The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.

The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.

To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.

Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).    

The same on the surface 

Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.

Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause. 

But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.

Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.

Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes, including food systems, urban resilience and nature. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.

COP30 roadmaps off the cuff

Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised. 

With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.

Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.

“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan. 

COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives

This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.

Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.

COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’

None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight. 

UNFCCC reform process in the shadows 

Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.

Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed. 

Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.  

Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation

The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.

A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.

In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye. 

The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.

When we talk about the green economy, we often think nationally: industrial strategies, renewable-energy targets, subsidies and rules for electrification. But much of the investment needed to deliver the green transition will be decided closer to home – in our cities.

City authorities determine where and how buildings are built and renovated, how public transport develops, how land is used, what municipalities buy and what gets built in terms of infrastructure.

These decisions have the power to go beyond cutting emissions and strengthening resilience. They create new opportunities for businesses and investors.

A new analysis by C40 Cities and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM) shows just how large these new markets could become.

Across 151 cities, annual spending on key green products could rise from $293 billion in 2025 to $2.78 trillion by 2050, as cities implement the climate commitments they have made. That figure would place them among the world’s five most valuable companies by market capitalisation.

Reliable source of rising demand

The supply of these green products will need to increase dramatically to meet booming demand. With Smart City Expo in Barcelona, Spain, and COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, on the horizon, these projections highlight an unprecedented investment opportunity that decision-makers cannot afford to ignore.

Beyond the global headline figure, it represents millions of local decisions and investments and, crucially, a growing source of market certainty. The analysis shows that fulfilling existing city climate plans could drive demand for key green products to eight times current levels by 2050, creating a reliable pipeline for businesses and investors.

Because these markets are shaped locally, the same national policies can produce very different outcomes from one city to another. But cities determine how quickly markets take off through planning, permitting, procurement, infrastructure and the targets they set.

Over the past decade, GCoM has brought together more than 14,000 cities and local governments across 150 countries under the premise that tackling the climate and energy crises head-on requires municipalities of all shapes and sizes to act – alongside their national governments.

And we have seen firsthand how local climate action can create new investment opportunities. Renca and Melbourne offer two very different examples of this dynamic in practice.

Greener future for city living

Melbourne is creating a pipeline of green investment across the city. In its 2025-2026 budget, Melbourne committed approximately $31 million to new parks, streetscape improvements and thousands of trees, while planning to electrify 11 municipal sites, including Melbourne Town Hall, and move its buildings towards 100% renewable electricity. Its 4-km Greenline project is also delivering promenades, parks, native planting and environmental renewal along the Yarra River – Birrarung. Together, these investments are creating demand across construction, clean energy, urban design and other green industries.

In Renca, climate investment is tackling local challenges while bringing public and private partners together. Between 2018 and 2025, about $7.6 million in public and private investment funded a reforestation effort that has planted more than 85,000 trees in the Renca Hills Metropolitan Park. An assessment supported by the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) now puts a number on what that investment returns: once the park matures, around 2035, its ecosystem services could be worth about $8.9 million a year.

A Water Master Plan, designed to reuse treated industrial water, will help sustain it. Renca has also attracted clean-energy investment through a 1.6-MW solar plant at a site run by manufacturer Tehmco. The project, which involved cooperation with the Japanese city of Toyama, includes more than 3,400 panels and expected annual emissions savings of about 1,000 tonnes of CO2.

Stepping up to meet cities’ climate needs

For us, as mayors, the lesson is clear: climate resilience is also economic resilience.

This is why the message ahead of COP31 should be straightforward: the world does not need a new market for climate action. It is already emerging in cities across the globe. What we need now is the push to take it to scale and turn local demand into a global investment boom.

COP31 has made implementation central to its Global Climate Action Agenda, with targets including raising the share of final energy demand met by electricity to 35% by 2035 and reducing building energy-consumption intensity by at least 25%. It has also highlighted green industrialisation, circularity and resilient cities.

Comment: Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action

These are ambitious targets and delivering them will require investment at a scale that matches the ambition. Cities are already putting projects into motion. The task now is to ensure that national policies and global finance scale up supply to meet demand.

But governments and global institutions cannot do this alone. The private sector must respond, too. The $2.78-trillion opportunity will be built on thousands of local climate and energy projects, like those in Melbourne and Renca. Companies need to look to cities as a source of long-term demand, while markets need products that can reach smaller projects and businesses, not only mega-infrastructure.

As members of C40 and GCoM, we strongly believe city and business leaders must work together to scale solutions faster. We need predictable, affordable finance and the capacity to turn local priorities into investment-ready projects. COP31’s Climate Implementation Bridge can help connect national commitments with these city-level investment pipelines and place local governments where they belong: at the centre of implementation and investment.

The businesses best positioned for the next decade will be those that see local governments not simply as stewards for climate solution deployment, but as the markets driving growth at speed and scale – from villages and towns to cities and metropolises. The opportunity is already there. Now we need to invest in it.

The post From Australia to Chile, our cities are driving a green investment boom appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a letter sent to UN climate chief Simon Stiell last Sunday, Ghana, which is chairing the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) this year, requested three additional agenda items on tripling adaptation finance, trade and climate change, and the financing arrangements of the Green Climate Fund. 

Governments agreed at last year’s COP30 on a new target to “at least triple” finance for climate adaptation in developing countries by 2035, following a push led by the least-developed countries which are highly vulnerable to growing climate impacts. But the last-minute deal left out key details, including the baseline year for tripling, a headline amount, who should pay and how it will be delivered.

AGN chair Antwi-Boasiako Amoah wrote in the letter that “a dedicated item is needed”, pointing to worrying trends in adaptation finance. He added that the mid-year climate talks in Bonn had “made clear” that countries could not agree how or where to take the goal forward.

During June’s session, developing countries tried to anchor the target in the negotiations on the Global Goal on Adaptation, which lays out technical indicators to measure and boost global efforts to cope with climate change. But wealthy nations – led primarily by the EU, the UK and Japan – opposed that push, arguing adaptation finance should be discussed elsewhere. Unable to break the deadlock, diplomats left Bonn without an agreement on adaptation.

‘Homeless’ issue

No other developing-country group has officially backed the AGN’s proposal so far. That may change next week, when negotiating blocs hold their pre-COP coordination meetings in Antalya.

Raju Pandit Chhetri, lead climate finance negotiator for the least-developed countries (LDCs), told Climate Home News it would be difficult to secure an agenda item on adaptation finance alone, but it is “a homeless issue” that needs to be discussed somewhere within the formal talks at COP31.

Developed countries are likely to resist. In their agreed COP31 negotiating position, EU governments reaffirmed the tripling call but framed it within the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), the broader post-2025 finance goal agreed at COP29 in Baku. The EU and its member states are the largest provider of international climate finance to developing countries, but some nations, including Germany and France, have cut their aid budgets in recent years.

The LDCs want the goal to be defined as $120 billion a year by 2030 (five years before the agreed timeline), which would triple a previous target of around $40 billion. That was meant to be reached in 2025 but is likely to have been missed.

Mattias Söderberg, global climate lead for the Danish development NGO DanChurchAid, said tripling adaptation finance is not just “catchy wording”, but something that will save lives and help countries and communities cope with climate change on the ground. 

He added that the AGN’s proposal will “for sure” spark a debate and “may lead to an agenda fight”, but it will ensure that the goal will not be forgotten. 

GCF’s needs assessment

The second request in Ghana’s letter aims to revive a provision dating back to COP19 in 2013. Countries agreed then that the COP conferences should periodically assess how much money developing countries need to implement the UN climate convention, with the goal of helping inform fundraising by the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

Amoah said the COP has not made that assessment since 2013, so the fund’s replenishments have gone ahead without it. The GCF’s next fundraising round, covering 2028 to 2031, officially began in July. Its board is meeting in South Korea this week to agree rules for donor contributions, and a pledging conference is expected by the end of 2027.

The letter points to “declining” aid and “pressure on multilateral climate funds”. In May, the UK told the GCF it would deliver only half of the £1.62bn it had pledged for the current period, as it spends more on national security.

Trade tensions return

The third African request, for a “Trade and Climate Change Dialogue” item, is likely to be just as contentious. Disputes over what some countries call unilateral trade measures, such as the EU’s carbon border tax, have flared at recent COPs.

To keep this hot issue out of the official negotiations, in Belém last year, the Brazilian presidency set up three trade dialogues to take place at the Bonn mid-year sessions from 2026 to 2028. The first, in June, stayed stuck at “principled debate”, E3G’s Ellie Belton told Climate Home News. There, the African Group and Russia floated a formal negotiating track, which developed countries are reluctant to open.

Tensions set to flare over trade at COP31 as China makes it a priority

The AGN letter argues that the Belém decision already gives sufficient basis for an agenda item. “Respecting previous decisions of the [UNFCCC] governing bodies is an inalienable basis for trust in the process,” it says.

China, which previously asked for an agenda item on trade, signalled last week that it wants COP31 to tackle trade “protectionism” and the free flow of green technology, after US and EU curbs on its cleantech exports.

The UN climate secretariat can add the requested items to a provisional agenda that would need to be formally adopted at the start of the COP. Any government can object to the inclusion of additional issues, and disputed items are often moved into consultations led by the presidency to broker a deal.

The post Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight appeared first on Climate Home News.

Ahead of the COP17 nature summit taking place in Yerevan, Armenia, a UN assessment report showed that governments are off track to meet nearly all the 2030 targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.

In Yerevan, talks on increasing financial resources for biodiversity have remained gridlocked by an EU proposal to expand the list of potential government donors, so that emerging economies like China or Gulf states would also be able to contribute funding and have it counted towards a collective goal.

But some developing nations have fiercely opposed proposal. The group of Arab countries said at the summit’s opening plenary that it “rejects any attempt” to expand the list of donors or “reclassify” the development status of countries.

Ireland’s nature minister Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, told journalists in Yerevan that EU member states “do feel very strongly about this”. “There are a lot of countries considered developing countries that obviously need to play their part,” he said.

“It’s been 20 years since that list was added. Times have changed and there are new realities. And we just, as simple as this, would like to see those new realities reflected,” O’Sullivan told a press conference on Wednesday.

EU environment commissioner Jessika Roswall said the bloc’s member states will continue their financial commitments but – given a “big gap” on investment – their effort alone will not be enough. “We need more countries to bridge biodiversity finance” to meet the 2030 targets, she added.

Countries are meeting in Armenia for the first Global Review of Collective Progress – a similar process to the climate Global Stocktake – under which they are expected to adopt a “Yerevan Pathway” outlining ways to ramp up nature conservation policies and get on course to meet global nature goals.

Biodiversity finance falling short

The UN report on progress shows developed countries most likely failed to meet an interim target to channel $20 billion for nature protection by 2025, which developing countries say is necessary to implement a global target to protect 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030.

The group of African countries said in a statement at the COP17 opening plenary that the findings of the global review “serve as a serious warning” and “underscore the urgent need to strengthen” the delivery of public finance.

Brian O’Donnell from the non-profit Campaign for Nature told a Climate Home News webinar that public funding is key for developing countries – which are home to most of the world’s biodiversity – so that they can develop tools like spatial planning, incentives for local communities, institutional capacity and even simply signage within a protected area. “We’re asking a lot from those countries,” he added.

The GBF target also states that public biodiversity finance should be increased to $30bn by 2030, and that in total countries should mobilise $200bn from all possible sources – which includes the private sector and philanthropic funds – by the same date. In 2025, global biodiversity finance is estimated to have reached between $74.9 and $92.4 billion per year.

Speaking at the webinar, Steven Guilbeault, a former minister of environment for Canada and one of the architects of the GBF, said he has been hearing the idea of expanding the base of donors to increase available finance since the biodiversity COP1 in 1995, but added it’s not an “easy conversation” that will be solved in Yerevan.

“I wouldn’t want the progress that we’re seeing here, the progress that we can still make in the coming days, to be jeopardised by the entrenched position on this issue,” he said.

In a letter issued to governments, the Armenian presidency said it aimed to adopt the Global Review text on Wednesday, with two days of negotiations still to go. Observers told Climate Home News that this would be a way of detaching it from the thorniest negotiations on finance. The text, however, was not adopted as planned.

Reducing harmful subsidies as an alternative

Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), said it is “no surprise” that the finance decisions will require guidance from ministers, but argued that the “heavy lift” to increase financial commitments will need to come from reforming subsidies.

When the GBF was adopted, countries identified a finance gap of $700bn a year by 2030. They agreed to address it by mobilising $200bn from all sources, but the bulk of this is due to come by redirecting $500bn in subsidies for activities that harm nature. This goal – contained in Target 18 of the GBF – is where governments have made the least amount of progress, according to the UN progress report.

The UN currently estimates that for every dollar invested in nature conservation and restoration, $30 are currently invested in its destruction. A report by Conservation International puts the cost of harmful subsidies at $11 trillion-$24.7 trillion a year, when also accounting for the nature loss they leave behind.

In Yerevan, the COP17 presidency has aimed to raise the profile of the target on subsidies by launching several voluntary initiatives, including the “Friends of Target 18”, a new platform led by Colombia and Finland which will help countries identify and find ways to redirect damaging subsidies.

Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31

A group of over 130 business and financial institutions – among them French bank BNP Paribas, fashion retailer H&M, food giant Nestle and household products multinational Unilever – also issued an open letter calling on countries to accelerate incentive reform.

Speaking to the media on Monday, Kumi Kitamori, environment director at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said much of the discussion focuses on winding down nature-negative incentives, but noted “it’s also equally about scaling up incentives that are positive”.

In the formal negotiations, countries are talking about whether to include a specific mention of this in the Global Review. The COP17 presidency has proposed to include a line encouraging countries “to accelerate the identification, and the elimination, phase out or reform of negative incentives”, as well as scaling up positive ones.

Jill Hepp, Conservation International’s managing director of nature policy and incentives, said this sends a “powerful signal” that the presidency is prioritising subsidy and incentive reform. She said the new suggested text “well reflects the discussions over the last two weeks and the reality that action towards Target 18 in its entirety must be accelerated to keep 2030 goals within reach”.

Private contributions awaiting rules

Developed countries have pointed to the need for more private-sector contributions that can offset shrinking government aid budgets. At the COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, countries created a new fund to channel voluntary private-sector contributions based on their use of genetic material to support biodiversity protection.

A large part of the fund’s potential relies on the participation of pharmaceutical companies. According to a report by think-tank Zero Carbon Analytics, the top 15 pharma companies could have paid $756 million into the fund in 2025, when taking into account its guidelines suggesting contributions of 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenue.

Yet two years since its creation, the Cali Fund has received little more than $10,000 in corporate contributions. In Yerevan, negotiations have focused on how to operationalise the fund and how to distribute the money among developing countries.

Guilbeault argued that once the rules are finalised, it will open the door to further contributions, noting that companies “need a little bit more security” about what they’re investing in. “Like we saw on climate, when the rules became clearer, more money started flowing through the type of activities we want,” he said.

On the sidelines of COP17, the EU also launched an initiative for “Friends of Credits for Nature and Biodiversity”, which provides a platform to support biodiversity credits. Much like carbon markets, these are credits that companies can buy and sell representing “nature-positive” actions that protect biodiversity, but they are a controversial measure disputed by some Indigenous and environmental groups.

Campaign for Nature’s O’Donnell argued that, even if private-sector flows increase, public funds will still be required, given that the “business case” for some nature-conservation or restoration projects could be harder to make than for climate measures like renewable energy.

Nonetheless, the TNC’s Krueger noted there is a lot of interest among businesses in investing in nature and said the UN biodiversity talks could help ensure they play their part.

“A lot of businesses have taken it up voluntarily, which is fantastic to see. And so, I think a process of making that a little bit more mandatory, a little bit more implemented, could go a long way to help business and nature be aligned,” she said.

This story was updated to add further comments from Irish minister Christopher O’Sullivan and EU environment commissioner Jessika Roswall.

The post Stalemate on finance at COP17 nature talks exposes need for new sources appeared first on Climate Home News.

But these investments in the shift to low-carbon economies affect workers and communities and therefore require their support. Without funding for social protection and participation, their backing is unlikely, putting the transition at risk, climate justice experts warn.

Several headline-grabbing “Just Energy Transition Partnerships” (JETPs) were announced in 2021 and 2022, including for South Africa at the UN climate conference in Glasgow and Indonesia at the G20 summit.

While there is a need for fair, green transitions across all economic sectors, from vehicle manufacturing to farming and health, it is energy that has attracted the most attention and money so far. The early results have been mixed, with progress on moving away from coal power in the countries with JETPs slower than hoped for.

Another challenge is that the vast majority of the JETP funding on offer is in the form of loans, with the grants needed to support local communities through the transition making up a tiny fraction.

Of the finance pledged to South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam under their JETPs, grants accounted for just 4%, concessional below-market-rate loans for 53%, commercial loans for 25% and guarantees for 13%, according to a policy brief produced for the G20 in Brazil. 

Spotting a major gap in the justice side of these partnerships, philanthropic foundations in 2023 established a $20-million fund to support community-based and non-governmental groups in JETP countries in their efforts to secure a fair deal for local people.

Philanthropies back community input 

During three years of giving grants to 60 community organisations, unions and researchers, ClimateWorks Foundation – which set up the Global South Just Transition Fund with the IKEA and Laudes foundations – has learned what it takes to complement the JETPs. 

“They are built to move money to energy projects, and our grants build the civic and governance infrastructure that lets that money land,” Justin Sylvester, just transition director at ClimateWorks Foundation, told Climate Home News.

The results achieved with the Fund’s backing include progress on a subnational Natural Resource Fund model in Indonesia backed by the finance ministry, which offers a route for districts to channel coal revenues into developing communities’ post-coal economies. 

Comment: Santa Marta was a learning moment for how to shape inclusive just transitions

In South Africa, meanwhile, nonprofit INSPIRE has worked with solar developer Forethought Capital to build trust with community leaders and secure signed lease agreements for solar projects on protected communal land – a model that can be replicated.

One key lesson so far, Sylvester said, is the importance of building civil society’s economic, civic and cultural power – not just its capacity. Another is the need to get behind social ecosystems rather than isolated projects, and collaborate with other funders. 

“Results come when a community group, a researcher, and a ministry work on the same issue at the local, regional, and national levels,” he said. “We see clear wins when communities can shape transition decisions rather than only react to them, with positive policy outcomes, court rulings, and public money moving.”

The missing finance category

Despite the importance of these early efforts to ensure an equitable green future for communities on the ground, no one knows how much money is going towards it. That is largely because, as an emerging category of climate action that has evolved only in the past few years, funding for just transitions is not yet being comprehensively measured or tracked.

Nor is there consensus on how much will be needed as the energy transition gathers speed. Estimated requirements for international support for developing countries range from a high-level climate finance panel’s $50 billion a year by 2035 to $242 billion a year from the Civil Society Equity Review. But these figures are hard to compare directly.

A new discussion paper on finance for just transition and how it fits with a new Just Transition Mechanism (JTM) due to be established at the upcoming COP31 climate summit in Antalya notes that it faces “a definitional, methodological and accounting challenge”.   

It defines just transition finance as “finance coming primarily from public sources, above all grant-based, highly concessional and non-debt-creating, that supports the policies and measures needed to move economies away from extractive, carbon-intensive models while distributing costs and benefits fairly”. 

Co-author Jodi-Ann Wang, a research fellow with the Just Transition Finance Lab at the Grantham Research Institute, told a webinar on the paper’s findings there is as yet no common tracker or shared taxonomy in place, nor oversight to monitor such flows. 

“Opacity is… costing us a sound understanding of just transition finance,” she said. 

This is where the “Belém-Antalya Just Transition Mechanism” – or BAM, as it’s known among the civil society groups that advocated strongly for it – comes in. 

From Belém to Antalya – gains, gaps and challenges for a new Just Transition Mechanism 

Resource mobilisation group under BAM

As part of its objectives, form and methods of working, which countries will begin to define at the COP31 negotiations in Türkiye, Climate Action Network (CAN) International, a coalition of hundreds of NGOs, is pushing for the JTM to include a “resource mobilisation group”.

This, the paper explains, could explore and develop ways to boost the quantity, quality and governance of finance for just transition around the world, with a view to making it more accessible and equitable.

More concretely, it could map available sources of support and funding gaps, inform the new JTM on financial realities and needs, and propose partnerships between financial institutions, donor countries and actors implementing just transition on the ground. 

Rebecca Thissen, CAN’s global advocacy lead who co-authored the paper, emphasised that the aim is not to set up yet another UN climate fund – something donor governments are wary of. Instead, she described the role of a resource mobilisation group as “more agile and innovative”.     

One of its first tasks would be raising awareness about just transition finance – not yet an established category of climate funding. Climate finance has traditionally fallen into two main categories: mitigation (measures that cut emissions, such as installing renewables) and adaptation (protecting people, infrastructure and livelihoods from climate change impacts). 

A third pillar has recently emerged: loss and damage (responding to and minimising destruction and harm caused by climate-driven disasters and longer-term stresses).

Just transition finance here, there and everywhere

The time has come to add just transition into the finance mix, argued Thissen, explaining this could be done through two main approaches. The first is to ensure that the existing areas – mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage – have a strong justice component integrated into them. 

The second is to identify specific just transition policies and measures that “fall through the cracks” of those three types of climate finance and show how they can be funded separately.  

Examples given in the paper include Ireland providing a fuel allowance and tax rebates for low-income households to offset additional costs from its carbon tax, Romania offering retraining opportunities in its coal region, and Chile funding ecosystem restoration for polluted areas to recover from resource extraction.

Spain’s unions say just transition means renewing communities beyond jobs

Spain’s government, in addition, has been widely praised for funding formal pacts and just transition strategies in areas where coal mining and power has been phased out, based on tripartite consultations with national, regional and local administrations, unions and industry.

NDCs get serious about just transition

The emerging discussion around just transition finance comes as governments have begun incorporating the concept of just transition, and how to pursue it, into their national climate action plans (NDCs) in a far more meaningful way.

A report from the International Labour Organization, which covered 123 countries that had submitted updated NDCs by November 2025 – the third set of NDCs since 2015 – found that explicit references to “just transition” appeared in 79%, up from 50% in the second cycle.

It said many countries have moved beyond single mentions of just transition to multiple references or even dedicated sections, while around half of NDCs now reference follow-up mechanisms or institutional arrangements for just transition. 

