The global goal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 “will not be achieved” unless action by countries “accelerates rapidly”, says a draft UN report.
Countries are falling short on 22 of the 23 targets for 2030 they set under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature”.
That is according to a draft version of a global report prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), published on 26 July.
The report will be finalised ahead of the next nature summit, COP17, taking place in Armenia in October of this year.
The second draft of the global report has undergone “peer review”, but will still be subject to “technical edits” before being formally published ahead of COP17.
The final version will inform a global review of countries’ progress towards meeting the world’s 2030 nature goals, which will take place in Armenia.
Below, Carbon Brief explains why the report has been produced and what it says about countries’ progress in areas such as restoring ecosystems and raising funds for biodiversity.
Global report
In Montreal, Canada, in 2022, nearly every country in the world agreed to the GBF. The overall “mission” of the framework is to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Its “vision” is to bring the world into “harmony with nature” by 2050.
The GBF includes a list of 23 targets for 2030. They cover an expansive range of topics, from restoring ecosystems, to addressing pollution and providing developing nations with finance to help cover the costs of protecting nature.
As part of the GBF and its underlying documents, countries agreed to a schedule for monitoring their progress towards achieving the 2030 targets.
This included the preparation of a “global report” of progress coordinated by the CBD, which will inform a “global review” undertaken by countries at COP17.
The global report draws on countries’ national reports, which were due to be submitted to the UN in February of this year. It also draws on countries’ national nature plans, known as “national biodiversity strategies and action plans” (NBSAPS) and national targets, which were both due in 2024.
Not all countries have met the call to publish these documents and targets. According to the UN, 45% of countries published NBSAPs in time to be considered for the report, 83% had submitted at least one national target and 66% had produced their new national report.
The first draft of the global report was published on 29 June 2026. This draft was subject to a “peer review process”, which invited countries and observers, such as NGOs and businesses, to submit comments on all aspects of the report.
The second draft, which has been revised based on the peer review, was published on Sunday 26 July. (This was just ahead of COP17 preparatory talks being held in Nairobi from 27 July to 1 August.)
A final version of the global report will be formally published ahead of COP17, which will take place from 19-30 October.
Overall findings
The second draft of the global report says that the GBF has led to “unprecedented” interest in tackling biodiversity loss, but adds:
“However, unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly, the 2030 targets and mission will not be achieved.”
It says that countries have taken some action to address all 23 targets, but that “no target presents a fully positive picture”.
(The first draft has slightly softer language. It “concludes that the world is not yet on track to collectively meet the global ambitions that the parties to the convention set when they adopted the framework”.)
The report identifies “two distinct gaps in progress”, relating to ambition and implementation.
First, that the national targets and plans submitted by countries “do not yet fully reflect the scope and level of ambition” of the global targets in the GBF.
Second, countries are not taking sufficient action to achieve their targets, according to the report.
It adds that progress is “particularly lagging” for addressing the “indirect drivers of biodiversity loss”, such as harmful business practices and government subsidies promoting them.
In addition, countries are showing “consistent gaps” in making progress on taking action to protect “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
The report produces a “scorecard” assessing countries’ progress towards meeting each of the 23 targets of the GBF.
The scorecard includes an “overall score” of between 0 and 1 for each target. This is calculated by considering countries’ self-reported progress in their plans and targets, as well as an assessment of progress based on a set of agreed indicators.
The results are split into four categories: 0-0.25 is red, 0.25-0.5 is orange, 0.5-0.75 is yellow and 0.75-1 is green.
The report gives a “green” score for just one target, indicating overall positive progress. This is target 8, on “minimising” the impact of climate change on biodiversity, including through mitigation and adaptation.
Elsewhere, the draft says that countries have “reported gaps in the scale and timely provision” of “financial resources, capacity-building and development, technical and scientific cooperation, access to and transfer of technology, and knowledge sharing”. It adds:
“These barriers can result in uneven capacities and cause specific technical and financial constraints for all parties, but particularly for developing-country parties. It is likely these constraints are even more pressing for least developed countries and small island developing states.”
Protecting and restoring nature
Target 3 of the GBF is for countries to protect “30% of Earth’s land and sea for nature” by the end of the decade.
This commitment – referred to as “30 by 30” – is widely considered the flagship target of the agreement.
The report says that countries are making “progress in expanding and managing protected areas, especially for marine and coastal areas”. But it adds that “current ambition and implementation remain insufficient to fully achieve all aspects of the target”.
