Developing countries are receiving just a fraction of the international finance they need to prepare citizens and adapt infrastructure for escalating climate impacts.
That is according to the latest adaptation gap report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which calculates that developing nations will need more than $310bn annually between now and 2035 to prepare for the impacts of climate change.
And yet, in 2023, developed nations provided just $26bn in international adaptation finance to developing nations, according to the report.
UNEP warns that, under current trends, developed nations are on track to miss their goal – agreed at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow – of doubling 2019 international adaptation finance by 2025.
It cautions that countries’ more recent climate-finance pledge for 2035 – the new collective quantified goal (NCGQ) – will be “insufficient” to meet adaptation finance needs.
The UN report – entitled, “Running on empty: The world is gearing up for climate resilience without the money to get there” – also explores how countries are integrating adaptation priorities into national climate plans, policies and practices.
It finds that 87% of countries have at least one national adaptation plan or strategy in place, but warns that gaps remain in the implementation of measures.
Inger Andersen, the executive director of UNEP, says: “Even amid tight budgets and competing priorities, the reality is simple: if we do not invest in adaptation now, we will face escalating costs every year.”
Below, Carbon Brief summarises some of the key takeaways from the report.
- Developed countries are on track to miss their 2025 adaptation finance goal
- Developing nations’ adaptation finance needs are 12 times greater than current flows
- A majority of countries have a national adaptation plan or strategy in place
- Implementation of adaptation measures is progressing – but gaps remain
- The NCQG is insufficient on its own to meet adaptation finance needs
Developed countries are on track to miss their 2025 adaptation finance goal
Climate change adaptation refers to a range of measures that reduce society’s and infrastructure’s vulnerability to climate change, from planting crop varieties that can withstand greater heat through to building stronger defences against floods.
Spending from the public funds of developed nations is a key source of finance for these actions in developing nations, especially for low-income countries that are vulnerable to climate impacts.
Under Article 9 of the Paris Agreement, developed countries agreed to achieve a “balance” in the amount of climate finance raised for emissions reduction and adaptation. However, more money has been raised for cutting emissions than preparing for climate impacts.
UNEP’s adaptation gap report notes that, in 2023, the amount of public money channelled to developing countries from richer nations for adaptation measures fell.
In total, developed countries raised $25.9bn in international adaptation finance – marking a decline on the $27.9bn recorded in 2022.
The report authors attribute the fall to a decline in funding from multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, which provided more than half – 57% – of international adaptation finance.
The table below shows how adaptation finance provided by developed countries for developing countries (orange) dipped in 2023 – despite an uptick in climate finance as a whole.
The UN warns that, if current trends continue, developed nations are set to miss their goal of doubling 2019 adaptation finance flows by 2025.
This goal – set out in the Glasgow Climate Pact agreed at the COP26 climate summit in 2021 – commits developed nations to providing $40bn in adaptation funding for developing nations by 2025.
Official climate-finance figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2025 will not be available for several years. However, the report notes that, over 2019-23, international adaptation finance grew at a compound rate of 7% – falling short of the 12% rate required to meet the Glasgow Climate Pact goal.
Cuts to international aid budgets since 2023 are also threatening the Glasgow Climate Pact goal, according to the report authors. They note that, globally, foreign aid fell by 9% in 2024 and predict that reductions announced in 2025 are “likely” to lead to a further 9-17% decline.
Meanwhile, countries’ more recent pledge to help raise $300bn a year by 2035 for both tackling and adapting to climate change – set out in the new collective quantified goal for climate finance (NCQG), agreed last year at COP29 in Baku – is also under threat, according to the report.
In the introduction of the report, UNEP’s Anderson writes:
“While the numbers for 2024 and 2025 are not yet available, one thing is clear: unless trends in adaptation financing do not turn around, which currently seems unlikely, the Glasgow Climate Pact goal will not be achieved, the NCQG will not be achieved and many more people will suffer needlessly.”
‘Adaptation investment trap’
The report also breaks down international adaptation finance in 2023 by funding type. It finds that that 70% was either grants, which allow countries to address climate impacts without exacerbating debt, or “concessional” loans, which are provided at below market rate.
However, it notes that “non-consessional” finance – which is provided at, or near, market rates – is on the rise, growing at an annual compound rate of 7% over 2019-23. In 2023, non-concessional loans exceeded concessional ones for the first time, the report notes.