Mentions of explicit resources being allocated for just transition rose to 26% – whether in the form of financial commitments, budget lines or designated funding channels – compared with 2% in the previous round of NDCs. 

The report also cast the net wider, showing that employment has become a common consideration when it comes to climate action, with 90% of the latest NDCs referencing employment and giving growing attention to green jobs and decent work. Social inclusion and equity, meanwhile, are also more prominent, appearing in over three-quarters of NDCs. 

Labour rights lens puts focus on all workers 

This broader lens on just transition fits with the perspective of the International Trade Union Confederation, which argues it must lead to quality jobs in renewables and other green industries, respect labour rights and be built on social dialogue, as well as compensate those who lose out in the shift to a low-carbon world using social protection systems. 

All this has to be financed, emphasised Bert De Wel, the confederation’s global climate policy coordinator. His organisation argues that this can best be done by planning a fair deal for workers and people with lower incomes as economies go greener. 

“It’s not always about having more money – more public money, more private money,” De Wel said. “It’s also about what is out there and how it’s being distributed – who is winning and who is losing?” 

For example, when it comes to promoting sales of electric vehicles over petrol or diesel cars, government subsidies often end up going to richer families, while public transport used by those who can’t or don’t want to buy a car suffer from under-investment.

Similarly, just transition is often seen in rich countries as limited to helping workers in coal mines or oil fields find new green jobs. But this, De Wel said, is far too narrow an interpretation. 

Key decisions at UN climate conferences make clear that just transitions are needed across multiple sectors and require “whole-of-society and whole-of-economy approaches”. 

“All workers affected by climate change or by climate policies [should be] the subject of just transition policies, and the best way to deal with it is to give them decent jobs and good contracts, which means formal jobs or formalisation of informal workers,” De Wel said. 

This is especially important in developing countries where informal work makes up a large share of economic activity and those who do it risk being left out of the just transition. So far, they have been largely left out of estimates of what will be needed to fund just transitions.   

Narrowing the development gap 

In addition to compensating workers who are negatively affected by climate policies, social protection and social welfare systems can also be an effective way of providing just transition support to vulnerable people who are hit by climate change impacts. 

Back in 2021, record rainfall caused rivers to burst their banks on the border of Germany and Belgium, killing at least 170 people and causing many employees to be out of work for a few months until their companies could recover. 

But, De Wel noted, they did not lose out financially because they were covered by national social security systems – unlike in developing countries such as Pakistan when people’s small businesses or fields are devastated by flooding and they have to rely on handouts.

For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity

Khaled Hashem, an Egyptian negotiator who coordinates the just transition track for the G77 and China group of developing countries at UN climate talks, said it is essential for the new JTM to take a broad view and work towards narrowing the development gap between rich and poor nations, so that the latter are in a position to take stronger climate action.

For example, just changing the energy source of a factory to solar requires a whole range of investments in infrastructure, the power grid, skilling of the labour force and even support for basic health and education services at the local level, he argued. Funding for all these different activities “can be considered as part of the just transition”, he added. 

JTM can connect and coordinate

Given the scope of the challenge, CAN International proposes that a resource mobilisation group under the JTM could connect what is happening inside and outside of the UN climate process to coordinate the many existing and potential sources of funding and have them recognised as just transition finance with shared guidelines.

Currently, Thissen said, multilateral development banks are already working on just transition using their own sets of principles, but are starting to appreciate the value the new mechanism could offer in bringing funders together to discuss how to improve cooperation.

This would include UN climate funds, such as the Green Climate Fund which mentions just transition in its strategy but has so far funded few projects that directly address the issue. 

“If [the JTM] is established… with the right function and modalities and principles, it could really set a very good precedent on how we articulate the COP discussion, while also including newcomers and new actors, but through defined standards and approaches that are still embedded in multilateral climate agreements,” Thissen said.  

She suggested that the next Global Stocktake of national climate plans, due to conclude in late 2028, could evaluate and respond to countries’ progress on just transition and funding for it in the outcomes, which must be agreed by all governments. 

The stocktake could be informed by the UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance, which assesses climate finance needs for developing countries every four years, with its third such report due in 2028. While the committee has so far lacked data on just transition finance, this could be provided through the work of the new Just Transition Mechanism.

“That could be a clear connection [between] what actually already exists in the negotiations and… the added value of the BAM,” Thissen said.

The post Why COP31 needs to start talking about just transition finance appeared first on Climate Home News.

The climate crisis is also a human rights crisis – claiming lives and turning life upside down for countless communities across the world.

But while those profiting from fossil fuel expansion retain privileged access and influence over global climate negotiations, the people facing its harshest consequences, such as Indigenous peoples or those living in climate-vulnerable communities, remain largely shut out of the decision-making.

As directors of Amnesty International in Brazil, Türkiye and Australia, countries with a leading role in COP30 and COP31, we have seen how effective climate action depends on people being able to speak, organise, protest and participate.

Last year in Belém, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered every national delegation except Brazil’s, exposing the imbalance of power within climate negotiations. COP31 should confront corporate capture and expand public participation. Instead, serious concerns have been raised over whether civil society will be able to speak freely and safely in Türkiye.

Rights curbs worsen climate breakdown

The human rights needed to confront the climate crisis and demand justice are being eroded.

Authoritarian practices are supercharging climate breakdown by restricting protest, silencing defenders and shielding fossil fuel interests from scrutiny. Attacks on women, LGBTI+ people and members of other marginalised communities divide societies, weaken collective action and divert public attention while fossil fuel expansion continues.

That is why the assault on civic space in Türkiye, the host of COP31, should alarm every government preparing to attend the summit.

In September, Turkish authorities launched a nationwide operation targeting LGBTI+ organisations, activists and human rights defenders. Homes, venues and offices were raided, people were arrested and imprisoned, and social media accounts belonging to activists, journalists and human rights groups were restricted, including that of Amnesty International Türkiye.

This is part of a decade-long crackdown that has weakened judicial independence, ignored international judgements and restricted peaceful assembly, association and expression. Whoever is targeted, the effect is the same: dissent is silenced and fear spreads.

For COP31 to succeed, Türkiye must end its human rights crackdown.

Worrying signals from Türkiye

Against this backdrop, the agreement between Türkiye and the UN on hosting COP31 is alarming.

Article 11.11 requires participants to respect Türkiye’s laws and regulations and refrain from interfering in its “internal affairs”. Article 11.12 reintroduces language on waiving immunity that was omitted from Brazil’s COP30 agreement.

Turkish authorities are already invoking vague notions of “public morality” and “harm to the family” to investigate people and restrict expression. The agreement could therefore have a chilling effect on activists, defenders and journalists.

COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”

Could criticism of Türkiye’s fossil fuel policies, its treatment of environmental defenders or its crackdown on LGBTI+ organisations be characterised as interference in “internal affairs”? Nobody attending a UN climate conference should have to ask.

Türkiye and the UN should publicly guarantee that participants can speak, organise, report and protest peacefully without discrimination, intimidation, surveillance, detention or reprisals. Governments ought to challenge the agreement’s flaws before arriving in Antalya.

Progress, not perfection, at Brazil’s COP

COP31 must build on Brazil’s approach. Its COP hosting agreement committed to an inclusive and non-discriminatory conference, while its presidency adopted a more open and participatory tone. COP30 saw record participation by Indigenous peoples, but access did not guarantee influence: many key decisions continued to be shaped behind closed doors.

Commitments made in Belém ultimately depend on domestic political choices, and Brazil’s October election results point to a legislature that may be less willing to uphold them. This could put the rights of Indigenous peoples, Quilombola and traditional communities at greater risk.

When protections at home weaken, international spaces become even more vital for affected populations to speak out, and hold decision-makers accountable. COP31 must guarantee freedom of expression and peaceful assembly outside the “Blue Zone” (the UN-protected area) and grant civil society greater access to negotiations.

Comment: Coal mines and hypocrisy must not be Australia’s COP31 legacy

As documented by Amnesty International, communities resisting fossil fuel expansion and building fairer alternatives are facing harassment, surveillance, criminalisation, disinformation, violence and restrictions on peaceful protest. They include: First Nations people in Australia challenging offshore oil and gas exploration, artisanal fishers in Brazil’s Guanabara Bay fighting for environmental justice, and activists defending Akbelen Forest in Türkiye from coal mining expansion.

These communities are rights-holders, knowledge-bearers and political actors protecting territories and forging effective climate responses. Governments must protect them and ensure they have a meaningful say.

Confronting fossil fuel power

To defend human rights, governments must use COP31 to advance three urgent priorities.

First, they must end fossil fuel expansion and accelerate a full, fast, fair, funded and human rights-compliant transition away from fossil fuels. States most responsible must go further and faster, ending fossil fuel subsidies and redirecting public resources towards rights-respecting renewable energy.

Second, they must ensure the transition protects rights and leaves no one behind, including by making the new Just Transition Mechanism operational, funded and accountable.

And third, they must scale up public, grant-based climate finance for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage, without pushing lower-income countries further into debt.

COP31 will not deliver these outcomes without the knowledge and expertise of frontline communities.

Brazil must defend the participatory progress made at COP30. Türkiye must reverse its crackdown and protect civic space. Australia, as president of negotiations for COP31, should secure an ambitious, human rights-centred outcome while confronting restrictions on peaceful climate protest at home.

The climate crisis cannot be solved behind closed doors. The doors must remain open, and people must have the power to shape what happens inside.

The post COP31 must amplify people power, not oil lobby voices appeared first on Climate Home News.

China, which dominates global manufacturing of cleantech equipment, has staunchly denounced US and EU tariffs and measures restricting the import of Chinese green technologies, which Washington and Brussels argue receive unfair government subsidies that threaten their nascent domestic industries.

China’s vice-minister of ecology and environment, Li Gao, told a press conference last week that COP31 should discuss the free flow of green technology as well as trade “unilateralism ​and protectionism”, warning that Beijing would give a “firm response” to attacks against it.

Trade tensions spilled over into the climate negotiations at COP30 in Brazil last year, quickly becoming one of the talks’ major flashpoints after large emerging economies, including China, India and South Africa, pushed to get “unilateral trade measures” on the agenda of the UN climate negotiations.

Observers of the UN talks told Climate Home News trade is likely to re-surface as a major sticking point between the EU and emerging economies, including China, during COP31 this November after newly created spaces for dialogue on climate and trade adjacent to the formal negotiations have so far failed to yield practical solutions on a way forward.

“We should be prepared for the climate-trade issue to be one of the prominent issues in Antalya,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

China’s game plan unclear

Although there is currently no designated track in the negotiations to discuss trade issues, China and other large emerging economies have repeatedly used the climate conference to air their grievances over trade barriers. How far China is willing to push the issue within the UN climate process and what it hopes to achieve remain unclear, however.

The vehemence which characterised the trade discussions at COP30 could be tempered in Antalya next month, Li said.

“My expectation is that all sides will be mindful of the trade issue creating more frictions to the multilateral system and will be more measured at COP31,” Li told Climate Home News. “That said, we should continue to expect rhetoric around this issue. Domestic politics in different countries will demand emotions on this issue to be unleashed.”

An EU-China deal struck earlier this month to halve exports of Chinese hybrid vehicles to the bloc could also help ease tensions, with further talks planned in March.

The Trump administration did not send an official delegation at COP30 and is not expected to attend COP31 either, after it quit the Paris Agreement and is also withdrawing from the UN climate convention.

A space for dialogue

At COP30, China and other large emerging economies used the trade discussions to take aim at the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which they staunchly oppose.

The mechanism imposes a border levy on imports of high-emitting products from countries with less stringent emissions regulations to protect European industries from unfair competition and help drive down emissions. The UK is set to implement its own version from January.

But China and other developing countries argue that the levy violates international trade rules and disproportionately punishes countries with fewer resources to clean up their industries or pay a premium for greener products in their supply chains.

To keep the issue outside the formal negotiations, the COP30 Brazilian presidency bundled trade with other contentious issue into an overarching political decision, in which governments agreed to establish the first UN climate and trade dialogue.

The “Global Mutirão” decision repeated previously agreed language that unilateral measures to address climate change “should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”. Brazil also launched a voluntary climate and trade forum for countries to discuss how trade can support sustainable economic growth.

But recent discussions “have remained stuck at the level of principled debate and have failed to identify practical solutions”, said Ellie Belton, who tracks climate and trade issues for think-tank E3G.

Voluntary dialogue off on wrong foot

During the first of three trade dialogues scheduled annually between now and COP33, countries largely reiterated their existing positions at the June session in Bonn.

The EU defended its carbon border mechanism, and noted that the dialogue “should not become a space to address trade disputes or make judgements about the legitimacy of climate measures”. A spokesperson for the European Commission told Climate Home News that the bloc “welcomes continued dialogue” to enhance cooperation on measures to prevent carbon leakage.

Russia and the group of African countries suggested the creation of a formal negotiation track for trade discussions at the UN climate talks. But the EU and other developed economies will be reluctant to reopen the matter in Antalya, said Belton.

Meanwhile, the first meeting of the Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade (IFCCT) – also held during the Bonn climate talks – was poorly attended after last-minute participation by Russia, which led many developed countries skipping the dialogue, three attendees told Climate Home News.

Countries that joined the session “had a useful discussion but it wasn’t the meeting it was originally envisioned to be”, one delegate said.

Can UN climate talks deliver trade progress?

Although the World Trade Organization is the obvious venue to discuss trade issues, it does not assess the climate impacts of trade interventions – a gap the UN climate talks could help bridge, observers say.

“Trade can generate real economy benefits to help advance global climate action – failing to address this at the UNFCCC is a missed opportunity,” said Belton, of E3G. “Unfortunately, it is likely to remain challenging to focus attention on the positive role of trade co-operation at COP31 if these longstanding tensions continue to consume so much bandwidth,” she added.

Some of the solutions proposed by countries in the first trade dialogue included ways to make different carbon markets work together, including by exchanging data, and using free trade agreements to lower barriers for clean technologies.

Access to affordable clean energy technologies such as solar panels, EVs and batteries has become a key issue for developing countries seeking to wean their economies off expensive and polluting fossil fuels. At the same time, nations want a share of cleantech value chains to create jobs and spur development.

A background paper for the climate and trade forum, seen by Climate Home News, shows that some of the areas identified for co-operation include reducing the cost of low-carbon trade, protecting trade flows after climate-induced disasters, and better connecting systems to report and verify the sustainability of traded goods.

Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G, said the forum is meant for countries to “hold hands and move together in a more ambitious and faster way” without the need for global consensus required by formal negotiations.

Meanwhile, the accompanying trade dialogues are designed to “feed into the negotiations over the second Global Stocktake” at COP33, where countries will issue a set of recommendations to ramp up global climate policies. This package could include trade provisions for the first time.

“That could be useful if the next two years demonstrate that there’s a willingness to look for ways in which the UNFCCC can be constructive in the trade space, and make trade a driver of climate ambition rather than a finger-pointing exercise and an irritant,” Meyer said.

The post Tensions set to flare over trade at COP31 as China makes it a priority appeared first on Climate Home News.

Taking into account the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of 154 countries, which cover about 71% of global emissions, and current policies in the rest of the world, global emissions would fall to about 6% below 2019 levels by 2035. Last year’s update, based on 113 countries, put the figure at 12%.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, emissions need to go down by 60% over the same period to limit global warming to 1.5C – a threshold that is now inevitably going to be breached, at least temporarily.

The latest NDCs put the world on course for between 2.1C and 3.2C of warming by the end of the century, depending on what countries do beyond 2035. That is slightly higher than the 1.9C–3.0C range that the UN climate body estimated in last year’s update, published during COP30.

US exit worsens picture

A major factor is the US, the world’s second-largest emitter. Last year’s UN assessment included the pledge to cut emissions by between 61% and 66% by 2035, made under the administration of former President Joe Biden. 

But, since the US has officially left the Paris Agreement, its NDC has been excluded from the tally and its emissions projections have now been derived from current policies, which point to far higher levels of pollution. 

US emissions grew significantly last year as a result of growing electricity demand and the policies of President Donald Trump’s administration, which has rolled back support for clean energy and backed the burning of fossil fuels.

Weak new NDCs

Another reason for weaker emission reduction projections is that the approximately 40 new NDCs submitted since last year’s update have been less ambitious than the earlier UN modelling had hoped for.

India, the world’s third-largest emitter, submitted its NDC in April. Its plan would let emissions climb to 6.3 billion tonnes by 2035, almost 64% above 2023 levels, according to analysis by Climate Action Tracker (CAT). Its targets are weaker than India’s current policies and it could meet them as early as 2030.

Saudi Arabia’s plan, submitted at the end of last year, sets no 2035 target, but has only a 2040 goal to reduce, avoid or remove 335 million tonnes a year against an undisclosed baseline. CAT rates it “critically insufficient”, estimating 2035 emissions at between 13% below and 18% above 2019 levels.

About 30 countries, including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina, have still not produced an updated NDC, which all governments should have submitted more than a year and a half ago. 

UN climate chief Simon Stiell said this year’s assessment report demonstrates again that collective progress remains insufficient, that global transitions are very uneven and that many countries face substantial barriers to delivering their targets and pledges.

He added that COP31 in Türkiye can help address some of the key gaps highlighted in this year’s reports, through ambitious outcomes on emission-cutting efforts, adaptation, climate finance and just transitions, as well as presidency-led initiatives on electrification, curbing methane emissions and progressing towards zero waste.

The post National climate plans now promise half the emission cuts expected by UN appeared first on Climate Home News.

Defying expectations to win an unprecedented fourth term in office, Lula – who turns 81 this week – said in his acceptance speech that “we will show the world how climate policy is handled in this country”, and highlighted that, during his last four years as leader, the country has reduced deforestation every year.

Earlier this month, new data from Brazil’s space agency showed that forest-clearing in the Amazon fell to its lowest on record, after the introduction of a deforestation action plan that constrained illegal cattle ranching from expanding into the world’s largest rainforest.

Brazil leads “encouraging” decline in global rainforest destruction in 2025

At an international level, the country has long championed forest conservation, spearheading the creation of the newly established Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). As president of last year’s COP30 climate summit, the country is also developing a global roadmap to halt forest loss by the end of the decade, in line with a global goal, which will be presented at the upcoming UN climate summit in Antalya.

‘Much more needs to be done’

In 2023, Lula’s previous administration introduced a deforestation action plan that set a target of zero deforestation by 2030, achieving swift results. His re-election paves the way for this downward trend to continue.

Carlos Nobre, a veteran Brazilian climate scientist and co-chair of the Science Panel for the Amazon, said Brazil now has a “historic opportunity” to prevent a tipping point where large parts of the Amazon rainforest could turn into savanna, with dangerous impacts for the planet’s climate.

“The reduction in deforestation over recent years has been crucial, but much more needs to be done. Ending deforestation by 2030, tackling forest degradation and accelerating large-scale forest restoration are urgent priorities,” he said.

Anders Haug Larsen, advocacy director at the Norway Rainforest Foundation, described the election result as a “relief”, adding it makes it more attractive for donors to support rainforest protection in the country.

“Hope is a scarce commodity these days,” he said. “The international community must grasp this opportunity to strengthen efforts towards zero deforestation in the Amazon.”

Rainforest fund boosted by election result

Brazil was the original proponent of the TFFF, one of the highest-profile initiatives aimed at channelling new finance to protect the world’s rainforests. The fund aims to raise public seed capital to invest in financial markets, and then pay rainforest countries from the returns on those investments.

Despite being a developing country, Brazil has pledged $1 billion to the fund and is expected to play a key role in helping reach its goal to raise $10 billion from governments by the end of this year.

“We need more countries to come on board to meet the mobilisation target of $10 billion this year, and this election should inject trust in the calls from rainforest countries for support to their forest protection efforts,” Larsen said.

Brazil confident new rainforest fund will reach $10bn donor milestone

On Monday, the day after the election result, the Netherlands announced a contribution of up to $500 million to the fund, which will be disbursed over ten years and is still subject to parliamentary approval. This brings the total pledged to the TFFF from a range of countries to $7.8 billion.

Norway’s climate minister Sigrun Aasland told a TFFF event on the sidelines of the UN biodiversity summit in Yerevan that she was hopeful the $10bn goal could be achieved by the end of this year.

Brazilian officials have led the TFFF’s fundraising efforts and said they are in conversations with more potential donors including China, Korea and Japan.

Congress shifts further to the right

Sonia Guajajara, former minister of Indigenous Peoples in Lula’s government, celebrated the president’s re-election but cautioned that the 20 indigenous territories created under his current administration must be consolidated, as they are “essential to tackling the climate crisis and preserving our biomes”.

Veteran Brazilian diplomat Bráulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, meanwhile, noted that Lula faces a difficult political scenario, as right-wing pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers have gained more seats in both legislative chambers. He added that the courts will become key battlegrounds to challenge anti-climate legislation.

Observatório do Clima, a network of Brazilian green groups, said seven out of every ten representatives and senators who will make up the next legislature are likely to vote against the climate and environmental agenda, urging Lula’s administration to strengthen its action in parliament and expand alliances.

Still, Ferreira de Souza Dias echoed the widespread view among climate policy-makers that a Bolsonaro win would have been “terrible” for the rainforest and Indigenous peoples, and said the country had avoided a scenario where deforestation threatened to increase again.

This story was amended after publication to correct the currency of the Dutch TFFF pledge from euros to dollars.

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Many African households and businesses are increasingly turning away from unreliable grid power or deciding not to wait for access, and are installing more solar panels and battery storage. Data from energy think-tank Ember, published in August, projects that the continent will install a record 17 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity in 2026 – equal to around 100,000 solar panels every day. This would mark the third consecutive year of record growth, following increases of 51% in 2025 and 25% in 2024.

While generally a welcome sign of progress towards a cleaner energy mix, this trend could also create a headache for African officials. Anselm Marungu, Namibia’s deputy minister of environment, forestry and tourism, believes rules should be put in place to ensure that valuable materials can be recovered from discarded solar panels, batteries and inverters at the end of their useful life.

Some of the materials and minerals the world needs for manufacturing clean energy technologies – including glass, aluminium, copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel – can be obtained by recycling solar panels, inverters and batteries.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that recycling could reduce growth in new mining needs by 40% for copper and cobalt and by 25% for lithium and nickel by 2050, thereby reducing the social and environmental impacts associated with conventional extraction.

