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.

The post Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu appeared first on Climate Home News.

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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This year, a glacier collapse in Nepal’s Himalayan valleys swept away the lives of at least 1,500 people, with recovery costs of US$5 billion, or 10% of national GDP. But this was not a tragedy for which no one can be blamed. This was a crime with a balance sheet – one whose costs are paid by people who did nothing to cause it, and whose profits are booked by polluting corporations that did everything.

Across the Pacific, the calculation of injustice is now brutally clear. According to Oxfam Australia, the average yearly GDP loss of Pacific countries from climate disasters has increased four-fold over the last decade, reaching 14.3% of GDP. The number of Pacific people battered by climate disasters has risen by 700% in a decade. Whole villages are being packed up and moved as the sea takes the land beneath them.

Let’s look at the other ledger. This year, as climate change and an oil shock drove up the cost of living for ordinary families, Woodside – touted as “one of Australia’s biggest winners” from the war in the Middle East – reported revenues jumping nearly 30% to AUD$6 billion in just three months.

In Australia, Oxfam finds that in 2023-2024, fossil fuel corporations paid only AUD$22.8 billion in corporate income tax – just 5% of their AUD$436 billion in total reported income – while 26 out of 80, or one in every three large fossil fuel corporations, did not pay corporate income tax at all.

The polluters are not struggling to pay for the damage they cause. They are choosing not to.

This is the moral obscenity at the heart of the climate crisis: the money exists. It is simply flowing in the wrong direction. And nowhere is that clearer than in the funds the world built to protect the vulnerable, now left to languish.

Funds struggle to fill their coffers

The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) has received US$2.8 billion in requests from 119 countries. And Nepal has sought an urgent US$20 million for immediate needs. Yet the Fund has only US$342 million in total to give.

The Pacific Resilience Facility – a fund the Pacific designed for itself, to prepare its own communities – sits well short of even its modest US$500 million capitalisation target. And the Adaptation Fund is running on empty. While adaptation needs in developing countries could reach US$387 billion a year by 2030, according to the latest UNEP Adaptation Gap report, the Fund’s resource mobilisation target of a modest US$300 million for 2025 fell far short, with only US$135 million pledged.

This is a matter of priorities, not of resources. For decades, the world has accepted a simple principle – the polluter pays principle – whether through the OECD, of which Australia is a member, or Europe’s carbon pricing. New York and Vermont have already passed laws to make Big Oil pay into climate superfunds, and ten more US states are moving to follow.

The idea is neither radical nor new. It’s time to make big polluters pay.

Comment: After Hormuz, Nepal and wildfires, people want action to make polluters pay

What is urgently needed is the courage to apply it to the fossil fuel corporations that have spent decades avoiding it. In November, Australia takes up the presidency of the COP31 negotiations, committing to stand shoulder to shoulder with its Pacific neighbours.

Australia, together with the Turkish COP31 Presidency, must guide and inspire progress at the upcoming climate conference, including on new climate finance pledges by developed countries (which agreed to mobilise at least $300 billion by 2035) and triple the funds available to the FRLD, the Adaptation Fund and the other UN climate funds.

Rich countries agreed to these goals two years ago at COP29. Yet, the reality is that developing countries’ need for climate finance is in the trillions annually, while developed countries continue to delay providing even what they have already committed. A clear signal recognising the importance of delivering the promised climate finance must come at next week’s Pre-COP in the Pacific, and COP31 in Antalya must go on to deliver against existing promises or risk an irreparable breakdown in trust.

Time for a climate pollution levy

Countries must also ensure funding for loss and damage takes its rightful place as the third pillar of climate finance, alongside mitigation and adaptation, in negotiations regarding the UNFCCC climate finance work programme and Article 9 on shifting finance flows towards a low-carbon, resilient world.

Australia, as President of Negotiations and as a Pacific nation, cannot ask the world to fill these funds while it lets its own coal and gas giants off the hook. Australia should not only stop approving new and expanded coal and gas mines, it should also introduce a Climate Pollution Levy on big coal, oil and gas corporations – a charge on every tonne of carbon pollution they extract and profit from. Independent analysis shows such a levy could raise tens of billions of dollars a year, and can be designed so the cost falls on the corporations, not on households.

This is not charity – it is compensation. It is the beginning of accountability. And the public is far ahead of its leaders: eight in 10 people worldwide, and a clear majority of Australians, want fossil fuel firms taxed to pay for the damage they cause.

Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn

The money must go where the harm lands. A Climate Pollution Levy should feed the funds frontline communities are relying on – fully capitalising the Pacific Resilience Facility this year, replenishing the Adaptation Fund, and delivering the billions the loss and damage fund needs.

It is essential for these funds to be able to provide grant-based finance that reaches communities directly, not more loans that push drowning nations deeper into debt. With Nepal’s recovery costs estimated at around 10% of the country’s GDP, if we leave it to fend for itself without loss and damage funding, Nepal will likely be saddled with debt and could fail to recover adequately, increasing poverty and inequality.

We have heard enough empty pledges. We have watched enough funds announced with fanfare, only then to be starved in silence. The era of asking polluters politely is over. Australia, as COP31 president, has a rare chance to prove that the polluter pays principle means something and apply it to those who have profited the most.

The post As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage appeared first on Climate Home News.

This month, we’ll be on the ground reporting from the Convention on Biological Diversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia later this month and following all the developments as we build towards COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye next month. Here’s what you need to know for October, why it matters and what to expect.

Brazilian Election

First round: Sunday 4 October – Second round: Sunday 25 October

This poll is being closely watched by Brazilian environmentalists as it’s likely to make a big difference to Brazil’s international climate politics and the health of the Amazon rainforest. 

The two clear front-runners are current left-wing President Lula and right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro. Flávio is the son of Jair Bolsonaro, who ruled from 2019 to 2023 but was declared ineligible to hold public office because of his attacks on the electoral system and is now under house arrest.

In the unlikely event that either candidate wins more than half the votes in the first round, they will be elected as the country’s leader. Latest polls have Lula on 39% and Bolsonaro on 35% (though the numbers are shifting) with several minor candidates in the single-digits. If none of them get a majority, there will be a one-on-one run-off on October 25.

The Latin American nation is set to record its lowest-ever level of deforestation, as efforts to rein in illegal clearing and restore Indigenous rights progressed under Lula. But Brazilian experts are warning that the huge agribusiness lobby in Congress, whose interests shape what happens in the Amazon, will be emboldened if Bolsonaro takes power, with the Supreme Court also risking a turn to the right.

As for climate politics, some seasoned watchers fear that Flávio – a climate change denier like his dad – could even try to pull Brazil out of the Paris Agreement. That would leave other countries to take forward Brazil’s COP30 global roadmaps on transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF) and ending deforestation – both of which are due to be delivered by COP31. 

For Brazil’s own TAFF roadmap – commissioned earlier this year but so far nowhere to be seen – the election may have less of an impact, given Lula is as keen as any other politician to extract oil and gas from the Amazon, amid cross-party support for fossil fuel production.

Read more: Brazil leads “encouraging” decline in global rainforest destruction in 2025

Pre-COP

Monday 5 October – Thursday 8 October – Fiji and Tuvalu

The annual pre-COP meeting is usually a business-like gathering of government negotiators, sounding out each other’s positions and laying the groundwork for deals at the main COP summit. But this year’s “pre” has been jazzed up by Australia’s partnership with Pacific governments keen to elevate their climate issues on the international stage.

“We will bring the eyes of the world to our region, highlight the threat that climate change poses to it, and show how Pacific voices are shaping global action to counter it,” Australian PM Anthony Albanese said of the event.

Early in the week, a group of senior government figures – including a handful of leaders – will visit the world’s second lowest-lying nation Tuvalu, as UN boss Antonio Guterres did in 2019.

They will visit areas affected by sea level rise, see climate resilience projects and meet local communities before flying 2.5 hours south to Fiji to join up with the pre-COP and speak at a “Leaders’ plenary session” on Tuesday evening.

The pre-COP runs until Thursday. Governments are expected to try to advance on some kind of a roadmap for protecting oceans from climate change, while Fiji says Pacific nations will emphasise the need to follow science and step up efforts to limit warming to 1.5C. 

Australia is also due to present an action plan to improve access to climate finance for small island nations and least-developed countries, so that governments, development banks and climate funds can endorse it ahead of the Antalya summit.

Alongside the official pre-COP discussions, a “green zone” will host talks organised by civil society on topics like public transport, carbon markets and the International Court of Justice advisory opinion. Unfortunately, these events won’t be available to follow online.

Read more: Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood

Read more: At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance

Article 6.4 Supervisory Body

Monday 5 October – Friday 9 October – Bonn, Germany

The UN carbon market’s rule-making body meets for one last jam-packed session ahead of COP31, with decisions pending on several high-stakes issues that could shape the future of the new crediting mechanism.

Top of the agenda is a rulebook for clean cooking projects, which aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by distributing more efficient cookstoves. These projects generate some of the most popular carbon credits but have also drawn some of the heaviest criticism for overstating their climate benefits through lax accounting.

Technical experts have recommended the Supervisory Body tighten the rules compared to existing crediting programmes, including by forcing cookstove project developers for the first time to guard against the risk of the climate benefits of their credits – the trees saved from becoming cooking fuel – being wiped out by fire, drought or logging. 

The proposal on the so-called reversal risk assessment has sparked a “coordinated” lobbying campaign from the industry, some conservation NGOs and UNEP, arguing that stronger protections could hike project costs and restrict the supply of credits.

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

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plenary

Monday 12 October – Friday 16 October – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Scientists and government officials will try, once again, to agree on a timeline to produce the highly influential AR7 assessment report from the UN’s climate science body. 

The faultlines that have blocked a deal at several previous sessions are well established: a large group of predominantly developed countries, small island and progressive Latin American states and the poorest nations want the reports to be ready in time to inform the UN’s next global assessment of climate action, due to be completed in November 2028. 

A small group of primarily big emerging economies disagree, claiming this timeline would put a burden on developing countries with limited resources and restrict their ability to provide scientific input into the process.

Three options will be on the table in Addis Ababa. Two of them would see all three flagship assessment reports approved by July 2028 and September 2028 respectively, just in time to feed into the second Global Stocktake. 

The third, based on proposals from Saudi Arabia and India, would deliver only the Working Group 1 report, on the physical science of climate change, by May 2028. The reports from Working Groups 2 and 3, covering climate impacts and ways to cut emissions, would not be approved until mid-2029, well after the stocktake concludes at COP33.

Delegates are also expected to discuss the IPCC’s increasingly strained budget, made worse by a funding gap left by the withdrawal of the United States. The panel has warned that, without a sustained increase in contributions, its trust fund’s cash balance would run out by the end of 2028, putting the delivery of the AR7 set of reports at risk and forcing cuts to in-person meetings, translation and outreach.

Read more: Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks

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

World Bank & IMF Annual Meetings

Tuesday 12 October – Sunday 18 October – Bangkok, Thailand

With their biggest shareholder – the US – resolutely opposed to climate action, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are likely to try to avoid mentioning climate change at their annual meetings in Bangkok – and there are no headline events on the subject.

But they aren’t in complete control of the agenda. Thailand will host a discussion on financing a green resilient economy and World Bank President Ajay Banga is likely to be challenged on climate at a live-streamed civil society townhall on October 12.

With tricky negotiations on the World Bank’s climate finance target concluded earlier this year (it was dropped), talks are moving on to the sustainability framework of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, which invests in the private sector. Civil society is calling for its rules on protecting people and the planet to be maintained and strengthened.

The IMF’s guidance note to staff – which shapes the circumstances under which climate can be included in IMF programmes – will also be negotiated. Longer term, the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, which channels funding to green projects, will be reviewed but not before 2028 at the earliest.

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

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17

Monday 19 October – Friday 30 October – Yerevan, Armenia

The biodiversity COP – a sister convention to the UN climate process – will for the first time take stock of progress towards key goals in its 2022 landmark agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). These include a headline target to protect and conserve at least 30% of the planet’s land and marine ecosystems by 2030. 

A draft report prepared by a scientific panel warns that “unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly, the 2030 targets and mission will not be achieved”. In fact, governments are failing on 22 out of 23 targets. The final report is expected to be published ahead of COP17, where governments are expected to react strongly.

UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker told journalists earlier this month that the most significant progress is expected to occur towards the end of the decade, as 174 countries took the first four years to develop national targets. 

Finance, meanwhile, is set to become a contentious issue, as the draft report says developed countries fell short on a target to provide $20bn per year in international public finance for nature protection, reaching only about $17bn per year from 2020 to 2023. They have also yet to meet a wider goal to mobilise $200bn per year counting all kinds of finance.

Much like in climate talks, the EU has proposed to broaden the base of donors to include emerging economies who want to “voluntarily assume the obligations” of developed countries. Saudi Arabia and Qatar want nothing to do with this proposal. China has said bringing in new contributors should not weaken the obligations of developed countries. Expect a fight in Yerevan.

A preliminary meeting in Nairobi in August resulted in a heavily bracketed text that delegates will have to unravel in Armenia. One observer said countries had “overall missed the level of urgency” needed.

Keep an eye out for our webinar live from Yerevan later this month, where we’ll provide an update on the talks and how governments are responding to science’s demands for quicker action.

Read more: Mombasa ocean summit drives progress on marine protection, but threats persist

Read more: UN biodiversity talks agree finance roadmap, postponing decision on a new fund

European Climate Resilience & Risk Management Framework

Wednesday 28 October – Brussels, Belgium

Following a torrid summer beset by recurring heatwaves, drought and outbreaks of forest fires across the continent, the European Commission will present its keenly awaited climate resilience and risk management framework to help member states protect their populations from worsening climate change impacts.

As part of the policy package, the Commission will identify 100 of Europe’s most climate-vulnerable territories. And alongside an assessment of the risks, there will be guidance at which level they should be managed – regional, national or by the EU. Currently, confusion often arises over who is responsible for preventing, preparing for and managing disasters across the bloc.

The framework will also aim to make Europe a “champion in adaptation technologies” – such as drought-resistant crops, flood prevention or energy-efficient cooling – which have been described by EU President Ursula von der Leyen as “a huge emerging market”. 

With only around a quarter of catastrophe losses in Europe covered by private insurance, the Commission also plans to set up a Climate Insurance Alliance to boost that figure.

READ MORE: WHO issues new guidance on heat-health action plans, as El Niño sets in

The post What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026? appeared first on Climate Home News.

As climate change exacerbates water scarcity in Jordan, a deterioration in the country’s already prickly ties with Israel since the start of the Gaza war has underscored the strategic importance of the roughly $6-billion desalination initiative, billed by its backers as a strategic climate adaptation project.

But despite receiving $295 million in support for the project from the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF), the energy-hungry plant – which will double the power needs of Jordan’s water sector – will get no more than 27% of its electricity from a purpose-built solar farm in the desert near the plant in Aqaba. The rest will come from the grid, whose power is mostly generated by fossil gas. 

To get salt out of sea water, it has to be pushed at high pressure through a membrane – a process requiring huge amounts of electricity.

The annual planet-heating emissions from producing the non-renewable power needed for the plant would be equivalent to having 160,000 petrol-run cars on the road for a year, according to an analysis by Climate Home News of figures provided by the project’s developers to the GCF – the world’s largest multilateral fund to help developing countries tackle climate change.

Such forecasts prompted a warning from its independent technical advisory panel and criticism by climate campaigners, but the GCF board nevertheless approved the financing at a meeting late last year, with GCF Executive Director Mafalda Duarte hailing it as a “milestone project”.

A GCF spokesperson told Climate Home News its design “required the balanced optimisation of multiple objectives”, among them water security, financing considerations and climate-related benefits.

Asked to respond to concerns about the project’s sustainability, a spokesperson for Jordan’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation said the plant is key to tackling the nation’s water deficit, in tandem with other steps to conserve supplies such as managing leaks.

“We have carried out environmental impact studies for the Aqaba desalination plant,” the spokesperson added. “All donor countries reviewed and approved these studies.”

Dry and getting drier

Jordan is already one of the world’s most water-stressed countries, and climate change impacts mean the country of about 11 million people is getting less rain at a time of population growth, in part due to the arrival of refugees from the war in Syria.

Half of Jordanian homes currently receive water for less than 24 hours a week and many pay to get tanker trucks to deliver extra water despite the high cost.

“Every Jordanian living in a village or city … can feel, especially in the summer, that the amount of water reaching their home is not enough,” said University of Jordan water science professor Elias Salameh.

At the same time, heightened political tensions in the region are raising fears over a long-standing water supply accord with Israel.

Prominent Israeli news outlet Ynet quoted government officials as saying last year that – until Jordan ends its criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza – it would no longer send Jordan 100 million cubic metres of water a year, as it has been doing since 2021. 

Instead, media reports said Israel had decided to send just the 50 million cubic metres required by the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace agreement.

That makes the desalination project all the more urgent, Motasem Saidan, a former water minister who pushed it forward, told Climate Home News.

“Relying on neighbouring countries for sources of the most important resource for life is risky. You need to have self-sufficiency and water security,” Saidan added.

Largest single GCF investment

French multinationals Meridiam and Suez have been awarded the contract to lead construction of the desalination facility, which Suez says will be one of the largest of its kind globally.

Scheduled for completion in 2030, it will turn 300 million cubic metres of seawater a year – enough to fill 120,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools – into drinking water, which will then be carried by pipeline more than 400 km across the desert to reservoirs near Amman, home to nearly half of Jordan’s population.

The GCF will support it with a $220 million loan and a $75 million grant. While that represents a small share of the total cost, Duarte said last year it represented “the largest single investment in one project that we have made”.

But the GCF’s decision to pour millions into the project followed strong criticism from climate campaigners, initial opposition from some of the fund’s board members and a warning by its independent technical advisory panel (ITAP) over its potential impact on emissions.

The emissions it aims to avoid rest on the timely completion of a 65-km transmission line connecting the desalination plant to the solar farm. Without this, the plant will run entirely on Jordan’s gas-dominated grid, the ITAP said in its assessment report.

Moreover, while the government plans to make the power supplied by the national grid greener in the years ahead, there is no guarantee this will be achieved, the report added.

Such issues make the project “difficult to reconcile with climate finance objectives”, the ITAP said, adding there is a significant risk that “concessional resources could end up subsidising a high-carbon, high-cost water pathway”.