The “increasing proportion” of non-concessional finance raises “long-term affordability and equity” concerns, the authors warn. They also point to the risk of an “adaptation investment trap” – whereby rising climate disasters increase developing countries’ “indebtedness”, which subsequently makes it harder for them to invest in adaptation.
The report also finds that loans and other forms of “debt instruments” comprised “58% on average” of international adaptation finance in 2022-23.
The NCQG text highlights the need for “concessional” and “non-debt creating” finance.
(This came after strong calls from many developing countries to exclude “non-concessional” loans – which result in wealth flowing back to the donor countries as loan repayments and interest – as a form of climate finance. Analysis has shown that many developing countries are spending more on servicing debts than they receive in climate finance.)
Elsewhere, the authors also find that funding for new adaptation projects through UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) funds (the adaptation fund, green climate fund (GCF) and the least developed countries fund (LDCF) and special climate change fund (SCCF) managed by the Global Environment Facility) saw a “large spike” in 2024, with grants reaching around $920m.
However, they note that the recent increase “may not be a trend, with financial constraints likely to rise beyond 2025”.
Developing nations’ adaptation finance needs are 12 times greater than current flows
While previous UN adaptation gap reports have investigated adaptation finance shortfalls through to 2030, this latest analysis extends its estimates through to 2035.
This is in light of the NCQG, which states that developed countries should “take the lead” in raising “at least $300bn” a year for climate action in developing countries by 2035.
The report calculates that the costs of adaptation by 2035 for developing countries sit in a “plausible central range” of $310-365bn annually. It explains that it has arrived at this range based on “two lines of evidence”:
- A modelled estimate of the additional costs of adaptation, calculated using “global sectoral models with national-level resolution”. This exercise pins the cost of adaptation for developing countries at $310bn a year by 2035 under an intermediate emissions scenario.
- An analysis of the climate finance needs set out by developing countries in 97 national adaptation plans and nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC – with “extrapolation” of this data to all 155 developing countries. This results in the upper figure of $365bn per year up to 2035.
The chart below shows the disparity between existing finance flows (dark blue bar) and adaptation finance needs and modelled costs (red bars).
With current levels of international adaptation finance estimated at $26bn a year, the report calculates that developing countries are facing an “adaptation finance gap” in the range of $284-339bn per year by 2035.
As such, it calculates that the adaptation finance needs of developing countries by 2035 are “12-14 times” as much as current finance flows.
Of the public adaptation finance that has been issued, a higher proportion currently goes to the countries most exposed to climate hazards, according to the report. It notes that, in 2022-23, $10.4bn and $1.2bn was allocated to least-developed countries (LDCs), including Afghanistan and Rwanda, and small island developing states (SIDS), such as Tuvalua and the Marshall Islands, respectively.
Nevertheless, finance provided to these climate-vulnerable nations is still “modest relative to needs”, the report warns. It estimates that the adaptation finance needs of LDCs and SIDS are $50bn a year.
It also finds that per-capita adaptation finance to both country groups was lower in 2022-23 than previous years, at $9 for LDCs and $20 in SIDs.
A majority of countries have a national adaptation plan or strategy in place
Under the framework for the global goal on adaptation agreed at COP28, countries said they would put in place “national adaptation plans, policy instruments and planning processes and/or strategies” by 2030.
To assess the “global status” of national adaptation planning, the authors of the report tracked the publication of national plans, strategies and policies for adaptation in each country.
According to the report, the first national adaptation policy was published in 2002. It finds that there was a “notable acceleration” in countries developing national adaptation planning instruments over 2011-21, but says that, since then, progress has “slowed significantly”.
According to the report, 87% of countries had at least one national adaptation policy, strategy or plan in place as of 31 August 2025. However, 36 of these 172 countries’ plans are “expired” or “outdated”.
Meanwhile, 25 countries had no national adaptation plan at all, according to the report. It explains that these are “predominantly developing countries, suggesting that financial, technical and human resource constraints inhibit national adaptation planning”.
Of these countries without plans, 21 have “initiated a process to develop” a national adaptation plan, according to the report. However, it notes that many of these countries have “been in this process for a long time”.
The chart below shows the percentage of countries from different “country classifications” that have no national adaptation planning instrument in place (red), an expired adaptation planning instrument in place (yellow) and a valid instrument in place (green).
The report also discusses different types of adaptation “mainstreaming”. This is defined by the report authors as the “integration of adaptation objectives and climate risk considerations into the established functions, policy and practice of government institutions to build climate resilience”.
