Bill Hare is CEO and founder of Climate Analytics, and Claudio Forner is head of climate policy at Climate Analytics.
To address climate change, the answer should be relatively simple: governments need to decarbonise their economies by first focusing on stopping the burning of fossil fuels. But we are currently facing a crisis involving the land sector that could put the 1.5˚C warming limit at further risk.
The scientific community is clear that including land and forest carbon storage together with fossil fuels and other emissions in national single national targets – as some governments are doing – will likely allow for greater emissions of fossil fuel carbon. This will hinder our ability to limit warming to 1.5°C, and in the worst case it may become impossible. We explain why in a recent report.
Two examples illustrate the scale of this crisis. Australia and Brazil are relying on their reported land carbon sequestration to meet a substantial part of their 2030 and/or 2035 climate targets, significantly reducing the crucial cuts needed in fossil fuel-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
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Let’s be clear: the idea that land-based carbon removal/sequestration can “offset” CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels is scientifically flawed. For all practical purposes, fossil fuel CO2 emissions are irreversible. They can stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, whereas land-sector “offsets” or “sinks” are impermanent – especially when considering the increasing number of wildfires around the planet.
And this is not the only issue: there’s a range of other substantial problems that have been analysed in the scientific literature.
Under the Paris Agreement’s emissions reporting rules, governments are allowed to equate fossil fuel emissions and the drawdown of CO2 by some natural carbon sinks – like the boreal forests – as a one-for-one trade, as set out in this recent paper published in Nature. This means a country could appear to have ‘achieved net zero’ while still contributing to ongoing warming, as emissions continue to rise amid increased tree planting and forest protection.
Carbon fertilisation confuses the numbers
Many countries, particularly developed-country governments, are using ‘managed land’ definitions to claim that carbon uptake from their forests and other ecosystems is additional because of direct human activities, when much of it may be just passive carbon uptake due to atmospheric CO2 fertilisation and other effects caused by fossil fuel emissions. For example, increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere lead to increased growth by plants and more carbon uptake – a phenomenon that is not the result of active forest management.
One recent estimate is that about 44% of the additional carbon sequestered in the terrestrial ecosystem since the 2000s is due to the carbon fertilisation effect which, in turn, is mostly due to fossil fuel emissions. A substantial fraction of this would be counted within government accounting frameworks for their reporting of what’s called ” LULUCF” (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry).
A clear example is Australia, which, in recent years, has continually revised both its historical and projected land sector emissions and in particular carbon sequestration, to the extent that it can now claim to have nearly reached its 2030 target, while barely taking any new action to cut fossil fuel emissions.
In the case of Brazil, its 2035 NDC is cast in net emission terms and does not differentiate between the contribution of its land sector and the fossil fuel sector, making it impossible to work out what, if anything, is actually going to be done.
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This year, Brazil will be hosting COP30 – but the LULUCF accounting in its 2035 NDC is opaque, at best, while its energy sector emissions continue to rise. The Climate Action Tracker has always excluded LULUCF from its country analyses for all the reasons cited above, set out in detail here, and Brazil’s 2035 NDC is a perfect example of the rationale for this decision.
Forests: carbon sink or source?
There are similar issues with the countries that encompass the northern boreal forests. In this report on the contribution of these forests to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C warming limit, we found that global models assessing carbon emissions and sequestration from forests differ substantially from land sector emissions reported by governments.
Governments’ national inventories show the land sector as a global sink, but the global models show it as a source of emissions. The difference between the two is marked: roughly the equivalent to the entire emissions from the US in 2023.
We set out a clear list of recommendations in our report, starting with a call for governments to first focus on decarbonising their economies, and for them – and corporations – to set separate targets for land use sinks, to transparently communicate how much they intend on relying on sinks to reach their climate targets – otherwise known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
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Instead of deploying what increasingly look like creative accounting tricks, governments must get on with the job of prioritising fossil fuel emission reductions.
Alongside clearly accounting for LULUCF, governments also need to commit to ending deforestation by 2030 and set out how and when they plan to cut their emissions to net zero, including their planned use of carbon trading to help them get there.
Without enhanced transparency and a fossil-first approach to emission reductions, the land sector could drive overall emissions higher. But with concerted action to halt deforestation and restore carbon sinks, land has an important role to play in reaching net zero and keeping the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C warming limit within reach.
The post Why governments should not hide behind forests to meet their emissions goals appeared first on Climate Home News.
Why governments should not hide behind forests to meet their emissions goals
Latin American governments cracked down on forest clearing in 2025, leading global deforestation to fall by the most this decade, but political shifts and the likely impact of a strong El Niño threaten to undo those “fragile” gains, a new report has found.
Seven million hectares of forests – roughly the size of Ireland – were lost last year, a 15% drop from 2024. This marks the first meaningful slowdown in deforestation since 145 countries committed to ending deforestation by 2030 at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, according to an annual assessment of the pledge.