Still, the ITAP concluded that “given the dire water situation in Jordan”, the project’s benefits outweighed those concerns and recommended approval to the board.

Bigger renewables role deemed unfeasible

The possibility of producing more of the plant’s electricity from solar power and batteries was dismissed by the project’s proposer and co-funder – the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) – and the GCF as too expensive and impractical, a decision critics see as a wasted opportunity to shift to clean energy.

The companies that carried out the project’s environmental and social impact assessment – Eco Consult and Energies Group – said the option of sourcing all power from renewables “was not studied in detail” because it was seen as unfeasible.

Asked to comment, the GCF spokesperson said the fund supported that conclusion, citing renewable energy’s intermittency and noting that excess solar power produced would be wasted because there is no provision for it to be sold to the grid.

“The optimum design of such a critical life-line desalination project for Jordan is fundamentally a whole-of-system water optimisation challenge rather than a standalone energy storage exercise,” the spokesperson said.

Instead, the plan’s advocates have touted potential emissions reductions as the pipeline replaces water trucks. They say the solar farm set to supply more than a quarter of the desalination plant’s power will prevent 6.7 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent being emitted over its 26-year projected lifetime. 

Saidan, the former water minister, said the urgency of providing water must take priority over gas dependency concerns.

“This is not the time to raise such issues,” he told Climate Home News.

But Kostanta Rangelova, a global electricity analyst at think-tank Ember, said the plant could “easily” get at least 80% of its power from solar with batteries, pointing to Jordan’s abundant sunshine and the plunging costs of the equipment needed.

Such systems are set to power large facilities elsewhere in the region, like a luxury Red Sea resort just over the Saudi border and a data centre near Abu Dhabi, she said. Jordan’s own energy sector strategy, published in May, lists increasing battery storage as a strategic target.

Rangelova noted that with battery prices falling significantly in recent years, the cost of solar plus battery storage is now competitive with grid power in many places, particularly in countries like Jordan that have a lot of sun but currently rely on expensive imported gas.

“With solar and batteries, Jordan (could) use homegrown electricity not just during daytime hours, but round-the-clock, which can significantly strengthen its energy security position,” she added. 

Lesser of two evils

Using more renewables in the project could also help reduce demand for Israeli natural gas imports – a sensitive issue in Jordan.

“[The desalination plant] will not be viable if we depend on gas supplied by the Israeli occupation,” Mahmoud Amin Al-Hayari, an activist with the General Trade Union of Electricity Workers in Jordan, told Climate Home News.

Jordan’s government is working to develop new sources of gas imports to diversify its current supply, and also wants to boost domestic gas production, alongside renewables.

In the meantime, Jordan’s National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) remains heavily dependent on Israeli gas for electricity generation, industry experts say. Latest government figures from 2024 show the country got 58% of its electric power from gas.

Most of that gas is likely to be Israeli. “About 57% of the electricity that NEPCO supplies to distribution companies comes from gas imported from Israel,” a Jordanian energy and conflict analyst told Climate Home News, asking to speak anonymously due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The spokesperson for Jordan’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation declined to comment on the source of the gas that would help power the Aqaba desalination project.

The issue has gained attention due to several security-related gas supply disruptions from Israel related to the conflict in the Middle East.

For countries like Jordan, a net fuel importer, the energy security case for boosting renewables is a no-brainer, said Ember’s Rangelova. “Unlike imported fossil fuels, the sun cannot be turned off,” she said.

The post Jordan’s mega-plan for water security risks locking in fossil gas demand appeared first on Climate Home News.

The deadly flash flood that thundered down Nepal’s Bhote Koshi valley a month ago may have been hard to predict given the complexity of monitoring glacial slopes in the high mountains. But it should come as a surprise to no one that such a disaster could happen in a world set to barrel past the 1.5C warming limit governments agreed to in 2015.

I say this with confidence because even before the ink was dry on the Paris Agreement, former colleagues and I were writing extensively about the dangers posed by accelerating glacier melt in the Himalayas. I went back to look at what we covered, often working with local journalists in Pakistan, India and Nepal. It was substantial.

Comment: The response to Nepal’s disaster is a test for global climate institutions

In one story from a conference on climate change and geology, Bill McGuire, a professor who then led the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London, was quoted as saying: “The most likely thing we are going to see soon is an increased level in giant landslides in mountainous terrains, huge collapses, millions of cubic metres of rock.” 

That is precisely what unleashed Nepal’s most recent disaster, some 13 years later.

Other articles zoomed in on internationally funded programmes to prevent glacial lake outburst floods; studies warning of the rising risks to downstream communities; and cross-border efforts (or lack of them) to set up monitoring systems. But information has not led to sufficient action.

Falling behind intensifying impacts

Reporting on climate-related disasters over the past 20 years (it was way back then that UN aid chief John Holmes started referring to extreme weather as the “new normal”) has been a pretty frustrating beat, as things have gotten dramatically worse.

There’s no question that our understanding of the risks has grown hugely – alongside our knowledge of how to protect people and infrastructure in the face of fast-growing threats. 

Yet governments and businesses have dragged their feet on adaptation policies and practical measures, even when confronted with the numbers showing it’s far cheaper to prevent and prepare than to clean up and rebuild after a flood or a storm. This intransigence has left a yawning chasm in the world’s ability to deal with climate change-driven impacts. 

Let’s call it the adaptation accountability gap.

These days we see the effects all around us – in hospital emergency rooms where workers and older people struggle with heat exhaustion; in campsites and hotels abandoned by holidaymakers fleeing forest fires; in flooded streets piled high with mud, broken furniture and twisted cars.

The only bright side to the growing climate chaos we’re experiencing is that it’s become practically impossible for politicians and corporate bosses to ignore the evidence – and the rising cost to their balance sheets. Voters who can no longer afford to shoulder the economic and social burden of this damage need to let their leaders know time’s up.   

1.5C overshoot means adapting differently

Last week, during Climate Week NYC, I moderated an event packed with experts who work on adapting to climate change – from Nepal to Brazil, from Sierra Leone to the Marshall Islands, and from communities to the top of governments and UN agencies. They spoke of tree-planting to stabilise slopes, heat insurance for informal workers, a climate risk guide for midwives, drought-resistant seeds and solar panels to irrigate farmland along the Nile.

Amid the diversity of experiences and approaches, there were two common threads: first, as underlined by the UN Environment Programme’s new report on overshooting 1.5C, we may have missed the boat to catch up on adaptation as we know it. 

With global warming continuing apace, we’ll need to come up with new “transformational” strategies if the coral reefs, ice sheets, oceans and other natural systems on which we rely cross tipping points and unleash cascading consequences. Nepal’s flash flood is being flagged as an example of the kind of disaster that requires a major change in how we think about adaptation.

Second, the investment required to adapt to intensifying climate shocks and stresses can no longer be seen as something to be squeezed out of shrinking foreign aid budgets. There are a growing number of tried-and-tested funds and mechanisms for channelling finance at the local, national and global levels – these must be filled, replenished and used without delay. 

Businesses need to get stuck in too, not least to safeguard their assets, operations and profits – but also because in some sectors like agriculture or water there are opportunities for a return. Despite this, there are many activities governments will have no choice but to pay for, such as moving people out of the path of rising seas.

Finance not flowing where needed

Mikko Ollikainen, who heads up the UN’s pioneering Adaptation Fund for developing countries, told the event the fund has a portfolio of projects worth $1.6 billion but a pipeline waiting to be financed to the tune of $1.8 billion. Yet, in recent years, as needs balloon, donor nations have failed to meet its annual fundraising target of $300 million at COP climate summits. 

The chair of the UN climate body for implementation, Julia Gardiner, said she expects to see more pressure on governments at November’s COP31 summit in Türkiye to show how they will meet a goal to triple adaptation finance by 2035 and fill the under-resourced coffers of the fledgling Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).

Nepal, meanwhile, is still waiting for a formal response to its request to the FRLD for urgent support to tackle the aftermath of the flood. Manjeet Dhakal, a Nepali scientist who advises least-developed countries in the UN climate process, said the disaster – which killed over 1,450 people and left nearly 6,000 missing – cannot be treated as just the latest climate crisis that grabs the headlines before it’s replaced by another.

That was backed up by Prakriti Dhakal, personal under-secretary to Nepal’s prime minister, who has been working closely on the emergency response. She said she had received many condolences and warm words of support during her meetings in New York. 

But, she asked, “when you go home, will you continue having that sympathy for us that translates into something rational, something long-term, to strengthen the communities in Nepal?” A fitting response would be for governments to get behind a new Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism, proposed by Nepal’s leader at the UN last week, as one way to start closing the adaptation accountability gap.

The post Editor’s Desk: Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap appeared first on Climate Home News.

The TFFF, launched by Brazil at COP30 in the Amazon last November and co-led by Norway, is intended as an alternative to traditional grant-based forest finance. The fund aims to raise $125bn in public and private capital, invest it in bond markets, and then pay countries that keep their forests standing from the annual returns. Donor contributions needed to get it going have tailed off after an initial burst.

Speaking to Climate Home News on the sidelines of Climate Week in New York, Brazilian environment minister João Paulo Capobianco pointed out that in less than a year since its official launch, the TFFF has already secured $7.3bn from governments.

“How many other initiatives can say that?” he asked. “Of course, if you have $7 billion, it’s easier for more countries to consider their own contribution. And not just countries – non-governmental organisations also. We are expecting even more support.”

As its initial target, the TFFF aims to raise $10bn in seed capital from governments by the end of 2026, and still needs to fill a gap of $2.7bn. Its backers say that for each dollar in public funding, they can secure $4 from the private sector. Critics say the $10bn goal barely covers the fund’s expenses and would not allow it to make any significant payments to forest countries.

Because setting up its financial architecture, raising the starting capital and making the first investments will take time, experts say the TFFF is unlikely to generate any payments for developing countries before 2028.

Seeking new pledges

Capobianco told Climate Home News that Brazil is still in talks with potential new contributors to the fund, among them China, Korea and Japan, and said he hoped to see more pledges announced at the upcoming biodiversity and climate COPs in October and November. The Netherlands is expected to up its first small contribution and Canada may also come in, according to other sources close to the TFFF.

Because the fund was not created as part of the UN climate talks and is hosted by the World Bank, developing countries can contribute without taking on wider donor responsibilities for climate finance. Brazil and Indonesia – both large emerging rainforest nations – have each pledged $1bn to the TFFF.

Earlier in September, the UK became the latest country to pledge funding – promising a loan of £400 million (about $540 million). Capobianco welcomed the contribution and noted that Britain has also said it will keep “under review” the possibility of putting in more.

Currently the largest donor is Norway, which announced a $3bn pledge last year at COP30 in Belém. However, that pledge came with conditions, among them that the fund must reach $10bn in sponsor capital by 2026, and that Norway’s contribution can’t make up more than 20% of that total. Over the longer term, this means the fund must raise $15bn from governments to unlock Norway’s full investment.

Comment: UK’s budget juggling trick with rainforest loan for bus-fare cap needs transparency

Speaking at a forest finance event in New York, Norway’s environment minister Sigrun Aasland said the country’s pledge was made not “only out of solidarity but because of shared interests”, adding that protecting rainforests is critical for climate and biodiversity goals as well as for national security.

“Tropical deforestation matters to people in the Amazon and in the Congo. But let’s not forget that it also matters to global food production and to the cost of living in Oslo or in London,” she said.

At the event, Guyana’s minister of natural resources Vickram Bharrat said the TFFF is “one in a menu of options” to finance forest protection in developing countries. He added that to boost its capital “maybe we should put some amount of pressure on oil companies to contribute to the fund”.

Upcoming election “not a risk”

Brazil, which has been pivotal to getting the fund off the ground, is now heading into a national election that could see the country swing back to an anti-climate stance if right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro beats current left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Capobianco, however, said the election result does not pose a risk to the TFFF.

“It’s a global initiative, not a Brazilian initiative. We proposed the first idea, but nowadays it’s a global initiative,” he said. “We believe the investor countries and the tropical countries together have the possibility to continue this process.”

In Brazil, the first round of voting is scheduled for Sunday, October 4. If no candidate wins more than 50% of valid votes, a run-off ballot will take place on October 25.

COP30 roadmap to end deforestation will invite countries to draft domestic plans

In July, the TFFF board adopted a charter, which outlines the instrument’s objectives and values, including that 20% of the payments made to tropical countries will go directly to Indigenous people and local communities.

The charter also says the TFFF board may comprise up to 12 member countries during the initial phase. Currently, seven seats are filled by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Germany, Brazil, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Indonesia.

The board has also formally incorporated the Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF) – the TFFF’s investment arm that will trade bonds in financial markets – hosted in Luxembourg.

The post Brazil confident new rainforest fund will reach $10bn donor milestone appeared first on Climate Home News.

A climate summit serious about implementation cannot afford to leave major emissions reductions off the table. Yet, that is the risk COP31 faces unless it makes reducing raw material use central to the way countries decarbonise their economies. 

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York last week, COP31 host Türkiye laid out proposals to accelerate emissions cuts in the next decade. Its plans include global goals to increase the share of recycled products in material use to at least 15% (up from 6.9% in 2025) and halve waste generation by 2035.

COP31 offers an opportunity to connect efforts to improve material circularity with stronger national climate commitments and mitigation pathways. But these targets could be a lot more ambitious.  

The case for circularity  

The Paris Agreement cannot be delivered through cleaner electricity alone. We must also reduce the emissions that are embedded in the way we extract resources, manufacture products, build infrastructure and dispose of waste.  

Circularity principles are pivotal to credible mitigation pathways: designing technologies and products to last, repairing and reusing them, and reducing demand for virgin resources.

The scale of the opportunity is striking. A recent European Environment Agency review found that adopting such principles could deliver average global emissions reductions potential of 52% in the waste sector against a business-as-usual scenario, 48% in construction and buildings, 28% in transport and mobility, 26% in industry and 24% in agriculture.  

These figures make a compelling case for raising circularity ambitions across the economy, offering the promise of far more than better recycling bins.

In fact, recycling minerals used in cleantech equipment, for example, illustrate the extent of the emissions savings available. The carbon footprint of minerals and metals recovered from secondary sources is up to 80% lower than those produced from new mining and processing, according to the International Energy Agency.

A major EU-funded project estimates that recovered materials could substitute up to 56% of Europe’s primary critical raw material requirements by 2050, provided they achieve the necessary quality. The main takeaway goes beyond Europe: yesterday’s products can become tomorrow’s strategic resources while mitigating climate change. 

In this light, a target to increase the share of recovered material use to 15% isn’t enough.

The evidence-based Circularity Gap Report found a 17% target by 2032 is possible and could unlock additional emissions reductions amounting to several gigatonnes of CO2.

Reducing material demand  

A higher circularity metric is only part of the answer, however. An economy can increase its recycling rate at the same time as extracting more primary materials if total material demand keeps growing.   

The tougher issue governments need to address is identifying what reductions in primary material use are needed.  

The Circularity Gap Report uses an indicative benchmark of eight tonnes of virgin materials consumed per person annually. This is already being translated into policy: Germany’s 2024 circular economy strategy aims to reduce primary resource consumption, with the German Federal Environment Agency identifying six to eight tonnes per person as an ambitious target. 

Reducing primary material demand will require a closer integration of energy and resource policies. Efficient EVs charged with solar power can complement better public transport and walkable cities, while batteries designed to be repaired and reused for stationary energy storage before being recycled will reduce the materials footprint of transport and clean energy services.

Coordinated infrastructure development and urban planning can prevent unnecessary overbuild, while renovating existing building stock reduces demand for new steel, cement and aluminium, which are emissions-intensive to produce. Connecting industrial waste heat to district heating networks can further reduce energy demand and emissions.

What governments should agree at COP31 

COP31 can translate this approach into three concrete commitments. 

First, governments should agree a stronger circularity ambition, supported by material-footprint indicators and milestones. The presidency should seek recognition of these priorities in negotiated outcomes, alongside concrete delivery partnerships under its COP31 Action Agenda. 

Second, countries should include quantified circular economy measures in their updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and implementation plans. Such measures should include reuse, material efficiency and circularity targets, as well as transparent estimates of emissions savings that avoid double counting across sectors. By the end of 2025, countries had developed 101 national circular economy roadmaps and action plans, yet these often remained disconnected from their NDCs.

Third, climate finance should support the delivery of circular solutions such as material recovery at scale, investments into circular critical mineral value chains beyond mining, developing a circular plastics economy, and designing buildings and cities that support material reuse. Developing countries need technology, affordable finance and support to deliver these ambitions, including for the informal workers whose livelihoods depend on recovering and recycling materials.

The test for COP31 is to reach an agreement that can start the transformation of our production and consumption systems and how they are financed.  

A headline circularity target will achieve little without policies that address absolute resource demand and deliver measurable emissions cuts. But COP31 offers an opportunity to make circularity a central element of climate policy, with targets strong enough to matter and institutions equipped to deliver them.

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An exceptional El Niño is building. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says it has intensified to very strong levels and is likely to last at least through February 2027. If its current trajectory holds, it could become stronger than anything seen since WMO monitoring began four decades ago.

That is bad news for agriculture. El Niño – a naturally occurring weather phenomenon – can scramble rainfall patterns across the world, bringing drought to some regions and floods to others. And this time it is unfolding against the backdrop of a significantly hotter climate, with farmers already contending with unreliable growing seasons, extreme heat and less predictable rainfall because of global warming.

El Niño expected to bring next record-hot year as soon as 2027

We are seeing the consequences already. In Sri Lanka, drought linked to El Niño has dried wells and reservoirs and cut into crops and farmer incomes. Indonesia is experiencing its worst wildfire season in 11 years, with prolonged drought and extreme heat exacerbated by El Niño. And in Peru, authorities are preparing for the opposite extreme: intense rains, flooding and landslides which the national civil-defence agency says could affect around 1.2 million people.

These impacts will multiply as El Niño intensifies.

And yet, just as the risks to food production are rising, the money available to help farmers withstand them is shrinking.

10% funding decline in 2024

A forthcoming analysis from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that climate-related development finance for agrifood systems is moving in the wrong direction. In 2024, the latest year for which data is available, it fell by 10 percent compared with a 2 percent overall decline. The sectors that put food on our tables — crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries — received just 5 percent.