The authors list six different mainstreaming strategies. For example, “directed” mainstreaming means “dedicating funding, staff capacity-building and resources specifically to adaptation, including through financial frameworks and fiscal processes such as budget planning”.
Another example is “regulatory mainstreaming”, which means “modifying the formal or informal policy instruments such as legislation, frameworks, strategies and plans by integrating adaptation”.
According to the report, only regulatory mainstreaming is captured by the framework for the global goal on adaptation’s target related to planning.
The report also outlines the different “levels” of mainstreaming. These range from “prioritisation”, which it describes as a strong level of mainstreaming in which adaptation takes precedence over existing policy goals, to “coordination”, in which adaptation “is recognised as a policy goal, but is secondary to existing priorities”.
However, the report says there is “presently no agreement on how to measure and assess the outcomes of mainstreaming”.
Implementation of adaptation measures is progressing – but gaps remain
Under the UN “enhanced transparency framework”, countries are required to submit information about their climate progress in biennial transparency reports (BTR). The first report was due at the end of 2024.
The adaptation gap report calls BTRs the “most comprehensive national source of information on adaptation implementation worldwide available”.
The report says that 105 countries had submitted BRTs as of 31 August 2025, of which 94 include details about adaptation
The authors find that 75 of these BTRs mention gender in relation to adaptation. However, only 4% of the results reported through BTRs are directly related to “gender and social inclusion”.
The report also highlights the “uneven coverage” of BTRs globally. According to the report, 88% of developed countries have submitted a BTR, compared to only 37% of developing countries.
It adds that there are further inequalities within the bracket of “developing countries”. Only 21% of SIDS and 14% of LDCs have submitted BTRs with “detailed information on climate impacts and adaptation”, according to the report.
This could “indicate that preparing national reports such as BTRs is most burdensome for the countries with the least capacity”, the report authors suggest.
The map below shows the countries that have submitted a BTR including “detailed information on climate impacts and adaptation” (blue) and those that have not (grey). For the former category, darker blue indicates that the country’s BTR includes more segments of text (data points) about climate impacts and adaptation.
The report finds that countries are “disproportionately reporting on climate hazards, systems at risk, climate change impacts and adaptation priorities” in BTRs. Meanwhile, only 15% and 7% of the data points in the map above discuss adaptation “actions” and “results” respectively.
In total, the report identifies 1,640 “adaptation actions” across 68 BTRs. It says that 23% of these are related to “biodiversity and ecosystems”, 18% to “infrastructure and human settlements”, 16% to “water and sanitation” and 14% to “food and agriculture”.
However, it finds that actions targeting health and poverty alleviation or livelihoods are each accounting for only 5%, while those addressing cultural heritage are “nearly absent” and account for less than 1% of all reported actions.
In a separate analysis, the report explores documents submitted by developing countries to the UNFCCC to understand how adaptation needs break down by sector. It finds that the 55 plans submitted by developing countries which include “detailed sectoral information” reveal that the agriculture and food sector and water supply are “common priorities across all regions, though they vary in terms of their relative importance”.
The NCQG is insufficient on its own to meet adaptation finance needs
At COP29 last year, developed nations pledged to raise at least $300bn per year under the NCQG for both mitigation and adaptation.
The report says that, although the target “appears significantly higher than the previous goal for developed countries to mobilise $100bn by 2020 for developing countries”, it is still “clearly insufficient” to meet adaptation finance needs in 2035.
The report sets out two reasons for this.
First, the authors explain that the $300bn target is not adjusted for inflation. It says that adaptation costs for developing countries are currently estimated at $310-365bn annually until 2035, based on costs in 2023. However, when adjusting for an inflation rate of 3% per year for the next decade, this number rises to US$440–520bn by 2035.
(In an analysis published last year, Carbon Brief noted that the $300bn target does not account for inflation.)
The plot below shows the effect of inflation on adaptation finance needs (dark blue) and modelled costs (light blue). It also shows the NCQG goal, accounting for inflation, based on 2023 costs (red) and without inflation based on 2035 costs (pink). It also shows the NCQG goal of $300bn by 2035 (yellow).
Second, it notes that the NCQG covers both mitigation – namely, efforts to cut emissions – and adaptation. So far, it warns that no “subgoal” has been agreed to determine how much money goes to each.
The report authors have also developed two scenarios exploring how much the NCQG would bridge the adaptation finance gap, if the $300bn target is met, both of which account for inflation. These are:
- A “minimum adaptation scenario”. The authors assume that 26% of the NCQG money will be used for adaptation finance as this is the percentage of all international climate finance that was spent on adaptation over 2011-20. Based on historical proportioning of finance, $3bn of the resulting $78bn this would go to SIDS and the rest to $25bn to LDCs.