Speaking at a pan-African policy conference on circular value chains this month, Marungu said the success of these technologies depends not just on how quickly they are installed, but also on whether the materials are sourced responsibly, the equipment maintained and its components recovered to create economic opportunities across their entire life-cycle.

He called for sound policies, sustainable investment and circular business models that can become the foundation of new industries, green jobs and stronger African value chains. Solar panels, batteries, inverters and tubes “must not become tomorrow’s environmental burden”, he added. 

From importation to end of life

When not properly disposed of or handled during recycling, discarded solar panels and batteries can release hazardous substances into the environment, contaminating soil and water and exposing waste workers and nearby communities to toxic materials which can cause lung cancer and damage vital organs.

Innocent Barikor, director-general of Nigeria’s National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), said the rapid uptake of off-grid renewable energy has made it necessary to strengthen waste management rules and develop a framework for reusing materials from equipment. 

UN sets steep emission cuts to reverse 1.5C overshoot by end of century

Nigeria is Africa’s second-largest importer of solar technologies, bringing about 400 billion naira ($295 million) worth of equipment into the country in 2025. This has led to the drafting of a national policy on waste management for off-grid renewable energy equipment, which has been validated by relevant government institutions, regulators and development partners, and is now awaiting cabinet approval. 

According to Barikor, once approved, the policy will require producers, distributors and importers of renewable energy technologies in Nigeria to “to take responsibility for these products from the beginning to their end of life”. Commonly known as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), the policy is expected to support the development of a recycling value chain by requiring companies to take back and properly manage products once they become waste, Barikor said.

“We believe a policy will enable us to be able to manage what will become a very rowdy outcome of this particular [renewable energy] space,” he said.

Some countries develop regulation

Last week, energy ministers of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) adopted a regional framework on the deployment of battery energy storage systems and similar technologies, with requirements for the safe management, dismantling, reuse, recycling and disposal of batteries.

Some other African countries have previously strengthened rules on e-waste involving renewable technologies.

In 2024, Kenya introduced the Sustainable Waste Management (Extended Producer Responsibility) Regulations, requiring producers and importers of listed products, including electrical and electronic equipment and batteries, to put in place a system for dealing with them even after consumers stop using them. Companies are required to arrange for or finance the collection of discarded products, as well as their recycling and safe disposal.

Can giant batteries unlock Africa’s green industrial future?

Namibia, meanwhile, is preparing investment opportunities for waste buy-back centres and innovation hubs, said Marungu, with pilot projects already incentivising recycling in the country. The southern African country’s Sixth National Development Plan, launched last year, includes plans for modern recycling infrastructure aimed at reducing landfill waste, attracting private investment and creating green jobs.

The country wants to move from a linear to a circular society through the principles of reduce, reuse, recycle and regenerate to minimise waste and reduce environmental impacts, according to the plan.

Regional corporation and investment

Policies alone, however, cannot guarantee success, the conference heard. Diana Dalton, deputy high commissioner and development director at the British High Commission in Nairobi, said collaboration is needed. The African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) offers a platform to strengthen regional value chains and promote a more integrated approach to recycling renewable energy equipment, she said.

Loss and damage fund agrees $20m for Nepal but rich nations warn it should not set precedent

Regional coordination could help harmonise standards, align regulatory approaches, strengthen markets and enable cross-border trade, creating the scale needed to attract investment and develop regional recycling value chains, she added.

Dalton said this would require investment in infrastructure and skills, as well as collaboration between governments, industry, academia and development partners. She also called for stronger systems to collect, repair, refurbish and recycle renewable energy equipment, alongside support for local manufacturing and innovation.

Namibia’s Marungu said regional cooperation will enable the recycling of large volumes of materials and improve commercial viability, adding that African countries should share experiences, harmonise standards so that equipment and materials can move across borders, and pursue shared treatment and recovery solutions. 

The continent needs a plan to tackle renewable energy waste before large volumes of obsolete equipment accumulate, he said, urging development partners and financial institutions such as the African Development Bank to de-risk investments that can support a circular materials value chain. 

Nigeria’s Barikor said international support could help African countries develop data systems and a regional registry to track producers’ responsibilities for managing waste. He added that countries could also align their Extended Producer Responsibility rules through the African Continental Free Trade Area, helping ensure that global manufacturers face similar requirements across African markets.

“Africa needs to have common standards,” he emphasised.

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The list, which is published by the United Nations and subject to change, includes 77 countries whose leaders are listed to speak at the summit in Antalya on November 11-12. That would be nearly a third fewer than the 116 who spoke at COP28 in Dubai three years ago.

Yvo de Boer, a former head of the UN’s climate secretariat, told Climate Home News that the low turnout and “the absence of many nations that should be showing leadership on climate action and support for developing nations” sends “the wrong signal at a difficult time”.

Amid geopolitical conflicts, a struggling global economy and an inevitable overshoot of the 1.5C global warming limit, de Boer said that “climate action needs a strong show of support, not empty seats at a leaders’ summit”.

Earlier this week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said G20 countries should lead on climate action, adding that while they have varying responsibilities in tackling global warming, “all countries, especially the big emitters, must do more”. As major economies spanning developed and developing nations, G20 countries account for more than three-quarters of annual global emissions.

China is likely to be represented at COP31 by Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang, as in the past three years, rather than President Xi Jinping, who has rarely left China since the COVID-19 pandemic and has not attended a climate COP since Paris in 2015.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is scheduled to speak, after telling parliament in September he would do so as part of his efforts to “meet the climate challenge” following a series of deadly heatwaves.

UK approves gas drilling despite admitting blow to “climate leadership” status

Brazil’s President Lula has also said he will attend. Depending on the result of Sunday’s election against his far-right rival Flávio Bolsonaro, he will speak at COP31 as either a recently re-elected or outgoing president.

While the COP31 summit is being hosted by Türkiye in Antalya, Australia has the formal role of President of Negotiations and its prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will speak at the summit. Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not on the UN’s speaker list but is likely to give an opening speech.

Many of the countries whose leaders are due to attend COP31 are those suffering the worst effects of climate change. About a third are African countries and a quarter are small island developing nations. Türkiye’s Central Asian and Balkan neighbours are also well-represented. 

COP31 no-shows

Among the major emitters not on the list are French President Emmanuel Macron, German leader Friedrich Merz, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, India’s Narendra Modi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Canada’s Mark Carney and Japan’s Sanae Takaichi.

Macron, who is struggling to deal with rising social unrest across France, will reportedly attend commemorations marking the end of the First World War and a European Political Community summit instead. It is not known whether the others will eventually decide to attend COP31, or what they will do instead. 

Climate change-sceptic US President Donald Trump has never attended a COP and is withdrawing the US from the UN climate convention (UNFCCC), under which COP meetings are held, after quitting the Paris Agreement for a second time.

Argentina’s Javier Milei has considered exiting the Paris Agreement but has so far not done so, although his government is one of around 30 countries yet to submit an updated national climate plan to the UN.

The post Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Indonesia bills its plans to mix wood with coal at dozens of power plants as a way to cut electricity generation emissions as the country transitions towards clean energy. But look closer, and the biomass co-firing plan could do far more harm than good. 

Biomass co-firing involves mixing a small amount of wood or other plant matter, usually wood chips or wood pellets, into the coal that a power plant burns.

State electricity company PLN wants to use it at 52 coal-fired plants across the Southeast Asian nation – a target set out in its national electricity supply business plan and tied to Indonesia’s pledge, under its Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Agreement, to raise renewables to 23% of the energy mix. PLN originally aimed to secure 10.2 million tonnes of biomass a year by 2025; that target has already slipped to 2031, as the country struggles to line up enough supply. 

Most plants only mix in a small amount of wood, often between 1% and 5% of the fuel load, meaning they do not even have to change machinery. In truth, it lets coal plants keep doing what they have always done, just with a little wood added to the mix.  

That presents two big problems.  

Firstly, creating additional demand for wood would put further deforestation pressure on the country’s thick and biodiverse tropical forests, already at risk from mining and palm oil plantations. 

Secondly, by making old coal plants look a little greener on paper, the plan could hand them a reason to keep operating well beyond when they would otherwise be retired, meaning the fleet keeps emitting for longer than a genuine phase-out would allow. 

This is not a real climate solution. It is coal wearing a green mask. 

A threat to forests

To meet its co-firing mandate, Indonesia would need more than 10 million tonnes of wood pellets every year, an area of forest equivalent to 3.27 million football fields, according to a 2024 assessment by a group of NGOs.

The same report warned this could push deforestation as high as 2.1 million hectares a year, and found that a 10% cut in coal use through co-firing could threaten 10 million hectares of untouched forest in the areas where wood is collected. At Indonesia’s biggest power plants alone, switching just 10% of coal to wood could clear an area of forest roughly 35 times the size of Jakarta. 

PLN and the forestry companies that supply it insist the wood comes from dedicated “energy plantation forests” – land set aside to grow fast-growing trees for fuel, not from clearing natural forest. But the same assessment found that of the 1.2 million hectares already designated for these plantations, more than 400,000 hectares still contain undisturbed tropical forest, which will come under growing pressure as demand rises. The claim that this wood comes from already-degraded land does not hold up to scrutiny. 

Advocates of co-firing say wood is a clean fuel because trees can grow back. But when old natural forests are cleared to make way for fast-growing forestry plantations to grow trees for fuel, they release carbon that took decades or centuries to build up. 

One study, by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), estimated that co-firing with just 10% wood across 52 power plants could create up to 26.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions each year, once the clearing of land and the production of wood pellets are counted. 

Wood pellets for export 

Government rules have made this easier, not harder. Companies that already hold industrial timber plantation permits can convert them into energy plantations, giving them a ready-made legal route into the wood pellet business without applying for new forest land.

Indroyono Soesilo, chairman of the Indonesian Forestry Entrepreneurs Association (APHI), has publicly called on the government for tax breaks and relief from state forestry levies in exchange for making that switch. 

Research by Trend Asia found that the push into energy plantations for biomass is dominated not by small or informal loggers but by large companies already notorious for deforestation, including APP Group, Korindo Group, Barito Pacific and Wilmar International. In short, some of the same companies long associated with clearing forests are being given an easier path and a green label to keep doing it. 

Much of this wood does not even stay in Indonesia. Japan and South Korea have bought more than 99% of Indonesia’s wood pellet exports since 2021, using them to meet their own clean energy targets. 

Perhaps the biggest risk in Indonesia’s co-firing plan is what it could do to the coal fleet itself. Mixing in a small amount of wood does not require a plant to shut down or upgrade. It simply gives the plant a reason to keep running, dressed up as progress. Every year a coal plant stays open because of a paper-thin green label is a year that real clean energy, such as solar and wind, is pushed further down the road. 

None of this means biomass is always bad. Using leftover farm waste or city waste to make power can make sense. 

But the scale of Indonesia’s co-firing plan cannot be met by leftovers alone, which is exactly why forests are being pulled into the supply chain. The countries and banks funding Indonesia’s energy transition, along with Japan and South Korea, should stop counting co-firing as a climate win. 

Real progress means closing coal plants, not feeding them wood. 

The post Coal in a green mask: Indonesia’s co-firing plan will harm, not help, the climate  appeared first on Climate Home News.

At an extraordinary online meeting, board members unanimously invited Nepal’s government to submit a proposal for how to use the money, which will be considered at a future board meeting.

The board’s co-chair Camila Minerva Rodriguez described the decision as “truly historic” as it is the first time the new fund has allocated any money since it was set up three years ago. It is expected to approve its first set of projects at its next board meeting in December.

Maheshwar Dhakal, a senior official at Nepal’s climate ministry, told the meeting the decision was “a powerful expression of humanity, compassion, solidarity and hope” and, for the flood victims, a “recognition of their suffering, respect for their dignity and hope that they are not alone in their darkest hour”.

While board members were united in approving the $20 million, plus $1.6 million of administrative costs, representatives of developed and developed countries were divided over the extent to which the decision should set a precedent for the fund’s long-term way of operating.

Germany and Czechia’s board members said it should not set a “precedent” while Japan’s representative said the decision is “truly exceptional” and that the fund’s support must be “in accordance with established rule and procedure”.

Learning the lessons?

Responding, Pakistan’s Ali Sheikh said the lessons from the Nepal case should “feed the long-term model and its work on rapid disbursement” of funds.

He added that he had heard Jan Dusik, Czechia’s board member saying that “we are open for learning but not in setting precedent”. “Please do not define the boundaries for learning,” he emphasised.

Sheikh complained that the decision approved by the board – the result of negotiations between a group of four developed and four developing-country representatives – was narrower than developing countries had hoped for.

“We are saying it is a one-time and Nepal-only window, a sentiment against which many developed countries have raised their voice,” he said, adding there had been no time to review the decision.

Walter Schuldt from Ecuador echoed Sheikh, saying “we should not put limits on lesson learning”. He said the decision, which he was involved in negotiating through “intense exchanges”, tells the fund’s staff to assess the lessons learned.

The fund is currently in a start-up phase and the board will debate its long-term model – including whether and how to rapidly disburse funds in response to climate-driven disasters – at its next board meeting in the Philippines in December.

At Thursday’s meeting, several developing-country board members called for wealthy nations to put more money into the fund. Recovery and reconstruction from Nepal’s flood alone is estimated to cost $4.8 billion – in comparison, the fund has only around $350 million available to allocate to countries, with a current cap of $20 million per project.

Climate justice experts welcomed the decision to allocate money to Nepal as a sign of solidarity but lamented that it came only after significant pressure and is a tiny amount compared with the country’s recovery needs.

“Setting aside millions is not the same as delivering billions,” said Lien Vandamme, a climate justice campaigner with the Centre for International Environmental Law. “What’s clear is that a fund that is desperately under-resourced will remain toothless in the face of escalating climate disasters.”

Editor’s Desk: Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap

Communities on the frontline of those disasters are owed reparations “as a matter of legal obligation”, she added, referring to last year’s advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice which made clear that states most responsible for the climate crisis have a duty to repair the harm it causes.

Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns with ActionAid USA, noted that three years after being established, the loss and damage fund has yet to send any money to countries hit by climate impacts and has not provided a concrete timeline for paying out the money it reserved for Nepal this week.

“If the fund were adequately resourced, an immediate disbursement to Nepal would be an absolute no-brainer. But it seems rich countries are terrified that the fund – which has received a paltry $500 million to date – will run dry, thus putting more pressure on them to provide the money they owe,” he added.

This story was updated after publication to add comment from climate justice campaigners.

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At COP16 in Cali, governments made a significant commitment: at least half of the funding from the new Cali Fund should support the self-identified needs of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including women and youth. It was a watershed moment for multilateral benefit-sharing.

The challenge now is to translate that commitment into access arrangements that recognise the different institutions, priorities and decision-making processes of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

For generations, biodiversity and traditional Indigenous knowledge have provided significant value to companies who depend on nature’s genetic diversity to discover new drugs that fight diseases, create products that improve health, and grow crops resilient to extreme heat and flooding events. While some compounds are sampled directly from the source country, increasingly the digital blueprints are held in online public databases which are freely accessible to use for innovation and research.

Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17

The Cali Fund was established at COP16 to encourage commercial users of Digital Sequence Information, or DSI, to share benefits arising from its use. Estimates suggest it could generate over $3.5 billion a year – a stark contrast to the modest $10,656 currently committed to the fund from just five SMEs, underlining how much progress must be made at COP17 over the next two weeks.

The COP16 decision that set up the fund offers two routes for money to reach Indigenous Peoples and local communities: through government authorities, and through direct payments to institutions identified by Indigenous Peoples and local communities themselves. 

Varied ways of organising

Indigenous Peoples and local communities organise through a wide range of institutions. Some have national or regional organisations experienced in managing international grants. Others work through territorial organisations, customary institutions, community associations, cooperatives or networks. Some have professional finance teams and audited accounts; others have extensive experience governing territories, collective resources or conservation work without having been organised around international funding requirements.

For direct access, some questions are already apparent. Which institutions should be able to receive funds? How should they be identified? What fiduciary standards should apply? How should safeguards and accountability work where institutional capacities differ? What support may be needed where institutions have strong community mandates but less experience with international finance?

Comment: Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity

If access is designed mainly around institutions that already meet the expectations of large international finance mechanisms, early funding will tend to favour those already familiar to funders. They will gain further experience and become better positioned for future funding, while institutions with less administrative capacity may remain outside the system despite strong community mandates and long histories of stewardship.

These first decisions matter most, because they set the terms for everyone who follows.

The role of intermediaries requires care. Some Indigenous organisations may want a fiscal host to hold and manage funds on their behalf. Communities may choose to work through an NGO they trust. Government-facilitated arrangements may work well in particular national contexts.

What matters is the function an intermediary performs and the authority that comes with it. Providing administrative support is different from deciding which Indigenous organisations qualify, which priorities can receive support, or how success will be assessed. Direct access means communities keep that decision-making authority.

Decision-making power

The COP16 decision refers to institutions that Indigenous Peoples and local communities identify. But authority among Indigenous Peoples does not sit in one kind of body. It may sit with territorial organisations, customary institutions, community associations or combinations of these. Legal recognition and customary authority do not always align neatly.

Global deforestation slowed in 2025 but Brazil’s election could undo “fragile” gains

An important feature of the Cali Fund’s governance is that Indigenous Peoples and local communities participate as full members of the Steering Committee, rather than as observers. Seven Indigenous Peoples and local community representatives, one from each of the seven socio-cultural regions, participate in consensus-based decision-making alongside representatives of governments and UN entities. Six additional representatives from civil society, scientific institutions and the private sector participate as observers.

That representation carries responsibility. Institutional legitimacy, access and representation take different forms across the seven socio-cultural regions. Indigenous Peoples and local communities members therefore have an important role in bringing those differences into the Fund’s governance and in ensuring that arrangements developed for one context do not become the assumed model for everyone else. 

Safeguards and clear responsibilities

COP17 can establish the core principles and direction, while allowing operational pathways to develop in ways that respond to different regional contexts. The decisions countries take in Yerevan will shape how that flexibility is realised in practice. 

The choices made around access will influence which institutions are able to participate, which routes become established and which forms of authority are recognised within the funding architecture. The aim should be an architecture with enough structure to maintain confidence while allowing for different forms of Indigenous and community governance.

A credible direct-access pathway will need safeguards, financial oversight and clear responsibilities. This would give the 50% commitment a stronger institutional foundation.

The Cali Fund’s importance will ultimately depend not only on how much funding reaches Indigenous Peoples and local communities, but on whether they are able to determine how the money is accessed, governed and used. This requires access pathways that recognise their institutions, priorities and decision-making processes, rather than requiring them to conform to a single predetermined model.

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UK energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh approved the drilling on Wednesday after months of high-profile debate, fuelled in part by interventions from US President Donald Trump. She argued that the project would boost energy security in the wake of the Middle East fossil fuel crisis, protect hundreds of jobs and add £2.9 billion ($3.88bn) to the UK economy.

She said Jackdaw’s gas would be cleaner than imported gas and would not prevent the UK from meeting its legally-binding carbon targets and its goal of net zero by 2050. As the field is already licensed, she said extraction was consistent with the Labour Party’s 2024 manifesto promise not to issue any new oil and gas licenses.

The same morning, the government announced a new Energy Wealth Fund to reinvest oil and gas revenues in the climate transition. It will start with £2 billion ($2.67bn) from the government and be topped up over time with tax revenues from offshore oil and gas production.

Climate campaigners in the UK and abroad were quick to condemn the decision, while a leading legal expert told Climate Home News it goes against the advice of the International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, the government’s own documents reveal that it recognises the drilling could damage the UK’s reputation and its ability to push forward the global transition away from fossil fuels.

“Climate leadership” blow

The 92-page decision document says Fahnbulleh “acknowledges that international standing on climate is important and accepts that a decision to grant consent may not further the UK’s international climate leadership.”

It adds: “She acknowledges concerns about the potential implications for the UK’s credibility and influence – including the difficulty inherent in encouraging other states to move away from fossil fuel production while the UK continues, in a limited and transitional way, to draw on its own domestic resources.”

While noting that Jackdaw has not been issued with a new license – just permission to extract gas – the document says Fahnbulleh “accepts this does not fully resolve the underlying tension in the UK’s position” but “considers this alongside the substance of the UK’s wider record [on emissions reduction], which remains significant”.

It continues that she accepts these concerns are “legitimate” and weigh against approving gas extraction, but only gives this argument a “moderate negative weight” set against the benefits of gas production.

“Huge” wrong signal

In international climate talks, the UK has long supported the transition away from fossil fuels and is one of very few major oil and gas producers to ban new licenses. Across the North Sea, the Norwegian government continues to make offshore areas available for oil and gas exploration through annual licensing rounds.

Climate experts and campaigners shared the concern, acknowledged in the decision document, that approving Jackdaw could set a precedent for fossil fuel production elsewhere. Sam Fankhauser, professor of climate change economics at Oxford University, said the direct climate impact of Jackdaw is “much smaller than the debate around it would suggest” but the “wrong signal it sends, however, is huge”.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said that while Jackdaw’s output will be very small, “it will signal to other fossil fuel producers that they too should carry on with business as usual, less than a month before the COP31”.

Kenyan campaigner Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, called the decision “a serious blow to Britain’s international climate credibility” as “the UK cannot expect developing countries to move away from fossil fuels while giving the green light to new drilling in its own backyard”.

International Court of Justice

In July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advised that government failure to take appropriate climate action “including through fossil fuel production” may amount to an internationally wrongful act.

The UK voted in favour of a United Nations resolution welcoming the advisory opinion. Yet, in its Jackdaw decision document, it notes that the ICJ opinion is not legally binding and says the UK does not accept the court’s opinion that the customary international law duty to prevent significant harm to the environment applies to climate change.

Fahnbulleh concludes that, although it will have “significant effect on the environment”, gas drilling in Jackdaw “would not lead to significant harm to the environment” – and so does not breach any duty to prevent such harm. Instead, the government document says the duty should be considered “as a matter of policy rather than legal obligation”.

Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, who led Vanuatu’s legal team pushing for the ICJ’s advisory opinion, told Climate Home News that treating the duty as a matter of policy rather than legal obligation is “not how international law works”. “An advisory opinion is not a judgement,” she said, “but it states the law as it stands, and that law binds the UK whether or not it accepts it.”