It continues that, according to countries’ available national targets, “monitoring and reporting of some elements of the target remains low”. This includes “those relating to equitable governance of protected areas” and “recognition of Indigenous and local territories”.
The report adds that countries “face significant challenges in implementation, particularly related to lack of finance and capacity”.
(An investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian in 2025 revealed that more than half of nations that have submitted UN biodiversity plans do not commit to “30 by 30” within their borders.)
Another conservation measure included in the GBF is target 2, which aims to ensure that at least 30% of land and sea areas are under restoration by 2030.
The report says that “restoration efforts are expanding”. However, it says that “current commitments to restore areas and implementation of those commitments remain below the level required” to achieve target 2.
It adds that countries’ national targets are “generally well aligned with target 2”, but that “addressing the effectiveness of restoration efforts is often absent”.
Moreover, the report adds that monitoring of progress is “constrained by inconsistent definitions and monitoring approaches for ecosystem degradation and restoration”.
Another “major barrier” is a lack of available finance for developing countries looking to restore ecosystems, it says.
Climate and biodiversity links
Target 8 of the GBF is the only one to specifically address climate change, one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss.
It says countries should “minimise the impact of climate change” on biodiversity through mitigation and adaptation, including “nature-based solutions” and “ecosystem-based approaches”.
Target 8 was the only one to achieve a “green” marking in the report’s scorecard of progress (see: Overall findings).
The report says that actions to make biodiversity more resilient against climate change are “progressing”. Yet “implementation remains constrained by data gaps, limited means of implementation and the need for stronger coherence between biodiversity, climate and disaster risk reduction planning”.
It continues that countries’ national targets “generally” show “good alignment” with target 8, across “all elements apart from efforts to minimise the impacts of ocean acidification”.
It adds that the deployment of nature-based solutions and ecosystem restoration is not yet at a “sufficient scale”.
Subsidies
Overall progress is “insufficient” on target 18, which calls on countries to identify subsidies and other incentives that are harmful for biodiversity by 2025, says the GBF report.
It also outlines that nations should “eliminate, phase out or reform” these subsidies in a “proportionate” way, reducing them by at least $500bn per year by 2030.
Countries should first target the “most harmful” incentives, while simultaneously scaling up positive incentives for nature, it adds.
The report finds that countries have made some progress in assessing, compiling inventories and commissioning studies on harmful subsidies.
But issues remain, such as incomplete data and the lack of agreed definitions on which subsidies are deemed “harmful”.
Several national reports also note “entrenched interests and political barriers to subsidy reform”, says the report.
Only one-quarter of countries’ national targets that are “highly aligned” with target 18 are “on track” to be met, it finds. Most show “insufficient progress”.
It notes that 38% of countries have addressed the 2025 aim to identify harmful subsidies in their national targets “to some extent”.
Countries’ national reports do not “provide a sufficient basis to determine” whether this goal was met, says the report, but available evidence “suggests” that it was not.
Recent analysis by Carbon Brief found that just 16% of the 134 national reports submitted so far appear to meet the aim.
The report outlines that half of countries have set national targets addressing plans to eliminate, phase out or reform harmful incentives. Almost 60% mention scaling up positive incentives, it adds.
Just 27%, however, address the issue of reducing subsidies by at least $500bn annually by 2030. Also, only 5% set quantitative national targets to reduce subsidies.
There are two headline “indicators” to measure progress on target 18. The first shows that 30% of countries have outlined information on their nature-positive incentives.
The second indicator shows that 22 countries submitted the value of their biodiversity-harmful subsidies, which amounted to a total of $268bn spent on harmful subsidies over 2022 to 2025 – averaging $67bn each year.
Carbon Brief’s analysis had identified an estimated $270bn each year, based on a wider list of submissions from 32 countries. (More countries submitted national reports since the CBD’s deadline to be included in the global report in February.)
All of these figures remain well below the estimated trillions of US dollars spent annually.
The report notes that different methodologies could lead to global subsidy estimate “inconsistencies”, meaning that reported values are likely “underestimates”.
The amount of positive incentives in place is also likely underestimated, it adds.
The report says that harmful subsidies may have declined by around 20% in recent years, based on figures consistently reported by a minority of countries over 2022-24.
Despite this, the total value of subsidies “remains higher than the resources that parties reported mobilising for biodiversity”. (See: Mobilising finance.)
Mobilising finance
Overall progress on raising biodiversity finance has been “insufficient”, according to the report.
Goal D of the GBF, shown below, states that countries must close a $700bn biodiversity gap by 2030 through ending harmful subsidies ($500bn per year) and mobilising resources from the global north to south ($200bn per year).