- A “maximum adaptation scenario”. Under this scenario, the Glasgow Pact and Baku to Belém Roadmap are achieved, meaning that adaptation funding reaches $40bn annually by 2025 and $120bn annually by 2030. They also assume that adaptation finance grows by 7% per year, reaching $166bn by 2035 – more than half of the NCGQ finance goal of $300bn. Under this scenario, SIDS would receive $6bn in adaptation funding by 2035 and LDCs would receive $55bn.
The report concludes that, even if the NCQG is achieved, a “significant adaptation finance gap” is likely to remain in 2035 “regardless of the share of international public climate finance that will flow towards adaptation”.
Meanwhile, the report notes that private-sector finance can help “fill the adaptation finance gap” – but cautions that its overall contribution is likely to be “modest”.
The “realistic” potential for private-sector investment, according to the report, is $50bn per year by 2035 – a figure it estimates would cover 15-20% of overall estimated needs.
Reaching this level of private-sector finance will require “targeted policy action” given that current private-sector flows to “publicly identified” adaptation priorities in 2023 are estimated at $5bn, it notes.
Furthermore, UNEP warns that many proposed approaches for raising private-sector funds for adaptation measures pass “most of the costs of adaptation back to developing countries or households”.
The post UN report: Five charts which explain the ‘gap’ in finance for climate adaptation appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UN report: Five charts which explain the ‘gap’ in finance for climate adaptation
CCL Monterey was one of many chapters who planned or participated in a special ‘Sun Day’ outreach event in September 2025.
Celebrating clean power and community outreach on Sun Day
By Flannery Winchester
CCL chapters around the country have been busy with outreach this fall. Lots of this outreach rode the wave of public enthusiasm for “Sun Day” — a nationwide day of action celebrating and educating people about the power of clean energy.
Our volunteers’ creativity and enthusiasm shined as brightly as ever at these local events.
Rally gets TV time in Asheville
Twelve CCL volunteers from CCL’s Western North Carolina chapter tabled and clipboarded at the Asheville Rally for Clean Energy at the local Pack Square Pavilion. “We had a great day!” says Don Kraus, WNC chapter leader and CCL State Coordinator for North Carolina. “We collected 84 constituent comment forms with 19 new members joining.”
Don gave a 7-minute speech at the event and even had the opportunity to give a short TV interview to Asheville’s WLOS. “This was a case of ‘right place, right time’ — and being willing to say hello to the camera man!” Don jokes. “Since I had just done my speech, I had my talking points down.”
Climate community turned out in Monterey
CCL’s Monterey chapter in California felt so inspired by the Sun Day concept that they organized their own event for their community.
“We had 12 different groups join us on Monterey’s Window on the Bay park, including solar contractors, heat pump installers, environmental groups, advocacy groups and a church,” said chapter co-leader David Prina. “We had a good turn out with kids activities, music, a choral performance and face painter.”
A local TV station, KSBW, attended and interviewed David and chapter member Sandy Hoag, who was quoted in the broadcast speaking about the steadily decreasing prices for solar energy. David said on air, “Sun Day is a day of support for a healthier, more affordable future where solar and renewables are a big part of the grid.”
“We’re glad we did it!” David said. “We had a great time organizing this in a very short two months, and we felt like the community here in Monterey showed up in support.”
Palouse plugs in
CCL Palouse, which serves a region stretching into Idaho and Washington, hosted an Electric Transportation Fair on Sun Day.
Chloe and Aspen
“Local dealerships and our members brought a range of EVs and hybrids, and a bike shop brought a wide selection of electric bikes to share with the public,” shares chapter co-leader Judy Meuth. “We provided information about the vehicles and about the federal tax credits immediately available. Live music, food trucks, and kids activities rounded out the event. A couple hundred people showed up to learn and play!”
From Sun Day to the district office
Betsy and Nancy
CCL Reno tabled at their local Sun Day Solar Festival, where chapter members Chloe, Aspen, Brian, Janet, Betsy and Michelle greeted festival-goers with a smile and gathered 29 constituent letters. Chloe is a recent graduate from University of Nevada – Reno who has attended several of CCL’s events on Capitol Hill in D.C., and Aspen is one of CCL Reno’s newest members.