“Even as a matter of policy,” she added, “the decision asks the wrong question: whether Jackdaw on its own would cause significant harm. The Court found that accumulated emissions are already causing significant harm. What matters is whether approving new production is consistent with the stringent due diligence the duty requires.”

Public support for decision

While the decision was criticised by climate campaigners and the opposition Green party, polling reported by Politico suggests that 55% of British adults support drilling at Jackdaw, with just 14% opposed. Even supporters of the UK’s net zero target back new drilling by more than two to one, the polling found.

Jackdaw is one of two North Sea oil and gas fields the government has been debating whether to extract more from for months. While Jackdaw is a small gas field, the other, Rosebank, is a much larger field that holds mostly oil.

Rosebank’s emissions are estimated to be around seven times higher than Jackdaw’s. Fahnbulleh told Sky News that Rosebank is “different” to Jackdaw because its oil would be exported, whereas Jackdaw’s gas will be used in the UK, adding that she will consider it “in its own right”.

The Guardian reported on Wednesday that UK officials say Fahnbulleh is minded to refuse approval for Rosebank. She has not yet taken a final decision on Rosebank, the newspaper said, but a ruling is expected later this year.

The post UK approves gas drilling despite admitting blow to “climate leadership” status appeared first on Climate Home News.

On stage, the vice chair of the board of Koç Holding said the family company, which weeks earlier had been announced as one of the top sponsors for the UN climate summit, can be seen as “quite exemplary” for its climate record.

What Koç did not mention was that the group’s biggest money-making arm – Türkiye’s largest oil refiner Tüpraş – plans to keep running its refineries “at maximum potential”. Nor did he say that, in 2025, both parent company and subsidiary cut their 2030 climate targets to a level they had already nearly achieved, as Climate Home News’ analysis of company records reveals.

The decision to hand Koç Holding a prominent role at COP31 – the company is also the summit’s “Global Business Partner” – has reignited a long-running controversy over the platforming of fossil fuel interests at the annual UN climate conference.

It has also thrown into question how COP sponsors are chosen and screened. The hosting agreement between the Turkish government and the UN climate secretariat (UNFCCC) says that a partner company’s “climate integrity” should be taken into account.

COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment

But how that test is applied is unclear and the process for picking sponsors remains largely opaque. The Turkish COP31 presidency has not published its selection criteria, nor the financial terms of any of its partnership agreements, including Koç’s. The UNFCCC declined to clarify how it advises on such deals.

Campaigners have long argued that accepting sponsorship from polluting companies is wrong because it gives them a global stage, visibility and access to policymakers at talks that are meant to move the world away from fossil fuels, and tarnishes the reputation of the COPs.

Koç’s energy division, which is dominated by oil refiner Tüpraş, accounted for three-quarters of the parent firm’s income in the first half of 2026.

“How was Koç Holding ever chosen as a COP31 sponsor? Any corporation that makes most of its money from oil refining should not qualify as sustainable,” said Pascoe Sabido, a campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory, which exposes company lobbying. “This is hugely embarrassing for the UNFCCC and its climate integrity check, which doesn’t appear to be worth the paper it’s written on.”

Koç Holding “is not just standing still but walking backwards”, he told Climate Home News.

Koç Holding and Tüpraş did not reply to multiple requests for comment. The UNFCCC secretariat and the Turkish COP31 presidency declined to respond to questions from Climate Home News on the sponsorship agreement.

Oil refining windfall

Türkiye’s biggest industrial group, Koç Holding has stakes in several key sectors of the economy, spanning vehicle manufacturing in a joint venture with Ford to electronics, home appliances and banking.

But the conglomerate’s crown jewel is oil refiner Tüpraş, which Koç controls. Last year its four refineries turned crude oil into 26.8 million tonnes of petrol, diesel, jet fuel and other products, enough to fill about 36 Olympic swimming pools every day. 

The company plans to raise its production to 29 million tonnes in 2026 – already a bumper year so far with soaring profits, thanks to sky-rocketing refining margins driven by a crunch in global oil processing capacity caused by the Middle East crisis. 

The oil business boom sits awkwardly with the climate and energy transition plans Koç and Tüpraş unveiled in 2021, when both pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. Then, Tüpraş set out its aim to become “a leading carbon-neutral energy company”.

Despite these promises, in 2025, both companies lowered their targets for cutting emissions from their own operations by 2030, from 27% to 20% below 2017 levels. Tüpraş also cut its 2035 goal from 35% to 25%. The company still technically retains its long-term target of carbon neutrality by 2050, but the new plan will require much more drastic cuts after 2035. 

Lowering the climate bar

Tüpraş blamed its weakening of climate ambition on “changing market dynamics, economic conditions and technological developments”. In a presentation announcing the revision to investors, the refiner said the energy outlook had changed since 2021.

The reasons it listed included elevated geopolitical tensions, increased investment in oil and gas extraction, which it said showed refined fuels remain vital for energy security – and even the depletion of the carbon budget to keep global warming to 1.5C. 

Its parent company Koç pointed the finger at the slow pace of green hydrogen development, which the group said now had a “low feasibility” of transforming the energy sector after it had previously pinned much of its transition plan on the sustainable fuel. 

The Turkish company’s new 2030 targets are certainly within reach. Tüpraş had already cut its operational emissions by 17% from 2017 levels by 2025, with nearly all of that progress achieved before the transition plan was unveiled, while Koç had reduced them by 16%. 

The softer targets also exclude the bulk of the group’s climate impact. Most of its emissions come not from its own refineries and factories but from the products it sells: petrol, diesel and jet fuel burned in the engines of cars or planes.

These so-called Scope 3 emissions make up about 97% of Koç’s carbon footprint. They rose by around a sixth between 2019 and 2024, and neither Koç nor Tüpraş has set a target to cut them.

Efe Baysal, Türkiye team lead at campaign group 350.org, said there is a “clear contradiction” between talking about climate action while weakening emission targets and seeing emissions from the use of petroleum products keep rising. 

“If the company is serious about the transition, it needs a clear plan to wind down fossil fuel operations, rather than relying on efficiency measures and technologies that let business as usual continue,” she told Climate Home News. 

‘Sustainable refining’ push

Tüpraş’s updated transition plan rules out expanding its oil refineries, but commits to “maintaining the existing capacity” and running it “at maximum potential”. Oil refining is expected to remain its main source of earnings for years to come. Koç listed “growing oil demand and diesel deficit” in Türkiye as a competitive advantage for its energy business in a pitch to investors last month.

The biggest component of the Tüpraş transition plan is what the company calls “sustainable refining”. It plans to invest $3.9 billion between 2025 and 2035 in programmes to modernise its refineries, improve their energy efficiency and bring down the direct emissions they generate. The company is also shifting some of its production to petrochemicals, which it expects to reduce its Scope 3 emissions.

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Alongside these “sustainable refining” efforts, Tüpraş is also investing in renewable power. 

Four years ago, it bought Entek, which produces electricity primarily from six hydropower plants and one gas plant. Since the acquisition, Tüpraş has started building a utility-scale solar farm in Romania and a wind power plant with storage in Türkiye, alongside smaller solar energy installations at some of its refineries. A dozen more renewable energy projects are currently in the pipeline, according to its latest annual report. 

In a self-declared bid to become “Türkiye’s leading producer of zero-carbon electricity”, Tüpraş wants to reach installed capacity of 1.6 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 – a target it raised in its updated plan – and 2.5GW by 2035. The Turkish government has committed to rolling out 120GW of wind and solar capacity nationwide by then. 

Setback for green fuels

Tüpraş plans to supply most of its low-carbon electricity to run its future production plants for green hydrogen, an alternative fuel that can replace fossil fuels in some heavy industries and long-distance transport. 

A few years ago, green hydrogen looked set to become a key pillar of the global energy transition, with companies pitching visionary projects and governments rolling out strategies for the fuel to decarbonise economies. But inflated forecasts, high costs and weak demand have led to a reality check for prospective producers like Tüpraş. 

The Turkish refiner significantly scaled back its green hydrogen plans last year. While it originally hoped to start producing the clean fuel in 2025, it now targets a first pilot project by 2030 with commercial large-scale production not expected before 2035. That’s primarily because the cost of electrolysers, the machines that split water into hydrogen and oxygen, has risen fourfold since its original projections, the company said.

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Tüpraş’s ambition to become Türkiye’s leading producer of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has also seen a partial rethink. The firm originally said it would convert by 2026 a unit in its sprawling oil refinery in the port city of Izmir into a plant that would produce SAF from waste cooking oil into “green” jet fuel. 

But it is now planning to build a dedicated plant which is expected to be commissioned towards the end of 2028. That means its SAF output will be added to its existing fossil fuel refining capacity rather than replacing any of it.

Dividends dwarf green spending

Under its updated blueprint, Tüpraş plans to invest $4.35 billion in zero-carbon power, SAF and green hydrogen by 2035. Last year, it spent $137 million on activities that qualify as green under EU rules, leaving much ground to make up in the next 10 years. Most of its green investment in 2025 went on solar and wind farms, and a quarter on a unit making propylene, a refinery by-product used to produce plastic packaging and bottle caps.

Over the same year, it paid out about five times as much – roughly $740 million – to shareholders, under a policy of distributing around 80% of its profits. About half went to Koç Holding, which in turn paid its own shareholders some $460 million. The Koç family and companies it controls hold the majority of the group.

Kelly Trout, research director at energy think-tank Oil Change International, said a company like Koç should not be the face of the COP31 climate summit as it doesn’t pass the test of “climate integrity” the UN requires of a sponsor. 

The hosting agreement struck between Türkiye and the UNFCCC says that the government has to consult the secretariat of the UN body to obtain advice on which “entities of concern” it should not conclude sponsorship or partnership agreements with. The document adds that the advice should give appropriate consideration to the partner’s climate integrity, but it does not specify how that should be judged.

‘Climate integrity’ mystery

Climate Home News asked the UNFCCC and the Turkish COP31 presidency if this process was followed for the Koç Holding sponsorship, but had not received a response at the time of publication. 

The same provision featured in the host country agreement for COP29 in Azerbaijan, according to a leaked copy published by Human Rights Watch.

COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”

The clean energy arm of state-owned oil and gas company SOCAR was named “Energy Transition Partner” for that summit, alongside other firms which an investigation from the Organized Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP) found were owned by the country’s ruling family or people associated with them. 

Koç is not the first fossil fuel-linked company to bankroll a UN climate summit. At COP24 in the Polish coal-mining city of Katowice in 2018, sponsors included the state coal power company PGE and the coking coal miner JSW. 

‘A real story to tell’

COP sponsors typically get the right to promote themselves inside the conference venue and appear at official events. When it unveiled the agreement, the COP31 presidency called Koç Holding a “vital partner” in its efforts to unite the public and the private sector “to demonstrate Türkiye’s unwavering commitment to global climate action”.

The presidency declined to answer Climate Home News’ questions on how Koç Holding will be involved in the summit. 

Koç itself has revealed little about its plans for the Antalya talks. When the deal was announced, the group said it would use the summit to share its experience of turning climate solutions into “concrete business results” and to forge new partnerships. 

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Speaking at a high-level roundtable on energy at UN headquarters in New York last month, Ali Koç said the industrial group has “a real story to tell”, having undertaken a “comprehensive transformation process in climate matters”. 

Campaigners, however, want companies that retain their high-emitting businesses to be excluded from the COP climate summits and have long demanded an “accountability framework” to protect the negotiations from fossil fuel influence. 

“If the UNFCCC and its secretariat wants to salvage a bit of credibility, the UNFCCC needs to urgently address conflicts of interest in the UN talks,” said Corporate Europe Observatory’s Sabido. 

The post Turkish giant sponsoring COP31 cut climate goals then cashed in on oil boom appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a video message accompanying the 2026 Emissions Gap Report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the world could no longer avoid overshooting the 1.5C limit and that the consequences were already devastating. However, he said it was still possible to return average global temperatures to 1.5C above preindustrial times by the end of the century.

“Overshoot is not surrender,” he said, adding that the report, released on Wednesday, sets out what is needed to limit warming. That entails cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040, all compared with 2025 levels.

This implies average annual reduction rates of 5.7% for 2025-2035, higher than the pathways laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its last major scientific report, which required annual reduction rates of about 5%, UNEP said.

Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs

The more ambitious emissions reductions – which countries are still far off achieving – would put the world on the lowest-possible overshoot pathway, giving a 50% chance of limiting peak warming to 1.7–1.8C around mid-century before bringing global temperatures back to 1.5C or below by 2100, the report said. Reaching this scenario will also require carbon removal from the atmosphere, it added.

UNEP noted that if countries fully implement their current national climate plans (NDCs), they would only reduce emissions by 5-8% by 2030 and 11-15% by 2035, relative to 2025 levels.

UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said the world must not give up on the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious warming limit, adding that every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of heating above 1.5C increases climate change impacts and risks, such as the deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires that have plagued many nations this year. 

“We must pull out all the stops to minimise peak warming and return to 1.5C by the end of the century. This is possible,” she said, adding that governments must urgently implement policies that deliver rapid and sustained emissions reductions.

Climate pledges fall short

In 2025, global greenhouse emissions reached a total of 58.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalent, which is estimated to be a very slight decline from 2024 levels, but UNEP said it is too soon to conclude that global emissions are plateauing or peaking.

New climate pledges since last year’s report have made a negligible difference to projected emissions and warming, UNEP said. Under current policies, the world is on course for 2.8C of warming this century, while full implementation of national climate pledges and continued similar efforts would limit warming to 2.6C, the report found.

UNEP said its projections had deteriorated, attributing this to the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement under President Donald Trump and revised estimates of historical emissions. 

Even with the most optimistic pledge-based scenario – which assumes countries deliver both their current national climate commitments and additional net-zero targets – warming would now only be limited to 2.1C this century, the report found.

IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock

Speaking to journalists ahead of the report’s launch, co-author Anne Ohlhoff said the US exit from the Paris accord meant that its previous national climate target was no longer included in UNEP’s global projections. The country has also dropped its net-zero emissions goal, she said, affecting the outlook because the US is the world’s second-largest emitter.

She warned that there is still a large gap between countries’ emissions commitments for 2035 and the reductions needed under the report’s lowest-possible 1.5C overshoot scenario.

Every five years of CO₂ emissions at current levels pushes peak warming up by around 0.1C, she said, adding that without urgent action, it could quickly become impossible to keep peak warming below 1.7–1.8C.

Describing the emissions gap as a “leadership gap”, UN chief Guterres warned that current national climate plans and policies “fall dangerously short” of what is needed to limit warming. He urged countries to adopt credible roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels, accelerate clean energy deployment and electrification, invest in electricity grids and storage, cut methane emissions and halt deforestation.

Carbon removal needed, but risky 

Alongside deep emissions cuts, removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere needs to be accelerated throughout the century, the report found. The world will need to remove and permanently store about 320 billion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere to return global temperatures to around 1.5C by 2100.

The estimated carbon removal is equivalent to around eight years of global CO₂ emissions at 2024 levels. However, UNEP cautions that removing carbon at this scale remains uncertain because of technological and socio-economic challenges.

Keywan Riahi, a contributor to the report, said carbon could be removed through nature-based approaches, such as planting forests and improving wetland management, which help ecosystems absorb carbon emissions, as well as engineering solutions that capture emissions from energy production or remove carbon directly from the air.

However, he warned that both nature-based and technological approaches face risks and might not deliver carbon removal at the scale needed. This is because nature solutions such as planetary sinks are weakening because of climate change while techno-fixes remain uncertain, he added.

“All of those technologies come with risks,” Riahi told reporters, adding that what the world needs is to try “to keep the overshoot as low as possible, so that we do not need to rely on these technologies to take CO₂ out of the atmosphere later on”.

Renewable energy supports emissions cuts

Despite the expected overshoot of the 1.5C warming limit, the UNEP Emissions Gap Report underscored that the rapid growth of renewable energy and the impact of climate policies so far show that deeper emissions cuts remain possible. 

It stated that since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, global renewable electricity capacity has grown three times faster than anticipated, while solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment has increased sevenfold compared with projections made a decade ago.

Maintaining the recent pace of renewable energy expansion, alongside stronger policies, could put the world on track to meet the global goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, the report said. It could also increase the share of wind and solar in electricity generation to levels consistent with the pathway that limits the overshoot of 1.5C to the lowest possible level, it added.

SE Asia speeds up plan for connected clean power grid after oil shock

Andersen said the explosion of renewable energy and slower-than-projected growth in coal energy supply showed that accelerating climate action is possible. However, she warned that progress remains insufficient, particularly in phasing down fossil fuels and halting forest loss.

“Nations must understand that the point of return begins now, not later,” she said, calling for “fast, deep and sustained emissions reductions”. She urged governments to strengthen their climate action at upcoming UN climate talks and accelerate efforts to keep the 1.5C pathway within reach.

Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, said major fossil fuel-producing countries need to take greater responsibility for reducing their emissions, saying that big polluters such as the US and Saudi Arabia need “to stop playing politics and face the scientific reality”. 

“Right now they are looking at the fire, denying it exists and pouring more petrol on it, while their own citizens increasingly face searing heat, wildfires and other impacts,” he said. “Governments [need] to get on with enacting policies that cut fossil fuel use as soon as possible.”

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After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.

It called out Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.

“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.

In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.

Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.

By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.

Rainforest and renewable energy ambitions

The silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.

After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.

Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.

Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.

“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.

“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.

Paris Agreement requirement

The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.

The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.

Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.

Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.

The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement and so do not have active NDCs, nor does Taiwan, which is not a UN member state.

Rao said that because the PAICC is “facilitative and non-punitive”, naming the countries “is meant to open a door, not close one – the invited consultation is the point”.

“In recent months, governments that explained their constraints, whether capacity, finance or domestic process, have been met with follow-up and support rather than sanction, and the number of silent governments has fallen sharply,” Rao said.

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During the weekend, government officials and scientists alike expressed disappointment over the inability to reach a compromise before some delegates from developing countries and small island states had to leave the week-long meeting in Ethiopia to catch flights home.

The disagreement – which has persisted since early 2024 – turns on whether the three key parts of the AR7 assessment should all be published before the conclusion of the UN’s next Global Stocktake of global climate action, which is due to be completed in late 2028.

The IPCC issued a statement after the close of the session, saying that “key agenda items” – the timelines for the three AR7 reports, as well as the IPCC budget – remain open and under discussion. It said the IPCC’s plenary session and its deliberations on the pending agenda “will resume at the earliest opportunity”, giving no further details of when.

IPCC Chair Jim Skea told delegates in closing remarks that recent months had been some of the most turbulent for the climate science panel and that, if there were stronger words than “profound disappointment” he would use them, according to a summary published by the Earth Negotiators Bulletin (ENB). IPCC discussions happen behind closed doors. 

IPCC scientists remained committed

In an open letter, issued on Monday, a group of nearly 120 scientists – from a total of 664 AR7 authors – said they “stand committed to continue working to deliver the AR7 reports in a manner that is rigorous, timely and inclusive, in line with our mandate to be policy-relevant”. 

“An assessment that arrives after the decisions it is meant to inform cannot serve its purpose,” they emphasised. “The second Global Stocktake in 2028 is such a decision point, and the world should not have to face it without the IPCCʼs latest assessment.” 

Europe, small islands and the least developed countries, plus many Latin American and developed nations, want the IPCC to meet this deadline, arguing that the findings from the UN climate science body are irreplaceable in the UN climate policy-making process. 

However, around a dozen developing countries plus Russia have argued that the reports should come later in order to allow for greater research input from the Global South – something that, in their view, would make the findings fairer. They also claim that a shorter timeline would put excessive pressure on experts.

The most vocal of this group at last week’s meeting were India and Saudi Arabia, according to the ENB summary and a developed country diplomat. Critics see this push for a longer timeline as an excuse to deprive government decision-makers of the latest science and ease pressure on emerging economies to raise their ambition, particularly on cutting emissions.  

Commenting on last week’s meeting, France’s ambassador for climate negotiations Benoît Faraco said a broad coalition of developed and developing countries from all five continents, “united in their support for science and the timeline proposed by scientists”, had withstood pressure “from a few countries” seeking to slow down the process of adopting the IPCC reports.

He added that France would not back down and would “continue to fight tirelessly for science, protect the integrity of information, and convince our partners that without the best available scientific data, we will be less effective in tackling climate change and protecting our populations”.

Inclusivity proposal stalled

In a bid to unlock a solution for the AR7 timeline, countries discussed ways to improve the inclusivity of the IPCC’s work. One option put on the table was for the IPCC to expand its funding for delegates from developing countries to attend some or all of its sessions from one to two participants, according to the ENB summary and a delegate speaking to Climate Home News.

That would increase the costs for the IPCC to complete AR7 by up to a quarter, according to an assessment shared by the secretariat. The panel’s budget is under severe strain and its officials have warned that, without additional voluntary contributions, it risks running out of money before it can deliver on this assessment cycle. 

Climate Home News understands that some of the IPCC’s traditional donors – which mainly include European countries, Japan and Australia – indicated a willingness to support funding for an additional developing country participant. But without an agreement over the budget or the timeline for the reports, that option was ultimately not adopted.

‘Disappointed and worried’

The three reports are managed by working groups that collate and draw overall findings from the latest scientific studies and data on the physical effects of global warming around the world, how to adapt to it, and pathways for cutting planet-heating emissions in order to meet the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. 

Winston Chow, an urban climate professor at Singapore Management University who co-chairs Working Group II on adaptation, wrote in a LinkedIn post that he was “disappointed and worried” for the IPCC authors who have worked “extraordinarily hard” to assess the relevant climate science over the past two years.

He said he shared their concern that “the rigour, time and goodwill they’ve invested are now being put at risk by the Panel’s stalemate”. 

As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond

For Working Group II, a meeting for 250 experts writing that report is scheduled for January 2027, followed by the approval of a special report on cities and climate change in Singapore next March. 

But because the IPCC’s budget has not been confirmed due to uncertainty about the AR7 schedule, travel support for those researchers is at risk, wrote Chow. “If they cannot participate, our assessments will lose vital expertise, perspectives and scientific breadth, and the collective effort of our authors will be undermined,” he warned.

Scientific work continues

Despite the political holdups, he – together with French climate scientist Robert Vautard, co-chair of Working Group 1 – agreed with IPCC head Skea who told the IPCC’s closing session on Friday: “The engine room of the IPCC is working, and it’s healthy.”   