Yet this is precisely the moment when climate investment in agriculture needs to grow, not shrink. It can help communities adapt, build resilience and protect food security, while unlocking larger flows of public and private finance. Agriculture feeds us, supports the livelihoods of well over a billion people, and is often the first sector hit by drought, floods and extreme heat. Cutting that investment now is a false economy.

One failed harvest can plant the seed for the next crisis, forcing farmers to eat the seed they have saved for planting, sell livestock or tools, or take on debt. It can also deepen food insecurity, disrupt supply chains and drive up prices, showing up months later in supermarket aisles far away.

Comment: A supercharged El Niño is coming – are we ready?

The Central American Dry Corridor, stretching through much of the region, shows both how exposed farmers are, and what investment can do. Based on an analysis of 41 years of satellite observations, FAO finds that some crop and pasture areas there face more than a 50 percent chance of agricultural drought over the coming months.

About half of Central America’s 1.9 million producers of maize, beans and other basic grains live in the Dry Corridor. Many grow food both for sale and for their own families. When a harvest fails, they lose both income and dinner.

El Salvador project conserves water and soil

In El Salvador, which lies within the Dry Corridor, more than 50,000 farmers have adopted practices to better withstand drought and increasingly unreliable rainfall through RECLIMA, a project financed by the Green Climate Fund and implemented by FAO in partnership with the government of El Salvador. It has substantial national co-financing, including from the country’s Environmental Investment Fund.

El Niño can intensify El Salvador’s annual mid-season dry spell, known as the canícula, turning it into a longer, harsher drought just as maize needs water most.

For María Cristina Corvera de López, a second-generation farmer in rural Nahualapa, adapting means changing how every drop of rain is captured and used. She plants trees alongside her crops to provide shade and minimise evaporation and uses simple irrigation channels and a homemade drip system to conserve water. Instead of burning stalks, leaves and husks after harvest, as generations before her did, she turns them into mulch to hold moisture in the soil.

“The effects of climate change are a constant challenge,” she says. But the new techniques have made her farm more resilient to El Niño as well. Where she once harvested about 50 bags of maize per acre, she now gets around 80, even during droughts. It’s enough to feed her family and sell the surplus.

Managing risk now cuts future costs

Together, these adaptations can mean the difference between losing a crop and getting through a dry season with enough food, seed and income to plant again. They are also the result of climate finance invested before disaster strikes.

RECLIMA shows what that kind of adaptation investment can buy. Adaptation accounted for 45 percent of climate-related development finance to agrifood systems in 2024, and multilateral development banks are directing more agricultural finance towards resilience. That shift reflects a growing recognition that adaptation is a form of risk management, not just a development cost.

We need much more of it. The same investments that help farmers withstand El Niño also enable them to adapt to a hotter, more unpredictable future. Cutting investment in the people who produce our food just as climate risks intensify does not save money. It simply pushes a much larger bill into the next harvest, the next food crisis, and the next El Niño.

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Türkiye has faced growing criticism from human rights groups over the jailing of opposition figures, journalists and activists and imposed a blanket protest ban around July’s summit of the NATO military alliance in Ankara.

The contested provision is included in the binding agreement between the UN climate secretariat and the Turkish government that sets out responsibilities over logistical arrangements and details participants’ rights and obligations.

The document, signed in June but only made public on Wednesday, gives accredited COP31 attendees immunity from legal action over what they say, write or do in connection with the conference. Climate Home News understands that this safeguard can be applied to what takes place both inside and, in certain circumstances, outside of the UN-controlled COP “Blue Zone”. For the first time, this protection explicitly continues after the summit ends.

But participants enjoying these “privileges and immunities” also have a duty to respect Türkiye’s laws and regulations and not to interfere in its internal affairs, the agreement states. Rights groups fear its wide-ranging formulation could be used to discourage criticism of the host government.

Climate Home News understands that whether an action is covered by the immunity or infringes on the host’s internal affairs would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with close coordination between the country’s authorities and the UN climate change body.

A separate provision states that immunity shall be waived where the UN believes it would “impede the course of justice”.

‘Chilling effect’

Those same provisions featured in the host country agreements for COP28 in the United Arab Emirates and COP29 in Azerbaijan, both regarded as authoritarian regimes, before being dropped for COP30 in Brazil.

Ann Harrison, climate justice policy advisor at Amnesty International, said it is “extremely disappointing” that the COP31 agreement re-introduced clauses that could “hinder the ability of human rights defenders and civil society organisations to conduct their work safely”.

COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment

She added the provisions could have a “wider chilling effect” on rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, given concerns over the human rights situation in Türkiye, including laws that “have shrunk civic space” and their “abusive” implementation by authorities.

The UN climate change body declined to comment.

Rights groups have documented blanket protest bans, unlawful use of force by the police and prosecutions of journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers across Türkiye in the last year.

Arrests and protest bans

Last July, environmental activist Esra Işık was sentenced to more than two years for “resisting” a public official over what Amnesty International described as a peaceful protest against an urgent expropriation order linked to the expansion of coal mining in south-western Türkiye. She is appealing the conviction.

Ahead of a summit of the NATO alliance in the capital Ankara in July, authorities put in place a 13-day blanket ban on demonstrations, citing “national security”, and arrested over 200 people. Human Rights Watch said the crackdown showed Türkiye’s “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly”.

Earlier this month, Turkish police detained dozens of people as part of what rights groups described as the government’s widening crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists and venues.

Questioned by media as to how he would guarantee the right to protest at COP31, Kurum said earlier in September that his team would “try to meet” any request they receive from civil society and give them “a free space to express themselves”.

“Don’t worry, thinking you will not be able to voice your opinions or really share your thoughts,” he said in an attempt to reassure campaigners, adding that he had put former deputy environment minister Mehmet Birpinar in charge of liaising with civil society.

Civic space needed

Camilla Pollera, human rights and climate change campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said meaningful participation at COP31 is fundamental to the legitimacy of climate action.

“At a climate summit, civil society participation necessarily includes being present, speaking out, scrutinising governments’ decisions and climate policies, and advocating for communities most vulnerable to climate change,” she added.

At last year’s COP30 summit, thousands of Indigenous people and climate activists peacefully marched through the Amazonian city of Belém in the first major demonstration outside the UN venue in four years. Smaller-scale demonstrations were largely confined to the “Blue Zone” at COP27 in Egypt, COP28 in the UAE and COP29 in Azerbaijan.

In two other separate incidents in Belém, members of the Munduruku tribe blocked access to the conference centre for hours, demanding an end to development projects in their ancestral land, and protesters stormed through the venue clashing with UN security officials.

The COP31 hosting agreement keeps some of the safeguards previously hailed by civil society groups. The government and the UN secretariat commit to upholding “the fundamental human rights” of all participants in the agreement’s preamble.

Under the deal, Türkiye also needs to ensure that security personnel follow “the highest ethical and professional standards and are expected to behave with integrity and respect”.

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The declaration, which was championed by climate-vulnerable small island states, affirms “the presumption in favour of continued statehood” in the face of sea level rise fuelled by climate change, and urges countries to work together to assist communities affected by encroaching oceans.

Speaking at a high-level UN meeting to address the existential threats posed by sea level rise, Cabo Verde’s Prime Minister Francisco Carvalho, one of the initiative’s co-facilitators along with Australia, said the adoption of the text by consensus sends “a message of hope”.

“This declaration has a very special meaning. For us, sea level rise is neither a distant threat nor a theoretical concern,” he said, adding that rising seas put at risk key infrastructure, water resources and economic growth in small island states.

In the Pacific, sea levels have risen at twice the global rate, dramatically increasing coastal flooding events from two to 20 a year in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and from zero to 102 events per year in American Samoa, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the Pacific island of Palau, said the summit in New York represents a “moment of international solidarity”, and highlighted that small island states will remain permanent members of the UN.

Declaration recognises statehood

An advisory opinion by the world’s top maritime court, the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), first upheld in 2024 that countries do not have to shrink their maritime borders even if they lose land territory due to sea level rise. This was reiterated by the International Court of Justice in last year’s landmark ruling on the climate obligations of states.

The new declaration endorsed by all governments at the UN General Assembly stresses that sea level rise “is not a distant scenario but a real and lived experience for many”, and notes that international law must be implemented in global responses to rising seas.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the “milestone must now be translated into action”, adding that the declaration should encourage an “ongoing dialogue” at the “highest possible level” leading to practical outcomes. Pacific islands have proposed an international treaty on sea level rise that would provide more legal certainty.

“Those on the frontlines must be front and centre on every decision. We cannot allow countries and cultures to vanish beneath the waves,” he said. “The SOS has gone out. The world must answer.”

At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance

Goodwin Friday, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said measures to protect vulnerable states will require adequate finance. “Investing in resilience now is more cost-effective than paying the far greater price for loss and damage later,” he added.

Championed by Australia’s COP31 co-presidency, Pacific islands have sought to put adaptation to sea level rise and ocean conservation at the top of the political agenda by inviting world leaders to attend the pre-COP31 summit co-hosted by Fiji and Tuvalu in October.

Tuvalu will also host the second global fossil fuel phase-out summit in July 2027, after around 60 governments met this year in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss ending their dependence on coal, oil and gas.

“Our coastlines, our reefs and our communities are living with the consequences of fossil fuel dependence every day, and our people have earned the right to help shape the way forward,” Lynda Tabuya, Fiji’s climate minister, said in a statement announcing details of the conference.

Ocean monitoring gets a boost in New York

Amid record-breaking marine heat and seas rising at unprecedented speed, governments in New York announced new commitments to protect the world’s ocean, as efforts to bolster marine ecosystems and coastal communities rise up the political agenda.

On Wednesday, the EU and Canada announced more funding for a new Europe-led ocean monitoring system called OceanEye, launched in the aftermath of a failed attempt by the Trump administration to dismantle the largest existing network of deep-sea observatories.

During an event at UN headquarters in New York, EU President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced around $163 million in new funding for the initiative, with the EU pledging €92 million ($105m) on top of existing seed funding and Canada pledging C$82 million (US$58m) over five years. 

According to an EU statement, while OceanEye will collaborate with the Global Ocean Observing System, that network “remains vulnerable to financial shortfalls and geopolitical disruptions”. A group of 30 countries from Europe, Africa and the Americas joined an international initiative in support of OceanEye, including large coastal nations like Brazil, Namibia and Mexico.

Von der Leyen said OceanEye “can make us the leading ocean data provider in a matter of years”, including by launching new satellites and installing new observatories in the deep ocean. “From outer space to the deepest ocean, our funding helps us keep watch beneath the waves,” she added.

Carney said the initiative would help protect Canada’s Arctic region with real-time monitoring operating year-round. “We can’t protect what we can’t see,” he said, also highlighting that Canada had expanded conservation of its ocean territory from 1% a decade ago to 15% now.

In New York, a group of 19 countries said they are either developing or implementing plans to sustainably manage all of their ocean territory, with 12 new nations joining the initiative. In a joint communiqué, they called on more countries to sign up ahead of COP31.

Warnings of El Niño-fuelled extreme heat

Scientists and world leaders have raised the alarm over this year’s record-breaking marine temperatures, which have persisted above historical peaks for more than 100 days as the naturally occurring El Niño phenomenon intensifies in the Pacific.

Extreme ocean heat could become a threat to coastal ecosystems and communities, experts fear. Water temperatures 1.5C above normal levels have also rapidly fuelled a strong hurricane in the Pacific in recent days.

Despite scientific calls for additional ocean conservation efforts, a report launched this week in New York warned that efforts to protect ocean ecosystems are lagging behind, with only 10% of the global ocean covered by conservation areas and just 3.5% designated as “effectively protected”.

This article was amended after publication to correct the month of the second international conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. It will take place in July 2027, not April 2027 as previously stated.

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The Turkish and Australian co-hosts of the November summit want governments to sign up to a pledge to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 and 50% by 2050. It is currently around 23%.

“We should arrive at COP31 with clean cooking firmly embedded in that electrification and efficiency agenda,” Ruto said during an event on clean cooking organised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the governments of Kenya, Norway and the US at the ongoing UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

“The kitchen is where the energy transition enters daily lives for nearly one billion people,” the Kenyan president said. He added that schools, hospitals and prisons – as well as homes – need to switch to clean cooking fuels.

COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment

Ruto said that – as well as the climate, health and gender equality benefits of clean cooking – electric cooking can make investment in electricity generation and networks more profitable and ensure households get more value from electricity connections.

LPG or electricity?

According to the IEA, about 6% of sub-Saharan African households – overwhelmingly in southern Africa – used electricity to cook in 2024 – while just under a fifth used liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

Despite being a fossil fuel and worse for indoor air quality than electric cookers, LPG is widely regarded as a clean-cooking fuel as the damage it does to the climate and to health is far less than the firewood and charcoal on which most sub-Saharan Africans rely.

A new IEA report on electrification found that electric cookstoves are 10% cheaper over their lifetimes than LPG stoves. But they are more expensive upfront so restricted access to finance holds back their adoption, as do power cuts, a lack of access to electricity and cultural preferences.

At the event in New York, some speakers promoted electric cookers while others stressed “technology neutrality”, implying that LPG should be used where appropriate.

UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte was more in the former camp, saying that “clean cooking must be fit for the modern age of energy transitions and the age of electricity” and “genuinely clean and future-facing”, adding that countries can “ride the trend of electrification” to roll out clean cooking.

As disruptions to oil and gas supply chains push up the cost of cooking gas, Kyte asked: “Why should households and governments be locked into solutions that are simply going to be a victim to fossil fuel and price volatility?”

Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said that renewable energy offers the best potential to achieve clean cooking because decentralised clean power can get to everywhere on the African continent. 

Echoing Kyte, he added that “[renewables] detaches you from the volatility of fossil fuel that you see today, very often”, adding that it poses a very low level of risk compared with other energy systems and is one of the easiest ways of reducing emissions throughout the world.

But Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said country realities are different and so the pathways to achieving clean cooking will require varied combinations of LPG, electricity, bioenergy and other solutions.

Technology neutrality

With half of the about two billion people lacking access to clean cooking globally living in Africa, the African Union’s commissioner for infrastructure and energy Lerato Mataboge said the continent prioritises “technology neutrality” and does not have a preference for electricity or LPG if either would help achieve clean cooking. 

She said national circumstances of African countries must be respected, adding that the continent needs a range of affordable, reliable and safe cooking solutions as well as approaches that allow countries to select technologies that are “appropriate to their resources, infrastructure and household needs”. 

She added that financing decisions should not exclude viable solutions “solely because of the energy source from whence they come”. Whatever clean-cooking technology is used, she said that “affordability must extend beyond the purchase of a stove. We must ask if a household can afford the next cylinder refill or the next electricity payment.”

Dola Oluteye, senior fellow in energy and transport policy at the UCL Energy Institute, agreed, telling Climate Home News that – while electric cooking is viable in parts of Africa where reliable electricity, affordable appliances and suitable infrastructure already exist – those conditions remain out of reach for much of the continent.

She warned that making electric cooking the only measure of a clean cooking transition could slow progress in countries where other technologies offer a more immediate solution. “My concern is a purity trap,” Oluteye said.

She pointed to an IEA scenario forecasting that, with clean cooking rolled out quickly, over 60% of people gaining access to clean cooking in Africa from 2024 to 2040 would do so through LPG, compared with 17% through electricity. Bioethanol and biogas combined would account for 11% while advanced biomass cookstoves make up 10%.

“The intermediate solutions cannot be abandoned while the grid catches up,” she said, but added that if handled well, cooking could be “one of the best things that could happen to African electrification”, providing the predictable demand that gives utilities a reason to invest in electricity networks and reliability.

Amina Mohammed, UN deputy secretary-general and former Nigerian environment minister, warned at the New York event against repeating the experience of programmes that supplied cooking technologies without adequately considering whether they actually worked for the women expected to use them.

Speaking after Birol, Ruto, US energy secretary Chris Wright and Norwegian international development minister Åsmund Aukrust, Mohammed joked that she was responding to “four men for whom this is a big women’s problem”.

After Birol noted that the IEA had been working on the issue for 25 years, Mohammed said the fact that the problem had not been solved in that time was “probably an indictment of the international community on what is supposed to be a huge problem for women and a billion of them”.

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The blueprint focuses on electrifying transport, home heating and industry, while gradually replacing fossil fuel power generation with renewables. Renewables supplied about 55% of Germany’s electricity last year and the government wants that to reach at least 80% by 2030.

All coal-fired power stations – which generated almost a quarter of Germany’s electricity in 2025 – must close by 2038 at the latest. That deadline has been set in German law since 2020, but the roadmap says the government is exploring the possibility of bringing the end date forward to 2035.

New gas-fired plants that receive state funding must be “hydrogen-ready” and run on climate-neutral fuels by 2045. The roadmap does not specify what those fuels are but they generally include biofuels and green hydrogen. 

At the same time, Berlin wants to install 2,000 more wind turbines and reduce the need for power plants by boosting the use of batteries. 

UN SUMMIT LIVE: UN chief says world has tools to end the fossil fuel age

Speaking at the UN chief’s climate summit in New York, environment minister Carsten Schneider said the plan will allow Germany to lower its imports of fossil fuels and reduce its dependence on “supply chains vulnerable to geopolitical crisis” – and called on more countries to do the same.

“It is important to ensure that transitioning away from fossil fuels remains high up on the international agenda,” he said, adding that Germany would seek to “improve the overall framework” for mobilising more funds to help developing countries phase out fossil fuels.

“We want to enable countries to chart their own course towards energy security and prosperity,” he said.

On Tuesday, addressing the UN General Assembly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged all countries to submit national roadmaps to end the production and consumption of fossil fuels with “clear timelines and protection for affected workers and communities”.

A group of around 80 countries led a failed push at last year’s COP30 in Belém to create a global roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels. While the initiative was not adopted at the summit, some countries like France and the Netherlands opted to move forward with their own national plans.

Subsidies for EVs and heat pumps

To cut reliance on petrol for transport, the German government says it will make available 2.8 billion euros to subsidise the cost of buying electric vehicles for lower and middle income households.

Official projections suggest that by 2035, every new car sold in Germany will be electric, according to the document. Freight, shipping and aviation are expected to shift to a mix of electric vehicles, “sustainable” biofuels and hydrogen-based fuels. 

For homes, the roadmap relies mainly on replacing gas and oil boilers with heat pumps, backed by state subsidies. Anyone who installs a new gas or oil heating system will have to use a rising share of “climate-neutral fuels” from 2029, reaching 60% by 2040. A proposed quota would require fuel suppliers to switch entirely to climate-neutral heating fuels from 2045. 