This target aims to raise “at least $200bn per year” by 2030 from “all sources”, including domestic, international, public and private funding.
In all, countries reported raising a cumulative total of $186.4bn over four years, according to the report.
While it adds that it “is still too early to conclude”, the report states that the total finance mobilised so far “falls far short” of what is needed to close the biodiversity finance gap.
Target 19, shown below, states that developed countries and others should boost finance for nature to “at least $20bn” per year by 2025 and “at least $30bn” by 2030. This falls to developed countries and others that “voluntarily assume” the obligation of contributing.
However, the report suggests that the milestone of raising “at least $20bn per year by 2025” was “likely not achieved”.
Between 2020 and 2023, reporting countries cumulatively raised just $17.7bn in international public funding for biodiversity, according to the report.
This amounts to an average of $4.4bn per year between 2020-23, with the total touching its highest at $5.2bn in 2023.
The report cautions that this figure “should be read as a minimum”, as it does not account for all potential flows of biodiversity finance.
Both estimates “fall below the $20bn milestone”, although the report adds that a “definitive assessment will only be possible” once data for 2024 and 2025 are included.
An earlier draft of the report included language noting that biodiversity-related “official development assistance” remains “well below the agreed 2025 milestone”. This was cut from the summary in this latest iteration of the report.
References to the OECD reporting a “shortfall in funding” and projecting “a decrease for 2024 and 2025” – suggesting the $20bn target was “unlikely to be met” – were also removed from the latest draft.
The chart below shows how international public funding for biodiversity has varied from 2020 to 2023, according to the report.
By comparison, domestic spending makes the largest cumulative contribution to biodiversity finance, at ($135.9bn) over the four years. However, spending has “declined” as a share of GDP. It also notes that spending varies “greatly”, from 0.1% to 2.7% of GDP.
According to the report, many countries highlighted that national budget allocations for biodiversity are “far too low” and that biodiversity “frequently loses out to competing development priorities”, including “defence, food security and infrastructure”.
At COP15 in Montreal, the EU and several other countries pushed for the inclusion of “all sources” of finance in the final text – including private finance and “innovative” schemes.
Private and “innovative” biodiversity finance – which spans a plethora of sources such biodiversity offsets and debt-for-nature swaps – was eventually included in target 19.
The report, however, notes that private finance “peaked in 2021 and fell afterwards” and “remains particularly undeveloped”, with a cumulative total of $32.7bn between 2020-23.
At the same time, the report notes that only 26% of all countries had reported data on private biodiversity finance, making it harder to assess funding declines in 2022 and 2023.
Genetic resources
The report finds there has been limited progress on sharing genetic biodiversity data.
”Digital sequence information” (DSI) refers to genetic data derived from biodiversity, which is often sourced from species in biodiversity-rich developing countries.
These countries have long called for an international mechanism to ensure that the benefits of DSI are shared fairly with the people living where the resources were “discovered”, including Indigenous communities.
At COP16, countries agreed to the first-ever global fund, called the Cali Fund, for companies profiting from genetic data to contribute to conservation goals on a voluntary basis.
However, experts have cautioned that much rests on whether countries develop strong national laws to support the COP16 agreement. This could include incentivising companies in their regions to contribute to the fund.
In the GBF, target 13 and goal C address elements of DSI, including the sharing of benefits from genetic resources and their digital derivatives.
According to the report, 79% of countries submitted national targets that address legal, policy and administrative measures to enable benefit-sharing from DSI. Some 71% included measures to facilitate access to genetic resources.
The report finds that the “strongest progress” has been in developing laws and policies, which are now at an intermediate stage.
The “most fundamental regulatory barrier”, according to many countries cited, is the lack of a “dedicated” national framework to enable access to genetic resources and share benefits with communities.
This would involve enacting laws compatible with the GBF, setting up digital registries to catalogue and trace genetic resources, as well as implementing tracking systems to monitor how they are used. It would also include a financial mechanism to pay communities for the use of their traditional knowledge.
Progress in monitoring monetary and non-monetary benefits from DSI is “much weaker” and is “particularly limited” for measures related to the Cali fund.
According to the report, most parties have “no monitoring systems [for evaluating benefits from genetic resources] in place, or [are] still developing them”. It says they add that the benefits from genetic resources are hard to track “across borders and along value chains through to the final product”.
For those that have tracked benefits, it says that countries reported a cumulative $6.9m in receipts from the use of genetic resources between 2022 and 2025. It adds that “several parties reported that they had received no monetary benefits” to date.
