of the newspapers have also thrown their support behind the Conservative party, as it frames itself as an anti-net-zero, pro-fossil fuel alternative to Labour.

The Daily Mail described Badenoch’s proposal to drill more in the North Sea as a “concrete plan”, while the Sun – in an echo of Trump’s slogan – has simply urged her to “drill, Kemi, drill”.

Media reaction: How climate change intensified Europe’s record-breaking June heat

Extreme weather

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26.06.26

Media reaction: UK and Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May heat and climate change

Extreme weather

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28.05.26

Analysis: How Chinese media is covering the Iran energy crisis

China Policy

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07.04.26

Q&A: What does the Iran war mean for the energy transition and climate action?

International policy

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10.03.26

The post Analysis: UK newspapers have already printed 63 editorials in 2026 backing North Sea drilling  appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Analysis: UK newspapers have already printed 63 editorials in 2026 backing North Sea drilling 

We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

Heatwave scorches European agriculture

‘PUSHED TO THEIR LIMITS’: The record-breaking heatwave that swept through much of western and central Europe in recent weeks had myriad impacts across the continent, reported Carbon Brief. Martin Lines, chief executive of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, explained: “Prolonged high temperatures place huge stress on livestock, dry out soils and reduce crop resilience, all while putting more pressure on nature.” The Times noted that “refrigerated warehouses were pushed to their limits” by the high temperatures.

POULTRY PROBLEMS: “At least several hundred thousand poultry” perished in France due to the extreme temperatures, the head of a French poultry-industry group told Reuters. A separate Reuters article said that “cows and pigs were suffering from heat stress” in Belgium, “which has raised concerns about milk and meat production”. Meanwhile, UK government data obtained by Carbon Brief showed that “twice as many animals died due to heat stress en route to slaughterhouses” amid record heat in 2025, compared to 2024.

FIRE AND ICE: The heatwave also had widespread impacts on the natural world. A wildfire scorched 200 hectares of moorland in Derbyshire, reported the Times. Derbyshire’s fire service said: “The ground is tinder dry and the slightest spark…could soon escalate to a major incident.” Agence France-Presse reported that “Swiss glaciers are set to lose an enormous amount of ice”, noting that this is the “second-earliest arrival on record of the tipping point known as ‘glacier-loss day’”.

UK 2050 farm plan

FARM CHANGES: The UK government launched a 2050 “farming roadmap” for England, setting out aims to make agriculture more resilient to climate change, increase domestic food production and boost nature recovery. The plan is “full of ambition”, but “falls short” on action and delivery, said National Farmers’ Union president Tom Bradshaw in a statement. Meanwhile, the government also announced £47m in funding for peatland protection and restoration schemes.

FOREST LOSS: UK companies may soon be required to “check that their supply chains are free from products linked to illegal land clearances”, reported the Times. The government revived plans for anti-deforestation rules for products such as soya, palm oil, cocoa and rubber, said the newspaper. The rules will initially target goods linked to illegal deforestation, but later move to a “blanket ‘deforestation-free’ standard”, it noted, adding that similar plans in the EU have been repeatedly delayed.

FRAUGHT FUND: UK energy secretary Ed Miliband was “poised to announce” a £400m commitment to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, but the plan was “shelved over ‘optics concerns’” amid a “bitter row over defence spending”, said the Times. Meanwhile, one of Europe’s oldest and largest trees died after “becoming stressed by a series of hot, dry summers”, reported the Guardian. The Major Oak, which has grown in England’s Sherwood Forest “for at least 1,000 years”, did not produce leaves this year, said the newspaper.

News and views

• OCEAN ACTION: The Our Ocean Conference concluded in Mombasa, Kenya, with more than 300 voluntary commitments from governments, civil-society groups, non-governmental organisations and others, said Carbon Brief. Observers told the outlet that “these pledges must now be backed up by action”. 
• HOT SEAS: Record-high global ocean temperatures in June could lead the world to “uncharted territory”, said the Financial Times. Meanwhile, the Independent reported that a species of sea star thought to be extinct was found off the coast of California. 
• EU PLANS: The European parliament approved rules to allow the use of gene-edited plants, marking a “major shift” in the EU’s approach to modified crops, reported Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Grilled, a new investigative newsletter, said the EU is “considering an overhaul of how it measures methane emissions from livestock”. 
• BRAZIL BLAZES: Last year, fires caused a “significant spike in forest loss” across three areas in Brazil home to Indigenous peoples living in “voluntary isolation”, according to Mongabay. Indigenous leaders told the outlet that fire “affects their productive practices and destroys the biodiversity and vegetation they depend on”.
• DISCLOSURE DISPARITY: The Biodiversity Footprint Company analysed the climate- and biodiversity-related disclosures of “120 of the world’s largest listed companies”. It found that “companies disclose roughly two-thirds of assessed climate information, yet less than one-20th of the equivalent biodiversity information”.
• FRUITLESS: Fruit growers across the US south-western state of Utah “are reporting near-total harvest losses”, reported High Country News. It noted that a warm, dry winter, followed by a “record-breaking spring heatwave”, led orchards to bloom early, but the crop was then “devasta[ed]” by a “series of April freezes”.