Industry is expected to decarbonise by switching to electricity and hydrogen, becoming more energy efficient, and capturing carbon where emissions are hard to avoid.

UN backs push to upgrade grids slowing clean power uptake in Africa and SE Asia

Schneider said the roadmap is not just a climate strategy, but also an economic policy strategy. “The money we currently spend on importing oil and gas will increasingly flow into local value creation,” he added in a written statement. “Moving away from fossil fuels combines independence, affordability and climate protection”. 

In 2024, Germany spent about 76 billion euros on importing fossil fuels. Around two-thirds of that went on oil and petroleum products, and the rest on gas and coal.

Campaigners call for faster phase-out

Reactions to the roadmap from analysts and campaigners were mixed – both praising the country’s initiative for launching its plan voluntarily but also calling for an even faster fossil fuel phase-out.

Jennifer Morgan, former German climate envoy, said the roadmap is a “welcome step” but to truly deliver, the strategy should be backed by “a faster, more deliberate and just phase-out, paired with the rollout of green electrification”. 

Laurie Van Der Burg, public finance lead at campaign group Oil Change International, said Germany deserves credit for publishing the roadmap, but its efforts are “not commensurate with the reality of the crisis, or its responsibility as a wealthy, historic emitter”. She urged the country to end its financing for fossil fuels, strengthen the roadmap and redirect public money toward renewable energy. 

Germany is the third European country to publish a national fossil fuel transition roadmap following France and the Netherlands. France has set end dates for coal (2030), oil (2045) and gas (2050), though its plan mostly brings together existing policies. The Dutch government has not set a binding end date for the country’s fossil fuel production and use, indicating only that it should be “minimised” by 2050. 

Linda Kalcher, executive director at think-tank Strategic Perspectives, said the targets in the three national roadmaps still fall short of what is needed to achieve energy security, but they still send a powerful message to fossil fuel exporters. “A huge share of the European market is planning for a future in which demand for coal, oil and gas declines,” she added. 

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As the world faces extreme climate impacts turbocharged by a “super El Niño” event and fossil fuel prices soar amid conflict in the Middle East, Guterres said reliance on fossil fuels “wreaks havoc”, and urged governments to boost their renewable energy capacity as a way out.

“Doubling down on oil and gas will only lock in vulnerability for decades. Fortunately, we have a way out. Because the crisis is accelerating – but so are the solutions,” he said.

Reiterating a point made in his farewell speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Guterres urged all countries to submit “credible” national roadmaps to end their production and consumption of coal, oil and gas – “with clear timelines”.

“The G20, responsible for 80 percent of global emissions, must lead. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities must apply. But all countries must raise their ambition,” he added.

Germany plans to end use of fossil fuels in energy sector by 2045

At last year’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, a group of some 80 governments led a failed push to develop a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. Brazil instead will draft a voluntary report to be presented this year ahead of COP31, incorporating views from a range of countries and organisations.

Governments first agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, but have since been unable to agree at UN climate talks on how to move forward with that commitment, as efforts to do so have been effectively blocked by large fossil fuel-producing countries.

The UN chief urged the world to respond to the accelerating climate crisis “with accelerating action”, by matching the revolution in clean energy with a revolution in finance and rising impacts with rising protection.

“I ask you all to deliver – then over-deliver,” he said. “We are the first generation with the tools to end the fossil fuel age – and the last who can avert climate catastrophe.”

Nepal flood a warning of global impacts to come, says minister

After being hit by devastating flash floods last month in its Himalayan region that left around 1,500 people dead and 6,000 missing, Nepal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Shisir Khanal warned the catastrophe is “not merely a local tragedy but a warning to the world of what might be coming next”.

“The crisis has dragged vulnerable communities back into poverty,” Khanal said, adding that the crisis has “shattered the dream of many who saw hope in our steady development path”. 

Preliminary assessments estimate that losses could reach up to $5 billion – equivalent to 15% of the country’s GDP or a third of its annual budget. “This is not merely a humanitarian emergency, it’s a development emergency dismantling years of progress,” said Khanal.

He called on the international community to “act not only differently but decisively” by delivering on an existing commitment to double adaptation finance and capitalising the new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage Fund, which currently has only several hundred million dollars to disburse to countries hit hard by climate impacts. 

Vulnerable countries, he said, need “scaled-up, front-loaded and accessible climate finance that reaches communities before disaster strikes, not after devastation has already occurred”. For countries like Nepal, “adaptation is not optional; it is a lifeline,” he added.

Comment: The response to Nepal’s disaster is a test for global climate institutions

Khanal also urged countries to double down on efforts to keep the 1.5C global warming goal within reach. “This is a matter of survival for mountain and coastal communities,” he said, calling for universal access to early warning systems, affordable technologies tailored to mountain ecosystems, climate information services and resilient infrastructure.

Sharing a stage with Khanal, the prime minister of Pacific island state Tuvalu, Feleti Teo, said the Nepal flash flood is a testament that the “devastating and indiscriminate” impacts from climate change are no longer a matter for forecasts. “They are happening now and no one country will be spared,” he said.

“The process and modality of access to climate financing must be simple and easily accessible. – particularly for small administrations like Tuvalu. We do not have the luxury of capacity and time to navigate through complex and convoluted procedures,” he added.

Türkiye’s president says countries can’t all move at the same pace

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urged countries to deliver an “implementation COP” in Antalya, noting that the “devastating floods in Nepal already demonstrate we no longer have time to lose”.

However, he stressed that developing countries cannot be rushed into taking measures outside of their capacity, adding that “in Antalya, we must bring ambition closer to capacity and targets closer to implementation”.

It is “not realistic to expect all countries to move forward all at the same pace”, he added, emphasising that “any proposal that fails to reconcile climate objectives with social and economic realities will be doomed to fail”.

The Turkish COP31 co-presidency has prioritised a voluntary target to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% by 2035, up from the current level of 23%. Erdoğan also flagged a proposed target to reduce global waste, which is being championed by his wife.

IEA head: Strait of Hormuz pushing countries towards clean energy

As governments prepare for COP31 – where one of the flagship targets will be to boost electricity’s share of global energy consumption to 35% by 2035 – International Energy Agency (IEA) chief Fatih Birol said the Middle East conflict presents an opportunity not seen in years.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, due to tensions between the US and Iran, has led countries to reassess their energy sources and partners, Birol said. Their response, he added, has been in “a big chunk if not all” cases to pick clean energy as the most secure, affordable and green option.

“In the energy world, we have three choices in front of us: shall I choose the most secure option, the most economic energy option or the cleanest? We have to make choices and tradeoffs. When I look at the world today, for the first time in years, all three objectives hit very close to each other,” he said.

The IEA chief said an electrification target at COP31, proposed by Turkiye, would send “a very strong and unmistakable signal to investors, financiers, utilities, governments and beyond”. 

“This, in turn, will not only make the world much more secure, and offer a more affordable option to consumers, but at the same time it will bring emissions down, which would be a major outcome and major good news,” he said.

UN backs push to upgrade grids slowing clean power uptake in Africa and SE Asia

His words were borne out by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, who said the closure of the Strait of Hormuz had made the bloc bitterly aware of the effects and the additional costs of its dependence on imported fossil fuels. 

She added that Europe has assets in the form of electricity produced from home-grown renewables and nuclear. “This clean electricity gives us independence, energy security, and it is affordable,” she said. Europe already gets 70% of its electricity from clean energies, “but more has to be done”, she added, including better integrating clean power into the energy system. 

Europe needs to boost clean energy storage and flexibility, and accelerate grid connections, in order to reach its goal of doubling the share of electricity by 2040, Von der Leyen said. 

“With this, Europe could cut its fossil fuel import bill by 260 billion euros a year and invest it in the clean transition,” she added.

Australian PM promotes Pacific climate resilience

Anthony Albanese, Australia’s Prime Minister, whose country is co-hosting the COP31 climate summit in Türkiye, offered firm support to the Pacific region which will host pre-COP discussions next month in Fiji. He called on countries to contribute to the new Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), a regional climate financing mechanism intended to provide money for community climate action.

Australia has contributed $100 million towards the fund’s goal of reaching a capitalisation of $1.5 billion. So far the PRF has raised $180 million against an interim goal of $500 million by COP31.

“It is a fact that those countries which are least responsible for the rise in emissions and the change in temperatures, such as our Pacific Island family, are those who are most affected by climate change,” he said. 

He noted that for island nations such as Tuvalu and Kiribati, “it is literally an existential threat”. “So we must act, and we must act as a matter of urgency,” he added. 

Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr. told the summit that the PRF will allow finance “to go directly to the communities that need it the most”, adding that “speed and agility are essential” for Pacific islands to adapt to extreme climate impacts. The low-lying Marshall Islands, for example, said it had taken 10 years to plan, fund and build a sea wall to protect its people from rising waters – time it does not have.

At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance

Albanese added that Australia is seeking a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for 2029-30, and if elected, aims to “elevate the importance of climate security, particularly in the Pacific, but more broadly as well”.

He stressed that while the cost of not acting would be “too high”, there are also economic – as well as environmental – benefits from tackling global warming.

“The truth is that it makes good macroeconomic policy to shift to a renewable-led clean energy revolution,” he said, adding that it also helps families. Some 540,000 Australian households have taken up subsidies to install solar panels with battery storage in the past year, he noted, slashing the cost of their power.

UN launches country platforms to support mineral-rich nations 

More than two years after a UN panel of experts called for justice and equity to underpin the development of the mineral supply chains needed for the energy transition, the UN is starting to follow up with concrete action.

On Wednesday, UN chief António Guterres announced that six countries – Guinea, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe – will be the first to receive dedicated support to turn their mineral wealth into engines for sustainable industrialisation, job creation and revenue generation so that it “drives local development, with added value remaining there”.

The country support mechanism, launched at the UN Climate Summit, will identify what individual recipient countries need to improve mineral governance, boost value addition and protect environmental and human rights and respond with coordinated technical assistance and capacity building from across the UN system. 

Zambia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mulambo Haimbe said the initiative will support the country’s ambition “not simply to produce more, but to create greater value at home through investment, value addition, industrialisation and jobs”. 

Booming demand for minerals such as copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earths that are needed to build the equipment the world needs to move away from fossil fuels offer real development opportunities for the countries that hold them. But communities living near extraction sites often shoulder most of the costs while seeing few of the benefits.

The UN panel’s recommendations set out a vision for more just and sustainable mineral value chains. But implementation has been slow to follow. 

China keeps Indonesia’s battery dream afloat but future less certain

China’s deputy UN representative Sun Lei told the climate summit on Wednesday that critical minerals governance is a key issue for the country, which holds a firm grip on the mining and processing of most critical minerals. Last year at COP30 in Belém, China was one of the countries that blocked a mention of the social and environmental risk linked to energy transition minerals.

“All states must strengthen cooperation to build a governance system on critical minerals that is fair, reasonable, open, inclusive, clean and openly beneficial with win-win results,” he said.

Suneeta Kaimal, president and CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, welcomed the announcement of the country platforms, adding that to succeed must be driven by local concerns. 

The new support mechanism “could enable countries to lead on the design of strategies, safeguards and policies that will allow them to shift from rule-takers to rule-shapers and unlock prosperity for all their people”, she said. 

UK minister defends climate multilateralism

After hosting a meeting of foreign ministers on Wednesday to discuss climate change as an issue of national security, Britain’s foreign minister Ed Miliband put up a spirited defence of global efforts to tackle climate change and slammed what he called “the defeatists”.

Those, he said, are people who maintain that climate negotiations have been going on for 30-40 years, and nothing has changed, so there’s no point in continuing. “The defeatists, I think, actually are now a bigger problem than the deniers and the delayers” and they should be told they are “wrong”, Miliband said. 

He noted that at the time of the failed Copenhagen COP in 2009 the world was headed for warming of 4C or more, while now the prediction has been reduced to around 2.5C. This, while still “very bad”, is proof that multilateralism has worked, he said.

“At a time when it is more under question than it has been for generations, I actually think that the climate efforts that we are making together and the will that I see from countries across the world to tackle this problem should give us confidence and optimism about the future,” he argued.

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UN boss António Guterres launched the Global Grids Accelerator on the sidelines of the UN Climate Summit in New York on Wednesday. The initiative aims to turn government plans to expand and modernise grids into investment-ready projects and bring together the expertise, finance and support needed to build them.

Guterres said the accelerator will help countries build “the arteries of the energy transition” to expand energy access, strengthen energy security and power growth in developing countries.

The initiative will not create a new financing institution, the UN said, and no additional funding to boost grid upgrades was announced. Instead, it will act as a broker by bringing together UN agencies, development banks, investors and utilities around grid priorities identified by governments.

Renewable energy deployment is happening at record speed but the infrastructure required to move clean electricity from where it is generated to consumers is not keeping pace. As a result, record amounts of green electricity that cannot be absorbed by the grid are being wasted.

In addition, more than 2,500 GW of renewable projects – nearly twice the electricity generation capacity of the US – are currently stuck in queues worldwide, waiting to connect to the grid, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Grid bottlenecks

To meet global climate goals and cut emissions from fossil fuels, electricity demand needs to grow orders of magnitude faster in the next decade than it did in the last. The COP31 presidency has called on governments to endorse a pledge to raise electricity’s share of final energy consumption from 23% today to 35% by 2035.

Grids are essential to support this surge in electricity demand as sectors such as transport, heating and cooling electrify.

The lack of adequate infrastructure to transport electricity can have a major negative impact on economic development by delaying new power generation, slowing down efforts to expand access to electricity and hampering industrial growth.

In contrast, strong grids can help countries connect their renewable energy potential to surging power demand, strengthen energy security and support new industries and job creation.

Meeting national climate goals requires adding or refurbishing more than 80 million kilometres of grids by 2040 – equivalent to roughly the size of today’s entire global network, according to the IEA. Technologies can also help increase the capacity of existing grid infrastructure. The watchdog estimates that annual grid investments need to increase by around 50% by 2030 to meet growing electricity demand.

The IEA has warned that the mismatch between the time it takes to build new power grids – 5 to 15 years – and the much faster buildout of renewable projects, EV charging infrastructure or data centres, makes upgrading grids an urgent task to prevent slowing down the energy transition.

Matching expertise and finance to projects

At COP29 in 2024, more than 60 countries committed to collectively build more than 25 million kilometres of additional grid infrastructure by 2030.

But a key barrier is turning long-term and often complex plans to overhaul electricity infrastructure into viable projects that can be matched to funding.

The accelerator aims to bring together expertise from across the UN system to support countries navigate this fragmented landscape and access the financing they need.

In Africa, the accelerator will focus on delivering national priorities to expand grid infrastructure and regional interconnections to expand access to reliable and affordable electricity. It will build on existing initiatives such as Mission 300, which aims to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030.

In Southeast Asia, the accelerator will support initiatives such as the ASEAN Power Grid, which aims to connect different countries’ electricity networks and enable cross-border power trading to meet growing power demand and boost energy security.

Across the region, inadequate grids are threatening billions of dollars in clean energy investment. The lack of grid capacity is part of the reason about 50% to 60% of renewable energy projects in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia were cancelled or stalled between 2021 and 2025.

Alexander De Croo, the administrator of UNDP, said making grids projects investable must be a priority, noting that grids require a big upfront investment but deliver “a stable return over the long-term”.

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Since Guterres launched the Early Warning Systems for All goal in 2022, the number of countries reporting that they have an MHEWS has increased from 113 to 136, the UN announced on Wednesday. Around 60 nations are still not covered 15 months ahead of the UN’s 2027 deadline.

“We must close the remaining gaps, reach every country, and ensure that by the end of 2027, every person on earth is protected”, outgoing UN chief Guterres said.

The UN said the largest gaps in coverage are mainly among the world’s least developed countries, small island developing states and fragile and conflict-affected nations. These countries are also among those hardest hit by climate change.

Guterres said that early warning systems “save lives, protect livelihoods and shield communities from disaster”, highlighting the Colombian Red Cross’s response to drought in June as an example.

At an event on the initiative in New York on Monday, Huw Beynon from the UN Disaster Risk Reduction Office said that the systems had helped during floods in Kenya last year and when recent cyclones hit Madagascar.

Jagan Chapagain, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said in a statement that “reaching more people with early warnings is a success worth celebrating”.

Simple warnings not enough

The Early Warning Systems for All initiative supports about 160 countries and 31 countries have developed national roadmaps to install early warning systems. But Beynon said that, while most countries have a MHEWS, most also report limited capacity. “So you might have a warning disseminated but it’s not leading to the right action,” he said.

Speaking alongside Beynon, Nepali climate negotiator Manjeet Dhakal gave a recent example of this. He said Nepali authorities had sent text messages to 600,000 people – including him – who were in, or had recently been in, an area where flooding was likely.

The flood, caused by a glacial rock-ice collapse, swept through the valley at huge speed, with a wave at least 30 metres above the river, killing thousands. But the messages did not “articulate the magnitude of this disaster”, he said, adding “these are humans who have to craft that message and that scale of disaster has never [previously] occurred”. The Straits Times has reported that these messages did not say how fast or big the flood would be and were sent too late for many.

When heavy rainfall led to floods in the Spanish city of Valencia in 2024, some text messages with warnings were only sent out after flooding had started and did not give residents clear instructions of how to act, such as moving to higher floors and not driving. Many Valencians drowned in their cars or in the underground garages of their apartment blocks, according to official reports.

Remaining barriers

​Rohini Kohli, the UN Development Programme’s head of climate adaptation policy, told Monday’s New York event that a challenge for MHEWS in developing countries is a lack of foundational data.

This can include equipment to measure physical factors like rainfall, river levels and soil moisture or human factors like where peoples homes or power lines are located. The UN’s Systematic Observations Financing Facility is trying to bridge this “critical gap”, she said.

Another barrier, Kohli said, is that acting on early warnings is often the responsibility of local rather than national authorities and they need the capacity to respond in the right way. “Like most adaptation, local leadership has to be at the centre for design and delivery,” she said.

The IFRC’s Chapagain said that as “warnings alone are not enough”, authorities should “invest in trusted local actors so that communities can turn information into action and become agents of their own resilience, not simply recipients of alerts. Early action is what makes early warnings work.”