Countries also reported more than 960 non-monetary benefits, ranging from technical training to research participation. The report cautions that these “fluctuated over time rather than increasing consistently, and cannot be seen as indicative of global benefit-sharing”.
In December 2025, Carbon Brief reported that the Cali fund had received only one contribution of $1,000 as an “icebreaker”. No other major companies have stepped up to fill the fund.
Meanwhile, the report states that the formal protection of traditional knowledge held by Indigenous peoples and local communities remained “underdeveloped”.
It says that a “significant number” of countries raised concerns about gaps in recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights and dedicated registries to document their traditional knowledge.
The report says it is not yet possible to assess progress towards goal C:
“To date it is not possible to comment on whether benefits are being shared fairly and equitably nor on the role played by traditional knowledge and Indigenous peoples and local communities. Therefore, progress towards goal C cannot yet be assessed.”
Pollution
Target 7 of the GBF focuses on tackling pollution from pesticides, chemicals, plastic and other sources.
It calls for countries to reduce pollution risks and negative impacts “from all sources” to “levels that are not harmful” to biodiversity and ecosystems by 2030.
It also aims to reduce excess nutrients in the environment and overall risks from pesticides and hazardous chemicals by “at least half”.
The draft report finds that there is no significant change or insufficient progress on 60% of national targets categorised as being highly aligned with target 7. Only one-third of these national targets (35%) are on track to be achieved by 2030.
On average, it says countries have addressed around half of the various elements of target 7 “to some extent” in their national targets.
The most frequently-mentioned aspect of the target – addressed by 72% of countries – refers to reducing pollution from all sources by 2030.
One headline indicator related to target 7 focuses on the concentration of pesticides in the environment.
Just five countries out of 125 submitted estimates on this, according to the report. It says only one country has met the aim of halving the overall risk from pesticides on a national basis so far.
Measures to address plastic pollution are the most frequently reported actions by countries in relation to this target, including bans on single-use bags and straws.
A number of countries in Europe and Asia have also implemented measures to reduce nutrient losses from fertilisers and slurry.
A “major challenge” for countries in advancing pollution aims is “effectively and fairly considering and managing impacts on food security and livelihoods”, according to the report.
Several countries point to a lack of national funding to implement measures towards achieving this target.
Some developing countries also list poor wastewater-treatment infrastructure as a “persistent challenge” on this issue.
Invasive species
Invasive alien species refers to those that have moved to and become established in a region outside their natural habitat, as a result of human activities. This has negative impacts for local biodiversity and ecosystems.
Target 6 of the GBF calls for countries to, among other things, reduce the rates of introduction and establishment of invasive alien species by 50% by 2030.
The draft report says countries are “taking action” on this target, but progress is “difficult to assess”.
Two-thirds of national targets aligned with target 6 show “no significant progress or insufficient progress”, it finds. Fewer than one-third are on track to be achieved by 2030 and just 1% of these national targets have already been achieved.
But most countries have made progress in putting in place measures to manage invasive species – mostly focusing on reducing the introduction rate and impact of species.
Countries have addressed around half of the different elements of the invasive species target “to some extent” in their national targets, finds the report.
But fewer than one-third (30%) have set national targets that put a numeric goal on reducing invasive species.
Island biosecurity programmes and measures to intercept invasive species at country borders are among the actions countries have put in place to tackle the issue.
The report lists some barriers countries say stand in the way of achieving the target. These include a lack of baseline data from which to measure a 50% reduction rate, poor early-detection systems and a lack of funding for long-term reduction efforts.
Some countries also cite capacity and technical challenges in monitoring invasive species, according to the report.
They say many of these species “go unnoticed for years before impacts become apparent”, it adds, with countries arguing that setting a specific reduction target is “challenging”.
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The post World falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets for 2030, says draft UN report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
World falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets for 2030, says draft UN report
Chinese industry is beginning to shift from fossil fuels to clean electricity, with wind, solar and batteries progressively displacing coal, oil and gas across the industrial sectors that made the country the world’s factory and largest carbon emitter, a new analysis shows.
Clean electricity met all of China’s demand growth in 2025 and coal generation fell for the first time in a decade, even as electricity demand rose by 5%, the report found.
Despite a rebound in coal power generation in the first half of 2026, the analysis by global energy think-tank Ember found the growth in clean electricity illustrates a longer-term shift: a massive build-out of wind, solar energy and battery storage and deepening electrification of the economy are starting to make a dent in the fossil-fuel energy system supporting China’s industrial base.