At their monthly chapter meeting, CCL Reno gathered three more letters, for a total of 32. Chapter members Betsy and Nancy then delivered the letters to the district office of Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV-02). (Shout out to Betsy for founding CCL’s Reno chapter nearly 10 years ago!)
This is one of the key ingredients in CCL’s secret sauce — in addition to building all of these community connections around climate change, we also bring those community voices directly to lawmakers, building more and more support for positive change.
The post Celebrating clean power and community outreach on Sun Day appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 24 October 2025: EU 2040 climate goal progress; Shipping industry carbon price delayed; Europe’s indigenous people take Finland to court
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
EU leaders agreed climate goal ‘truce’
‘BREAKTHROUGH’: EU leaders have reached a “breakthrough” on climate issues that “increases the likelihood” that the bloc will be able to sign off on its 2040 climate goal before COP30 in November, reported Bloomberg. Leaders reached a “truce” after agreeing to a raft of “enabling conditions”, designed to support carmakers and other energy-intensive industries through a “green transition”, it added.
‘COMPETING GOALS’: Reuters reported that leaders agreed “to proceed with the 2040 target, but [to] leave details for ministers to approve at a 4 November meeting”. It added that the European Commission had “promised to amend some climate measures” to win support from member states, including “controlling” carbon prices in the upcoming market for heat and transport fuels. France24 noted that leaders discussed how to manage the bloc’s “competing goals” of supporting business while playing a “lead role in the climate fight”.
Shipping industry delayed carbon price
NEGOTIATIONS COLLAPSE: Just hours after the previous issue of DeBriefed was published, member states of the UN’s International Maritime Organization agreed to delay a vote on whether to formally adopt a global carbon price for shipping by a year, reported the National. It said the negotiations “collapsed under US pressure”, meaning they were unable to finalise a deal agreed in April that would have “made shipping the first global industry subject to a carbon pricing system”. [Carbon Brief covered the deal and what it would have meant for shipping emissions at the time.]
‘MAJOR VICTORY’: The Financial Times described the delay as a “major victory” for US president Donald Trump’s “campaign to block a climate agreement for the global shipping industry” and “part of the wider Trump administration drive to sell more of its oil, coal and gas”. According to Agence France-Presse, the UN called the delay a “missed opportunity” and the European Commission said it was “regrettable”
‘REGRETABLE DERAILMENT’: A Financial Times editorial said the outcome was a “regrettable derailment” and “one of Trump’s most successful attempts yet to force all countries, rich and poor, to back his push to prolong the era of fossil fuels”. Elsewhere, US secretary of state Marco Rubio wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal, outlining how the administration had “thwarted the UN’s tax”, dubbing the delay a “diplomatic victory” for the US.
Around the world
- DISASTER ALERTS: A new report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has called for a worldwide disaster alerts system as extreme weather events are leaving millions of people vulnerable, reported Al Jazeera.
- FOREST FUND: The World Bank has agreed to host the Tropical Forest Forever Fund (TFFF), being pushed by the Brazilian COP30 presidency Brazil, according to Folha de São Paulo. Separately, the country’s state-owned oil company Petrobras has been granted permission to drill for oil near the mouth of the Amazon, reported the Guardian.
- ‘GREEN JOBS’: The UK government announced a national clean-energy jobs plan, designed to “create…an extra 400,000 green jobs” in the next five years, the Guardian said. Meanwhile, UK prime minister Keir Starmer made a “last-minute decision” to attend COP30 in Brazil in November, the Financial Times reported.
- ‘BEAUTIFUL CHINA’: After a meeting in Beijing, top Chinese policymakers have listed “building a Beautiful China” as a “primary objective” for the 15th five-year plan covering 2026-2030, said International Energy Net. The concept, described in Carbon Brief’s glossary, covers tackling pollution and meeting China’s carbon neutrality targets..
$101bn
The record-high cost of “climate disasters” in the US in the first half of 2025, according to new research from the Climate Central group reported by the Guardian.
Latest climate research
- Between 1997 and 2021, Antarctic ice shelves saw a decrease in “damaged area” | Nature Climate Change
- Reducing food waste and dietary shifts could help halve emissions related to meat consumption in US cities | Nature Climate Change
- In an “overshoot” scenario, where the world temporarily passes 1.5C of warming, permafrost area may “effectively recover” once temperatures fall, but carbon losses will be “largely irreversible” | Earth System Dynamics
(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 amount of forest being lost around the world has reduced by millions of hectares each year in recent decades, Carbon Brief reported, based on the Global Forest Resources Assessment from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. The report found that an estimated 10.9m hectares (Mha) of land was deforested each year between 2015 and 2025, nearly 7Mha less than the annual loss over 1990-2000. However, as the map above shows, more forest is still lost than gained each year. Between 2015 and 2025, there was an average 6.8Mha of forest growth each year, but 10.9Mha of loss.