Kohli added that a lack of finance was also a problem for developing countries. She cited the UN’s adaptation gap report, which found that developing countries will need well over $300 billion a year by 2035 to adapt to climate change while they are currently receiving less than a tenth of that figure.

In 2022, the World Meteorological Organisation estimated that meeting the early warning systems for all goal would require a total of $1.5 billion.

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The climate crisis didn’t just knock at our doorstep. It has smashed through homes, demolished critical roads, and caused untold grief for millions of Nepali people. It has now been nearly a month since a wall of ice, rock, and water tore through the Bhote Koshi river system. The death toll has risen to nearly 1,500 people with 5,800 more still missing. 

Nepal needs sustained assistance from the international community. 

We are staring at a reconstruction bill of at least $5 billion, as we laid out in our letter to the co-chairs of the Board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage on September 1. This constitutes a tenth of our entire economy, and we cannot afford to be saddled with greater loans. We asked the Board to treat the Bhote Koshi disaster as the special case that it is: sudden, unprecedented and exceptional. 

The Loss and Damage fund currently holds $820 million in pledges, yet not a single dollar has yet been disbursed for the nearly $3 billion in requests. Its next scheduled meeting is not until December, in Manila. Nepal cannot wait that long, and neither can the next country this happens to. 

As loss and damage fund stalls, Nepal crowdfunds flood relief

The tragedy must also serve as a wake up call for immediate climate action. A new study from the World Weather Attribution has found that global warming was a likely contributing factor for the avalanche. 

Bandaid solutions are no longer enough; the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels and accelerate investment in clean sources of energy.

Disproportionate impact

The Nepal government has set an ambitious target to replace petrol/diesel vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs) by 2031. The country also already gets most of its electricity from clean sources, with plans for further expansion within the next decade. Our forest cover has grown to 46 percent. 

Nepal contributes less than 0.1 percent of the planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Major polluters need to step up their efforts, so that countries like mine stop bearing a disproportionate impact.

Global emissions are still rising, while countries such as the US, the UK, Australia and several others have drastically reduced the foreign aid that they provide to the rest of the world. And at the same time, they are continuing to increase their fossil fuel production. That is not only unjust, it is also unsustainable for a planet that is already showing us how little room for error remains. 

What happened in Bhote Koshi is not unique to the Hindu Kush Himalaya. In May 2025, a nearly identical disaster buried the Swiss village of Blatten, when a rock and ice avalanche tore off the Birch Glacier above it. A study published this month found the avalanche needed almost no friction to travel as far and as fast as it did, a sign of just how destabilised that mountainside had become.

In the Arctic, researchers reported this week that thawing permafrost on the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen turned an ordinary magnitude 6.5 earthquake into the island’s first major glacier rock avalanche in 40 years, the kind of tremor that would once have caused only minor disruption.

From the Alps to the Arctic to the Himalaya, the same warming is loosening the ice and rock that used to hold these mountains together. The next Bhote Koshi could strike anywhere that grip is failing.

Growing focus on mountains in UN climate process

This is not the first time we have tried to get the world’s attention on the mountain ecosystem. At COP30 in Belem last November, Nepal led the push to put mountains on the global climate agenda for the first time, through our Sagarmatha to Belém initiative.

That effort got mountain ecosystems written into the COP30 cover decision and the Global Goal on Adaptation, marking the strongest visibility mountain issues have ever received at the UN climate process. We also secured the first Annual Dialogue on Mountains and Climate Change, which was held at the UN climate talks in June this year at Bonn.

We used COP30 as a platform to warn that retreating glaciers and destabilised mountain systems were not a distant risk. Ten months later, that warning became the Bhote Koshi disaster.

The UN General Assembly and upcoming UN climate talks in Antalya will be two fora for world leaders to show solidarity and more importantly, show how they intend to walk the talk. 

Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say

In the near-term, the Loss and Damage board has been requested to hold an emergency meeting to consider Nepal’s difficult situation. Several nations have generously stepped up to offer physical relief and direct aid. This is greatly welcome. Our needs, unfortunately, far exceed that.

Every impacted village needs a chance to rebuild, children need to see their schools back in operation, and the roads that are the lifeline of communities require urgent reconstruction. Some things may have been lost permanently, but through investment in monitoring and early warning systems, the government of Nepal can try to ensure a future event does not unfold yet another unimaginable tragedy. 

This was not just someone else’s disaster that affected the people of Dhading, Rasuwa, and Nuwakot. It is a shared emergency, across Nepal and the world over as more and more communities become victims to a crisis they did not create. This is why, even as we cope with relief and rescue efforts, we are taking the time to present data and share our needs around this climate injustice. 

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Earth has just had the hottest August since records began. Wildfires tore through Europe, North America and Asia, killing dozens, forcing hundreds of thousands from their homes, and burning more than a million acres of land.

In Nepal, flash floods triggered by a glacial lake outburst killed more than a thousand people and left thousands missing – a disaster Nepal’s foreign minister said reflected the disproportionate share of climate consequences borne by countries like his. Just recently, the UN Environment Programme confirmed what scientists have long warned: the world is now on track to breach 1.5C of warming, likely within the next few years.

As the climate crisis intensifies, one question is central: who is at the helm?

GWL Voices’ report, published this summer, shows that women are very much on deck in climate and environmental governance, but they are not steering the ship.

Of all climate COP Presidents since the annual conferences began over thirty years ago, three-quarters have been men. This matters because COP Presidents are among the most visible and influential roles in global climate governance. The climate COPs, however, are not the worst offenders. Another of the UN’s three environmental “sister conventions,” the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), has had a woman preside over its COP only three out of 17 times since 1997.

Structural inequality cascades down

Women’s underrepresentation is not a harmless coincidence. It’s a pattern that cascades down to other critical roles, including country delegates, heads of delegations, national focal points, and COP bureau members.

It is a structural inequality that limits the diversity of perspectives, priorities and decisions brought to bear on the environmental emergencies we face, and it is unfolding against a backdrop UN Women itself describes as one of “escalating conflicts, attacks on women’s rights, and environmental degradation.”

GWL Voices’ Spotlight on Women in Global Climate and Environmental Leadership shows that progress beyond the COPs is slow and sparse. While the Green Climate Fund has approached gender parity in its top leadership role over time, the IPCC, which is the body charged with compiling and communicating climate science to the world, has never appointed a woman to its top position of Chair in nearly four decades.

Gender focal points mainly women

Parity in environmental governance at the multilateral level remains extremely rare. There is, however, one role where women are, for once, not under- but substantially over-represented: when the task at hand is gender equality itself. Ninety percent of countries’ gender focal points under the biodiversity and climate conventions are women.

Relegating women to so-called “women’s issues” within climate and environmental governance is a particularly stark example of horizontal segregation, a pattern that repeats well beyond the multilateral level.

According to the Women in Politics Map 2026, prepared by UN Women and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the largest share of women cabinet ministers worldwide sit in Women and Gender Equality ministries (90%) and family and children affairs (73%), while they remain sidelined in strategic areas including economic affairs (18%), foreign affairs (29%) and energy (12%).

‘Hectic’ in high heels? Women still face gender hurdles at UN climate talks

The danger of this segregation is that women’s rights come to be seen as women’s responsibility alone, which does nothing to advance equality, since the problem affects us all and requires everyone’s active engagement to solve.

Conversations about gender and climate too often focus on women’s vulnerability to climate impacts. That angle reflects a real problem, but it hides a second one: access to decision-making. Women are not simply “victims” of the climate and nature crisis, they are among its most experienced responders, its most consistent advocates, and, when given the chance, its most effective leaders.

Studies show women leaders’ impact

What if women had an equal seat at the decision-making table? Would environmental governance be more effective? The evidence says it would. Research by Norgaard and York (2005), Mavisakalyan and Tarverdi (2018), and Fredriksson and Wang (2011) finds that women leaders are more likely to support environmental protection, ratify environmental treaties, and adopt stricter climate policies.

Following last year’s COP30 – where the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted a landmark, nine-year plan to mainstream gender equality across climate governance and implementation – GWL Voices called for the same principles: gender parity across all climate bodies, Indigenous women’s voices embedded in policy design, gender-responsive climate finance with transparent tracking, and real accountability for women-led initiatives. Its 2026 report is the evidence for why implementation of the Belém Gender Action Plan cannot wait any longer.

Why women’s leadership is central to unlocking the global phaseout of fossil fuels

As the world convenes for Climate Week NYC, weeks before the UN chooses its next Secretary-General, and less than two months before COP31, we raise our voices for this message to reach those who hold power.

Let’s start seeing the climate crisis as a governance crisis, one with an outrageous blindspot for women’s leadership, ingenuity and readiness to decide. We invite every government, institution or boardroom, and every person to read the spotlight report in full, identify the pattern in the ranks of their own organisations, and use whatever power they hold to break it.

Because when it comes to the climate crisis, women’s hands are already on deck; it’s time we let them steer.

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In his farewell speech to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Tuesday, outgoing UN Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time urged “every government to adopt a national plan to transition away from fossil fuels” aligned with limiting warming to 1.5C. The plans, he said, should include “clear timelines and protection for affected workers and communities”.

“We know fossil fuel interests won’t step aside on their own. For decades, Big Oil has treated the atmosphere as an open sewer – and cashed in on the consequences,” Guterres told diplomats in his speech opening the leaders’ segment of the assembly, also calling out the industry’s windfall profits after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At last year’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, a group of about 80 governments led a failed push to develop a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. Brazil instead proposed to draft a voluntary report that will be presented this year ahead of COP31 after countries and organisations submitted their views to the process.

Governments first agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, but have since failed to agree at UN climate talks on how to move forward with that commitment, as efforts to do so have been effectively blocked by large fossil fuel-producing countries.

France, Netherlands issue plans

A few countries have moved forward with their own transition plans. France launched the first one at an international conference on the issue in April and the Netherlands followed suit this month. Not being major fossil fuel producers, both European nations aim to end their coal, oil and gas consumption by 2050, although the Dutch plan was criticised for not setting specific phase-out dates for the dirty fuels.

Adão Soares Barbosa, climate ambassador from Timor-Leste and chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group in the UN climate negotiations, told a press briefing on Tuesday that last year’s discussions on shifting away from fossil fuels need to continue at COP31, adding that developed countries should lead the way with transition plans and curb their use of fossil fuels.

“We are expecting that we can make a request to major-emitting countries to limit emissions from this sector,” he said. “For LDCs, we’ll also try to reduce fossil fuel use, but it will depend on national circumstances.”

Samoa’s lead negotiator Anna Rasmussen said small island states have outlined their energy transition plans in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – countries’ plans for meeting the Paris Agreement goals – but added “we’re still waiting” for climate finance to help implement those plans.

Despite the global push to clean up the energy mix, countries leading climate talks are themselves also expanding fossil fuel production. COP31 co-presidents Australia and Türkiye have both recently given the green light to mine and drill more coal, oil and gas, and still depend on fossil fuels for 60% and 56% of their electricity production respectively.

Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn

COP30 host nation Brazil has also persisted with its plans to explore potential new oil reserves near the mouth of the Amazon River – a region known as the Equatorial Margin.

These are moving ahead despite President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announcing last year at the Belém climate summit that the country would develop its own fossil fuel phase-out plan. This is still under development with little information about its progress and may be hampered by elections next month.

“We have achieved our self sufficiency in oil and will continue to explore the potential of new reserves, such as those in the Equatorial Margin,” Lula said in his speech to the UNGA on Tuesday. “But we will not abandon the environmental agenda,” he insisted. “We will move forward with the roadmap for the decarbonisation of the Brazilian economy.”

Transition far cheaper than status quo

Speaking at the main Climate Week NYC venue, Mads Christensen, executive director of Greenpeace International, said given the fast-shifting cost dynamics for both fossil fuels and renewables, countries should revise their existing energy plans because they are now out of date.

Gas power generation now costs around 150 euros per megawatt compared with around 50 euros for solar with battery storage – making the latter two-thirds cheaper.

“If these plans were updated, I think we would have a much faster transition because it simply makes good financial sense,” he said.

Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told Climate Home News that the Santa Marta process for transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF), launched at April’s conference, could help countries discuss, design and develop their national roadmaps, as well as mobilise the international cooperation required to actually deliver them.

“Many countries want not only national roadmaps but a global roadmap off the highway to hell,” she added. “A global plan is necessary to ensure the rules aren’t rigged against those who want to do the right thing and so all countries can make credible commitments.”

The second TAFF conference will be held in the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu next spring, co-chaired by Ireland. In New York, Tuvalu’s climate minister Maina Vakafua Talia called for stepped-up efforts to tackle the fossil fuel use that is threatening his country’s “demise” by driving global warming.

“The world is running out of time, and so I ask every government to come to… Tuvalu with solutions – real solutions, not false solutions – for us to ensure that we have a pathway and a way forward,” he urged.

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Governments that sign the voluntary pledge at this year’s UN climate summit will commit to increasing electricity’s share of total energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 in line “with pathways consistent with keeping 1.5C alive”, the text unveiled by the Turkish presidency on Tuesday says. 

While the document says that the electrification goal is “complementary to efforts to expand renewable energy and improve energy efficiency”, governments are not explicitly asked to commit to producing the extra power with clean sources and driving down greenhouse gas emissions. 

The text instead says the “use of clean electricity” will vary according to national circumstances. Fossil fuels are not mentioned by name, although the pledge cites the COP28 Global Stocktake decision, which called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” in energy systems.

COP31 president Murat Kurum said earlier this month that the push to make electrification more “widespread” – through measures like the rollout of electric vehicles and heat pumps –  will “automatically” lead to a reduction in the use of fossil fuels. 

But many campaigners disagree, criticising the proposed pledge for failing to give an explicit signal on the fossil fuel transition. 

Lack of clarity on energy sources

“Let’s not let electrification become the Trojan horse of our times, used to hide new fossil fuel consumption rather than promote renewable energy,” Claire Smith from civil society umbrella group Beyond Fossil Fuels said in reaction to the pledge’s publication. 

She added that the commitment will only help address the climate crisis if electrification is powered by a flexible energy system where solar and wind are complemented by enhanced grids and storage. 

The pledge’s text says that the electricity goal should be supported by “diverse and sustainable energy sources”, but it stops short of explaining what these sources are. 

Alden Meyer, an international climate policy expert and senior associate at think-tank E3G, said the details of the pledge matter to how effective it will be in helping bring planet-heating emissions down.

“It has to be clean, and we haven’t got enough clarity on a guarantee that it will be a decarbonisation move,” he told Climate Home News.

China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit

According to an annual electricity review from energy think-tank Ember, in 2025 renewables edged ahead of coal power for the first time in 100 years. Continued growth in solar and wind pushed the share of renewables above a third of global electricity generation to just under 34%, compared with coal at 33%, it said.

Janet Milongo, energy Transition lead at CAN International, said success cannot be measured simply by how much of the world’s final energy consumption becomes electric. 

“We must ask what generates that electricity, who has access to it, who owns the infrastructure, and whether it is helping communities transition away from fossil fuels,” she added. 

Electrification alone can’t meet climate goals

Analysis published by the IEA on Tuesday, alongside the pledge, found that it would already be cost-effective to raise electricity’s share of global energy use from 23% today to around 33% with existing technologies, putting the COP31 goal “within striking distance”. Based on current policies, however, the share reaches only about 30% by 2035.

Hitting the 35% target would cut fossil fuel importers’ import bills by around $400 billion a year by 2035, the IEA said. At the higher prices caused by the conflict in the Middle East, that saving rises to more than $500 billion.

Speaking at New York Climate Week on Tuesday, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said the agency’s figures show that in 2026, about 80% of all new power plants built will run on renewables, with a few percentage points coming from nuclear power and the rest from fossils fuels. “So therefore, electrification itself will lead reduction of the [greenhouse gas] emissions,” he added.

However, the IEA warned in its new report that electrification “by itself is not enough” to meet the world’s climate targets. It noted that, if “low-emission” sources of power continue to simply grow in line with current policy scenarios, that would be only just enough to cover the extra demand from electrification, driving a modest decline in emissions.

It added that for the electrification target to align with a 1.5C pathway for global warming, coal-fired generation must fall by around 70%, and gas-fired by around 60% by 2035.

Matt Webb, associate director of global clean power diplomacy at E3G, said the electrification pledge is a “welcome signal of leadership” and can help COP31 be a “critical moment” for countries to double down on the energy commitments they made at COP28.

But to secure the full benefits, he added, it is essential that countries “urgently clean up” their grids as they electrify by speeding up the rollout of renewables and phasing out coal and gas plants, as well as developing credible national plans to transition away from fossil fuels.

“Get this right, and electrification will deliver on its promise in full, with stronger economies, better energy security and a safer climate,” he added in a statement.

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Individuals and companies from Nepal and abroad have chipped in from $5 to “many millions” of dollars to the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund, Manjeet Dhakal, an advisor to the poorest countries at UN climate talks, told an event on Monday focused on early warning systems.

The prompt and substantial response from the public contrasts with the slower, more limited support that is potentially on offer from the UN’s new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), set up by governments to compensate developing countries for climate disasters.

Comment: Human security relies on adapting to the world’s new climate reality

Over three weeks have passed since Nepal’s finance and environment ministers asked the FRLD board to take an urgent decision to allocate funding to help Nepal protect people and restore essential services in the wake of the disaster, which caused around 1,450 deaths and left more than 5,000 people missing.

“Time is of the essence,” the ministers wrote in an appeal to the FRLD on August 31, which was swiftly followed by a letter from a group of developing-country board members urging the FRLD board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary meeting to come up with a response.

Loss and damage fund hesitates

Yet, despite informal online meetings, the co-chairs have yet to convene a meeting with the power to allocate funds. The board’s next scheduled meeting begins on December 15.

Dhakal said on Monday that the request has “received some positive response, but still there is some discussion ongoing about how to respond to that”.

“If they can’t respond in a timely manner, then is [the fund] fit for purpose in terms of disasters that the world would be facing in the coming years? The scale and intensity of these disasters is increasing,” he said.

With just $820 million pledged to it by rich countries and not all of that yet delivered, the FRLD has earmarked just $350 million to spend in its initial phase and without further contributions could run out of money next year.

Because of these limited funds, and a huge number of requests for funding totalling nearly $3 billion, the FRLD has said it will only give out a maximum of $20 million to each project for now. It has yet to approve funding for any projects.