But the researchers cautioned that the world remains 70% off track from fulfilling that promise and, despite progress in Latin America, deforestation in tropical Africa, home to the Congo Basin, kept rising. For the first time, it nearly matched losses in Latin America – a trend the report’s publishers called “particularly ominous”.
Erin Matson, a lead consultant at Climate Focus and one of the report’s authors, said the slowdown in the rate of deforestation “is welcome news”, but last year’s figures “look good in part because previous years look so bad”.
She added that, at the moment, last year’s progress should be seen as an “exception and not a new trajectory because the underlying problem has not gone away”.
Lula’s policies drive progress
The decline in deforestation was primarily driven by reduced expansion of agriculture and cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, thanks to a new deforestation action plan introduced by the Lula government and stronger enforcement measures, the report found.
“Brazil provides a concrete example of how national policies can be successful,” said Ana Flávia Corleto, legal analyst at Climate Policy Initiative in Brazil. “The combination of near real-time monitoring and targeted enforcement has contributed to a historical reduction in deforestation alerts in the Amazon, with a 36% decline between August 2025 and July 2026”.
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President Lula bolstered efforts to protect the vital Amazon ecosystem when he returned to office in 2023 after enforcement had deteriorated and deforestation skyrocketed under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
Neighbouring Colombia also contributed to the slowdown in forest loss in Latin America last year, posting a fourth consecutive year of falling deforestation, driven in part by reduced cattle-linked clearing.
Brazilian election puts gains at risk
But the researchers warn that this progress rests heavily on the choices of a small number of governments and it is “highly vulnerable” to political shifts in recent and upcoming elections across the Amazon basin.
On October 25, Brazilian voters will choose between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president’s son, in a run-off election. Bolsonaro narrowly led the first round with 47% of the vote to Lula’s 45% and polls show the pair neck and neck.
In an interview with TV Globo in August, Bolsonaro said he did not believe in climate change, only in “cyclical” extreme weather events. As a senator, he voted in 2025 for a bill loosening environmental licensing rules.
Although he has pledged to end illegal deforestation by 2029, Brazilian environmental groups fear he could follow his father’s example of weakening forest protections. “Instead of restoring forests, we would face the dismantling of environmental safeguards, land grabbing, illegal mining, and deforestation,” Observatório do Clima, a network of climate NGOs, said on Tuesday. “At the worst possible moment in the global climate crisis, electing another Bolsonaro would be a gift to environmental crime and those who profit from the destruction of the planet”.
Climate Policy Initiative’s Corleto said changing political priorities in the Brazilian federal government can have significant consequences, especially for federal institutions and budgets. But she added that much of the country’s environmental policy is implemented at local or state level and some continuity can be expected there.
Deforestation growth in Congo Basin
Threats to forest conservation are already growing elsewhere in the Amazon region. In Colombia, recently elected far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella has repealed mining restrictions and promised to support oil and gas exploration, which the report’s authors said pose threats to forests.
Latin America has historically been the world’s deforestation hotspot but the second-largest tropical forest, Africa’s Congo basin, has been catching up, the assessment found. Deforestation in tropical Africa rose to 2.4 million hectares in 2025, almost level with the 2.5 million hectares lost across tropical Latin America and the Caribbean.
Forest loss there is driven primarily by smallholder agricultural expansion, logging, infrastructure development, and regulatory systems that lack either the capacity or the political mandate to counter those pressures, the authors found.
“We need to see states with very clear policies, strong legislation and very rigorous enforcement capacity,” said Samuel Nguiffo, a lawyer and founder of Cameroon’s Centre for Environment and Development. “Unfortunately, this is what we seem to be missing. There is a deficit in government capacity”.
El Niño threat
The report also warns that last year’s progress in keeping trees standing could also be eroded by a possible spike in forest fires fuelled by the so-called super El Niño weather pattern which could peak this December.
In Indonesia, which is severely affected by drought in El Niño years, wildfires are currently burning vast swathes of forest. Fire emissions in Indonesia are on track to match 2015, the country’s worst fire season this century, experts told Carbon Brief.
Matson said the world saw a “huge spike” in tree cover loss during the last “super” El Niño event in 2015 and expects to see a similar increase this year. “We can’t fully project the future, but it’s unlikely that in 2026, we’ll see the same kind of reductions that we saw last year”.
The post Global deforestation slowed in 2025 but Brazil’s election could undo “fragile” gains appeared first on Climate Home News.
Global deforestation slowed in 2025 but Brazil’s election could undo “fragile” gains
The UK government warned the Carbon Capture and Storage Association’s (CCSA) annual conference on Tuesday that the fledgling industry should prepare to receive less financial support from taxpayers in the future.
As the left-wing Labour government, under its new leader Andy Burnham, seeks to boost military spending in line with NATO allies, it is reportedly looking to cut funding for emissions-reduction projects, with subsidies for carbon capture and heat pumps among the projects in the firing line.