Vautard commented in a separate post on LinkedIn after it ended: “The boat is at full steam.” Working groups I and II are due to start revising the first drafts of their reports, while Working Group III on reducing emissions is finalising its first draft which will be out soon, he wrote.

“The most exciting two years of the cycle are ahead, for the authors. The momentum in the engine room is here and now. Trust the engine room!” he added. 

The IPCC and some scientists report that progress has been made towards achieving an equitable balance of authors from the Global North and the Global South. 

The group of researchers who signed the open letter on Monday noted that “inclusivity is at the heart of how we work”, with author teams bringing together experts from developed and developing countries with diverse backgrounds and at different stages of their careers.

Plea to overcome political differences

The signatories include several scientists from some of the countries opposed to the alignment of all IPCC reports with the Global Stocktake. 

“We are committed to an assessment in which the knowledge, experience and priorities of every region are fully reflected, a commitment we share with the leadership of the IPCC.

Equity is built into how our assessment is being drafted,” they added.  

They appealed to governments that make up the IPCC “to overcome their political differences and work together as we do as a global scientific community, so that we can deliver the IPCC reports the world needs to hear”.

In a statement published on Monday, IPCC chair Skea said reaching consensus on the schedule for the reports is “vital”. He added that the assessments provide authoritative scientific evidence to inform national climate policies, strengthen adaptation and resilience and support access to climate finance, as well as helping communicate the scale of the climate crisis and the urgency of efforts to tackle it.  

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In 2022, COP15 delivered the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. With COP17 starting in Yerevan, we are now halfway to the deadline, and according to the first Global Review of progress, countries are not on track to meet the biodiversity targets, and implementation must accelerate fast.

One of the main findings of the Global Review is that funding falls far short of the scale needed to halt and reverse nature loss. But the crisis facing the world’s biodiversity is not an absolute scarcity of capital – it is a profound public policy distortion.

The global economy currently spends roughly $30 destroying nature for every single dollar invested in its protection. According to a report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a staggering $2.4 trillion is spent in public subsidies for fossil fuels, agriculture and water use, while global investment in biodiversity conservation and restoration stands at a mere $220 billion. 

Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17

Yet, discussions about how to close the biodiversity finance gap continue to claim that salvation lies in mobilising private capital, scaling offsets and “derisking” investments in nature. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of both the nature of ecological stewardship and of the global financial architecture.

Biodiversity conservation is not a speculative investment portfolio – it is the foundation of human survival. The health of our planet is a  non-monetisable, non-excludable public good. Expecting profit-seeking private capital to protect nature perpetuates the structural drivers of ecosystem destruction in the first place. 

But if private market mechanisms cannot save biodiversity, where will the necessary public resources come from?

Money going to the wrong places

The answer lies in recovering the vast public wealth currently drained by cross-border tax abuse, financial secrecy and corporate impunity. Finance and environment ministers meeting in Yerevan must give a strong political signal that, to avert ecological breakdown, countries need to take swift action to reform global tax rules, eliminate harmful public subsidies and cancel unsustainable sovereign debts for the public revenues to end up where they belong.  

Extractive sectors such as industrial agriculture, fishing, timber and mining continue business-as-usual, often heavily subsidised by public treasuries, while voluntary carbon and biodiversity offset markets pose a serious risk to nature conservation. Offset schemes have delivered only a negligible fraction of the funding needed to preserve ecosystems, allowing industries to continue with their destructive business-as-usual practices.

In advanced economies, public funding often actively undermines biodiversity. In Europe, over €5.3 billion in public subsidies is funnelled annually into intensive forest biomass harvesting under renewable energy directives, degrading primary forest ecosystems and undermining long-term climate resilience. Pleading with private investors to fill a “finance gap” while pouring billions into ecological destruction is an exercise in futility.

Developing countries struggle with debt burden

For developing countries, reliance on private finance is further compounded by a crushing sovereign debt crisis. In 2024, public debt in developing economies reached record levels, with net interest payments alone absorbing $921 billion. A record 61 developing countries now spend more than 10% of government revenue on foreign debt service, with many climate-vulnerable nations spending twice as much servicing external debt as they receive in climate and biodiversity finance combined.

This burden acts as a structural driver of ecosystem destruction. Under pressure from external creditors and international financial institutions to avoid default and secure foreign exchange, governments are routinely forced into austerity measures and pushed to expand raw commodity exports into pristine biomes. 

Comment: World Bank and IMF should lead the financial system in responding to the climate crisis

The current negotiations for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC) also offer a way forward. An estimated $492 billion in tax revenue is lost every year to offshore tax havens. Multinational corporations account for around $348 billion of this total by shifting profits away from the countries where real economic extraction and environmental degradation occur.

In the mining sector alone, developing nations lose tens of billions annually to corporate tax dodging. Furthermore, international financial secrecy shields environmental criminals, with illicit financial flows from illegal logging draining between $51 billion and $152 billion annually.

At COP17, leaders must seize the opportunity to build a bridge between the two conventions and enhance cooperation. Governments must put the world on a firm path to securing predictable, sufficient, sovereign public finance for biodiversity conservation. It’s the only path to a restorative, rights-based future for people and the planet.

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The motion, seen by Climate Home News, has been drafted by a group of board members from both developed and developing countries and so is likely to pass easily at the fund’s first-ever extraordinary board meeting on October 22.

It invites the government of Nepal to submit a proposal for how to use the money, with the board then deciding at one of its regular board meetings whether to approve the proposal or not.

While Nepali officials have described $20 million as merely “symbolic” in the face of the $4.8 billion estimated costs of recovery and reconstruction, it would be the first time the new FRLD – agreed in 2022, months after devastating floods in Pakistan – has set aside money for a specific disaster.

Until now the fund has only taken requests through a single call for proposals, launched at COP30 in Belém last November, that gave countries six months to submit requests.

Most of the 180 projects the FRLD is currently considering are designed to help countries avoid damage from future climate disasters, for example by strengthening responses to floods in Bangladesh and Lagos.

The draft decision says Nepal’s proposal will serve as a pilot for how funding requests can be submitted outside of the fund’s current timetable. That could let governments seek funds quickly after a climate disaster strikes, rather than waiting for the next call.

This arrangement would set the fund apart from other United Nations funds designed for climate adaptation or cutting emissions like the Green Climate Fund.

Climate campaigners from Fill the Fund said the draft decision is “a real step forward” as it is “the first time this Fund has moved to respond to a specific disaster”.

Too little, too late

The FRLD was agreed by governments at COP27, set up and operationalised at COP28 in 2023 but has yet to award any money. The 180 funding requests it is currently considering would cost around $2.8 billion, but it only has $350 million to allocate.

The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has described the amount of money available in the fund as “ridiculously small” and Fill the Fund said $20 million “is a meaningful signal but it is a drop against an ocean of need”.

A glacial rock and ice collapse sent a torrent of water and debris through Nepal and the Chinese-administered region of Tibet on August 26. It killed more than 1,400 people, left thousands more missing and destroyed homes, bridges, roads and hydropower plants. Nepal’s finance and environment ministers quickly appealed to the FRLD board for funds, saying that “time is of the essence”.

Their call was followed swiftly by a letter from developing country FRLD board members urging the board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary meeting to allocate funds to Nepal.

But developed countries initially called for an informal consultation rather than a full board meeting. It took a further 45 days for the board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary board meeting for October 22 and to draft a motion for adoption.

Fill the Fund called for a permanent way for the FRLD to respond rapidly to disasters, as “Nepal should not have required historic letters, an informal drafting group and the Fund’s first-ever extraordinary meeting simply to unlock an emergency response. The next country cannot wait two months and a bureaucratic marathon. Speed must be built in, not improvised.”

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“Homes, mines, factories, farms, and growing cities – what do they need? Reliable, affordable baseload power,” Ajay Banga told the bank’s annual meeting in Bangkok on Friday. “Our approach is balanced by design – a full mix of renewables, hydro, gas where appropriate, nuclear when it makes sense, transmission, grids, storage – the whole thing.”

His comments come in a week during which he faced pressure from the US to finance more gas projects and from climate campaigners to stop funding fossil fuels altogether, part of a tightrope he has walked on the bank’s climate policy since Donald Trump’s re-election in 2025.

The bank ended its support for coal around ten years ago and last year, for the first time, funded no oil projects. It has ended support for gas exploration but still backs some projects to do with transporting and using gas, such as a $140-million project to help Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo in West Africa to import liquefied natural gas (LNG).

While its overall support for fossil fuels wanes, the bank’s support for clean energy has been at historic highs over the last few years, with funding of just under $10 billion a year in 2023, 2024 and 2025 – compared to under $1.5 billion a year for fossil fuels.

On Monday, the head of Pakistan’s Indus Consortium, Hussain Jarwar, asked Banga at a civil society townhall meeting why the bank is supporting a “volatile” energy source like LNG, which is pushing economies and consumers into debt “when real renewable energy solutions like solar [are] available and supporting communities and industries for clean, accessible and affordable energy source”. Global LNG prices hit record highs earlier this year as the Iran war squeezed supplies.

Banga replied that the bank is working with countries to source “baseload productive power” and that “if Pakistan wants to build an energy system that is more self-reliant by going further on different forms of baseload plus top-up energy, we’re more than happy to work with it”. “We’ve got no biases in the system – our job is that electricity and water are human rights,” he added.

His answer did not satisfy climate campaigners. Sunil Acharya, just transition lead at Recourse, an NGO that works on sustainable development finance, said in a statement that the bank is moving in the wrong direction and Banga’s “framing of wind and solar as a ‘top-up’ to nuclear, hydropower and gas misses the opportunity to transform energy systems”.

“Fossil gas is bad economics – it exposes countries to volatile global markets and debt while locking public resources into costly infrastructure,” the Nepali campaigner said. “The World Bank must stop reproducing the extractive development model of the fossil fuel era and redirect public finance towards 100% renewable economies that deliver energy for all, protect people and nature, and put people’s priorities before private profit.”

US pressure from Scott Bessent

On Wednesday, however, Banga was pressured from the other direction. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who skipped the Bangkok meeting, issued a statement praising the bank for “beginning to refocus on its core mission of reducing poverty and raising economic growth” after what he called “years of mission creep”.

He said the bank should “formally retire its prohibition on financing” gas and oil exploration and production as it “cannot credibly invoke country ownership while categorically excluding upstream projects before their development merits are even assessed”. He argued that supporting gas projects would help extend electricity access in Africa.

The US is a major gas exporter and analysts are warning its gas companies will struggle to sell their product abroad in the coming years, as US LNG production expands while buyers in Europe and Asia move away from gas to cleaner sources of electricity.

In July, under US pressure, the World Bank scrapped its target for 45% of its finance to go to climate projects. But, with support from a broad majority of countries, it renewed its climate change action plan. The compromise “could have been a lot worse”, E3G climate policy advisor Danny Scull said at the time.

Other multilateral development banks that have the US as a major shareholder, like the Inter-American Development Bank and Asian Development Bank, are now expected to face pressure to scrap their climate finance targets too.

In June 2025, the World Bank ended its ban on support for nuclear power – a move that was welcomed by the US. In his speech on Friday, Banga said the bank would support nuclear retrofits – the modernisation of existing nuclear power stations – alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency, noting that this was “the first such work in 50 years for the bank”.

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The world urgently needs the next assessment of climate science. But speed cannot be the only consideration. Equally important is whose research informs it, whether scientists from developing countries can participate meaningfully, and how its findings shape global climate policy.

The timeline of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) is a major point of contention at its sixty-fifth meeting in Addis Ababa this week. Since early 2024, it has been contested principally between developed countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) seeking earlier completion, and many developing countries calling for more time.

Many developed countries, SIDS and some Least Developed Countries (LDCs) want the AR7 Working Group reports completed by 2028, to inform the second Global Stocktake (GST2) of the Paris Agreement. IPCC assessment cycles have generally taken five to seven years.

But the IPCC’s findings would remain relevant after 2028. Reports completed in 2029 could inform countries’ next nationally determined contributions (NDCs) in 2030. The stocktake assesses collective progress, rather than prescribing individual emissions targets.

More time needed for input from developing countries

Between IPCC60 and IPCC65, developing countries – including Algeria, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Bolivia, China, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Mozambique, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe – have raised concerns over an earlier AR7 timetable and its impact on inclusivity. Russia and Belarus have expressed similar concerns.

An earlier completion date could also affect the scientific integrity and robustness of the AR7 assessments, these governments argue.

Developing countries have emphasised equity in the IPCC’s work, both in process and substance. Their emphasis on a six-to-seven-year assessment cycle is linked to ensuring that the reports reflect scientific literature from the Global South, including research led and funded by institutions in developing countries.

Who funds research, where institutions are based, which questions receive attention and whose work is assessed shape the IPCC’s evidence base. Scientists in developing countries face unequal access to funding, institutional support and international collaboration.

Extending a deadline alone cannot resolve these inequalities. The timetable must be designed alongside measures to strengthen research capacity and enable meaningful participation, otherwise existing inequalities risk being reproduced in successive assessments.

Timeliness doesn’t guarantee political action

Equity is not only about who participates. It also concerns the assumptions behind scientific models, the development pathways they describe and how their findings are subsequently used. Consider mitigation scenarios assessed in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The IPCC itself acknowledges that most do not explicitly incorporate assumptions about global equity, environmental justice or income distribution within regions.

These scenarios draw on assumptions about development, technology and mitigation, and can shape climate policies. The IPCC calls them projections, not predictions or forecasts. Yet when global emissions pathways become reference points in UN climate decisions, the distinction between projected outcomes and an equitable distribution of responsibilities can blur.

Timely science does not guarantee political action. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 identified emissions reductions of 25–40% below 1990 levels by 2020 for developed countries as a group, under a particular scenario. Yet Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, while Japan and Russia declined new commitments under its second period.

Comment: Governments that support climate science must stand firm against naysayers

The first Global Stocktake in 2023 recognised the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 relative to 2019, and reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions around 2050 to limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot.

These benchmarks were highlighted in AR6’s mitigation report. However, the report had an important caveat, that most modelled pathways do not explicitly account for global equity and are projections, not forecasts. But when the 43% figure entered the Global Stocktake decision, it did so without this caveat. This was a fatal omission, given that Article 14 of the Paris Agreement requires Global Stocktake be conducted in the light of equity and the best available science.

Including findings from such models in international climate decisions without their caveats is problematic. Such assumptions affect how future energy use, emissions reductions and development opportunities are distributed across regions.

Emissions-cutting pathways put burden on Global South

A 2024 peer-reviewed study by Indian scientists, published in Climate Policy, examined 556 mitigation scenarios. The researchers found that global inequalities in income, energy use and emissions were projected to persist until 2050, raising questions about whether these pathways reflect equity.

In the scenarios underlying the 43% global reduction figure, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to reduce emissions by 80% by 2030, against 50% in North America and Europe. Developed countries are projected to retain higher per-capita fossil fuel consumption in 2050, while developing countries reduce consumption from already low levels. These pathways place a disproportionate mitigation burden on developing countries, despite developed countries’ historical responsibility.

As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond

Some of the severest projected restrictions on energy use are in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, home to many Least Developed Countries (LDCs), where essential infrastructure is yet to be built, even as climate impacts worsen. Yet these scenarios constrain energy consumption and development prospects.

The scenarios also rely on large amounts of land-based carbon dioxide removal, with more than 70% projected in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. This has implications for food security, livelihoods and biodiversity, placing burdens on communities most vulnerable to climate change and least responsible for it.

The IPCC’s findings carry considerable scientific and political weight. Its assessments must uphold the highest standards of scientific integrity, inclusiveness and equity, both in process and substance. There must be no shortcuts for political expediency.

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The State of Biodiversity Action, put together by a panel of technical experts for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), was released in Yerevan, ahead of the COP17 nature talks starting on Monday in the Armenian capital. Before that, a leaders’ summit on Friday will set the political direction.

Over the next two weeks, governments will for the first time take stock of progress towards the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreed in 2022 – a set of 23 targets also known as the “Paris Agreement for nature” – and will decide on policy guidelines for ramping up ambition before the 2030 deadline. The UN report will be the main basis for these negotiations.

At a press conference in Armenia, UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted that, while there has been some progress on the GBF, the “bad news” is that less than half of country plans are on track to meet its targets.

If current commitments are met by the end of the decade, only 26% of land ecosystems and 12% of marine ecosystems will be protected – falling “real short” of the 30% target agreed in Montreal in 2022, Guterres said. “The war on nature has not yet ended,” he added.

UN Environment chief Inger Andersen said the report “sets the tone for the focus, ambition and urgent action we need to deliver” in Armenia, including by reducing subsidies that harm nature and mobilising new finance for biodiversity. “All leaders and all negotiators must respond to these findings,” she emphasised.

Andersen added that climate change amplifies threats to biodiversity, which makes protection all the more important as global warming is now almost certain to rise above a key threshold. “Exceedence of 1.5C increases the likelihood of forest diebacks, phenological shifts, warming oceans that become more inhospitable to species, irreversible tipping points and so much more,” she said.

Progress on land but ocean lags behind

The report shows that if countries meet all the biodiversity targets in their plans, this would protect about 27% of the world’s land and sea by 2030, a fivefold increase in the span of ten years.

Progress has been uneven, with most conservation efforts focused on terrestrial ecosystems. The report suggests that currently about 19% of land ecosystems are protected, up two percentage points from 2020, which UN authorities welcomed but said is not a fast enough pace.

However, the real gap is at sea, where only about 10% of the global ocean has some sort of protection. Coastal areas under national jurisdiction have done better, as currently 23% of this marine territory is protected, but the report shows most of the deep ocean is not.

Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, an advocacy group, said the new High Seas Treaty – which entered into force this year and will allow for the creation of Marine Protected Areas in the deep ocean – represents an opportunity, as only about 1.5% is under protection so far.

A group of environmental NGOs including WWF and Bloomberg Philanthropies has issued a call for governments to scale up ocean conservation and to designate $16 billion annually for marine protection measures, up from $1.8bn now.

SE Asia speeds up plan for connected clean power grid after oil shock

Some countries did not set a conservation target at all for both land and sea, the report says, blaming technical challenges like how to account for overlapping protected areas, difficulty recognising protections for private land and land-accounting methodologies changing over time.

A separate report by Campaign for Nature suggests that the 30×30 goal could still be met with “increased ambition and commitment”, and says that around 50 countries have already protected about 30% of their land.

A group of environmental NGOs has warned that, beyond the 30% headline figure, protected areas need to be “high integrity” and recognise the stewardship of local communities and Indigenous peoples.

Developing countries call for finance

Rich countries will arrive at COP17 with shrinking aid budgets and geopolitical preoccupations – yet they will likely hear the same plea they’ve heard for the past few years: stepping up commitments will require finance.

A submission by African countries in August said the “implementation gap” has at its core a shortfall in the provision of funds, and that bridging it will require predictable and accessible finance. 

Pacific island nations launched a similar call, arguing there is “a treaty obligation” that developing countries, including themselves, will effectively implement commitments depending on the finance and technology made available by developed nations.

To close this gap, the EU made a proposal at preliminary talks in Nairobi in August to expand the base of donors so that richer developing countries could voluntarily assume donor responsibilities. Saudi Arabia and Qatar rejected the idea, while China said this should not weaken the responsibility of developed nations.

Pre-COP draws attention to Pacific’s climate plight and 1.5C goal

Wealthy governments have yet to meet a target to provide $20bn per year in international public finance for nature protection by 2025, reaching only about $16bn annually from 2023 to 2025, according to an OECD report. By 2030, the GBF aims for developed countries to directly transfer $30bn per year, and mobilise $200bn from all sources, while switching an additional $500bn in support for damaging to beneficial activities.

The UN report released on Thursday shows even slower progress on that aim of redirecting harmful subsidies such as those which encourage the overuse of fertilisers and the production and consumption of new fossil fuels, and below-market fees that encourage overfishing. UN Environment estimates that for every dollar spent protecting nature, $30 goes on destroying it.

UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker told journalists in Yerevan that “if you hear there is no finance, please do not believe it” because economies are continuing to grow. “It is being spent on activities that harm the economy rather than those that work with nature and sustain life on this planet,” she said.

Guterres said developed countries tend to say they are grappling with budget constraints due to increased defence expenditure, which “in my view does not justify a reduction” in international aid. He added that existing resources can be multiplied if they are used to mobilise private capital.

Campaigners, companies and the Armenian government want to shift the needle on this situation at COP17 by highlighting how positive subsidies help restore biodiversity. They will launch a flagship call to action that will be taken forward by countries and groups working to reform damaging incentives.

Global review: the main act

The Global Review of Collective Progress – a bit like the Global Stocktake for climate action – is set to be the most important outcome from COP17, and it will be the first time this process unfolds at the biodiversity talks. The actions decided in Yerevan will respond to the gaps outlined in the State of Biodiversity Action report and determine whether countries can turn the tide of biodiversity loss this decade.

Overall, the report shows that while countries have taken action to address all 23 targets in the GBF, none “present a fully positive picture”. A target to strengthen the resilience of ecosystems to climate impacts is the only one with high relative progress, the report says, as government have already made effective interventions that show “a positive trend”.

The report assessed each country’s national targets, which define their contribution to the global goals, as well as their separate National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) outlining how they will achieve the national targets.

But it does not paint a complete picture, since at the cut-off date, only 89 NBSAPs and national targets from 162 countries had been submitted, leaving out a couple of dozen plans that arrived late. Pacific island nations said this might undercount commitments.

Many of those lacking an NBSAP are biodiversity-rich developing countries, which say they need financial and technical support to fully develop these plans. Some large nations pending an NBSAP include South Africa, Bolivia and Russia.

Since the GBF was agreed in 2022, governments have mostly focused on developing their biodiversity targets and plans, while the lion’s share of implementation is expected to happen towards the end of the decade, according to UN biodiversity chief Schomaker.

But O’Donnell said “accelerated political ambition” is still needed to improve commitments and translate them into effective protection on the ground or at sea. 

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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”. 

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”.

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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.

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.

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Recent catastrophic floods in Nepal starkly remind us that the climate crisis demands urgent action. The initial estimate that the country will need to spend $5 billion on recovery will likely remain a major concern. However, that is only one part of the story. No financial metric can capture the value of lives lost in crises like this. 