Dhakal recently told The Nation magazine that this amount was just a “symbolic gesture”. Nepal’s government has estimated the costs of recovery and reconstruction at $4.8 billion, with homes, roads, bridges, hospitals and hydropower stations in the affected area needing to be repaired and rebuilt.

“Ridiculously small” funding

In a speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the body’s outgoing Secretary-General António Guterres criticised the “ridiculously small” level of funds made available by wealthy governments to the FRLD. Developed countries should “make the loss and damage fund work at scale”, he said.

The Portuguese diplomat told world leaders that when he travelled to Nepal three years ago, he had “sounded the alarm on accelerating glacier melt, warning that the rooftops of the world are caving in”.

“Some dismissed it all as overstating dangers, but as tragic events have shown, impacts are arriving sooner, hitting harder, and spreading further than many anticipated,” he said.

A recent study by scientists with the World Weather Attribution group found that climate change contributed to the rock-ice avalanche which sparked a huge flash flood along a river valley on the Nepal-Tibet border.

Speaking at a separate event in New York on Monday, leading climate scientist Johan Rockström highlighted those findings on the role of global warming in the Himalayan disaster.

“This will be potentially the first poster-child case of a loss and damage invoice, because here we have a proven case of a catastrophe which would not have occurred if it hadn’t been for human-caused climate change,” he said.

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On Monday, global petitions with a collective total of more than 2 million signatures were presented to the United Nations, calling on governments to introduce binding mechanisms to make fossil-fuel companies and the super-rich contribute to the costs of the damage they have created.

The petition signatures were received by Selwin Hart, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Action, in New York during the UN General Assembly, sending a clear message to governments: there is no more room for excuses.

If governments are serious about resilience, energy security and protecting people from an increasingly unstable world, they must make the companies profiting from the fossil-fuel economy pay their fair share. Because the crisis we are facing is no longer some distant threat. It is unfolding in real time, and it is exposing the extraordinary costs of an economy still built around fossil fuels.

For more than six months, the Strait of Hormuz, the channel through which a fifth of the world’s oil once flowed without a second thought, has been closed, contested or effectively unusable. Tankers sit at anchor. Insurance premiums have gone through the roof. Petrol pumps from Los Angeles to Lagos have felt the tremor. It has taken a war to remind the world just how much of our daily lives still rests on a single, fragile artery of fossil fuels.

At the other end of the same emergency, a glacier came down on the Nepal–China border in the last week of August. A wall of ice, rock and water tore through the Bhote Koshi and Langtang valleys. It has been described as one of the deadliest disasters in the region’s modern history, unfolding in a landscape where the world’s glaciers are retreating and destabilising at a pace scientists have been warning about for years.

And this came only weeks after hundreds of thousands of people were displaced — not by ice, but by fire. Europe has experienced its worst wildfire season in more than a decade. Homes have been lost across Spain, Portugal, France, Greece and the UK. Firefighters and civilians have been killed battling the blazes, while damage and reconstruction costs continue to reach extraordinary levels.

These are not separate crises. They are different expressions of a world becoming more volatile, while the fossil-fuel economy continues to generate enormous profits for those at the top and pushes the costs onto everyone else.

Communities absorbing cost

Because the crisis we are facing is no longer some distant threat. It is unfolding in real time, and it is exposing the extraordinary costs of an economy still built around fossil fuels. One thread runs through all of these events: a global economy still organised around the profits of a fossil fuel industry that has known, for decades, exactly what it was doing to the planet.

At a moment when governments are gathering in New York for the UN General Assembly to talk about security, resilience and economic competitiveness, it is worth spelling out what “security” – or the lack of it, driven by our economy’s dependence on oil – actually means this year for ordinary people around the world: 35,000 excess deaths in Europe due to heat; the highest food prices in three and a half years; $700 billion in economic losses, threatening countless jobs and livelihoods, from a war and a closed oil chokepoint whose consequences are nowhere near over.

Meanwhile the companies that extracted, refined, shipped and sold the fuel behind all of this continue to report extraordinary profits. Households are paying more for energy. Governments are spending billions on disaster response, on reconstruction, on emergency deployments of firefighters and aid. Communities are absorbing the cost of a system they didn’t design and don’t control. We pay. They profit.

This is not a coincidence, and it is not inevitable. It is a political choice, repeated year after year, to let the companies most responsible for the climate crisis hoard the wealth they generate while the rest of us carry the risk.

Taxes and fines needed

That is why, together with communities and campaigners in dozens of countries have spent the last three years building the case for a simple, overdue idea: polluters should pay for the damage they have caused. Not through voluntary pledges or distant net-zero promises, but through binding mechanisms, climate damages taxes, surtaxes on fossil fuel profits, and fines ring-fenced for recovery and adaptation that put real money where the harm actually is. This is how we take the profit out of destruction and protect the generations to come.

The response has told us we are not alone in thinking this. Our petitions calling on governments to make polluters pay have now gathered a collective total of over 2 million signatures from people across every region of the world.

The case for making polluters pay has moved into the mainstream

That is not a fringe demand. It is what happens when people watch a choke-point war spike their fuel bill, watch a glacier take a thousand lives, watch their own summer holidays rearranged by fire. They draw the obvious conclusion: the people who caused this should be paying for it – not profiting from it.

We hear the objection already forming: that this is not the moment, with wars underway and economies fragmenting, to burden industry further. We would say the opposite is true. If governments can mobilise trillions for war, for bailouts and for new fossil fuel infrastructure, they can mobilise the political will to tax the companies that caused this crisis.

Money for clean energy and resilience

That money can go straight to the people paying for it, through cheaper, cleaner, more secure energy, and through funding for communities on the frontline of floods, fires and glacial collapse. There isn’t an excuse left. There is only a choice about where power and money go next. Every dollar we don’t spend now on adaptation, resilience and cutting emissions, we burn many times over later: on disasters we could have prevented and economies we scramble to fix too late.

This year’s UNGA should be the moment that choice gets made in public. Governments arriving in New York will talk about resilience, about energy security, about protecting their citizens from an unstable world. Let them explain on the record why a fossil fuel industry that has spent decades profiting from that instability should not be the one paying to fix it so wrecking the planet no longer pays off.

The fires, floods and storms won’t just go away. The system that keeps producing these disasters, and keeps paying the same companies for the privilege, will not change itself unless political leaders step up. It is on all of us to make sure they hear, as loudly as possible, that the time for excuses has run out.

The post After Hormuz, Nepal and wildfires, people want action to make polluters pay appeared first on Climate Home News.

Ed Miliband – who was until July the UK’s energy minister – said the growing urgency and severity of extreme weather and related disasters require a shift in thinking, calling on governments to put the issues “front and centre”.

“Climate breakdown, in my view, must be an issue for foreign ministers and prime ministers, as well as energy and climate ministers – the security community, not just the activist community, the generals, not just the green campaigner,” he told an audience of policy and business leaders.

There is a need to assess risk differently, he added, by embedding climate and nature in national security systems, threat assessments and contingency planning. He also urged countries to pool information because climate shocks can travel fast through supply chains as well as influencing financial markets and migration patterns. 

The framing of climate change as a threat to countries’ security and stability is not new, but it has gained greater emphasis as the impacts of global warming are biting harder in places like Europe, which is struggling with more intense heatwaves, drought and forest fires.

In mid-August, Miliband said in a social media post, reflecting on the UK’s hot and dry summer, that he would convene foreign ministers attending the UN General Assembly in late September to discuss how to respond to “this new national security threat” and build a coalition for action. But he did not give further details of that initiative on Monday. 

Australia calls for unified response

Other leaders in New York also reflected on the growing threat to their societies and economies from climate change impacts and exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his country “understands the dangers of global warming and the urgency of climate action as well as any nation”.

“We have seen it up close – from increasingly intense bushfires and floods, to the damage warming oceans are wreaking on our vulnerable coastlines,” he said in a speech, adding that with a record-breaking El Nino forecast, Australia and Pacific nations are preparing for a potential summer of extreme heat, bushfires and floods.

With scientific forecasts of worsening impacts now coming to pass, “this means the global community cannot afford to be frozen in time as the world warms around us”, he added. People cannot be left to cope alone, he said, emphasising that as leaders, “we need to come together, to meet the problem head on”. 

Australia will lead the negotiations at the upcoming COP31 climate summit, and has brought the existential threat to Pacific countries from sea level rise into the diplomatic limelight. The pre-COP gathering next month will be hosted in Fiji, with a visit by leaders to Tuvalu.

Speaking to Climate Home News in New York, Panama’s environment minister Juan Carlos Navarro said the small Central American country faces hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from drought in the Panama Canal due to El Niño.

The Panama Canal Authority estimates income could be reduced by between $225 million and $400 million due to slower maritime traffic passing through the strait.

“What a great irony,” Navarro said. “Panama being a small, carbon-negative country pays the price for the big carbon-emitting countries.”

Climate investment “critical” to stability

Amina J. Mohammed, deputy secretary-general of the United Nations, said there was a need for countries to stick with multilateral approaches to problems including climate change, despite the difficult geopolitical times the world is going through. She added, however, that it “does require your voices. It won’t happen by itself. We have to lean into it.” 

The rest of the high-level UNGA week in New York will show the extent to which multilateral efforts to resolve the world’s problems – from climate change to poverty – have top-level support as leaders give their speeches, including the Brazilian and US presidents on Tuesday.

Kaysie Brown, associate director for climate diplomacy and geopolitics with think-tank E3G, said the statements by Miliband and other leaders at Climate Week NYC had underlined the political and government case to integrate climate considerations into security thinking and institutions at the highest level.  

“In a world of escalating climate impacts and the record El Niño expected to heighten risks worldwide alongside energy volatility and geopolitical tensions, investing in global climate resilience and the clean energy transition are critical to credible strategies to enhance stability and national security,” she added in a statement.

Suneeta Kaimal from the Natural Resource Governance Initiative (NRGI) said that, while in previous years governments heavily focused their speeches on climate action, this year’s focus on energy security does not change the underlying challenge. 

“The fact that the framing has changed from energy transition to energy security doesn’t change the reality that this transition needs to occur in energy systems. It’s just a different framework. It’s a more transactional framework, but it all points to the need for resilience,” she said.

Speaking at the opening session of Climate Week, Iceland’s Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir described how her country had reacted to the spiralling costs it faced from the 1970s oil price crisis by investing in a large-scale district heating system fuelled instead by its abundant geothermal energy.

“Resilience wasn’t built while the crisis was happening. It was built in the years after – deliberately, patiently, as a national mission – so that the next shock wouldn’t hit as hard, if at all,” she said.

New COP goal on electrification

Speaking at a separate event on Monday, UN climate chief Simon Stiell pointed to a new voluntary target expected to be adopted at COP31 for 35% of global energy use to come from electricity by 2035 as a strategy that can help cushion countries, families and businesses from fossil fuel supply shocks and rising costs.

At the United Nations, the Turkish COP presidency gave more details of the electrification goal it first announced at the Bonn climate talks in June, including sharing with governments a final text of the pledge it wants them to get behind.

The pledge sets out a global ambition to advance electrification, highlighting the importance of supporting developing countries to identify their grid investment needs and access finance for electrification. 

“It is a development strategy, an industrial strategy, a health strategy, and a security strategy,” Stiell said.

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In a statement on Monday, the COP31 hosts said they will launch the Antalya Pledge on AI, which they billed as a “political” commitment on how AI is “designed, procured, powered, deployed, measured and managed” in support of climate action. 

“We must openly discuss AI’s growing energy consumption and it is time for governments to start setting the terms,” COP31 president Murat Kurum said in an emailed statement. “We expect companies to be transparent about their energy use and to power their operations with clean energy”. 

No further details about the pledge have been made available so far, including whether it will include a clean energy commitment or whether governments and companies will be invited to sign on. The COP31 presidency said it would share a draft before the summit opens in Antalya in early November.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell went further in a New York speech on Monday, warning that AI leaders are “on thin ice when it comes to license to operate, and sinking deep underwater when it comes to public support”.

“Energy-guzzling artificial intelligence is driving up planet-heating pollution from coal, oil and gas, while ratcheting up energy costs for households and businesses,” he said, adding that data centre projects are being put on hold due to public opposition from New York to Texas.

Growing energy use and emissions

Concerns about the environmental impacts of AI infrastructure and its impact on rising electricity prices have led to a growing backlash in some communities, especially in the US.

Big Tech’s breakneck race to develop new AI models and build out the energy-hungry infrastructure supporting them has stoked fears over the technology’s growing climate impact. 

Greenhouse gas emissions generated by data centres through their electricity use are set to more than double between 2024 and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Data centres, which underpin various technologies including AI, are expected to consume more power than all but five countries by the end of the decade. 

The AI race is also driving a surge in new fossil gas investment in the United States, where Big Tech giants including Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta have struck up major deals with fossil fuel operators to power their infrastructure. 

In China, the other major global AI force, coal provides around 70% of the electricity powering the country’s data centers, according to an IEA report published last year. 

More space for AI at COPs?

Despite AI’s rapidly growing relevance for the world’s ability to limit global warming, high-level discussions on the climate impact of the technology have been largely absent at UN climate summits.

While the pledge is still being developed and scarce details have been made public so far, the Antalya initiative, alongside sharper rhetoric from Stiell, suggests that might be changing.

Climate Home News understands that the UN climate change body is encouraging AI companies to be present at COPs as the climate summits set the global direction for energy policy and tech firms now have a major stake in it.

Earlier this year, UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched an initiative aimed at holding AI companies accountable for their environmental impacts and repeated a call for all big AI companies to commit to powering every data centre with renewable energy by 2030. 

Align AI with science

Stiell said that tech titans need to start showing why the benefits of AI outweigh its “skyrocketing costs”, by setting credible climate targets, coming clean about their energy use and powering data centres with renewable energy. 

AI proponents claim that, despite its growing energy use, the technology’s widespread application would bring net benefits in the fight against climate change by driving massive energy efficiency gains and optimising renewable energy integration. The IEA estimates that existing AI applications could cut emissions by more than data centres add.  

Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn

But critics argue that it is wrong to compare theoretical gains with real-world emission growth and any gains are outweighed by the widespread adoption of AI tools by fossil fuel companies to extract planet-heating oil and gas faster and more cheaply.

Stiell said the tech industry needs to “respect science and start aligning with global climate efforts – urgently”. 

Alongside the AI pledge, the COP31 presidency has also announced it will launch an ‘AI for Clean Technologies’ Initiative, which will develop a portfolio of AI-enabled clean-technology pilots in priority sectors, including smart energy and green industry. 

This programme aims to demonstrate the responsible use of AI in practice, the COP31 presidency promised.

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At the June 2026 UN Climate Meetings in Bonn, the incoming Turkish COP31 Presidency introduced a headline target for the Action Agenda: raising electricity’s share of global final energy consumption from around 20% today to 35% by 2035. 

Backed by the international Electrify Now campaign – also launched in June by the European Commission and governments across five continents, including Ethiopia – the aim is to replace fossil fuels with clean energy by shifting the way we travel and transport goods and commodities, cook and warm our homes and offices, and power our industries.

On paper, this is a welcome signal. Yet, as world leaders line up behind global goals in the lead-up to COP31, African nations face a fundamental question: whose energy transition are we talking about? For the roughly 600 million people living without electricity on the continent, international climate targets often sound less like a lifeline and more like a conversation happening on another planet.

For developed countries, electrification is largely a replacement exercise – swapping petrol and diesel vehicles for electric ones, and gas boilers for heat pumps powered by existing, stable grids. 

But across sub-Saharan Africa, the challenge is vastly different. The region accounts for 85% of the global population without electricity, up from 50% in 2010. Here, electrification is not a technology swap; it is the foundational building block of human dignity, economic sovereignty, energy access and modern development.

Electricity connections must deliver real development

Half of the number of people without electricity access in Africa live in three countries – Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo – while 900 million other Africans lack clean cooking solutions.

The proposed global electrification goal must not treat a continent with nearly half of its population without electricity the same way it treats mature Western economies.

To regard electrification merely as a tool for decarbonisation misses the core reality of our continent. Africa is not just transitioning an existing energy system; we are building one from the ground up in many places.

If a global electrification target of 35% by 2035 is to mean anything for Africa, it must be rooted in African realities. That begins with acknowledging that expanding power connections alone is insufficient. 

China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit

Energy poverty does not end when a power line crosses a village; it ends when electricity is reliable, affordable and powered by clean sources that spur productive economic activities. Connecting households to a micro-grid they cannot pay to use does not deliver development.

Electrification can also help solve the critical issue of super pollutants in countries like Nigeria, notably the production of methane and black carbon, by replacing combustion-based systems with cleaner, electric alternatives.

Breaking from past extractive models

Equally critical is how the electricity is generated. Within some African policy circles, electrification has occasionally been viewed with scepticism – seen as a possible Trojan Horse to justify expensive nuclear projects or to expand long-term fossil gas lock-ins. 

We must be clear: expanding electricity demand while increasing reliance on volatile fossil fuels or unviable, high-cost infrastructure is a false solution.

True electrification must be paired directly with the massive development of Africa’s unparalleled renewable energy resources. 

Africa holds 60% of the world’s best solar resources, alongside immense hydro, wind and geothermal potential. Tying the global electrification push to renewable energy capacity and local battery storage is the only pathway that protects African economies from international fuel price shocks while keeping our climate commitments intact.

Global climate negotiations such as those ongoing at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) offer another building block for Africa’s green energy future. 

International trade linked to 20% of global emissions – but imports ignored

Adopting a shipping carbon price at the IMO this year, through the Net-Zero Framework, would create a climate fund worth $12 billion a year. This finance could be used not only towards the electrification of Africa’s ships and ports, but also for building broader renewable energy production on the continent.

Furthermore, global initiatives must break from past extractive models. Africa cannot remain merely a site for extracting critical minerals – such as lithium, cobalt, and copper – to feed green supply chains elsewhere, only to import expensive finished technologies. 

An authentic, inclusive campaign must support the development of local industry, mineral value addition and job creation on the continent.

Africa’s COP31 agenda should centre clean electrification

To achieve this, international campaigns like Electrify Now must deepen their partnership with Global South institutions. Western-centric messaging encouraging people to buy electric vehicles and install heat pumps at home must be paired with calls for robust transmission grids, decentralised mini-grids, industrial energy security and affordable clean cooking.

For this to happen, it would be great to see more African governments, businesses and civil society organisations join the Electrify Now campaign, where they can advocate for the challenges and opportunities on our continent. 