Martin McCluskey, a junior minister in the UK’s Department for Energy and Net Zero (DESNZ), told the CCSA conference in Westminster that, while the government supports the industry, “it is no secret that we are operating in a challenging fiscal environment and this government remains committed to meeting its fiscal rules”.
“So I owe it to you today to level with you,” he said. “The next phase of the CCUS (carbon capture, use and storage) programme will be in the context of broader, difficult decisions on funding. We must ensure that public investment is targeted where it can deliver the greatest value while continuing to build confidence in the long-term future of the sector.”
He warned that this may mean “making decisions about priorities, sequencing and pace and recognising that progress will not always happen everywhere at once”. “But this will also mean opportunity as we move beyond first-of-a-kind projects,” he added.
Earlier in the day, the energy ministry’s industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS) lead Stefanie Murphy was asked by an audience member if it had become clear that the government could not afford to support future carbon transport and storage projects at the same level as in the past.
“I think yes,” she replied. “We can all see the fiscal realities that we’re facing,” she said, adding that the government’s top priority is tackling the cost of living and, while it also wants to grow the economy, there are lots of competing priorities for its money.
She urged the industry to reduce costs and demonstrate its benefits in terms of job creation and regeneration of economically deprived areas.
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Opening the conference, the CCSA’s chief executive Olivia Powis made that case, arguing that CCS “engineers in Teesside, fabricators in Hartlepool, construction workers in north Wales” are “what reindustrialisation looks like”.
Speaking before the government officials took the stage, she warned that “this momentum is not inevitable. The first projects have created confidence because governments made commitments and industry invested against them.”
“If that commitment weakens now, investment and developers will not simply wait. They will go elsewhere. The UK has worked hard to establish itself as a global leader in CCUS. We cannot afford to lose that position just as delivery begins,” she said.
Eoin Devane, acting director of net zero for the UK government’s official advisers, the Climate Change Committee, said the government is relying on CCS to meet its carbon budgets and 2050 net zero target, but has “insufficient plans” to deliver these emissions cuts and there are “significant risks” it will fail.
Necessary but limited
CCS is when carbon dioxide is captured from a concentrated source – like a cement kiln’s exhaust – and then transported by pipeline, train or ship to be stored underground either at sea or on land.
It is controversial among many climate campaigners, as it is favoured as a solution to greenhouse gas emissions by fossil fuel companies that are keen to keep on making money both by producing more oil and gas and by storing carbon dioxide in reservoirs they have already exploited.
But experts describe it as having a necessary – although limited and expensive role – in the transition to clean energy. Scientists with the UK’s Climate Change Committee and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) say it is required to help clean up the emissions of industries like cement and chemical production that are hard to replace with renewable electricity.
But the IPCC also says that CCS is one of the costliest ways to reduce climate-heating emissions. Whereas industries like solar and wind energy are now mostly profitable without subsidies, the CCS industry continues to rely on taxpayers for support.
Northern Lights, the crown jewel of Europe’s CCS industry, was 80% funded and “enabled very much” by the Norwegian government, its managing director Tim Heijn told the conference.
The project captures carbon dioxide from emitters across Europe, ships it as a liquid to Norway’s west coast and transports it through a 100km pipeline to be injected into a reservoir 2,600 metres below the seabed.
Carbon dioxide emitters, like cement plants, also receive government subsidies and carbon credit revenues to help them pay to store their carbon dioxide, Hejn added. They can sell their products, like low-carbon cement, for a green premium.
Ways to become financially sustainable
With subsidies in the UK likely to dwindle, panellists at the conference were asked whether – and how – their business could become financially sustainable.
Cristel Lambton, technical and operations director of Italian oil company Eni’s CCUS arm, said the industry “still needs funding at this stage”. “We all want the CCUS market to be a sustainable market but we can’t just rush towards it,” she added.
Tanisha Beebee, CCS lead at British oil and gas company Harbour Energy, said the shifting economic and political situation had led her company to try and change business models in a bid to reduce reliance on government subsidies and lower its costs.
Jack Richards, CCS lead at a company called Spirit Energy which wants to repurpose its Morecambe gas field to store carbon, argued that reliance on government funding would ease if there was a higher carbon price, making emitting greenhouse gases more expensive compared to capturing and storing them and therefore boosting demand for CCS.
Another problem is that the interest of some CCS customers in the UK appears to be waning. Hydrogen-maker BOC, a subsidiary of Linde, withdrew its interest in the Northern Endurance Partnership offshore carbon storage scheme in September 2025. BP also withdrew after cancelling a blue hydrogen project in the region, leaving just one gas-fired power plant called Net Zero Teesside as a customer.
Waste management company Viridor, however, is still interested in paying for its emissions to be captured and stored. Its CCUS director James Eyton said the timeline for becoming independent of government support is “tricky”, adding that the sale of carbon credits could be a “fundamental alternative revenue source” for the CCUS industry.
The post Carbon capture industry faces tough future, as UK raids green spending appeared first on Climate Home News.
Carbon capture industry faces tough future, as UK raids green spending