Spotlight
The Sámi people take Finland to court
This week, Carbon Brief reports on the launch of a “landmark” legal claim by the Indigenous Sámi people against the government of Finland, focused on the interplay between climate change and cultural traditions.
In June, 33 members of the Muddusjärvi Reindeer Herders’ Cooperative (MPLK), a Sámi community in northern Finland, brought a legal complaint to the UN human rights committee in Geneva.
It alleged that the Finnish government had allowed multiple breaches of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which sets out the right to enjoy one’s culture, family life, non-discrimination and self-determination.
The MPLK has practised “nature-based Sámi reindeer herding” for centuries in Finland, as part of one of three remaining herding communities that use the endangered Inari Sámi language. The Sámi are the only Indigenous people recognised in Europe.
Changing conditions
Within its complaint, the MPLK said it is being dispossessed from land traditionally used for reindeer herding, as a result of climate change and decades of intensive logging by the Finnish state-owned forestry agency Metsähallitus. These have “severely damaged” the land they depend on, the group’s lawyers Hogan Lovells said.
In particular, the loss of lichen-rich, old-growth forests and changes to snow conditions have made it harder for reindeer to access natural food sources, creating an “existential threat” that “places in jeopardy the viability of the MPLK community’s way of life”, according to the complaint.
While there are additional funds provided by the Finnish government to compensate reindeer herders during harsh winters, this does not go far enough, the MPLK argued. For example, herders lost €32m between 2019 and 2020, but the MPLK only received €6m in compensation.
There have already been a number of lawsuits brought by the Sámi people across the Nordic countries, in an effort to protect their lands and traditions.
This includes the Norwegian government having to pay out millions to Sámi reindeer herders, an ongoing case in Sweden and two UN committees finding that Finland had violated Sámi rights to culture and land through mineral exploration permits on their territory.
A new precedent
For the MPLK case, Hogan Lovells are relying on a precedent set at the committee in 2022 in a case brought by an indigenous group in Australia, whereby the government was ordered to compensate Torres Straits islanders who argued that climate change had a direct harmful consequence on their livelihood, culture and traditional ways of life.
Finnish human rights law professor and human rights practitioner Martin Scheinin was involved in that case and is now co-counsel for the MPLK complaint. He told Carbon Brief that he had been “thrilled” by the 2022 outcome:
“The [UN committee] broke [a] new path by focusing on Australia’s adaptation obligations as positive human rights obligations. As the committee also established that the right of minorities and Indigenous peoples to enjoy their own culture includes the right to transmit a distinctive way of life to new and even future generations, it was natural that the Indigenous Sámi people in Finland…want to build upon all these elements in their own case before the same committee.”
A formal response from the Finnish government to the complaint is expected this month.
Watch, read, listen
INDONESIA’S ‘ENERGY PARADOX’: A new episode of the China-Global South Podcast discussed how China sits at the heart of Indonesia’s “energy paradox”.
‘RARE-EARTHS TRAP’: Simon Nixon, former chief leader writer for the Times, wrote on his Substack about how the “west lost” to China, after the country “spent decades laying its rare-earths trap”.
ANIMAL OBSTRUCTION: The latest episode of the Drilled podcast discussed how the animal agriculture industry has – and still does – “obstruct…climate policy”.
Coming up
- 28 October: NDC 3.0 synthesis report
- 28 October: Tanzania, presidential and parliament elections
- 29 October: UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2025
- 29 October: Netherlands, parliamentary elections
- 29 October: UK’s “carbon budget delivery plan”
Pick of the jobs
- Imperial College London, project manager | Salary: £41,005-£45,616pa. Location: London, England.
- UN Food and Agriculture Organization, policy officer (environment and climate change) | Salary: Unknown. Location: Santiago, Chile
- Nature Energy, associate or senior editor | Salary: $80,000-$95,000. Location: New York, US.
- EBRD, analyst, climate risk | Salary: Unknown. Location: London, England.
- Local Storytelling Exchange, freelance associate storytellers | Salary: £12,000 for 60 days. Location: Wales.