Spotlight

‘Up and running immediately’: what’s next for the High Seas Treaty

This week, Carbon Brief speaks to Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, about the High Seas Treaty (also known as the agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, or BBNJ). This interview was conducted at the Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Carbon Brief: What connects BBNJ and climate change?

Rebecca Hubbard: The high seas cover half of the planet, or two-thirds of the global ocean. The ocean is essential for many things, including producing oxygen, absorbing carbon and absorbing the enormous amount of excessive heat we’ve produced as a result of burning fossil fuels. The ocean, including the high seas, cannot perform its critical climate-regulating role without healthy populations, without being healthy, and – at the moment – the high seas are not protected.

In fact, only around 1% of the high seas are protected and they’re under immense pressure from shipping, fishing, pollution [and] climate change – both heating and acidification. The High Seas Treaty, for the first time ever, gives us the legal framework to be able to protect the high seas. By being able to protect and better manage the high seas, we are assuring its critical role in protecting us from the worst of climate change.

CB: What were your hopes or expectations coming into this conference?

RH: My hopes were that we would get strong engagement and leadership from African states in the High Seas Treaty and we have seen that, which is really fantastic. There’s been a lot of support, a lot of leadership from African governments on the treaty and on their ambitions to not just complete their ratification processes, but to also start looking at creating marine protected areas. They want to be engaged and involved in leading and delivering those processes and I think that’s really exciting. It’s a great opportunity for the whole world. We can really get some exciting collaborations.

CB: What has been missing from the conversation here?

RH: I actually don’t think much has been missing, because I think there’s been a lot of different conversations. There’s been conversations around the need for finance to implement the treaty and this is something that’s common across all multilateral environmental agreements – certainly no stranger to the climate process. We’re going to need this huge amount of resources to implement the treaty. Where is that money coming from?

CB: We’ve got almost exactly six months until COP1 [the first Conference of the Parties for the High Seas Treaty scheduled for January 2027]. What needs to happen between now and then?

RH: We need as many more countries to ratify as possible. We hope that well over 100 countries will be party to the agreement by COP1, so that they can be at the decision-making table. We need countries to really prepare for that COP, so that they’re ready to really efficiently make the decisions founded off all of the work that we’re done through the PrepCom [preparatory commission] meetings [and] so that we can get the rules of procedure and the subsidiary bodies that are going to be essential to an effective implementation up and running immediately.

There is so much to do and we do not have time to waste with circular negotiations, rehashing resolved issues. We also need countries to continue to prepare for implementation, particularly back in their capitals – establishing inter-ministerial committees, so that you have a cohesive and united approach from governments that reflects a whole-of-government approach. That’s what’s going to be essential for effective implementation.

Watch, read, listen

‘ELEPHANT MARSH’: Mongabay delved into the knock-on effects of a 2023 cyclone on farming households living in Malawi wetlands.

REEF RESILIENCE: In bioGraphic, journalist Claudia Geib explored the unexpected resilience of a coral reef in Miami that is home to some critically endangered species.

TRUMP VS ALGAE: The Guardian Science Weekly podcast discussed the causes of algal blooms, in light of the green algae saga at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington DC.

FRAUGHT FARMING: A century-old state law protects the water rights of just a handful of users on the Deschutes River at the expense of the region’s farmers, said Oregon Public Broadcasting.

New science

• Growing oil crops, such as oil palm and coconuts, potentially caused the long-term loss of 1.5% of global plant and animal species between 1995 and 2020, with largest impacts in the tropics | Nature Food 
• “Climate-smart agriculture” is improving household resilience in Ethiopia, but scaling its benefits requires addressing “local realities and inequalities” | Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
• Drought has been linked to “abundance declines” and range shifts in 40% of 37 birds species living in the deserts of the western US | Conservation Letters

In the diary

• 1-3 July: UN Food and Agriculture Organization global conference on “smart farming” | Rome (webcast available)
• 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council | Kingston, Jamaica
• 14 July: Launch of the “state of food security and nutrition in the world” report | New York City
• 27 July-1 August: Scientific and technical subsidiary body meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity | Nairobi, Kenya

Cropped 17 June 2026: Coral reef ‘hope’ | Ocean talks | Plant flowering times ‘shift’

Cropped

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17.06.26

Cropped 3 June 2026: Highway through the Amazon | El Niño impact | State of CO2 removal

Cropped

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03.06.26

Cropped 20 May 2026: Deforestation roadmap | Melanesian Ocean Summit | Returning pet parrots to the wild

Cropped

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20.05.26

Cropped 6 May 2026: Forest loss falls | Deforestation regulations | Saving ‘India’s Galapagos’

Cropped

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06.05.26

The post Cropped 1 July 2026: Heatwave scorches Europe | UK 2050 farm plan | What’s next for the High Seas Treaty appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 1 July 2026: Heatwave scorches Europe | UK 2050 farm plan | What’s next for the High Seas Treaty