And this is not a standalone event; from the mountains of Nepal to the coastlines of Latin America and the Caribbean, developing countries are increasingly facing severe climate impacts. The average annual loss from climate disasters in the Latin American and Caribbean region is estimated at $58 billion. Human suffering remains immeasurable in all these instances.

Climate finance has been a key demand from our regions and from all developing countries to meet the needs of their citizens. At the recently concluded pre-COP31 in the Pacific, several developing-country governments strongly warned leaders about the dangers of failing to act on both climate and climate finance. 

Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu

Yet, two years after the Baku climate summit, where all governments agreed on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) for climate finance – with multilateral development banks (MDBs) playing a key role in delivery – that discussion risks being sidelined at this week’s annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Bangkok, Thailand.

World Bank drops climate finance target

The MDBs have a critical role in mobilising a share of the $300-billion-per-year goal for public climate finance adopted at COP29 and are key to scaling broader financing to $1.3 trillion per year by 2035. They entered the NCQG dialogues promising capacity to mobilise these resources and agreeing to be part of the solution. 

This June, even as the World Bank announced the renewal of its Climate Change Action Plan, it dropped its 45% climate finance target under pressure from the US administration. That commitment was key to ensuring the bank continues to deliver on its promise to mobilise enough climate finance to meet the NCQG target. 

This announcement was a setback at a moment when developing countries are looking to MDBs to step up and fill gaps left by cuts in official development assistance (ODA) by donor governments. 

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

MDBs have long said they can convert $1 provided by donors into $2-$4 for client countries and have promised to deliver impact. Official data does paint an encouraging picture overall. The MDBs have delivered an increase in climate finance almost every year so far. 

While financing needs far exceed what has been provided, MDBs mobilised an average of around $75bn per year in climate finance for low- and middle-income countries over the last five years, showing they are still on track to deliver the $120 billion per year they committed to. 

Adding to the debt burden

However, climate finance cannot be measured by quantity alone. As MDBs increase their focus on private-sector mobilisation to diversify their funding, tracking the quality of the financing they mobilise becomes even more critical.  Beyond scale, this is where the system currently lags most. 

Between 70-90% of the financing provided by MDBs is in the form of loans, exacerbating the debt burdens that the World Bank and IMF have long warned about. This strains countries’ economies at a time when developing countries face severe climate impacts, inflationary pressures, and global economic uncertainty. Adding further debt that climate-vulnerable countries must repay with interest does not necessarily translate into effective climate finance flows. 

It is also essential to address barriers to accessing finance in low- and middle-income countries, particularly by prioritising transparency around how much climate finance goes to the most climate-vulnerable countries and communities. 

Additionally, there needs to be clarity on how much climate finance is being mobilised to build resilience and address increasingly frequent climate disasters, as well as for renewable energy projects that would help developing countries achieve a just transition. 

Climate stresses undermine development 

As climate-induced disasters become more frequent, countries are compelled to shift resources away from vital sectors such as health, education, food security and infrastructure that underpins development. For nations already grappling with limited fiscal budgets and mounting debt, climate change is becoming an even heavier burden, pushing them to borrow more.

These are also development issues at their very core – countering debt challenges, investing in resilient infrastructure, protecting schools and hospitals from climate disasters, and increasing crop yields to reduce the cost of food. So, when the World Bank talks about a smart development framework, it warrants a check on how much climate finance is provided and its quality.

Editor’s Desk: Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap

MDBs must now lead the charge by publishing a clear plan to deliver on the scaled-up climate finance goal as a first step, and make financing accessible and affordable, including grant-based instruments. The plan must also define clear accountability metrics to track delivery, access, affordability and reach and commit to at least triple adaptation finance.

MDB shareholder countries also have a role in backing the institutions to deliver on these promises. When World Bank and IMF management meets with finance ministers this week in a region battered by the worst climate impacts, they must not leave climate finance off the agenda. 

They must give the World Bank and IMF the mandate, the capital and the political backing to make real scale-up possible. The true test of this financial system will not be found in conference rooms in Bangkok, but in the lives saved in Nepal. 

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As prices soared, governments in the region scrambled to introduce emergency energy-saving measures – from a four-day work week to curbs on air conditioning. Thailand revived decommissioned coal plants while the Philippines, which imports nearly all of its oil, declared a “national energy emergency”.

But the crisis has also prompted renewed resolve to find a long-term solution to their vulnerability at a time when electricity demand is booming to power the region’s growing industry, cooling needs and the mushrooming of energy-hungry data centres.

At the heart of Southeast Asian nations’ response is a longstanding infrastructure project to connect the region’s power grids by 2045 and enable cross-border trading of clean electricity through a network of underground and subsea interconnectors.

The plans will allow nations with high renewable energy generation potential to trade surplus power to their neighbours and major demand centres like Singapore, helping to integrate more renewables into the power mix and reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports.

“[It] will give us more energy security,” the Philippines’ energy secretary, Sharon Garin, told a press conference after a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) energy ministers last week, when they discussed accelerating the delivery of the regional grid as part of measures to respond to the energy crisis.

“The Philippines is rich in solar power, Malaysia is rich in hydropower and Indonesia has geothermal: different countries have different resources. [The ASEAN Power Grid] will optimise the utilisation of renewables to the benefits of each member state,” said Garin.

But turning this decade-old political vision into a reality has been slow, held up by painstaking work to harmonise a patchwork of regulatory and legal frameworks and mobilise the private capital needed to build cross-border infrastructure.

More than $300 billion is needed to expand and modernise the region’s fragile grids to support the projected energy demand increase by 2050. This includes $27 billion required to deliver the cross-border interconnections by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Every year of delay could cost the region billions of dollars in additional fuel costs and lock in new gas infrastructure for decades to come, according to analysis by global energy think-tank Ember.

The building block for energy security

With electrification high on the agenda of the COP31 climate talks in Türkiye next month, there is growing attention on the need to modernise and expand grid infrastructure to cope with growing electricity use and more renewables in the power mix.

Clean electrification and energy efficiency could deliver about a third of cumulative carbon emission reductions between 2026 and 2050, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook. But delivering that would require doubling annual global grid investment to $1 trillion between now and 2035.

Last month, the UN launched an initiative to accelerate investment into expanding and modernising grids in Southeast Asia and Africa.

First conceptualised in 1997, the ASEAN Power Grid has gained fresh impetus in recent years as countries turn to renewables to cut their emissions and move away from volatile fossil fuel markets.

Energy supply disruption caused by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East has strengthened the case for regional grid connections. Before this year’s conflict began, the Middle East accounted for 60% of Southeast Asia’s crude oil imports. Competition for fewer, more expensive oil and gas shipments has left Southeast Asia facing a $160 billion energy import bill this year. Based on current policies, this could rise to $400 billion by mid-century.

In the Philippines last week, energy ministers agreed on an enhanced planning framework to deliver the ASEAN Power Grid and made progress on regulatory guidelines.

Garin said ministers were considering accelerating the project’s delivery. “The first study was to connect [by] 2045 – that’s too far,” she said.

A strong business case

The economic benefits of the plan have “captured the political imagination” of leaders in the region, Robert Cooke, grids advocacy lead at the Global Renewables Alliance, told Climate Home News. “The business case is stronger than ever,” he said.

“If countries were to go about building their own separate grids, of course that would be an expensive endeavour. But the discussion around the ASEAN Power Grid includes what costs could we share in building out this grid,” added Tiza Mafira, director of the Indonesia office for the Climate Policy Initiative.

Stronger grids would help the region meet collective targets to increase the share of renewable energy in total primary energy supply from 14% to 30% and in installed power capacity from 34% to 45% by 2030.

Connecting and pooling dispersed renewable resources would also help smooth local power shortages caused by daily and seasonal variations, reducing the need for backup gas plants and battery storage.

The IEA found the ASEAN Power Grid could help unlock some of the 20 terawatts of untapped solar and wind potential across Southeast Asia – an amount around 55 times the region’s current total power capacity.

From lines on a map to shovels in the ground

Rather than building a single unified network, the ASEAN Power Grid is developing cross-border links between neighbouring countries and smaller groups of nations.

As of 2025, nine of 18 priority interconnection projects are operational – accounting for around 10 GW of capacity with an additional 13.7 GW planned by 2040.

A power line channelling up to 200 MW of clean electricity generated from hydropower in Laos to Singapore via Thailand and Malaysia has emerged as a key building block for grid-to-grid trading.

Progress on technical discussions will also help provide the clarity the private sector needs to invest in bankable projects, said Cooke.

In 2025, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank announced a dedicated funding initiative to support the project.

“The enabling pieces are emerging,” said Monalisa Dimalanta, former chair of the Philippine Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Renewable Energy Board. “But the timelines remain unclear and a 2045 vision cannot answer today’s emergency,” she said.

“A power grid… that exists only on paper will not keep the lights on.”

Singapore: the delivery test

The implications of failing to deliver the ASEAN Power Grid are most acute in Singapore.

Constrained by space, with few renewable energy resources and dependent on gas for more than 90% of its electricity mix, Singapore has emerged as a leading proponent of a regional power grid as it seeks to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

To meet its power needs, the city-state aims to import 6 GW of low-carbon electricity by 2035, around one-third of its energy demand – a target which it is set to miss, however.

The plans heavily rely on building interconnectors to import solar power from Indonesia across the South China Sea. Around 40% of the ASEAN Power Grid’s planned interconnections are directed towards Singapore.

Ember’s analysis found that delivering the planned interconnectors by 2035 could enable renewables to meet nearly half of Singapore’s electricity demand. Delays could drop this to only a fraction of the country’s needs, and risk locking in new gas capacity until the 2050s. Without the ASEAN Power Grid, Singapore would need to install an additional 300 MW of gas-fired power capacity to bridge the gap by 2035.

Already home to the largest data centre capacity in Southeast Asia, Singapore’s electricity demand keeps rising, driven by the boom in AI infrastructure. “At one point, [it] either has to build a new gas plant, or it has to get the interconnection to supply that demand,” Lam Pham, an Ember energy analyst and the report’s author, told Climate Home News.

A region at a crossroads

With capital increasingly available, political will is now the biggest risk standing in the way of timely execution, said Pham.

But there are other challenges too, including the lack of frameworks on transmission tariffs and how to share the benefits of clean power trading. “It’s really hard to justify projects without that,” he said.

In addition, climate-fuelled weather events, including extreme heat and tropical storms, pose major threats to the region’s grid infrastructure. Experts say stronger grid interconnection can isolate damage and build the system’s resilience.

Efforts to deliver on the ASEAN Power Grid also come as ministers stressed the “continued importance of oil and gas” for economic development and seek to secure fossil fuel supplies and stockpile oil to prepare for the next crisis.

Despite an acceleration of renewable deployment, particularly solar, coal still generates nearly half the electricity supply in ASEAN member states and dominates the power mix in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, while Singapore and Thailand rely on gas.

While these measures might help the region with the immediate crisis, “the long-term answer is more domestic renewable energy, electrification, storage, efficiency and regional power trade”, Dimalanta said.

Main image: An aerial view of the MTerra solar project in the Philippines, set to become one of the world’s largest solar-and-battery developments (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

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The requirement is part of a new rulebook that the Paris Agreement carbon market regulator – the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body – approved last Friday for programmes that aim to cut emissions by distributing new and cleaner cookstoves in regions that still burn wood or charcoal for cooking.

These are the UN mechanism’s first rulebooks for cookstoves, one of the carbon market’s most popular credit types and also one of its most criticised for overstating climate benefits.

They consist of two methodologies: one for programmes that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by distributing more efficient cookstoves that burn less wood or charcoal, and a separate methodology for projects shifting households to lower-emissions cookers running on electricity or liquid petroleum gas (LPG).

Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of the Supervisory Body, said “this decision gives cleaner cooking projects a new pathway under the UN carbon market, with clear rules to ensure that each credit represents a real and credible emission reduction”. 

• 

  Sep 8, 2026

  Carbon markets

  Industry and NGOs lobby to weaken UN carbon credit rules in “coordinated” push

  In copycat submissions and a private briefing to government officials, the groups have opposed a proposal to tighten safeguards for emissions offsets

  Read more

• 

  Oct 9, 2026

  Energy

  Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes

  Repeated delays are raising questions about the bank’s momentum and whether it can mobilise investment to finance Africa’s oil and gas ambitions in an era of energy transition

  Read more

Exemption push rejected

More efficient cookstove projects earn credits based on the amount of carbon they save by preserving trees that would have otherwise been cut down and burned for fuel. But if those trees later burn in a wildfire or are logged, the carbon stored would be released anyway, erasing the climate benefits of the credits.

Several carbon credit developers, conservation NGOs and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) disputed that cookstove projects face this risk, in what critics described as a “coordinated lobbying campaign”.

They argued that, unlike forest protection schemes, this type of credit represents a “flow” of avoided emissions rather than a “stock” of stored carbon that can be released. They also warned that requiring a buffer would impose disproportionate costs and undermine the financial viability of these activities.

But the UN carbon market regulator was not persuaded by the argument. It decided that projects would have to protect against this reversal risk by handing over a percentage of credits to a so-called “buffer pool” instead of selling them.

A spokesperson for the Project Developer Forum, an umbrella group for carbon credit developers, said it was “disappointed” with the Supervisory Body’s decision. “The new requirements are expected to weigh heavily on a sector where major integrity improvements are already underway,” he added.

‘New paradigm’

The amount of credits to be given up is calculated by applying different methods for natural risks, like wildfires, droughts or hurricanes, and human-caused ones, such as logging or land clearing. 

For natural risks, project developers will need to apply local risk values derived from new modelling published by a group of independent scientists. 

Campaigners have broadly welcomed the decision. Federica Dossi, an expert at Brussels-based advocacy group Carbon Market Watch, said it sets a new paradigm for calculating reversal risk based on empirical data. “This approach is grounded in science and we hope to see this now being adopted by other carbon crediting mechanisms in the voluntary market,” she added. 

Backers claim this method is more rigorous than current practice in the voluntary carbon market, which largely relies on expert guesswork.

Pre-COP draws attention to Pacific’s climate plight and 1.5C goal

Pushback over science

As Climate Home News previously revealed, the same industry and NGO groups that sought an exemption from the “buffer pool”, along with some corporate buyers, criticised the use of a study backed by the UN carbon market’s experts that recommended the new risk assessment approach.

The groups pushed for more flexible rules that would have allowed natural risk values drawn from other sources, including national databases, or from the project developers themselves. 

While the Supervisory Body rejected this approach, it gave project developers and countries the option to propose alternative values that would first need to be vetted by the mechanism’s expert panel and then approved by the regulator.

A carbon market expert told Climate Home News that, while it is too early to say how this provision will be used, they expect requests will have to be backed up with solid scientific evidence, lowering the risk of unfounded claims.

Policy discounts questioned

To guard against human-caused risks, projects will need to apply a flat 20% value set by the Supervisory Body, at the bottom of the 20-45% range recommended by its technical experts ahead of last week’s meeting. 

That value can be further reduced by up to two-thirds if the host country has an emission-reduction plan covering forests, a long-term climate strategy and a framework for the UN’s REDD+ forest protection scheme. 

Injy Johnstone, senior research fellow at the Munich-based Max Planck Institute, said that, while these are important governance measures, their existence does not necessarily demonstrate that the underlying risk of forest carbon loss has been reduced. 

“It is important to distinguish between evidence of actual risk reduction and assumptions about the effectiveness of policy commitments,” she added.

Moving target

A UN source told Climate Home News that, under the approved formula, improved cookstove projects must set aside at least 9% of credits linked to saved wood if they operate in the lowest-risk areas and the host country can claim all available discounts. The share of credits rises significantly in regions with high natural risk values, such as Guyana, Sri Lanka and Timor Leste, or that do not have REDD+ programmes. 

These factors could change in the future as the Supervisory Body asked its technical experts to recommend revisiting the risk values “should credible new evidence arise”. 

Climate change is likely to make forest destruction events, such as wildfires or hurricanes, more frequent and more severe in certain regions. Meanwhile, national policies on forest protection can shift significantly depending on government changes.

Johnstone said the UN carbon market needs periodic reassessment to respond to new evidence showing that previously assumed levels of risk were too low.

“The integrity of credits is not guaranteed simply because a reversal risk tool exists,” she added. “The real test will be whether the mechanism provides equivalent atmospheric protection over time, rather than simply introducing another layer of accounting requirements”.

The post UN carbon market forces cookstove projects to protect against forest loss appeared first on Climate Home News.

Evidence of a rapidly changing climate and our improved scientific understanding is compelling nations to act, but not always in a good way. The science itself is facing well-organised obstruction.

The consequences of politicising the evidence are now more apparent than ever, especially in the run-up to a crucial intergovernmental climate meeting taking place in Addis Ababa this week.

On the agenda is a proposal that would prevent all governments from being able to use the most up-to-date analysis of options for combatting climate change at a critical stage in UN negotiations.  

The meeting is the 65^th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body charged with providing gold-standard scientific and economic evidence on climate change to the world.

Often characterised as a scientific organisation, the IPCC is actually a forum of governments that commissions assessments from scientists from across the globe. This unique effort is doubly important as it represents the world’s only climate science reports that are approved by consensus among the 195 countries that make up its membership.

But this consensus also means that governments can regulate the IPCC’s reports and timescales. Countries can make it difficult for their scientists to participate or even withhold the organisation’s budget.

By doing so, they can place a straitjacket on the production of analysis that these self-same governments are obliged to consider when they assemble under a different umbrella – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which relies on the findings from the IPCC to guide negotiations.

When it works well, this intergovernmental approach means that countries agree on, and have a firm, authoritative scientific basis for acting on the evidence in a cooperative way. 

Until now, the system has largely functioned as it should, despite a certain amount of posturing and politicking. This month, however, could be the time when that delicately balanced state of affairs comes to an end.

Enemies of science?

The vast majority of governments – in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and most importantly the small island developing states which sit on the frontlines of climate impacts – want the three main parts of the IPCC’s current assessment report (AR7) finished by the end of 2028. That would mean its conclusions can inform the next Global Stocktake – the five-yearly process set up under the Paris Agreement where governments review progress on climate action and ideally commit to stronger efforts.

Against this view stands a handful of major emitters who are determined that the IPCC’s upcoming report on mitigation – reducing climate-heating emissions – will not emerge until after that crucial political decision-making point.

The figureheads for this group are Saudi Arabia and India, with a few others such as Russia lurking in the background. Finding the Saudis here is absolutely expected, but India’s presence is more surprising given President Narendra Modi’s commendable commitment to building a clean energy economy, most notably his leadership of the International Solar Initiative.

As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond

Underneath pretexts of giving the authors more time, or making it fairer in terms of who can contribute, they have a hidden motive: if the report on mitigation is delayed beyond the second Global Stocktake, the same governments that delayed it will then argue that the stocktake cannot meaningfully discuss vital mitigation action without the latest report, effectively delaying more ambitious agreements on cutting emissions by another five years.

It is the duty of every government that professes to care about climate change to oppose such a retrograde step. There are worrying signs, however, that some governments which are highly influential within the IPCC system may be about to cave.

No time to appease

What seems to be happening is that in the face of signals that the Saudis, for example, are prepared to block the IPCC’s budget if they don’t get their way, some governments are leaning towards appeasement, i.e. publishing the mitigation report only after the Stocktake been has completed, just to keep the whole process moving – better a bad agreement than no agreement.

This would be a major error of judgement, for two reasons.

One is that appeasement will not stop the naysayers’ moves to derail climate action – quite the opposite. Giving ground on this will only embolden them to propose other roadblocks, such as further delays and arguments over report content, or further minimising and excluding UN and non-UN science in other fora, such as the UNFCCC science negotiation tracks.

The second is that giving way would be a betrayal of communities in countries impacted by climate change around the world. In India itself, 90% of the workforce toils outdoors in informal settings and temperatures are rising well above 40C – so constraining global warming as soon as possible is clearly desirable for both human health and economic productivity.

Funding gap threatens next round of IPCC climate science reports, chair warns

For the UK, this is a time to remain rock-solid in support of an outcome that so manifestly serves the interests of people at home and around the world. Britain has a distinguished record in international climate science, being the only country to have supplied two chairs to the IPCC, including the incumbent, Jim Skea.

The climate impacts seen around the world this year – from lethal heatwaves in Europe to Nepal’s devastating flood – prove there is no time to wait. Climate action needs to be accelerated. Getting the right decision this week, so that the latest evidence can be acted on at the right time, is essential.

The world will be watching and counting on governments to stand strong and defend the need to deliver relevant and timely climate science for us all.

The post Governments that support climate science must stand firm against naysayers appeared first on Climate Home News.

The bank, which had been billed to launch in September after a series of delays, is now scheduled to begin operations in November, according to the head of the African Energy Chamber, an advocacy body for the continent’s oil and gas sector.

Even as the world aims to transition away from fossil fuels, many African leaders have made clear they want to continue exploring and extracting the continent’s large oil and gas deposits – estimated at around 125 billion barrels of crude and over 600 trillion cubic feet of gas – to boost economic development.

As a group, Africa sided with a number of powerful oil-and-gas producing nations in blocking progress on negotiations to craft a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels at last year’s UN COP30 climate talks, although some countries did individually support the proposal.

Meanwhile, major projects under development across the continent – including the 1,443-km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and Dangote’s 700,000-barrel-per-day Kenyan refinery – show that African governments see oil and gas as playing a significant role in meeting their energy and economic needs for many years to come.

In 2022, at a gathering of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) in oil-rich Angola, ministers from its member states adopted a resolution to create the Africa Energy Bank to finance projects for the production, use and trade of oil, gas and broader energy sources.

African control over energy resources

An article on the APPO website explains that the bank was conceived as a way to overcome “disenchantment” with fossil fuels among “the international community” which it said had crystallised around the “energy transition” concept.

“If Western countries, after having long taken advantage of the energy sources they now revile to develop, can afford the luxury of abandoning them, this is not the case in Africa,” it adds, noting that many of the continent’s economies are still largely dependent on oil and gas revenues.

A separate web page about the bank, also hosted on APPO’s website, says its objectives include financing the exploration, production and refining of oil and gas, as well as supporting member states in transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources “while ensuring energy security”.

What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026?

Said Addi, a former executive with Shell and energy commodities trading house Gunvor, said the new bank was judged necessary because financing for hydrocarbons from many traditional international lenders has become constrained.