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The research identifies early signs that a structural transformation of China’s industrial economy from coal, oil and gas to clean electricity is underway, even if changes on the ground are not yet reflected in national data.
“The energy foundation of the Chinese industrial economy is shifting,” Muyi Yang, a senior energy analyst at Ember and the report’s lead author, told Climate Home News.
“Fossil fuels are progressively being replaced in the many functions they have historically assumed. Because of that, fossil fuel peaking is increasingly coming into view,” he said.
Electrifying industry
Coal generation has stopped growing in 17 of the 26 provinces and regions analysed by Ember between 2021 and 2025. This includes industrial centres such as Hunan in southern China and Shandong – home to energy-intensive industries like cement production. Together, these regions are home to more than half of China’s thermal power capacity.
A greater share of the Chinese economy is now running on electricity than in other major economies, accounting for 29% of final energy consumption in 2024, compared with about 23% in Europe and 21% in the US. Less than half of China’s electricity was generated from coal in the first half of the year.
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Meanwhile, fossil fuel use has fallen in eight of 11 tracked industrial sectors, declining between 26% and 71% from peak consumption levels across fossil fuel extraction, manufacturing industries such as textiles, machinery and food and beverages, transport equipment and chemical materials.
Earlier this year, German company BASF, the world’s largest chemical producer, opened a new facility in southern China, which is fully supplied by renewable energy. The company said emissions from the site could be 50% lower than conventional petrochemical facilities.
In easier-to-electrify sectors such as machinery, electronics and textiles, electricity now supplies about three-quarters of final energy consumption, Ember found.
Fossil fuel use is also showing signs of flattening in the metals smelting and processing sector – one of the most fossil-intensive parts of the economy – offering “encouraging signs” that the transformation is starting to take hold in harder-to-abate sectors, said Yang.
“If that is happening in more and more provinces, and more and more economic sectors that means that fossil fuels are progressively being squeezed out of the energy system,” he said.
“Growing by greening”
China’s vast cleantech manufacturing power has become an engine for growth in its own right, spurring investment, creating jobs and generating export revenues.
Yang described this “growing-by-greening” dynamic as “turning each step of the transition into a source of strength for the next”.
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For Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, this is part of what makes China’s lead in manufacturing clean energy equipment “irreversible”, comparing its growth with that of a rainforest, where different parts of the ecosystem thrive by reinforcing one another.
The early success of deploying wind and solar helped drive down electricity costs, which created favourable conditions for the rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and in turn boosted demand for batteries that are now critical to balance the grid.
An oversupply of renewable energy incentivised industrial players to benefit from cheap and readily available clean power generation, encouraging innovative solutions to electrify other parts of the economy. In the transport sector, for example, electrification is moving from passenger vehicles to harder-to-electrify trucks.
This abundance of cheap green energy is also making China competitive in what has long been seen as the anchor of Western competitiveness, Li said.
Stalling fossil fuel use
At the same time, China’s huge legacy fossil fuel generation capacity is still expanding, even as coal power plants are being used less intensively.
China brought 30 GW of new coal power capacity into operation in the first six months of the year and coal-fired generation rose 3% over the same period after local governments fast-tracked coal projects to prevent a repeat of severe power shortages in 2021.
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A further 274 GW of coal capacity is either under construction or has permits to be built while vast amounts of solar and wind power that could not be absorbed by the grid have gone to waste in the first half of the year.
“This doesn’t mean that the transition is losing steam,” said Yang, arguing that China is now grappling with some of the more complex aspects of the transition.
A recent analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) for Carbon Brief found that China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement have plateaued for more than two years following a peak in March 2024. Ember found that on a 12-month moving average, coal generation has been stalling since then, following years of continuous expansion.
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In the second quarter of the year, CO2 emissions fell by 1% after China’s oil consumption plummeted 9% as the US-Iran war prevented the transport of oil cargoes from the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz.
The electrification of the transport sector, particularly electric trucks, was the biggest driver in displacing oil demand as the conflict in the Middle East accelerated the transition.
A lesson in sequencing
China’s bumpy transition offers a useful lesson for other countries at an earlier stage of their transition, said Xunpeng Shi, president of the Sydney-based International Society of Energy Transition Studies (ISETS), a global network of professionals that shares research and fosters collaborations.
“Build quickly enough so that clean electricity can start taking over and prepare for the pressure on the fossil system before it arrives, because that is the part nobody has done easily,” he said.
For countries that are heavily reliant on revenue from fossil fuel exports, a peak in Chinese fossil fuel use weakens the assumption of rising demand on which investments have long been made.