Ethiopia is a great example, where a government policy to ban the importation of petrol and diesel cars has led to the country becoming a continental leader in the uptake of electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has seen the cost of electricity come down significantly and accounts for more than half of Ethiopia’s renewable energy generation capacity.

Türkiye says it has “final decision” at COP31 despite Australia running negotiations

The road to COP31 offers Africa a pivotal opportunity to place clean electrification at the very centre of its economic and climate agenda. 

By taking ownership of this narrative, African leaders can insist that global targets deliver capital, technology sharing and infrastructure investments tailored to local needs.

Electrification is not a luxury or a secondary climate goal. Powered by renewable energy – the African sun and wind – it can be the engine of our green industrial transition. It is important for global climate architecture and Western governments to be aligned with that reality.

The post Why the global electrification agenda misses the point on Africa’s energy crisis  appeared first on Climate Home News.

As governments are expected to continue fraught talks over how to advance the global transition away from oil, coal and gas in Antalya this November, both of the co-host countries are pursuing fossil fuel expansion at home, without a national timeline to phase out their use.

Türkiye has accelerated its rollout of wind and solar energy in recent years. But that progress has yet to make a dent in the country’s dependence on fossil fuels for power, as demand growth has outpaced the renewables build-out, new analysis by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) has found.

The share of electricity generated by burning coal and fossil gas – 56% in 2025 – has barely changed since 2019, and total fossil fuel use in the power sector, and the emissions it produces, are still rising, according to the report released on Friday.

The Turkish government has also signalled that fossil fuels will remain a central component of its energy mix and has outlined plans to expand the country’s burgeoning domestic gas production in the Black Sea. 

‘Need to demonstrate seriousness’

Australia, which will chair the Antalya negotiations, relies on fossil fuels for over 60% of its electricity, with coal alone still supplying 45%. According to experts, it lacks an ambitious plan to shift away from fossil fuels at home, relying heavily on carbon offsetting to reach its climate targets. 

Australia is also the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter and has plans to expand its coal and gas production, which is backed by significant government subsidies. It recently upset climate groups by approving an extension of the Saraji open-cut coal mine in Queensland.  

Türkiye says it has “final decision” at COP31 despite Australia running negotiations

Jennifer Morgan, a senior fellow with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and former climate envoy for Germany, said Türkiye and Australia need to demonstrate their seriousness about their COP presidency roles by leading by example on the energy transition.

“They have made progress in renewable energy,” she told reporters this week. “But I think their credibility – and their ability to therefore bring momentum and good outcomes to the COP – will depend on their taking further action at home.” 

Türkiye’s electrification homework

The co-hosts’ fossil fuel policies are being scrutinised in the run-up to the annual UN climate summit, with much riding on the signal climate diplomacy sends on the energy transition.

Türkiye has so far stopped short of putting any overt political capital behind the fossil fuel transition itself. It has instead been rallying support for a new global electrification target of 35% by 2035, seen as the centrepiece of this year’s non-negotiated Action Agenda put forward by Ankara.

Electrification emerges as COP31 priority

COP31 president Murat Kurum said last week the push to electrify economies – through measures like electric vehicles and heat pumps – will “automatically” lead to a reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

Türkiye’s own energy plan projects the country’s electrification rate would fall short on the global target and only hit 25% by 2035, according to the CAT report, which called for a “substantial step-change” in electrification policies and the deployment of more renewable power and grid infrastructure. 

Coal still dominant

CAT’s analysts also warned that, without a parallel phase-out of fossil fuels, rising electricity demand risks being met in part by coal and gas, failing to deliver the emissions reductions the electrification target is meant to achieve. 

Türkiye has had some success in its clean energy build-out: the share of electricity generation from wind and solar rose to 22% in 2025, up from 12% in 2020, according to the CAT report.

But coal’s role in Türkiye’s electricity mix has also grown, in both its share and absolute terms, over the past decade. And while reliance on fossil gas has declined overall, it still plays an important role in Ankara’s energy policy, which is pushing to boost domestic gas production in the Black Sea.

Dr Niklas Höhne from the NewClimate Institute said the government could demonstrate leadership as COP31 president by building on its recent successes in increasing its renewable energy capacity and announcing targets and plans to phase out coal and gas ahead of the summit. 

According to CAT, Türkiye should phase out coal by 2040 and fossil gas by 2045 at the latest to align its power sector with global efforts to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C above preindustrial times. 

Türkiye quiet on fossil fuel roadmap

Ümit Şahin, coordinator of climate change studies at the Istanbul Policy Center (IPM), said Türkiye’s strategy is to approach the fossil fuel debate exclusively from the “end-use point of view”. 

“I don’t expect any push from the Turkish presidency to the producer countries in terms of fossil fuel production,” he told reporters. 

Neither does Şahin believe the Turkish presidency will throw its political weight behind another big-ticket item for COP31: a new global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Brazil took on the responsibility to voluntarily draft this document outside of the formal negotiations as a way to break the deadlock at last year’s UN summit in Belém when governments clashed over whether to develop one. 

The outgoing COP30 presidency will deliver the roadmap in early November – but it will be up to Türkiye and Australia to guide countries towards a decision on how the blueprint will be taken forward, either inside or outside the negotiations.

Leadership needed

Australia’s Chris Bowen, COP31’s president of negotiations, promised to lobby producing countries to deliver a “meaningful step forward” on the fossil fuel transition in an interview with The Guardian earlier this year. But he has been quiet on the role Australia sees for the fossil fuel transition roadmap. 

Natalie Jones, senior policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), said the COP31 co-presidents “must provide clear leadership” on this process. 

“This roadmap cannot be left in a dusty drawer,” she told journalists. “Rather, it must be translated into action, with all countries identifying what elements they can adopt or develop in their own national roadmap.”

Like Türkiye, Australia has yet to produce a national blueprint for winding down coal, gas and oil. Rather than moving toward a phase-out, state and federal governments have kept expanding fossil fuel licensing over the past year, according to a new analysis published this month by Climate Analytics. 

Under existing policy, both coal and gas are on track to remain in Australia’s power system as late as 2050 – a trajectory the report defines as incompatible with the 1.5C limit the country says it’s committed to. 

No binding end dates for the Netherlands

Analysts are watching out for national transition roadmaps as a bellwether for governments that claim to be leaders in the global shift away from fossil fuels.

The Netherlands, which co-hosted the first fossil fuel transition conference in Santa Marta this year, published its own domestic roadmap earlier this week. The document followed through on a pledge that “leadership on transitioning away from fossil fuels must be backed by concrete action, not just ambitious words”, said a spokesperson for Stientje van Veldhoven, the Dutch minister for climate policy.

But experts criticised the plan for failing to set a binding end date for the country’s fossil fuel production and use. While targeting a rapid increase in renewables capacity, the Dutch government only commits to phasing out oil, gas and coal “in the energy and feedstock system to eventually zero, and to minimise fossil use” by 2050. 

Yvo de Boer, a former Dutch diplomat and executive secretary of the UN climate body, said the Dutch roadmap falls short of what’s needed to give industry the confidence to deploy capital in support of the energy transition with greater predictability. 

“Ultimately, a roadmap without deadlines is nothing more than a footpath paved with good intentions,” he added, writing on LinkedIn. 

The post Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn appeared first on Climate Home News.

This was the message from a coalition of global institutions working on energy, water and agriculture at this month’s Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda.

“Energy, agriculture, water and nutrition actors rarely design solutions together,” the Agri-Energy Coalition said in a Call to Action on powering food systems with clean energy.

Using more renewables – especially solar power – to drive food systems would reduce food losses, ensure year-round availability and affordability of healthy foods, and improve productivity, income and resilience among farmers, food processors and other small enterprises, the coalition added. 

In an interview with Climate Home News at the forum, Olamide Niyi-Afuye, CEO of the Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA) – a body representing private-sector developers of small-scale, off-grid electricity systems across the continent – said its members are starting to recognise this interdependence and are increasingly considering businesses that combine energy with agricultural activities.

This, Niyi-Afuye added, could lead to greater supply and use of clean power for key processes like irrigation, food processing and storage, creating new sources of revenue for both sectors. 

CHN: Conversations at the Africa Food Systems Forum highlighted how organisations working in energy and agriculture often operate in silos. What has hampered their collaboration, and how has that affected Africa’s economic development?

A: Most mini-grid companies in Africa were primarily incentivised to achieve connections. If you look at some ongoing projects, you see a cost-per-connection model [of revenue]. When a subsidy is tied to achieving a connection, regardless of whether it is a productive connection, you might not notice the problem until five years down the line, when you realise the cash flows are not what you projected.

Despite African walkout, fractious land COP ends without drought deal

So now we’re in a “come-to-Jesus moment” as an industry, where we’re righting the wrongs and adjusting our business models to make sure companies do not go bust and there is some level of sustainability over the long term.

The saying is not wrong that we’ve been working in our own silos because we’ve focused on the smaller things instead of the helicopter view. There needs to be cross-pollination [between the energy and agriculture sectors] because, if we are thinking about industrialisation, energy is a key driver of industrialisation. We will not achieve that if we’re not in the room and part of those conversations.

CHN: Productive use of energy is intended to ensure electricity access goes beyond lighting homes to improving livelihoods, creating jobs and powering equipment. But what happens when farmers cannot afford the equipment they need to do that? How can energy, agriculture and equipment players work together to make the transition more accessible?

A: That’s why we’re having conversations with companies set up to de-risk the agriculture sector. By leveraging that connection, we’re able to aggregate potential energy needs and develop instruments that make equipment more affordable through bulk procurement.

We can have arrangements that make it easier for farmers and food producers to lease equipment and eventually own it over a period. There’s no real pressure to recover the capital very quickly because you’re looking at scale.

There is a whole lot across the agricultural value chain that needs energy, from farming and harvesting to food processing and value-addition. We need to understand the energy needs across the value chain and bring our members in to provide solutions.

Developers do not necessarily need to provide every productive-use solution themselves. They can partner with equipment suppliers, financiers, agribusinesses and other service providers to enable customers to use electricity productively. The objective is simple: do not just electrify communities; enable economic activity that uses that electricity.

CHN: When Africa’s industrialisation is discussed, you hear things like renewables cannot provide enough baseload, while some food processors are sceptical about switching to renewable energy because of these concerns about reliability. What is your response?

A: It’s not a controversial statement to say that a typical baseload is usually from the grid, and it’s usually from multiple sources including renewable energy. For large-scale operations, we can look at blending multiple sources of energy. But how do we solve the problem of a mid-sized farmer? We can solve it with a mini-grid using renewable energy.

Comment: Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition

If you go to a small farmer in a rural area, they don’t care about what source of energy they’re getting. They just want something that can help them get from A to B. If you look at the direct energy needs of farmers and food processors, I’m sure 90 percent of their consumption can be solved by renewable energy. Let’s start with that problem first. Then, as they scale, they might need to ramp up, and we can start talking about a bigger baseload.

CHN: How much agricultural value is lost because farmers and food businesses lack reliable, affordable electricity?

A: If you look at, for example, the fact that we need to maybe plant tomatoes or strawberries in Jos before it gets to Lagos [Nigeria], which most likely is by road, I can assure you that a good chunk, if not stored properly, would be bad by then. So the fact that we do not have energy is in itself a lost opportunity to maximise the potential of the agriculture sector. So until we’ve solved the energy problem, we will not salvage waste – and for me that is a lost opportunity. 

CHN: AGRA, an institution focused on scaling agricultural innovations to help smallholder farmers, estimates a massive shortfall between current investments in the continent’s food systems and what is actually needed to build a resilient, profitable agricultural economy – to the tune of $180 billion per year. Can integrating energy into food systems help bridge that gap?

A: Yes – if energy can help unlock the potential to earn more money, investors will follow the money. Investments go where there is certainty, and until there is certainty around cash flow and revenue, investment will be limited.

My vision is to see more Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) being signed between energy players and the agriculture sector. We can start by getting people into the room, understanding their pain points, crafting a framework and documentation that works for both parties, and then seeing deals happen.

This interview was shortened and edited for clarity.

The post How clean energy can boost business for Africa’s food producers appeared first on Climate Home News.

Recent extreme events – from wildfires and heatwaves in Europe to flash flooding following a glacier collapse in Nepal – have shocked and devastated communities, bringing years of warnings about such climate impacts to the doorstep of communities around the world.

One thing is certain: the new climate reality is here – and the adaptation strategies designed for yesterday’s world are no longer sufficient.

Attribution science has since shown that the hotter and more frequent heatwaves we’re experiencing around the world would have been virtually impossible without today’s high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Climate shocks are now so severe that they reverberate through supply chains, food and water systems, financial markets and the movement of people.

They must be a catalyst for a new way of thinking about adaptation and resilience, and how we finance solutions that work. A failure to invest in adaptation in one region can create costs far beyond it, which is why the concept of shared resilience is critical for leaders to grasp.

Investment not charity

At the UN General Assembly (UNGA 81) this month, leaders have an opportunity to translate today’s urgency into concrete commitments on adaptation and loss and damage finance ahead of COP31.

Those commitments are needed to underpin global stability, shared prosperity and human security. Governments should use this moment to show what a new response looks like: finance that reaches communities faster, supports locally grounded solutions, strengthens national systems, and helps countries prepare before the next shock arrives.

If we want sustained economic growth, food and water security, and resilient and prosperous societies across every region, adaptation must be at the heart of today’s development and security agenda. It cannot be just a future planning consideration or a narrow issue for climate ministries. Adaptation is now everyone’s business – and it must be financed fast and fair.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly framed climate finance as an investment rather than charity, warning that “a world in climate chaos cannot be a world at peace” and describing human security as freedom from the chronic and sudden disruptions that climate change multiplies.

What’s more, adaptation delivers a real return-on-investment, with researchers estimating that every dollar invested produces $10 in benefits, saving lives, protecting livelihoods, and reducing the costs of future disasters.

Hitting adaptation limits

The urgency to scale adaptation systematically is growing. The newly released “Limiting Overshoot” report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) confirms what scientists have long warned: exceeding global warming of 1.5C is now unavoidable under current policies. Yet, how high temperatures rise – and how long the world remains above the 1.5C threshold – will determine whether communities, economies and entire ecosystems can keep pace.

There are limits to adaptation. When we breach those limits, lives and livelihoods are lost, and people and ecosystems suffer greatly. We cannot simply build yesterday’s infrastructure a little stronger and assume it will be enough.

Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say

We need to fundamentally change the systems that determine how societies anticipate, absorb and recover from both immediate and evolving non-linear climate shocks. This includes transforming physical systems, such as infrastructure, and the governance systems that affect where and how we live to how we maintain our health and wellbeing.

Finance today is nowhere near the scale of the challenge.

The UNEP “Adaptation Gap Report 2025” estimates the shortfall in adaptation finance in developing countries at $284 billion–$339 billion a year – roughly 12 to 14 times current international public flows of around $26 billion. That gap is a development, economic and human security problem, especially for the most vulnerable populations who have contributed the least to causing the climate crisis.

Building resilience into financial systems

There are already signs of what a more systemic adaptation response could look like. Communities around the world are delivering practical solutions at local level, even as adaptation finance remains notoriously, and appallingly, difficult to access. Cyclone-resistant homes, local forecasting capacities, drought-resistant crops, heat insurance for pregnant informal workers and mangrove restoration are rooted in local knowledge and lived experience, while delivering benefits far beyond the communities where they originate from.

But local innovation alone is not enough; the systems around it need to be resilient too.

Jamaica offers one example. The country has built a multi-layered disaster-risk financing framework, including a catastrophe bond and contingency funds, through sustained fiscal discipline and proactive investment. Its debt-to-GDP ratio fell from around 147% in 2012 to around 62% in 202-25. That groundwork matters when disaster strikes.

Hurricane Melissa’s destruction shows need for climate resilience push

Following Hurricane Melissa, Jamaica was able to secure billions of dollars in reconstruction financing from multilateral banks – finance that might otherwise have been much harder to access. The lesson is clear: resilience can be built into the financial architecture of a country before a crisis arrives. That is the shift we now need to make at scale.

The foundations already exist – in Kingston’s fiscal reforms, in early-warning systems from the Sahel to the Pacific, and in every community that adapted before disaster struck. What is still missing is the political will, and the finance, to take what works and put it to work everywhere, at the speed our world’s new climate reality demands.

To hear more on this issue from high-level officials and experts, sign up for this event during Climate Week NYC, at 8am EDT on September 24 (in person or online), moderated by Climate Home News Editor Megan Rowling: Adapting to the New Climate Reality: Why Accelerating Impacts Demand New Responses.

The post Human security relies on adapting to the world’s new climate reality appeared first on Climate Home News.

Recent reporting on international climate negotiations has highlighted a sharpening divide within civil society and multilateral diplomacy. A troubling, simplistic narrative has taken root: that the UN climate process is witnessing a binary struggle between defenders of science and those attacking it.

This framing is not only inaccurate; it is dangerous. Characterising a substantive methodological and political debate in these terms misdiagnoses the stakes and stirs conflict instead of clarity.

No one disputes that climate action must rest on science. Science tells us what has led us to the climate crisis – the accumulation of historical emissions – and how much carbon budget remains if we are to keep temperature rise below 1.5C. It tells us how much global emissions must drop, and how fast. Science is also essential in assessing each country’s historical contribution to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Responsibility, however, must also be based on capacity. For those who generated the largest share of historical emissions, that capacity includes the enormous wealth and economic power accumulated through the same fossil-fuel-intensive development that generated those emissions.

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

While principles that should guide human action aren’t scientific questions – they are matters of values – applying them to real-world problems requires scientific grounding. Equity recognises the scientifically established reality of differentiated responsibilities among countries and within societies. Putting equity into practice demands scientific rigour.

Scrutiny of IPCC models

Today, critics are scrutinising the assumptions and frameworks behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), used to project future scenarios and map global mitigation pathways. These concerns centre squarely on equity and justice.

The economic, technological and policy assumptions used in IAM scenarios are normative choices rather than scientifically prescribed or neutral facts. These include choices about discount rates, economic growth, energy demand, technology costs, carbon prices, land availability and the regional location of mitigation. Many IAM scenarios reproduce existing global inequalities rather than transform them. Questions about transparency, representativeness and diversity in the scientific process are deeply urgent.