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 24 October 2025: EU 2040 climate goal progress; Shipping industry carbon price delayed; Europe’s indigenous people take Finland to court appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The amount of forest lost around the world has reduced by millions of hectares each year in recent decades, but countries are still off track to meet “important” deforestation targets.
These are the findings of the Global Forest Resources Assessment – a major new report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization – which says that an estimated 10.9m hectares (Mha) of land was deforested each year between 2015 and 2025.
This is almost 7Mha less than the amount of annual forest loss over 1990-2000.
Since 1990, the area of forest destroyed each year has halved in South America, although it still remains the region with the highest amount of deforestation.
Europe was the only region in the world where annual forest loss has increased since 1990.
Agriculture has historically been the leading cause of deforestation around the world, but the report notes that wildfires, climate change-fuelled extreme weather, insects and diseases increasingly pose a threat.
The Global Forest Resources Assessment is published every five years. The 2025 report compiles and analyses national forest data from almost every country in the world over 1990-2025.
Carbon Brief has picked out five key findings from the report around deforestation, carbon storage and the amount of forest held within protected areas around the world.
1. Rates of deforestation are declining around the world
Rates of annual deforestation, in thousands of hectares, in South America, Asia, Africa, North and Central America, Oceania and Europe over 1990-2000 (dark blue), 2000-15 (medium blue) and 2015-25 (light blue). Source: Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025
In total, around 489Mha of forest have been lost due to deforestation since 1990, the new report finds. Most of this – 88% – occurred in the tropics.
This breaks down to around 10.9Mha of forest lost each year between 2015 and 2025, a reduction compared to 13.6Mha of loss over 2000-15 and 17.6Mha over 1990-2000.
Deforestation refers to the clearing of a forest, typically to repurpose the land for agriculture or use the trees for wood.
The chart above shows that South America experiences the most forest loss each year, although annual deforestation levels have halved from 8.2Mha over 1990-2000 to 4.2Mha over 2015-25.
Annual deforestation in Asia also saw a sizable reduction, from 3.9Mha over 1990-2000 to 2Mha over 2015-25, the report says.
Europe had the lowest overall deforestation rates, but was also the only region to record an increase over the last 35 years, with deforestation rates growing from 126,000 hectares over 1990-2000 to 145,000 hectares in the past 10 years.
Despite the downward global trend, FAO chief Dr Qu Dongyu notes in the report’s foreword that the “world is not on track to meet important global forest targets”.
In 2021, more than 100 countries pledged to halt and reverse global deforestation by 2030. But deforestation rates in 2024 were 63% higher than the trajectory needed to meet this 2030 target, according to a recent report from civil society groups.
The goals of this pledge were formally recognised in a key text at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023, which “emphasise[d]” that halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 would be key to meeting climate goals.
2. Global net forest loss has more than halved since 1990
Forest area net change by country between 1990 and 2025, in hectares. Source: Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025
The new report finds that forests cover more than 4bn hectares of land, an area encompassing one-third of the planet’s land surface.
More than half of the world’s forested area is located in just five countries: Russia, Brazil, Canada, the US and China.
The map above shows that, overall, more forest is lost than gained each year around the world. There was 6.8Mha of forest growth over 2015-25, but 10.9Mha of forest lost.
The annual rate of this global net forest loss – the amount that deforestation has exceeded the amount regrown – has more than halved since 1990, dropping from 10.7Mha over 1990-2000 to 4.1Mha over 2015-25.
The report says this change was due to reduced deforestation in some countries and increased forest expansion in others. However, the rate of forest expansion has also slowed over time – from 9.9Mha per year in 2000-15 to 6.8Mha per year in 2015-25.
There are many driving factors behind continuing deforestation. Agriculture has historically been the leading cause of forest loss, but wildfire is increasingly posing a threat. Wildfires were the leading driver of tropical forest loss in 2024 for the first time on record, a Global Forest Watch report found earlier this year.
The new UN report says that an average of 261Mha of land was burned by fire each year over 2007-19. Around half of this area was forest. Around 80% of the forested land impacted by fires in 2019 was in the subtropics – areas located just outside tropical regions, such as parts of Argentina, the US and Australia.
The report notes that fire is widely used in land management practices, but uncontrolled fires can have “major negative impacts on people, ecosystems and climate”.
It adds that researchers gathered information on fires up as far as 2023, but chose to focus on 2007-19 due to a lack of more recent data for some countries.
A different report from an international team of scientists recently found that fires burned at least 370Mha of land – an area larger than India – between March 2024 and February 2025.