“For them, the time to plan for that is now, while the revenues are still there,” he said.
The post China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit appeared first on Climate Home News.
China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit
Carbon credit developers, corporate buyers and some leading conservation NGOs are challenging new proposed rules to stop UN carbon credits being wiped out by fire, drought or logging, in what critics have called a “coordinated lobbying campaign” to weaken the nascent market’s push for greater integrity.
According to documents seen by Climate Home News – including a briefing given to government officials – companies, NGOs and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) have contested the scientific basis for the move, arguing that stronger protection for carbon reductions could hike project costs and restrict the supply of credits to the market.
The climate benefit of credits that claim to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions by storing carbon is undone if that carbon is released back into the atmosphere – something known as reversal risk. To protect against such losses and preserve the credibility of the credits’ carbon-offsetting claims, projects are generally required to set aside a reserve of credits that cannot be sold, as a form of insurance.
How these “buffer pools” are calculated has long been a source of contention, especially in forest conservation projects, which many experts say have historically underestimated the risk of carbon losses.
In July, the technical UN panel tasked with drafting rules for the Article 6.4 mechanism, which underpins the credits that countries and companies can use to meet their climate goals, proposed a new system. It would require project developers to size these insurance pools of credits based on local risk values derived from new research published by a group of independent scientists.
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Its supporters have hailed it as a more rigorous approach than current practice in the voluntary carbon market, which largely relies on expert guesswork and, in some cases, gives significant leeway for project developers to come up with their own data.
“The decision on the reversal risk assessment tool will be crucial,” said Federica Dossi, an expert at Brussels-based advocacy group Carbon Market Watch. “It would bring a new paradigm for calculating the number of units forwarded to the buffer pool based on empirical data.”
The technical panel is due to discuss the reversal risk tool and its application to a specific set of projects at a five-day meeting in Bonn this week. It is then expected to forward new recommendations to the mechanism’s regulator, the Supervisory Body, for a decision on whether to approve them at a meeting in early October.
The rules are set to be applied initially only to clean cookstove projects, one of the market’s most popular and heavily criticised credit types. They could then be extended to other activities, including programmes to protect forests.
Copy and paste?
More than 30 organisations aired their views in lengthy public submissions to the Article 6.4 mechanism, responding to a call from the UN secretariat for external feedback.
A Climate Home News review of those submissions found that there was significant overlap in their messages and, in several cases, sections of the text, or even entire submissions, were copied and pasted by different organisations. This points to a coordinated effort to flag concerns regarding the new rules.
In one instance, tech giant Apple, a large buyer of nature-based carbon credits, warned against relying on one scientific model and called for rules that let project developers use a variety of risk mitigation tools, rather than surrendering buffer credits, to cover the risk of carbon losses.
Apple’s submission is a lightly-edited version of a separate input presented by the Beyond Alliance, a coalition of corporate buyers and NGOs that promote market-based climate investments. In an apparent oversight in one paragraph, the Beyond Alliance’s name appears in Apple’s submission instead of the tech giant’s.
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The Beyond Alliance told Climate Home News that, after receiving input from its members, it shared its final submission, leaving them to decide if and how they wanted to use it. The coalition rejected any characterisation that its submission advocates for a weaker tool and only reflects business concerns.
The Beyond Alliance added that its members received briefings by UNEP, which Climate Home News understands has played an important role in wider efforts to influence the development of the rules underpinning the UN carbon market.
Three experts and a European Union diplomat told Climate Home News that the interventions of the UN agency overwhelmingly supported the views of those with a financial interest in carbon markets.
UNEP’s head of mitigation Gabriel Labbate rejected this accusation. He told Climate Home News that the UN agency contributes technical inputs from a “politically-neutral, science-based perspective” and its positions are grounded in an assessment of environmental integrity and are not shaped by, or aligned with, the financial interests of any market participant.
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In mid-July, representatives from UNEP, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) briefed government officials from Canada, the UK, Germany, Costa Rica, Belgium, Nigeria and Peru, according to a webinar readout seen by Climate Home News.
The online event was organised by the Forest & Climate Leaders Partnership (FCLP), an initiative that brings together 41 countries plus the EU.
The speakers voiced strong criticism of the new proposed rules. A technical advisor to Conservation International, a US-based NGO that runs several large-scale carbon offsetting programmes, told participants the Article 6 panel’s approach was “based on bad science”. This, he said, is because it relies on a single model that he claimed is not appropriate to determine buffer pool contributions, according to a presentation seen by Climate Home News.