Most IAM scenarios are built primarily around global cost-effectiveness – directing emissions reductions to places where mitigation is modelled as cheapest rather than allocating effort according to historical responsibility, capacity and development needs.

The resulting pathways allow developed countries to retain disproportionately high levels of energy and fossil-fuel consumption while requiring developing countries to undertake substantial mitigation and carbon removal, including land-based measures that threaten food security and local development.

Northern models often assume uniform access to cheap financing. In reality, Global South economies face far higher capital costs, driving up the price tag of rapid infrastructure shifts. 

Constraints on development space

Scenario constraints also limit the development space poorer nations need without guaranteeing adequate climate finance. When models treat profoundly unequal starting points as uniform baselines, policy pathways lock in global inequality under the banner of scientific objectivity.

Pointing out these structural flaws isn’t rejecting science. It is essential scientific scrutiny aimed at producing stronger, fairer, and more actionable results.

Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks

The fight is not about whether we want to keep temperature rise below 1.5C, but about how we get there. A pathway can be technically compatible with 1.5C or 2C while still being deeply unequal in who gets to consume energy, who must reduce emissions, and whose development is constrained. Temperature compatibility alone does not make a pathway fair.

Critiquing IAM scenarios from an equity perspective is neither an attack on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) nor an attack on science. Rigorously examining IPCC reports – their substance, assumptions, and processes – is an acknowledgement of the IPCC’s importance and entirely consistent with scientific method.

Tensions over AR7 timing

There is a separate but related tension over the cycle and timeline of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7).  Some governments and civil society voices advocate completing its Working Group reports in time to feed directly into the UN’s Second Global Stocktake in 2028. 

The motivation makes sense: policymakers need timely science. But several developing-country negotiators and researchers have warned that meeting that deadline could severely disadvantage the Global South.

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

Global North authors and institutions remain disproportionately represented in the research underlying IAM assessments. Developing-country researchers often work with fewer institutional resources, smaller research budgets, and less administrative support. Accelerated publishing and assessment schedules can further limit their ability to generate, submit, and peer-review research in time for inclusion.

The AR7 timeline concerns boil down to inclusivity, representation, and equity. Requiring the IPCC to meet tight political calendars without ensuring meaningful support and participation for developing-country researchers risks reproducing the very inequalities being challenged.

Cooperation requires equity

Political interests are indeed at work in UNFCCC negotiations and must be surfaced. Bad-faith actors seek to evade fossil-fuel phase-outs or shirk climate-finance obligations. Many developed country parties are guilty of both, including those who style themselves as “Friends of Science.”

We must not lump legitimate scientific critiques raised by several Global South researchers and many civil society organisations concerning representation, economic assumptions and fair-share accounting together with obstructionism. Doing so risks misrepresenting and delegitimising critical scientific work and Global South equity and justice perspectives.

The climate movement is strongest when it aligns rigorous science with global equity and justice. Achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals requires robust science that fully integrates the experiences, economic realities and academic contributions of the Global South. Effective climate action also requires international cooperation, and without equity, such cooperation cannot be sustained. We do not have to choose between science and equity. We need both.

The post Framing the climate science debate as a binary battle isn’t just wrong – it’s dangerous appeared first on Climate Home News.

The project at the Kamoa Copper mine in the south of the DRC, which became operational last month, is one of the largest solar and battery facilities generating baseload power on the continent.

The clean electricity is displacing millions of litres of polluting diesel and costs less than a fifth of the price of generator power per kilowatt hour, the mining company said.

The project is part of a massive solar deployment across the continent. Recent data from global energy think-tank Ember found record solar capacity of 17 GW will be installed in Africa this year – a 45% rise from 2025.

Installed by CrossBoundary Energy, a developer of distributed renewable energy systems, the solar-battery facility at the DRC mine is “proof of concept” that solar and battery systems can provide the reliable power at scale needed by remote industrial operations, Annebel Oosthuizen, managing director at Kamoa Copper, told Climate Home News in an interview.

“There’s always been this perception in the DRC that solar isn’t ideal because it is raining half of the year. But it’s perfectly ideal. We are seeing a lot of interest from other mines that are still depending on generators and power imports,” she said.

Mining drives solar and battery surge

Like Kamoa Copper, a growing number of miners in the DRC are looking to solar power to compensate for the country’s chronic energy deficit at a lower cost as global diesel prices hit record highs amid ongoing attacks on oil infrastructure in the Middle East.  

As a result, the mining sector has become a key driver of the country’s growing clean energy demand and one of the biggest importers of large-scale solar equipment.

Ember found the DRC is set to install a record 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels this year – a 544% increase compared to 2025 and the equivalent of adding more than 60% of the country’s entire 2023 grid capacity.

The deployment of combined solar and battery storage solutions to deliver stable energy supplies to mines has also caused battery imports to surge. In dollar terms, the DRC’s imports of batteries from China far exceeded that of solar in the year to June 2026, according to Ember.

A crippling power deficit

The DRC holds significant energy resources and some of the world’s largest reserves of the minerals required to manufacture clean energy technologies. It is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, which is needed to make batteries, and Africa’s top producer of copper – a metal sought after for its electrical conductivity which is pivotal to the world’s electrification efforts.

Yet just 22.5% of the DRC’s population had access to electricity in 2024 – one of the lowest rates in the world, according to the World Bank. And as mining expands and more of the minerals extracted are being processed in the country, unreliable power supply has become a major constraint for the sector, which contributed to more than a quarter of the country’s GDP in 2024, excluding oil and gas.

The country has enormous hydropower potential, with the hydroelectric potential of the Congo River estimated at around 100 GW. But only a fraction is being harnessed.

Still, virtually all of the DRC’s grid-connected electricity is generated by hydropower by the state-owned utility, Société Nationale d’Électricité (SNEL).

The electricity then has to be transported more than 1,500 kilometres to reach the mining belt in the south – a challenge made more difficult by ageing grid infrastructure and limited transmission capability. SNEL did not respond to a request for comment.

“It is estimated that there’s around a 1 GW energy deficit for the DRC mining sector,” said Matt Tilleard, CEO of CrossBoundary Energy, which owns the solar and battery equipment at the Kamoa Copper mine and provides the power as a service.

“The interest in solar from the mining industry is not theoretical – it is already translating into large-scale solar and battery procurement for mining operations in the region,” he added.

Solar displaces gas, saves energy costs

The facility installed by CrossBoundary is part of a plan by Kamoa Copper to supply more of the electricity it needs with solar energy and batteries as its operations expand, a faster solution than relying on harder-to-build hydropower projects.

“Our processing capacity has increased drastically over the last couple of years. We’ve constructed the largest copper smelter in Africa and that is so power-intensive,” said managing director Oosthuizen.

A joint venture between Canadian firm Ivanhoe Mines, Chinese company Zijin Mining Group and the DRC government, the mine needs 235 megawatts (MW) of power, which is expected to nearly double to 450 MW in the next five years.

Kamoa Copper currently receives 100 MW from state utility SNEL – “and the rest we have to find a solution for”, said Oosthuizen.

Another 30 MW solar and battery baseload facility is expected to come into operation this month, enabling around 25% of the mine’s power needs to be generated by solar energy. An additional 60 MW of continuous solar power will be added by the end of 2027, and the company is exploring options for more solar capacity and two hydropower projects.

The operational 30 MW of clean electricity provided by CrossBoundary Energy will power pumps that prevent 400 million litres of water from flooding the underground mine every day.

In August alone, the facility has reduced the mine’s diesel consumption by around four million litres, generating an estimated $11 million dollars in savings at current diesel prices, Oosthuizen said.

The mine still relies on generators to meet a 20-40 MW deficit and to power the trucks used in the mine, which Oosthuizen said would be difficult to electrify in the next five years because the technology isn’t yet ready to operate in the mine’s tough and wet conditions.

Avoiding a two-speed transition

To prevent a major imbalance between industrial players’ access to clean, reliable energy and the millions of Congolese who remain without power, the government requires private electricity producers to reserve at least 10% of their generated power for local communities living near rural production sites.  

Delivering this, combined with rural electrification, mini-grid development and national grid expansion, is critical to prevent a two-speed energy transition that leaves people behind, said Catherine Mukobo, head of ACERD, the Congolese Association for Renewable and Decentralised Energies.

“Without implementing these policies, the DRC could get in a situation where mines have access to abundant modern energy while a large part of the population remains without electricity,” she said.

The post DR Congo’s power-hungry mining sector drives record solar surge appeared first on Climate Home News.

The deal at the COP28 climate summit promised to triple the amount of renewable electricity capacity to at least 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements from 2% to 4%. Taken together, these two commitments have the potential to usher in a new global economy that is cleaner and smarter. 

Research suggests the world is on course to meet the renewable energy target, with an annual growth rate of nearly 30% between 2023 and 2025. The same cannot be said of energy efficiency, where growth fell to 1% in 2024, but has since climbed to 1.8%, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA attributes this poor performance to a number of factors: strong growth in industrial energy demand, policy gaps, greater access to inefficient air conditioners, and an overall growth in energy demand which renewables have not been able to meet. 

Global electricity demand is predicted to grow by 3.8% in 2027, up from 3% in 2025. According to researchers, this demand is primarily being driven by heavy industries – steel, chemicals, cement – which overwhelmingly still use fossil fuels to power their energy-intensive factories. 

In addition, the explosive growth of AI has led to the development of new data centres which require huge amounts of electricity. Under conservative scenarios, data centres could double their electricity consumption by 2030, and those dedicated to servicing AI needs could see a 30% annual increase over the same period. The more these trends continue, the greater the cost of transitioning to cleaner, more efficient technologies.

Taking the right policy direction

While both old and new technologies put added pressure on the electricity system, the targets set in recent years remain the same. This presents policymakers with a challenge and an opportunity.

Policy is often designed to be responsive to the world around it. When the EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive was first adopted in 2012, the world was a very different place. That is why it has since been updated, twice, in 2018 and 2023.

Is electrification a no-brainer in the race to net-zero?

Mario Giordano, global head of public and government affairs at lighting multinational Signify, calls this piece of legislation “market transformational” as it created “long-term certainty through binding targets, energy saving obligations, and renovation requirements”. This, in turn, allowed businesses to plan investments and start to innovate with the stability the directive created. 

The legislation has been credited with improving efficiency rates across the bloc. According to Eurostat, the EU used a record low amount of energy in 2024, 20% less than in 2006, an historic high point.

One of the next steps on that journey for Europe is the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive which seeks to upgrade old buildings and introduces a zero-emissions standard for new public ones.

“It is a huge opportunity to renovate the continent’s building stock, and lighting is everywhere,” said Giordano. “There will need to be a massive overhaul from conventional lighting to LEDs, targeting the worst-performing buildings,” he added. This bold legislative approach could provide a template for other countries to develop energy policies with maximum impact on efficiency rates.

How to get to 4%

Jérôme Bilodeau, energy efficiency programme manager at the IEA, told Climate Home News “the world is not currently on track” to meet the COP28 efficiency goal but agreed it was achievable with the right policies in place.

“Nine out of 10 countries have achieved a rate of improvement of 4% at least one year over the past decade,” he said.

“There are many examples of effective energy efficiency policies across the world, and governments are introducing new ones regularly,” he added, pointing out that countries representing 85% of global energy demand had announced hundreds of new or updated policies in 2025 alone.

Signify: “We believe resilience is becoming more important to businesses right now”

In addition, the global energy crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has turbocharged the policy environment with a suite of new policies from dozens of countries now in place to reduce energy demand.

The IEA recommends closing policy gaps and raising the ambition of existing ones to help achieve the 4% energy efficiency improvement target. These policy gaps can be quite straightforward to address – for example, creating efficiency standards for new buildings, something the IEA says is lacking in almost half of all countries. And as technologies improve, policies need to be updated.

“In some countries, a building that meets the local efficiency standard may in fact be using three times as much energy as one in another country with a similar climate but with higher efficiency standards,” Bilodeau added. 

One integrated system

Giordano argues that a whole system view is needed: “Across different industries, there is a growing consensus that energy efficiency, electrification and renewable energy are not separate policy tracks, but one integrated system,” he said.

He believes that lighting can make a serious contribution to this system as a scalable and cost-effective efficiency measure. As lighting is a mature technology that is installed almost everywhere, from small buildings to city streets, it can be upgraded faster and provide immediate savings.

“You can reduce emissions, free up electricity for electrification purposes, and also save money that can be invested elsewhere,” he added.

Can the circular economy win over big business?

The latest figures show lighting accounts for around 8% of global electricity demand, and Signify estimates that switching to efficient LED technologies could save enough electricity to power up to 300 million heat pumps, or 400 million electric vehicles worldwide.

The focus on lighting would form part of a wider policy push to upgrade each country’s energy system where efficient appliances and processes are powered by renewables. And using energy more intelligently and flexibly, for example, by incentivising demand when renewable generation is higher, will greatly improve efficiency rates.

The English city of Liverpool is an example of one place seeking to use electricity in this way. A recent project, completed in 2026, saw the installation of ‘traffic adaptive lighting’ on key routes between a new football stadium and the city centre. The council can now respond to real-time fluctuations in demand, such as increased usage on match days, to meet people’s needs. This new approach could offer up to 30% in cost savings over the next decade, according to Signify.

Making energy work harder

An oft-repeated phrase in energy circles is that the greenest electron is the one you don’t use. The world is making steady progress on the challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels. New wind and solar power installations continue to grow at record rates, with widespread coverage across continents. But in the headlong rush to build out capacity, governments and business may at the same time be taking a step backwards by paying insufficient attention to energy efficiency.

The positive work in renewables could easily be undone without a coordinated effort to make energy go further and work harder than it currently does. Experts in these circles agree that stronger, targeted policies are an important first step to achieving the world’s energy efficiency goals. But time is quickly running out to do so.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

The post The overlooked shortcut to meeting the world’s energy goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

Launching a study that highlighted the role of climate change in causing the glacial rock and ice collapse that triggered the Himalayan flood, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto told reporters that “no amount of local adaptation can fully shield vulnerable people downstream from this scale of destruction”.

The findings released on Thursday are likely to strengthen Nepal’s case for emergency support from the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Its board members met informally on Wednesday to discuss whether to grant the country a maximum of $20 million towards its estimated $4.8 billion cost of recovery and reconstruction, but no decision has yet been taken.

Nepal’s foreign minister Shisir Khanal told Climate Home News last week that the destructive flood was “exactly the kind of climate-driven catastrophe the Fund was created to address”.

Hard to predict

The WWA study found that rock-ice avalanches are very hard to predict and that moving people out of areas vulnerable to such floods is difficult as their livelihoods revolve around the rivers along which the floods travel.

The recent disaster began on the morning of August 26, when an avalanche started falling beneath a glacier. This caused huge amounts of rocks and glacier ice to fall over a kilometre to a valley floor, where they then picked up more rock and ice and became a flood of debris heading downhill and downstream along the border of Nepal and Tibet.

The torrent entered the narrow Lhende Khola gorge and crashed through the busy Gyirong port border crossing at 170 kilometres an hour. It continued many kilometres downstream before eventually turning from rock and ice to water and slowing down.

The flood swept through villages, roads, bridges and hydropower stations, killing over 1,300 people in Nepal with more than 5,000 still missing. The flood also killed at least 40 people in Chinese-run Tibet.

Those on higher ground away from the river mainly survived but the flood’s speed meant that many people received no warning to seek higher ground or shelter.

While Nepal has early warning systems for flooding caused by rain and glacial lake outbursts, the WWA study noted that rock-ice avalanches are complex and understudied, with methods to monitor them still being explored.

Co-author Walter Immerzeel, mountain hydrology professor at Utrecht University, told journalists that with current methods, the disaster could not have been predicted.

But, he said, in the future it may be possible to use remote sensing techniques to analyse glaciers and rocks to generate a warning before a collapse occurs.

A technique called radar interferometry can detect hotspots which should be monitored with field-based sensors and drones, he said, adding that early warning systems could be installed in these areas using seismometers, water-level measurements and CCTV.

Because doing this for thousands of glaciers across the Himalayas would be difficult, authorities could monitor only the rock and ice faces that are a danger to the river valleys with the most people and infrastructure in them, he added. But this would still require lots of investment together with international collaboration and coordination, he warned.

The study found that another potential adaptation strategy – restricting development in flood-prone river valleys – is socially, economically and politically difficult.

The scientists said habitable land is scarce in these steep river valleys and economic activities like transport and hydropower generation are dependent on the river itself.

Madhab Uprety, a Nepali scientist from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that, while new development should assess the risks of floods, many existing communities and buildings are already at risk.

Loss and damage

Otto said the flood should be discussed in the context of loss and damage as “there is no doubt that climate change is one of the drivers” and “it’s also one of the types of events that are absolutely outside of the limits we can possibly adapt to”.

As well as the deaths, a Nepali government’s assessment has found that a large amount of infrastructure was damaged, including more than 7,500 homes, 105 bridges, 48 public buildings, 47 cultural heritage assets, 18 schools, 13 hydropower facilities, seven health facilities, and numerous shops, hotels, restaurants, irrigation systems and farms. Over 30,000 people were affected.

Developing countries have called for the loss and damage fund’s board to hold an emergency meeting to discuss how to respond to Nepal’s request for funding. Instead of a full board meeting though, board members met only informally and online on Wednesday, Climate Home News understands. A source with knowledge of discussions said the informal nature of the meeting meant they were not able to take decisions or agree on next steps, which have been left up to the board’s co-chairs.

Speaking before that meeting started, Nepali climate negotiator Manjeet Dhakal said he had “heard of an extremely positive response” to Nepal’s request from board members. “Hopefully there will be something – a decision that the fund will do for exactly the reason that the fund was established,” he said.

Ajay Mathur, former Indian climate negotiator and now head of The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, told a separate press briefing on Wednesday that the Nepal flood disaster would push loss and damage higher up the agenda of international climate talks, particularly if the United Nations Secretary-General decides to champion the cause at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

Murat Kurum, Turkish environment minister and president-designate of COP31, told Climate Home News last week that he would be “pleased” if the fund could support Nepal and that he will keep calling in every speech for countries to give money to the loss and damage fund.

Jennifer Morgan, former German climate envoy and now a senior fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, called for the loss and damage fund – which currently has around $630 million in contributions – to be topped up with new pledges from governments as well as solidarity levies on things like luxury air travel, super-rich individuals and fossil fuel firms’ windfall profits.

The post Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say appeared first on Climate Home News.