3. Many countries are hugely increasing their forest area
Top 10 countries for annual net gain (blue) and net loss (red) of forest area over 2015-25, in 1,000 hectares per year. Source: Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025
Globally, deforestation is declining, but the trend varies from country to country.
The chart above shows that some nations, such as China and Russia, added a lot more forest cover than they removed in the past decade through, for example, afforestation programmes.
But in other countries – particularly Brazil – the level of deforestation far surpasses the amount of forest re-grown.
Deforestation in Brazil dropped by almost one-third between 2023 and 2024, news outlet Brasil de Fato reported earlier this year, which was during the time Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took over as president. The new UN report finds that, on average, Brazil lost 2.9Mha of forest area each year over 2015-25, compared to 5.8Mha over 1990-2000.
Russia’s net gain of forest cover increased significantly since 1990 – growing from 80,400ha per year in 1990-2000 to 942,000ha per year in 2015-25.
In China, although it is also planting significant levels of forest, the forest level gained has dropped over time, from 2.2Mha per year in 2000-15 to 1.7Mha per year in 2015-25.
Levels of net forest gain in Canada also fell from 513,000ha per year in 2000-15 to 82,500ha per year in 2015-25.
In the US, the net forest growth trend reversed over the past decade – from 437,000ha per year of gain in 2000-15 to a net forest loss of 120,000ha per year from 2015 to 2025.
Oceania reversed a previously negative trend to gain 140,000ha of forests per year in the past decade, the report says. This was mainly due to changes in Australia, where previous losses of tens of thousands of hectares each year turned into an annual net gain of 105,000ha each year by 2015-25.
4. The world’s forests hold more than 700bn tonnes of carbon
Changes in forest carbon stock by region and subregion of the world over 1990-2025. Source: Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025
The “carbon stock” of a forest refers to how much carbon is stored in its trees and soils. Forests are among the planet’s major carbon sinks.
The new report estimates that forests stored an estimated 714bn tonnes, or gigatonnes, of carbon (GtC) in 2025.
Europe (including Russia) and the Americas account for two-thirds of the world’s total forest carbon storage.
The global forest carbon stock decreased from 716GtC to 706GtC between 1990 and 2000, before growing slightly again by 2025. The report mainly attributes this recent increase to forest growth in Asia and Europe.
The report notes that the total amount of carbon stored in forests has remained largely static over the past 35 years, but with some regional differences, as highlighted in the chart above.
The amount of carbon stored in forests across east Asia, Europe and North America is “significantly higher” now due to expanded forest areas, but it is lower in South America, Africa and Central America.
Several studies have shown that there are limitations on the ability of forests to keep absorbing CO2, with difficulties posed by hotter, drier weather fuelled by climate change.
A 2024 study found that record heat in 2023 negatively impacted the ability of land and ocean sinks to absorb carbon – and that the global land sink was at its weakest since 2003.
Another study, published in 2022, said that drying and warming as a result of deforestation reduces the carbon storage ability of tropical forests, especially in the Congo basin and the Amazon rainforest.
5. Around one-fifth of the world’s forests are located in protected areas
The percentage of forest land in Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, Oceania and North and Central America contained inside protected areas (dark blue) and outside protected areas (light blue) in 2025. Source: Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025
The amount of forested land located in protected areas increased across all regions between 1990 and 2025.
For an area to be considered “protected”, it must be managed in a way that conserves nature.
Around 20% of the world’s forests are located in these protected areas, the new report finds, which amounts to 813Mha of land – an area almost the size of Brazil.
Nearly every country in the world has pledged to protect 30% of the Earth’s land and sea by 2030. However, more than half of countries have not committed to this target on a national basis, Carbon Brief analysis showed earlier this year.
Almost 18% of land and around 8% of the ocean are currently in protected areas, a UN report found last year. The level is increasing, the report said, but considerable progress is still needed to reach the 2030 goal.
The new UN report notes that Europe, including Russia, holds 235Mha of protected forest area, which is the largest of any region and accounts for 23% of the continent’s total forested land.
As highlighted in the chart above, 26% of all forests in Asia are protected, which is the highest of any region. The report notes that this is largely due to a vast amount of protected forested land in Indonesia.
Three countries and one island territory reported that upwards of 90% of their forests are protected – Norfolk Island, Saudi Arabia, Cook Islands and Uzbekistan.
The post UN report: Five charts showing how global deforestation is declining appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UN report: Five charts showing how global deforestation is declining
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