During a high-level discussion led by UNEP’s Labbate, speakers said the application of measures to manage reversal risk on cookstove projects could “impose disproportionate costs and undermine the financial viability of these activities”, according to the readout.
Cookstove programmes issue credits by calculating the greenhouse gas emissions prevented by burning less fuel – usually wood or charcoal – through the use of more efficient stoves. With the new reversal risk tool, these activities would be expected to guard against future carbon losses for the first time under the UN carbon market.
But UNEP, as well as leading NGOs and carbon credit firms, have pushed back against the requirement, arguing this type of credit represents a “flow” of avoided emissions rather than a “stock” of stored carbon that can be released. Scientists reject that distinction, noting that the wood left unburned is still standing in a forest exposed to the same risks as any other.
At the online briefing, speakers also raised concerns that the tighter approach would be replicated for nature-based carbon projects with a direct impact on the future of large-scale forest conservation credits. The Conservation International advisor called it a “bad precedent”.
Both Conservation International and TNC run carbon credit programmes that aim to protect trees from being cut down. Labbate leads the UN-REDD programme, which supports countries developing forest protection initiatives including through carbon credits, and is co-chair of the expert panel advising the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM).
After the webinar, the organisers shared by email a series of “key messages” and draft submissions produced by the three organisations, which participants were invited to consider and adapt in their own inputs to the Article 6.4 consultation process.
Getting the rules ‘right’
In a statement to Climate Home News, Ghana, Paraguay and the UK – which are FCLP co-leads for its work on forest carbon credits – said members of the coalition welcomed expert views from a range of partners to help them understand the potential impact of Article 6.4 rules on the eligibility of forest carbon credits in international markets.
They added that the FCLP does not have a common position on the rules and its members are free to choose whether to attend webinars and use any of the materials circulated.
In a statement to Climate Home News, Conservation International said “getting these rules right is important to the environmental integrity of the carbon market, while ensuring all sectors have a place in it”. It added that the NGO does not dispute the validity of the scientific research underlying the proposed buffer pool, but recommends a broader approach including multiple models and datasets.
A spokesperson for TNC said the organisation had helped clarify complex materials and their potential implications, while decisions on how to respond remained entirely with participating countries.
‘Inconvenient science’
The scientific basis for the disputed reversal risk tool rests on two pieces of research. A peer-reviewed study, published in Nature in May and led by scientists at several US universities, modelled forest carbon-loss risk across the United States and found existing buffer pools there are undersized by an average factor of six.
To extend that approach worldwide, the Article 6.4 panel also drew on a second, global analysis by the same research team, which has not yet completed peer review. That study used satellite images, weather records and computer modelling to estimate a 31-42% chance of forests worldwide losing stored carbon within 100 years, depending on the scenario.
The panel picked one of these scenarios and turned its estimates into fixed risk percentages for individual countries, and in some cases provinces, which projects in those locations would need to apply.
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Critics say the peer-reviewed portion of the research was calibrated on North American forests, and that applying the same approach to other regions relies on a global study that is still going through academic checks.
But, for William Anderegg, professor of biological sciences at the University of Utah and one of the authors of that research, it is the best science currently available. He described it as “light-years better” than assumptions underlying the voluntary carbon market, where risk numbers are not generally based on independent evidence and tend to be incredibly low.
Scientific research, including by Anderegg, has found that buffer pools in forestry projects in the voluntary carbon market are substantially smaller than they should be to adequately protect against future releases of carbon.
“There really seems to be a fairly coordinated campaign to try to weaken the strength of these [Article 6.4] tools and their scientific underpinning,” he told Climate Home News. “It’s a little dispiriting to see folks attack science that’s inconvenient.”
Regulators under pressure?
An EU diplomat told Climate Home News that experts and negotiators working on the Article 6.4 mechanism have faced intense pressure from big carbon credit developers and large parts of the nature-based solutions community.
“It is very clear that they are lobbying against strong rules, and they want to align the Paris Agreement mechanism with the standards of the voluntary carbon market,” the diplomat said. “They have influence, time and money, even more than some governments, so they can be very effective in their efforts.”
Last year, the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, the new market’s regulator, approved rules on the permanence of credits aiming to remove carbon from the atmosphere which critics said were watered down compared to the technical panel’s recommendations. This followed feedback from carbon market firms and conservation NGOs, which submitted dozens of critical views.
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Carbon Market Watch’s Dossi said decisions that strengthen environmental integrity are targeted in particular as they tend to reduce the number of credits that can be issued.