In trying to fill this financing gap, Africa is not simply setting up another fund to support oil and gas, he added. “It is also an attempt to give African countries greater control over how their energy resources and infrastructure are financed,” he explained.

Nigeria to host the AEB

The energy bank – a joint initiative of APPO and the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) – has so far suffered several delays and is almost two years behind schedule. The initial plan was to start operations in January 2025, with Nigeria as the host country, but the bank’s opening was delayed to June of that year to allow Nigeria time to finalise the construction of the bank’s headquarters in Abuja. 

After the government announced the completion of the offices in late November 2025, a new launch date was set for January 2026, which was moved back to April, June and then September. Now it has shifted again to November, raising concerns that the institution may be losing momentum. 

Former Shell executive Addi said that if the capital is eventually paid in, the bank becomes operational and its first projects are commercially credible, then the delays will be regarded as normal teething troubles in setting up a multilateral institution. But, he added, scepticism will be justified if it continues to stall. 

Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls

Baron Lamarré, an oil and gas expert and former Petronas oil trader, said that missing “three deadlines in a row is not normal”, and warned that if the timeline slips again, “the story flips from ‘ambitious institution finding its footing’ to ‘good idea that lost momentum before it found any’.”

The Nigerian government, APPO and Afreximbank did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

The funding challenge

The Africa Energy Bank is targeting base capital of $5 billion, with plans to scale up to $120 billion within five years by mobilising private-sector funds. However, it is expected to start operations with initial seed capital of $500 million. 

The funding plan is to have the 18 member countries of the APPO contribute $83 million each to the bank as equity for a combined $1.5 billion. Afreximbank, other non-APPO African countries and investors  outside the continent are expected to provide the remaining $3.5 billion. 

But even the initial $500 million has not been easy to mobilise. In May, APPO Secretary-General Farid Ghezali called on members to deliver on their pledges towards the startup goal before the end of June. But the delays suggest this may not have been met, with experts saying Africa may be finding it difficult to self-fund its oil and gas projects in the absence of international capital.

Lamarré said every extension of the deadline points to the fact that “raising fossil fuel capital in Africa without the majors and their financing networks is brutally hard”.

Why the global electrification agenda misses the point on Africa’s energy crisis 

Since 2020, Western lenders, export credit agencies and insurers have been in steady retreat from African hydrocarbons, he said, while oil majors are divesting their African assets, handing over fields to smaller local operators whose credit ratings are not high enough to borrow cheaply.

Even capital from China and the Gulf, which has partially filled the gap, cannot match the volume, tenor or pricing that Western investors once offered, Lamarré argued. 

“If mobilising the first $500 million of seed capital [for the AEB] has taken this long, that’s the clearest signal yet of how steep the climb to $120 billion looks,” he said, noting that the continent’s energy financing gap is as large as $30 billion-$45 billion per year.

Africa’s investment landscape, meanwhile, has been shifting. While foreign direct investment dropped from a 2024 peak, inflows remained roughly one-third above the continent’s long-term average in 2025, according to the 2026 World Investment Report from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). They are concentrated in a few sectors including critical minerals needed for renewable energy technologies, battery manufacturing and advanced industrial production.

At the same time, data on global energy investment from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that fossil fuel investment in Africa has declined over the last decade.

“Trojan horse” for fossil fuels

While the Africa Energy Bank struggles to get off the ground, climate campaigners have criticised its primary aim of financing oil and gas on the continent at a time when the world is starting to move away from high-carbon fuels to cleaner alternatives. 

Bhekumuzi Dean Bhebhe, founder of Africa Change Lab, described the bank as a “Trojan horse”, arguing that its focus on fossil fuel financing runs counter to the global energy transition and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 goals of sustainable development and inclusive growth.

The energy bank, he warned, “risks locking Africa into a new cycle of debt, dependency and fossil fuel entrenchment”, adding that its financing blueprint does not pave the way for a climate-resilient future. “In truth, it is to deepen the same extractive, carbon-heavy pathways that the continent should be moving away from,” he added.

Ugandan farmers use British court to try to stop East Africa oil pipeline

Kenya-based climate and energy expert Joab Okanda said the AEB’s plan to finance oil and gas is “a misplaced priority” and it should instead back clean energy in line with the policies of some of Africa’s major export markets like Europe.

In addition, the new bank could struggle to mobilise enough resources to advance large-scale oil and gas projects, he added, noting that its proposed $5-billion initial capital is equivalent to the cost of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline alone.

The AEB’s aim of backing more fossil fuels should be flipped “to support countries that are oil-dependent to start working on their transition plans”, Okanda said.

The post Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes appeared first on Climate Home News.

More than 30 world leaders, ministers, climate negotiators and international development bankers travelled to the sinking atoll nation of Tuvalu on Tuesday before attending the pre-COP31 talks in Fiji, where schoolchildren told them about the effects warming-driven droughts, heatwaves and storms are having on their education.

Australia and the Pacific nations hoped to use the pre-COP to reinforce the urgency of tackling climate change to the officials from around 50 countries who travelled to the region. Fiji’s climate minister, Lynda Tabuya, told a closing press conference on Thursday they had wanted to “bring decision-makers to the climate frontlines”.

Many of those decision-makers said they had been moved by what they had seen and heard this week, and their speeches emphasised the importance of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, a key goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

In September, a UN report acknowledged that the 1.5C threshold will be breached but said temperatures could still be brought back down to that level by the end of the century with stepped-up climate action.

A month ago, Türkiye’s COP31 President Murat Kurum told a press conference in the northern Turkish city of Trabzon that limiting global warming to 1.5C “does not really look possible”, adding that “around 1.5C, that will be a success”. 

But after seeing the “anxiety” of Tuvaluan children and mothers caused by rising seas and the threat to their lives from high tides, Kurum told reporters in Fiji that 1.5C is a “matter of survival –  the survival of cultures, history, memories, your homeland, your homes – it’s that important.” 

“The 1.5C target is in jeopardy and we do not have a single minute, a single day to lose,” he added through an interpreter.

Jacobo Ocharan, head of political strategies at Climate Action Network International, warned that “words of concern will not protect anyone”. “The Pacific has shown the world what is at stake. Now governments must show they are ready to act,” he said. “[COP31 in] Antalya must deliver decisions that change people’s lives for the better.”

$1.5 billion for 1.5C

In Fiji, Kurum echoed the call of Australia and Pacific nations for contributions to the fledgling Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), which aims to use the returns on its investments to fund community climate adaptation projects like water storage, building sea walls and protecting homes from storms. “$1.5 billion for 1.5 degrees will save the Pacific,” he said. “It’s that easy. Life will continue in Tuvalu. Children will be smiling again.”

Sitting next to him, Fiji’s Tabuya said she was “encouraged” by his words. “$1.5 billion for 1.5. We will hold COP 31 to that,” she said. The PRF has been promised just under $200 million so far – including about $15 million pledged by European and Pacific governments at pre-COP – and is aiming for $500 million by COP31. It has a longer-term target of mobilising $1.5 billion in capital.

After Pacific leaders on Tuesday aired a litany of concerns about the barriers to accessing the global climate finance system, Kurum joined in at Thursday’s press conference. “Justice in climate finance is essential,” he said. “Resources must reach those in need in a timely and accessible manner, not through a lot of red-tape, and we cannot accept that the same countries should always bear the burden.” 

Plan for easier access to climate finance

Australian climate and energy minister Chris Bowen, who is COP31’s president of negotiations, also lamented that “the countries that need the finance the most get it the least”. He said he would ask governments and multilateral development banks to support an access to finance plan for small island states and the world’s poorest nations, launched by Australia on Thursday.

The plan says that while there has been progress in making it easier and quicker to obtain international climate funding, “multiple persistent challenges have continued to limit access to climate finance for developing countries”.

It adds that the amounts available are insufficient to meet climate goals and stresses the need for “grant-based and highly concessional financing”, especially for adaptation and responding to loss and damage. The plan proposes an annual high-level forum on climate finance access to track implementation.

The pre-COP summit closed with an emotional plea from Fiji’s host minister Tabuya. Fighting back tears before finally succumbing, she asked delegates to “carry something of the Pacific with you”.

“Remember the people you met, the stories you heard and why we gathered. This pre-COP draws to a close tonight. Our responsibility does not,” she said to applause.

The post Pre-COP draws attention to Pacific’s climate plight and 1.5C goal appeared first on Climate Home News.

The case will test whether binding climate provisions in the EU’s free trade deals can be enforced to hold governments accountable to their climate obligations, experts told Climate Home News.

The EU-New Zealand free trade agreement, which came into force in 2024, was the first in the world to include legally-binding climate provisions and possible sanctions for violating them, as the EU seeks to use its trade partnerships to advance greater environmental protection.

Under the deal, both parties committed not to weaken their environmental law to promote trade or investment and to “refrain from any action or omission that materially defeats the object and purpose of the Paris Agreement”.

At the time the agreement was signed, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the agreement included “unprecedented social and climate commitments”. But experts warned it was unclear how the Paris Agreement provisions would be enforced.

The EU included a similar “trade and sustainable development” clause in 14 other bilateral trade deals in recent years, with several others, including with China, awaiting ratification or being negotiated.

Climate activists at the Dutch NGO Both ENDS argue that the New Zealand government breached these terms by reopening its waters to offshore oil and gas exploration, releasing a climate plan that barely requires any emissions reductions, and passing a law that prevents corporations from getting sued over climate damages.

“Here, we have a so-called gold standard for free trade agreements with sustainability provisions but we have a trading partner that is doing exactly the opposite: regressing, as all the evidence points to, away from the Paris Agreement,” said Marius Troost, a senior policy advisor at Both ENDS.

Can the EU enforce its climate trading rules?

The Dutch environmental group filed the complaint under the EU Commission’s Single Entry Point, a mechanism that allows civil society to request enforcement of the bloc’s trade commitments.

The EU-New Zealand trade deal includes the possibility of suspending beneficial trading arrangements between the two parties in response to serious violations of its climate provisions. This, Troost said, is a “unique” tool to enforce both parties’ obligations under the deal.

“This is an opportunity for the EU and New Zealand to show that they are actually serious about these commitments,” he told Climate Home News.

A spokesperson for New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade denied any violations of the agreement and said the government hadn’t received formal notice of the complaint. The country, they said, “takes its commitments under the NZ-EU Free Trade Agreement seriously, including the agreement’s environment and climate-related provisions”.

An EU Commission spokesperson said it will start a preliminary assessment of the complaint and engage with NGO Both ENDS. “Sustainability is a central pillar of the EU-New Zealand relationship,” they added.

The EU is New Zealand’s second-largest trading partner after China, with about 14% of the country’s exports going to the European market. Agricultural products like meat, diary, fruit and vegetables are the country’s biggest exports to Europe.

New Zealand is ‘having its cake and eating it’

Eliza Prestidge-Oldfield, a senior legal researcher at the New Zealand-based Environmental Law Initiative, which is supporting Both ENDS’s claim, told Climate Home News that if the EU upholds the complaint, both parties would begin a negotiation process.

“The idea is to try and resolve this positively with the New Zealand government acknowledging areas where it needs to change its actions in order to comply with the agreement, and get that change in place as soon as possible,” she said.

But New Zealand’s right-wing coalition government said it won’t take any directives from foreign actors regarding its policies. Trade minister Todd McClay told local media that it was “not for overseas countries, organisations or lobby groups to tell New Zealand how to meet its obligations”.

Prestidge-Oldfield argued the complaint isn’t about “Europe telling anyone what to do at all”, but rather stressing the conditions under which they are willing to import goods from New Zealand. “The New Zealand government is trying to have its cake and eat it too,” she said.

If New Zealand refuses to adjust its policies in line with the agreement, the complaint will be assessed by an independent panel, which can require the country to make changes. If those changes are not implemented, the panel could decide that New Zealand should lose its preferential EU market access.

A negotiated resolution is more likely, however, with no prior labour-related complaints to the EU having ever reached the panel stage.

Alexander Gillespie, a law professor at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, said sanctions would be a “last resort”. “This is a test case, which will generate considerable attention – as it is not just about climate change, but how free trade and environmental sustainability have been woven together,” he said in a statement.

Trade deals as tool for climate accountability

Experts said the case could set a precedent for how trade deals can be used to hold governments accountable on climate action. The EU has enacted similar “trade and sustainable development” clauses in its trade agreements with Canada, Japan and South Korea.

While still pending ratification, the EU’s 2024 trade agreement with Mercosur – which encompasses Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – also includes climate provisions, including a commitment to “effectively implement” the Paris Agreement and promote low-carbon trade.

In addition, legal researcher Prestidge-Oldfield noted that last year’s landmark advisory opinion on climate change by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) laid out stronger climate obligations for developed countries like New Zealand and could strengthen allegations of violations of the terms of the trade deal.

“It will be an interesting area to watch how the EU free trade agreement is interpreted in the light of this advisory opinion,” she said.

The post New Zealand accused of breaching EU trade deal over climate rollbacks appeared first on Climate Home News.

The announcement that November’s climate conference will produce what is known among negotiators as a “cover decision” lays to rest the annual speculation over how the main outcomes of the UN climate conference will be presented this year.

Unlike other formal decision texts at COP, cover decisions are not negotiated word by word between governments. They are often summaries crafted during the proceedings by the presidency, although they still need to be adopted by consensus. Cover texts bring together key elements and initiatives emerging from the discussions at the two-week UN climate talks and give a sense of the political direction of travel for the coming year.

Australian minister Chris Bowen, who will preside over the negotiations at COP31 in the Turkish seaside resort of Antalya, said the presidency did not want to negotiate “a lengthy political statement”. The two countries are sharing the presidency in an unusual arrangement, although Türkiye has the formal title of COP31 President.

The decision, he explained, will be one that “captures the global moment and calls for action”, adding that it would offer “a focused and concrete response to the challenges and opportunities of our time”.

Bowen said the text could recognise the recent UN report acknowledging that an overshoot of the 1.5C warming limit is now inevitable, but temperatures could be brought back down to that level. The decision could also stress “the urgent need for climate action, support and international cooperation to go further and faster”, he added.

With COP31 President Murat Kurum sitting next to him, smiling and nodding, Bowen said the joint presidency aimed to be open and transparent, giving governments an early idea of what to expect from the COP31 process.

Earlier in the week, they published a second joint letter laying out key areas for progress at the negotiations, from setting up a just transition mechanism to putting science at the centre of the next global stocktake of climate plans and focusing governments on the need to increase adaptation finance.

Cosima Cassel, climate diplomacy lead at think-tank E3G, said a COP31 cover decision should send a clear political signal that accelerating climate action is central to global security, prosperity and resilience, show that faster implementation can help address 1.5C overshoot, and support developing countries to put their climate plans into practice.

EU keen to know “what success looks like”

Earlier on Wednesday, Europe’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told journalists in Fiji that the European Commission had asked the UN and COP31 organisers to provide clarity on the summit’s agenda and “what success would look like” in Antalya.

That is why, he added, “I… like it a lot that the organisers are pushing for electrification and are already clear about it upfront”.

A voluntary goal for electricity to provide 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035, up from 23% today, was announced by Türkiye at the Bonn mid-year climate talks. It has since been garnering support for the target, which was developed with the backing of international energy agencies. Australia said on Wednesday it would sign up for the goal.  

However, it remains unclear if or how this goal will be reflected in the COP31 cover decision, as including it in a document that has to be endorsed by all countries could influence its form.

COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment

In recent years, blocking tactics by powerful fossil-fuel producing countries like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia have made it difficult for COPs to make headway on a 2023 decision to transition away from fossil fuels (TAFF).

At COP30 in Belém, Brazil had to offer to develop a voluntary TAFF roadmap at the last minute after failing to secure support to launch the process as part of the formal UN talks. There was also confusion over whether COP30 would produce a cover decision, with Brazil holding its cards close to its chest until the second week, when it decided to put together the “Mutirão Decision”.

Electrification goal in cover decision?

This time around, it is now practically certain that COP31 will produce a cover decision, but a key question is whether the co-presidency will somehow try to anchor the voluntary electrification pledge in that text.

Doing so could make it hard to specify that the electricity to meet the target should come from clean, renewable sources, due to potential objections from some countries. The proposed text for the electrification pledge, unveiled on the sidelines of the General Assembly last month, did not make that commitment.

E3G’s Cassel said the COP31 cover decision needs to specify that electrification will be clean “otherwise there is a strong risk that fossil fuel projects are supported by the pledge”. It also must outline the support needed to enable the 35×35 goal to be met, rather than just the top-line target, she added.

On Wednesday, the EU’s Hoekstra said “the whole main effort” towards the electrification goal “should be focusing on renewables”, while nuclear could also be part of the solution.

The energy transition, he added, “is about making sure we transition away from fossil fuels, as the world has already agreed on – so then doubling down on solar, on wind, on battery capacity, on all these elements should be at the very heart of it”.

The post Australia says COP31 co-presidency will work on a cover decision appeared first on Climate Home News.

A small group of government leaders, climate negotiators and heads of development banks and climate funds took a trip to Tuvalu’s Funafuti atoll on Tuesday morning, travelling by road over land just 10-20 metres wide to visit a project that is building barriers to keep the sea from the land.

They then flew to Fiji for the pre-COP summit, where several Pacific leaders said they had been let down by the insufficient quantity, bad terms and slow speed of international finance to help them adapt to a warming climate that is bringing higher oceans, drought and more powerful storms to their shores.

“Right now, our islands are like a canoe that has been rammed by a massive foreign ship. Our canoe is taking on water, we are sinking, and what is the world’s response?” asked Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr.

“They hand us a tiny patch to cover a gaping hole,” he continued, “but the bureaucratic process just to receive that patch is so slow that the water fills the hole while we wait. Then to rebuild the vessel so that we can survive the next storm, we are offered loans, debt that adds weight to a sinking boat packaged in red tape so thick we can barely access it. And while we wait, the water continues to fill.”

Pacific leaders and Australia called again on governments to invest in the new Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), which has been designed by the Pacific Islands Forum and is seeking $500 million in investments by COP31 in November.

It has around $180 million so far, but did not receive additional pledges during the UN General Assembly in New York. The PRF aims to invest to generate annual returns which it can give to projects like water tanks for drought-hit communities.

Witnessing sea level rise

The annual pre-COP gathering is usually a low-profile technical meeting of climate negotiators. But this year, Australia – which is the president of negotiations at COP31 – partnered with the Pacific to introduce a “leaders segment” in an attempt to shine a spotlight on climate issues affecting the region.

Fourteen government leaders – from Australia, Timor-Leste, Mauritius and the Pacific – made the trip. They were joined by the European Union’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the heads of the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank and former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard.

On their return to Fiji, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale told the pre-COP leaders roundtable that the sea level rise they had witnessed was personal for him.

“Tuvalu was not just a site visit for me. I saw the story of my own saltwater people,” he said, adding that he, his daughter and his grandfather had lost their houses to sea level rise and that three-quarters of his electorate live on land that will be underwater in the next 30 years.

From the other side of the world, Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Michael Joseph said Tuvalu’s problems felt similar to those of his own Caribbean islands. “I saw vulnerable communities… just metres from the sea and people determined to remain on their land, preserve their culture and way of life,” he said.

A group of Fijian schoolchildren told the leaders it was not just sea level rise the Pacific struggles with but also heatwaves, droughts and storms, which worry their families and prevent them from learning.

Climate finance red-tape

Several Pacific leaders criticised the world’s leaders for not doing enough to combat climate change. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown expressed disappointment that only two non-Pacific leaders had come to the pre-COP, a fact Australian media widely picked up on to label the event a flop and question its A$20 million (US$14m) price tag.

“We’ve heard a lot of numbers these last two days,” Brown said. “Let me share one of my own. More than 50 invitations extended to world leaders… to see for themselves what high emissions are doing to our nations and our ocean – an ocean that covers nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface.”

He called for more climate finance for the Pacific, asking “if the world is prepared to assess our suitability for climate finance, why is it not equally prepared to scrutinise whether those responsible for delivering it are meeting their obligations?”

Like Palau’s president Whipps, Naoero’s President David Adeang criticised the red tape that is hindering access to climate finance as well as a lack of money, complaining especially about “complicated procedures, heavy reporting, delays in approval and disbursement”.

Adeang added that “the way we assess vulnerability matters”, adding that it should be measured by more than income. Naoero, for example, is classified by the World Bank as high-income, restricting which climate finance it is eligible for.

Action plan to improve access

On Thursday, the Australian government will present a statement and action plan on improving access to climate finance for small island developing states and least developed countries, which it is asking other countries and organisations to endorse.

The statement addresses some of these Pacific complaints as well as acknowledging that progress has already been made on simplifying access by multilateral development banks and climate funds.

In Fiji, Asian Development Bank head Masato Kanda said his institution is “tailoring our finance and operations to island realities” because “your children and their children should be able to grow old in the countries their ancestors have called home for millennia”.

The executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Mafalda Duarte, said that the GCF-backed coastal adaptation project leaders visited in Tuvalu shows that “climate finance works” although – as the project took eight years to implement – “it takes time, and therefore we have no time to waste”.

Australia calls for optimism

While Pacific leaders expressed concern that the world is set to blast past its agreed 1.5C warming limit, endangering their nations, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for “optimism”. “If people think there is no hope, then they will not strive to get the change that we need,” he said.

He said that when he attended his first COP in 2005, Australia’s renewable energy target was 2%. Its target is now 82% renewable electricity by 2030.

While Albanese promoted Australia’s success at electrifying homes and businesses and rolling out renewables, he has been criticised by climate campaigners for extending the production of fossil fuels, including coal – largely for export.

France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut defended the European Union’s climate action at the pre-COP meeting. She said the continent was heating up and reducing emissions faster and providing more climate finance than anywhere else in the world.

“It is time for all major emitters to step up and do their fair share” on climate finance, she said. Most developing countries with large emissions have fiercely resisted joining the club of climate finance donors, arguing they have played a disproportionately small historic role in causing climate change.

Barbut, as well as Palau’s president Whipps, called for the next flagship scientific assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be finished by COP33 in 2028, in time to inform the next global stocktake of national climate action.

This timeline has been opposed by countries like India, Saudi Arabia and China, who argue it would put an unfair burden on developing countries. Barbut said countries should “support the work of the IPCC rather than sabotage its calendar”.