Then, as now, those who opposed tighter rules argued that overly strict safeguards would make some projects too expensive to carry out, with a negative impact on local communities and the climate.
But proponents argue that higher-integrity programmes will drive up market prices, ultimately benefiting everyone.
“If rules ensuring better-quality credits make them somewhat more expensive than they are today, that’s an acceptable consequence, not a reason to weaken the rules, especially since these credits will be used to offset continued emissions,” said Dossi.
Efforts to pull the rule-makers in different directions are expected to intensify in the coming weeks as a decision on the new credit protection system nears.
“I really don’t know how this will turn out in the end,” one veteran carbon market expert said. “What I am sure about is that it will be quite a battle.”
The post Industry and NGOs lobby to weaken UN carbon credit rules in “coordinated” push appeared first on Climate Home News.
Industry and NGOs lobby to weaken UN carbon credit rules in “coordinated” push
A relatively ambitious deal to reduce the shipping industry’s 3% of global emissions now looks more likely after four days of closed-door talks in London, observers say.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO), which oversees the negotiations, said there had been “constructive discussions” and “genuine willingness within the group to make concrete further progress”.
Em Fenton, senior director at the NGO Opportunity Green who attended the talks last week, said they “demonstrated a strong spirit of solidarity in the face of blatant attempts to undermine the credibility, ambition and equity of a hard-fought multilateral agreement”.
After several years of debate, governments provisionally agreed in April 2025 on a “Net-Zero Framework” (NZF) – a series of emissions reduction targets for shipowners aimed at incentivising them to use cleaner fuels, backed up with financial rewards for meeting the targets and fees for missing them.
But in October 2025, after a high-profile intervention by US President Donald Trump and threats of US sanctions and visa restrictions, the US convinced a majority of voting nations to postpone the adoption of the NZF for a year.
UCL analysis found that, of those who expressed a view at last week’s talks, 38 were in favour of an NZF-style solution while only 17 were against. Those opposed are “consistently composed of strongly fossil fuel-aligned governments”.
An observer of the talks, who did not want to be named, said the countries opposed include the US, Russia, India, Thailand, Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay, as well as eight oil-rich Gulf nations and shipowner-reliant Liberia and Panama. Governments that support an NZF-style deal include China, Brazil, Mexico, Türkiye, Canada, Australia, Chile, nine African nations, most European countries and small islands.
A new framework to tackle shipping emissions could be adopted if two-thirds of countries that are present and signed up to a regulation called Marpol Annex VI – endorsed by just over 100 states – vote in favour of it, as they did in April 2025.
UCL’s analysis said it was “reassuring” that governments which had taken strong positions in the media against the NZF were being more compromising in the negotiations.
Tweaks are probable
While there is majority support for the NZF, UCL said adopting it would be difficult politically. “The process from here could therefore be as much about producing what appears to be a new package, but one that broadly ends up with similar outcomes in relation to objectives,” UCL argued.
But tweaking the NZF, which resulted from years of negotiations, comes with risks, it warned. For example, changes could reduce the new system’s planned support for low-income countries, turning them against it. Fenton said compromising should not mean “abandoning the principle of justice in the maritime transition”.
UCL said the speed at which shipowners must reduce their ships’ emissions or face fees is likely to be reduced in the short-term but raised in the long-term to meet a goal of net zero emissions by mid-century.
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This was a compromise put forward by NZF-supporter Brazil. However, an analysis by the the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) has found that this change would lead to more overall emissions than the original NZF trajectory.
UCL has warned it could incentivise liquefied natural gas as a shipping fuel over greener options, which include hydrogen-based methanol and ammonia.
Analysis by UCL and the Rocky Mountain Institute suggests that, while a slower start to the NZF would reduce transport costs in the short term, it would increase them later due to the costs involved in switching the industry over from more polluting fuel to cleaner fuel.
NZF won’t meet emissions goals
IMarEst’s analysis finds that even in its current form – the most ambitious deal on the table – the NZF will not be sufficient for shipping to meet its emissions reduction goals.
It says that only a Pacific proposal to place a levy on ships’ total emissions – rather than just those above a certain level – would meet the industry’s targets to reduce emissions 20% between 2008 and 2030, 70% by 2040 and then reach net zero “by or around, i.e. close to 2050”. This is highly unlikely to be adopted.
Additional talks will be held from November 23-27 and from November 30-December 3 before a potentially final round of official negotiations begins on December 4.
The post London talks raise hopes for green shipping deal appeared first on Climate Home News.
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