Barbut said that governments should agree at COP31 to aim to raise the share of “clean electricity” in final energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The Turkish and Australian governments have pushed for this goal although without specifying that the electricity should be “clean”. Barbut added that COP31 should also agree to cut emissions of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

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The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of Queensland’s Saraji coal mine. Standing at the edge of the enormous pit, my brain scrambled for words as I scanned the earth’s open wound – a whole island could probably fit inside it. 

Looking down, I noticed footprints of an emu and a koala, pressed and dried in what was once a puddle – signs of how drought had driven animals in desperate search of water, so dangerously close to the coal trucks and heavy machinery ahead.

Earlier this year, I joined a small group of Pacific Islanders on a journey through the Bowen Basin to learn from First Nations communities battling Australia’s mammoth coal industry. Of the more than 40 coal mines operating in the area, BHP & Mitsubishi Alliance’s Saraji mine is one of the largest. So it came as a painful shock to us when in August, the Australian government approved the mine’s extension just months after our visit. 

Witnessing coal extraction is devastating. It is bad enough to see what pillaging tonnes of coal can do to a mine’s immediate surroundings: dry creek beds, dwindling wildlife, denuded land. But to know that this coal will be shipped across the ocean, bring air pollution, and eventually lead to the destruction of Pacific islands thousands of miles away is another kind of heartbreak.

Rising ocean waters

I’m an Australian-born Samoan. In 2002, I visited my family home for the first time. My father took me to the rural community where generations of my family were raised. He did not have the words to describe how much has changed since rising ocean waters had taken away almost a third of the beach.

I learned of how we had to relocate my great‑great‑grandparents’ grave to higher ground twice in the last 15 years. Of how my cousins have to paddle out further to sea to catch fish, since warmer waters have destroyed much of the reef. Of how the ocean crashes so close to my uncle’s home that he had to build a new house further away. 

We saw reflections of our own climate destruction in the Pacific when we shared these stories with our First Nations relatives at the edge of the Saraji mine. Murrawah Johnson and Teila Watson, both Birri Gubba and Gangulu women, made clear connections between their struggles and ours. “We don’t get to inherit our land and we don’t get to inherit our traditional roles. We are fighting a war on extinction,” Murrawah said.

Coal extraction devastated their lands and cultures – totems have disappeared, fresh water has become scarce – while the effects of using it have devastated ours. “King tide, cyclones, all the violence that has been enacted on your country and people is because of the violence that has been allowed here, to us and our country,” Teila said.

Wearing the mantle of climate leadership

This week, Australia is assuming the mantle of climate leadership as co-president and head of negotiations of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP31. It will lead on deliberating the summit’s priorities as world leaders and climate negotiators descend on Fiji and Tuvalu for the pre-COP meetings.

Ironically, just days before the pre-COP began, the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission approved the largest-ever coal project the state has seen, set to emit an extra 800 million tonnes of carbon emissions. I joined the Pacific Climate Warriors and other communities in submitting about 4,000 appeals to oppose the project – yet these all fell on deaf ears. 

But the fight is not yet over. The project still requires federal approval to proceed, so every promise that Australia makes while at the helm of the climate talks counts. These promises will be measured against actual decisions it makes at home: to either lock us into more decades of climate pollution, or begin shutting down coal and gas once and for all.

Pacific leaders have made it clear that countries must align their policies with the 1.5-degree warming goal, a limit that we already know will be breached within the decade. Any chance of keeping this still within reach requires an immediate end to fossil fuel expansion and concrete plans to phase out existing projects. But success will be an uphill battle if COP31’s own head of negotiations refuses to lead by example.

Australia remains the second-largest coal exporter in the world. It is one of the very few industrialised countries under the Paris Agreement’s Annex I that still has no coal phase-out plan. Since 2022, the Albanese government has approved 37 new, expanded or extended coal, oil and gas projects. It is thus unsurprising that its own mitigation policies have been rated by Climate Action Tracker as “insufficient”, even without factoring in fossil fuel exports and related expansion.

Keeping 1.5C alive

Australia must course-correct to earn the mantle it has been given, especially by Pacific nations that backed the country’s bid for the COP31 co-presidency. As a first step, the government must end all coal expansion and explicitly declare a coal phase-out date. It’s the only way to show that it’s capable of leadership that moves beyond endlessly deliberating the “if”, and starts implementing the “how” of keeping the 1.5C target alive. 

The dread I felt staring down at the abyss on the edge of that coal mine months ago still exists. I carry it with me as I show up at the pre-COP to demand that leaders heed the calls of Pacific people. But it is tempered with resolve to keep our lands and communities alive. We remain steadfast in our efforts to secure an outcome that protects people everywhere and brings us back below 1.5 degrees as soon as possible.

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But during the UN General Assembly last month, the right-wing leader reaffirmed his leftist predecessor’s ambition for Chile to host the landmark global pact, which came into effect in January and provides a legal framework to protect the waters of the high seas beyond national jurisdiction that cover about two-thirds of the world’s oceans.

Hailing the country’s “maritime vocation”, Kast’s government said the bid to host the treaty’s secretariat in the port city of Valparaíso was state policy and testament to its commitment to multilateralism.

“For the government of Chile, it is of high interest to achieve this recognition, and we will carry out all the efforts to obtain the necessary support,” Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna was quoted as saying by local media.

Tough competition from Chinese, Belgian bids

But to garner the votes it needs, Chile must fend off competing bids by Belgium – which has proposed its well-connected capital, Brussels – and China, whose well-funded bid includes the provision of free premises in the coastal city of Xiamen and five years of free utility costs.

Parties to the treaty, formally called the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), will choose the headquarters at their first summit (COP1), in New York from January 11 to January 22, 2027. They will seek consensus, falling back on a two-thirds majority in successive secret ballots.

Chile has offered to provide a restored waterside warehouse “at its own expense” as office space, pitching itself to developing countries as a Global South alternative to Europe-centred Brussels. Among richer countries, it is promoting its democratic credentials and greater transparency as an alternative to China. 

Rolling back environmental safeguards at home?

While the South American country remains the top pick among environmental campaigners and other civil society groups, critics of Kast’s government say recent policy moves may make it harder for the country to garner the support it needs.

On March 12, the day after Kast took office, the Environment Ministry withdrew 43 decrees awaiting legal approval, including a push to expand the Mar de Juan Fernández and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks – vast protected areas in Chile’s Pacific Ocean waters. Both remain under review, the ministry told Climate Home News.

The decrees also included an emission standard for coal power plants and regulations for Chile’s new biodiversity and protected areas service.

What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026?

A month after holding up the decrees, Kast questioned aspects of Chile’s urban wetlands protection law, suggesting it was sometimes an unjustified obstacle to much-needed housing development, and his administration has also sought to ease the rules on salmon farming in the world’s second-largest producer. 

In August, the Constitutional Court struck down the salmon farming reform after a challenge by opposition lawmakers and warnings from green groups including Greenpeace, which said it could help farms relocate into protected areas such as the Kawésqar National Reserve. 

Valparaíso mayor Camila Nieto, from former leftist President Gabriel Boric’s party, backs the bid to host the High Seas Treaty, but said she hoped “the government’s support also translates into public policies consistent with the goals of protecting and conserving the oceans”.

“The decisions a country makes on environmental matters can influence international perceptions of its commitment to protecting the oceans. That is something we cannot ignore,” Nieto told Climate Home News.

China’s bid stirs concerns over data access, fishing

Chile’s past record on marine protection – it has protected 43% of its jurisdictional waters – could yet give it an edge.

“Chile deserves it for its conservation record as a state. For more than 15 years Chile has been following this path,” Liesbeth van der Meer, executive director at conservation group Oceana in Chile, told Climate Home News.

Concerns in some quarters about the rival bid by China – for example, over a potential conflict of interest due to the vast Chinese fishing industry – may also weigh in Chile’s favour, experts say.

Chinese-flagged vessels did about 30% of detected high seas fishing between 2022 and 2024, according to an Oceana analysis of Global Fishing Watch data. China also sponsors five of the International Seabed Authority’s 31 deep-sea mining exploration contracts, more than any other country. 

The secretariat would host sensitive marine data, making transparency paramount, experts say.

China says hosting the secretariat in Xiamen would help make the treaty more globally representative, fostering cooperation between rich and developing countries and aiding equitable access to marine science and technology.

Wang Yi, China’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement that the country has “all along championed true multilateralism” and “firmly defended” UN institutions. Given Xiamen’s $38-billion ocean industry, the city lives up to the treaty’s “significance and promising future”, he added.

Meanwhile, Chile is proposing the treaty’s first high seas marine protected area for the Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges, a chain of more than 110 seamounts stretching about 4,000 km from off Peru to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that is rich in endemic fish and other marine species.

The ridges are “a true oasis of productivity”, said Carlos Gaymer, director of the Centre for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands at Universidad Católica del Norte and co-author of a 2021 scientific review of the area. 

The water is so clear that phytoplankton thrive around 200 metres down, feeding zooplankton, small fish and, up the chain, sharks and seabirds. Whales, turtles and sharks use the ridges as “a real highway” across the Pacific, Gaymer said. Parts of the Nazca ridge are likely nursery grounds for jack mackerel and swordfish.

Chile has already asked the body that regulates the industry in the area – the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) – to close the ridges to all fishing vessels. According to Chilean data, more than 80% of fishing in the area involves Chinese vessels.

Meeting on the Chilean request in early September, SPRFMO’s scientific committee agreed only to recommend closing the area to bottom fishing. SPRFMO’s commission will take the final decision at its next meeting, in early 2027.

For Gaymer, Chile’s push to close the area to fishing should be seen as a “starting point” for the treaty proposal. 

“Every time there’s a new expedition, species new to science appear,” Gaymer said. “If you don’t protect areas like these … those species simply disappear from the planet.”

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What does it mean to ask a continent to adapt to a crisis it did little to create? For Africa, that question has stopped being philosophical as it is answered every day in flooded communities, failed harvests, disappearing livelihoods and public budgets stretched by disasters they cannot afford. 

Africa produces a negligible share of global emissions, but between 1970 and 2021 it accounted for around 35% of climate-related deaths worldwide. The continent is therefore confronting a brutal contradiction that is exemplified by the fact that those who have contributed least to the climate crisis are carrying some of its heaviest costs. 

And that explains why, for us, it is worrying that much of the climate debate treats adaptation as a technical exercise. Build better infrastructure, they say. Improve early-warning systems, they urge. Develop drought-resistant crops, they preach. Strengthen disaster preparedness, they yell. All of these things matter, but they do not answer the harder question of why some people and countries are so much more vulnerable in the first place.

At pre-COP, UN climate chief warns of heat threat to mothers and babies

That is the question we have spent the last couple of years trying to answer, and it culminates in our recently launched thought-provoking report that shows how Africa’s vulnerability is not an accident of geography, but has instead been shaped by history, economics and power.

Colonial extraction, unequal development, debt dependency, global economic asymmetries and exclusion from international decision-making have all constrained the resources and choices available to African countries, and climate change is intensifying those existing inequalities, shows the report, titled “A Just Transition for Adaptation: A Framework and Vision for Africa”.  

Widening adaptation finance gap

I say it is ‘thought-provoking’ because it asks us to rethink adaptation itself – not as a collection of projects designed to help people cope with climate impacts, but as a question of justice, power and structural change. 

That distinction might not sit well with some people, but for Africa it matters, because there is a danger in asking vulnerable countries simply to become more “resilient”. Resilient against what? How can you ask people to toughen up while letting them be strangled by a system that continues to reproduce the very inequalities that have made resilience so difficult? 

If you want to know where the problem is, see where the money is coming from and where it is going. That becomes quite stark when you consider the fact that Africa’s annual adaptation needs are close to $70 billion but its adaptation finance flows are only around $14 billion.

Editor’s Desk: Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap

At the same time, a growing proportion of climate finance is being delivered through commercial loans rather than grants. That means countries already under severe fiscal pressure are being asked to borrow to protect themselves from climate impacts they did little to cause. 

There is something deeply wrong with a system in which climate-vulnerable countries are spending more of their own public money on adaptation than they receive in international support, because that system turns climate injustice into a financial transaction, with those least responsible carrying more of the cost.

From extractivism to African ownership 

And, as the new report shows, the problem goes beyond finance. Africa’s land, minerals, forests and other resources have become central to the global transition towards lower-carbon economies. Markets and green industrial projects may offer genuine opportunities, but without African ownership, participation and accountability, there is a risk that old patterns of extraction will simply be repackaged in the language of the green economy, and that is why we argue that a transition can be low-carbon and still be unjust. 

It is precisely because of this risk that the report’s idea of a  just transition for adaptation becomes important as it expands the idea beyond the familiar focus on emissions and energy systems. It asks what justice looks like when the goal is not simply to reduce carbon, but to enable societies to withstand a changing climate without reproducing the inequalities that made them vulnerable. 

The report places four dimensions of justice at the centre: recognition, participation, distribution and restoration. 

From Belém to Antalya – gains, gaps and challenges for a new Just Transition Mechanism 

Recognition means taking African realities and knowledge seriously. Indigenous and local knowledge has too often been treated as peripheral to “real” climate expertise, even though communities possess generations of detailed understanding of ecosystems, rainfall, soils, water and livelihoods. That knowledge should inform adaptation policy from the beginning, rather than being added after decisions have already been made. 

Participation means giving affected communities a genuine voice in decisions about their land, resources and futures. Adaptation governance should be inclusive, democratic, rights-based and rooted in free, prior and informed consent. 

Climate justice must confront unequal development

Meanwhile, distribution asks who actually receives adaptation finance, technology and protection? Money that is announced internationally but fails to reach vulnerable communities does little to change their reality. 

And, finally, restoration recognises that present-day vulnerability has a history. Climate justice cannot begin and end with today’s emissions, but must also confront the structural conditions that have shaped unequal development and continue to limit African countries’ room to respond. 

This report, therefore, is an invitation to change the terms of the conversation on just transition. Africa definitely needs adaptation, but that should not mean endlessly adjusting to an unjust system. The real goal should be something more ambitious; a transition in which resilience, development and justice reinforce one another, shaped by African priorities and grounded in African realities. 

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Speaking on the first day of the pre-COP31 meeting in Fiji, where new research was launched on the issue, Simon Stiell warned: “This faultline must not become another deep chasm of climate-driven suffering, inequality and injustice.”

Rather than being a time of hope, he added, pregnancy is becoming “a time of anxiety, as climate impacts fill everyday life with risk”, straining health systems and threatening essentials like food, water and power – especially in poorer countries where many women work outdoors and live in informal housing far from under-equipped clinics.

In a new international survey of 1,000 maternal healthcare professionals in Australia, Brazil, India, the UK and Zimbabwe, around three-quarters reported an increase in heat-related cases or complications affecting pregnant women, as well as foetal and newborn health, over the past five years.

Nearly all respondents in the survey commissioned by Wellcome, a global charitable foundation, said they had cared for a pregnant woman or baby whose health they believed had been affected by extreme temperatures.

Researchers have linked heat exposure with preterm birth, low birth weight, stillbirth and maternal complications. For every 1 degree Celsius rise in heat exposure, the odds of preterm birth increase by around 5%, while exposure to heatwaves is associated with a 25% higher risk of obstetric complications.

“No woman should have to fear that extreme heat will harm the baby she is carrying,” said Julia Gillard, chair of Wellcome and former Australian prime minister, adding “pregnant women must not be invisible”.

Call to include mothers and midwives

Wellcome urged governments to include pregnant women, new mothers and babies in their national climate and health plans, with funded measures to protect them from extreme heat.

It also called on the World Health Organization to develop clinical guidance on heat, pregnancy and the postpartum period, alongside stronger data and surveillance on how heat exposure impacts maternal and newborn health.

The charity is backing a study in Zimbabwe and South Africa to test simple interventions such as handheld fans, reflective paint on health-facility roofs and community-led climate information systems.

Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds

The International Confederation of Midwives, which represents over 2 million midwives, is also pushing for action, asking countries to include maternal healthcare professionals in their National Adaptation Plans, and provide finance to ensure clinics have access to reliable water, power and cooling.

Chief executive Anna af Ugglas told an event on adaptation at Climate Week NYC that midwives tire more easily when working in high heat, which can lead them to make errors. They are often first responders in a crisis – and yet “too many climate and emergency plans are still developed without them”, she added.

Pacific hosts Pre-COP

The campaign to put maternal health on the climate policy agenda kicked off the proceedings in Fiji, where ministers and other attendees from around 50 countries are gathering this week to advance discussions in the run-up to the COP31 climate summit in Antalya next month.

This year’s annual UN climate conference is taking place in Türkiye which holds the COP presidency, while Australia is in charge of the negotiations – a deal worked out after a long rivalry to host COP31.

Australia is using its role to spotlight the concerns of the Pacific region to which it belongs, where low-lying island nations are under threat from sea level rise.

On Tuesday, a group of 14 government leaders – mainly from the Pacific – plus heads of international organisations including the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank will visit climate resilience projects in neighbouring Tuvalu.

Key themes for the pre-COP – a glitzier event than usual – are keeping the 1.5C global warming limit within reach despite a projected overshoot, protecting oceans and improving access to finance for small island nations and the least-developed countries.

At a press conference on Monday, Australia’s climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen flagged his country’s investments in renewables, both in Pacific nations such as Vanuatu and at home, saying this would help lower the use of diesel, fossil gas and coal in energy supplies.

Ahead of the pre-COP, Australia has been criticised by climate campaigners and some Pacific leaders for greenlighting expanded coal production on its territory.

As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage

Asked about Australia’s ongoing support for fossil fuels, Fiji’s climate minister Lynda Tabuya said the issue had been raised by “certain countries” at a ministerial meeting on Monday.

“There will be things that we disagree on, but we can agree to disagree – and we’re just very grateful for the support of Australia and the commitment towards renewable energy, and I think that’s the direction that we need to take, especially in the Pacific,” she added.

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Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Santander were heavily involved in the NZBA and the associated Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) when it was launched by Mark Carney, then a UN climate envoy and now Canada’s leader, in the run-up to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Despite their involvement, data released this week shows those banks and some others did not reduce the amount of money they lent, nor the value of their underwriting, to coal activities between 2022 and 2025. Around half of the NZBA members who were engaged in coal financing over that time increased it and half cut it, according to the report by German environmental research group Urgewald.

Ana Botín, executive chair of Santander, was a member of the GFANZ CEO principals’ group and said at the time of the NZBA launch that her Spanish bank was “proud to be part of the founding members of this new alliance and to accelerate progress towards net zero”.

Since then, the report’s data documents that Santander has provided loans and underwriting worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year to coal companies, particularly American coal-power plant operators Duke Energy and the Southern Company. Santander did not respond to a request for comment.

Urgewald’s research adjusts the value of loans and underwriting provided to coal companies based on how much of a company’s revenues come from the most polluting fossil fuel. So a hypothetical $100 million loan to German utility RWE is valued at $21 million, as 21% of RWE’s revenue is from coal.

The research does not take account of whether companies are expanding their coal business or phasing it out for greener alternatives. Some banks have said their coal clients need to put in place transition plans by a certain date. Some also say that, by a certain date, they will stop lending money to clients that get more than a set percentage of their revenue from coal.

Most companies expanding coal are in Asian nations like China, India and Indonesia and are largely financed by banks from their own countries. But there are examples of NZBA founding members supporting companies that are actively prolonging the life of their coal businesses.

For example, Glencore, a Switzerland-based multinational that gets 4% of its revenue from coal, has just won preliminary regulatory approval to keep on coal mining in Australia’s Hunter Valley until 2045. Last year, the company was supported by loans and underwriting from Bank of America, Citigroup, Santander, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered.

Good and bad news

Some NZBA founding members like Swiss giant UBS have reduced their loans and underwriting for coal companies, the data suggests. Others – like Triodos and Kenya Commercial Bank – have provided no support for coal companies since at least 2021.

Urgewald researcher Hannah O’Neill told Climate Home News that “the banking sector is not moving in one direction. There is a growing divide between banks that are tightening their coal policies and reducing their exposure, and those where coal policies remain weak or where financing continues.” 

Unlike the UN’s Race to Zero campaign, with which it partnered, the NZBA did not require its members to end financing for fossil fuels like coal, leading to accusations by climate campaigners that its rules were too weak.

Despite this, after Donald Trump’s re-election as US president in November 2024, several North American banks quit the alliance and the NZBA’s requirements were diluted in April 2025. After further withdrawals, the group shut itself down in October 2025.

Globally, the Urgewald report found that many banks in the European Union, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Taiwan have reduced their coal finance since governments agreed at COP26 to phase down coal power.

But with Chinese, American, Indonesian and South Korean banks increasing their support, total bank financing for the coal industry has remained broadly the same each year since 2022. 

“Coal financing is not disappearing – but it is concentrating in banks and markets where coal policies are either missing or weak,” said Heffa Schücking, director of Urgewald.

Urgewald’s definition of coal companies includes firms and their subsidiaries that explore for, process, trade, transport and mine coal, or burn it in power plants to produce electricity, or manufacture equipment for the coal industry. It does not include companies that use coal to make cement or steel – and an adjustment is made to account for how much of the business model is coal-related.

Banks defend delays

At the time of publication, most of the banks named in the report for increasing their coal finance had not responded to requests for comment. But a spokesperson for Deutsche Bank pointed Climate Home News to its May 2026 announcement that it was delaying its requirement for existing clients to present it with transition plans and cut their coal exposure.

Instead of having to present these plans by the end of 2025, the bank has given them until the end of 2027. They will also have to ensure that their revenue share from thermal coal falls below half by then, the bank added. New clients need energy transition plans to access finance.

Deutsche Bank said at the time it was delaying its requirements because of the “increasingly complex regulatory environment as well as differing speeds of energy transition in various regions beyond what was anticipated by Deutsche Bank in 2023”.

Big banks’ lending to coal backers undermines Indonesia’s green plans 

A spokesperson for Barclays told Climate Home News: “Many companies in this report are diversified energy or mining companies. We do not provide financing to companies that generate more than 30% of revenues from thermal coal mining or power generation, and we will phase out all financing by 2035.”

The Barclays spokesperson added: “Barclays is financing an energy sector in transition, providing finance to meet current energy needs and also financing the scaling of clean energy. Over the past three years, we have facilitated more than $300 billion of sustainable and transition finance, including billions to cleaner energy projects, and invested millions into climate tech.”

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