Climate Change News

Organisations and campaigners across the climate justice movement are joining forces to counter the wider chilling effect of a major legal blow that could bankrupt one of its largest players.  

Earlier this week, a jury in the US state of North Dakota found Greenpeace International and its US bodies guilty of a mix of defamation, trespass, nuisance and conspiracy – and ordered them to pay more than US$660 million in damages to oil pipeline company Energy Transfer.  

The lawsuit related to protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017. These actions, centered around the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, brought Indigenous activists fighting for water rights together with climate campaigners challenging the company’s planned transmission of oil from North Dakota to Illinois. They did not stop the pipeline from being completed, but caused major disruption. 

People hold signs in support of the Standing Rock Sioux outside U.S. District Court where the tribe is seeking an injunction to permanently stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Energy Transfer had previously sought damages against Greenpeace and others in a federal lawsuit that was dismissed in 2019.  

But this time the claim was successful. Energy Transfer’s legal team successfully argued during the court proceedings that Greenpeace had “incited” the disruption. Greenpeace contended that its US bodies only played a small role, and the international group itself merely signed a letter opposing the project.

Greenpeace planning fight-back

Energy Transfer called it “a resounding verdict”, declaring Greenpeace’s actions “wrong, unlawful, and unacceptable by societal standards”, adding that it “is a day of reckoning and accountability for Greenpeace”. But Greenpeace US bodies have said they will appeal and Greenpeace International is “weighing all legal options”.

Greenpeace, which has campaigned on a wide range of environmental matters since the 1970s, acknowledges there is a risk of bankruptcy due to the damages awarded against it. However, it maintains this is “very remote” for its international arm whose assets are located in the Netherlands, where the verdict is “very unlikely to be recognised by Dutch courts”. Greenpeace’s 25 other branches around the world are expected to keep functioning as normal.  

The case has been classified as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). These cases, which arose in the United States in the 1970s and ’80s, can take various forms across different jurisdictions. But legal experts say they are an increasingly popular “lawfare” tactic used by powerful companies and individuals around the world – and many cases relate to the environment. 

Clean hydrogen hype fades as high costs dampen demand

Sushma Raman, the interim executive director of Greenpeace’s US-based organisations Greenpeace Inc and Greenpeace Fund, said the ruling was part of a “renewed push by corporations to weaponise our courts to silence dissent”. She added that lawsuits like this are aimed at “destroying our rights to peaceful protest and free speech”.  

“Deeply flawed trial”

Some concerns have centred around the legal proceedings themselves. A trial monitoring committee of independent lawyers concluded that it had been “a deeply flawed trial with multiple due process violations that denied Greenpeace the ability to present anything close to a full defense”. It claims the jury was “patently biased” because many members work in the fossil fuel industry and the judge lacked knowledge on the complex constitutional issues at the heart of the case. 

Speaking in a personal capacity, Charlie Holt, European lead at Global Climate Legal Defense and a former legal advisor for Greenpeace International, told Climate Home the decision was shocking, if not surprising. “There’s still an understandable desire to trust in the judicial system. But I think we could see how urgent a threat [the lawsuit] was,” he said.  

“This kind of activity is becoming increasingly common across climate action, with fossil fuel actors undermining progress wherever possible,” said Brice Böhmer, climate and environment lead at non-profit Transparency International. 

SLAPP lawsuits proliferate

Holt agreed, warning of copycat cases. “The big fear is that this will embolden other fossil fuel companies to try their luck with these large-scale SLAPPS as a means of shutting down criticism,” he said.   

SLAPPs are on the rise in Europe too, but as a jurisdiction it is generally less sympathetic to such claims. 

In December, Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International reached an out-of-court settlement in a legal dispute centered on the environmental group’s activism on an off-shore oil production vessel. It was one of the biggest ever legal threats against Greenpeace. 

Food systems are the missing ingredient from the COP30 menu

Last March, oil and gas company TotalEnergies was ordered to pay €15,000 ($16,200) in costs to Greenpeace France after failing to sue the NGO over a report claiming that the energy giant massively underestimated its 2019 greenhouse gas emissions. 

Emboldened by decisions like this, Greenpeace International is counter-suing Energy Transfer in the Netherlands, seeking to recover all costs and damages. If successful, it would be the first application of a new EU anti-SLAPP Directive. 

Counter-suit in Dutch court

Kristin Casper, Greenpeace International’s general counsel, said the organisation is “just getting started” and would see Energy Transfer in court in Amsterdam this July. “We will not back down,” she said. “We will not be silenced.” 

As part of a Global Week of Action, Greenpeace East Asia Taipei office’s activists join the widespread solidarity of the global Greenpeace network to send the message to Energy Transfer: “We will not be silenced”. (Greenpeace/Yves Chiu)

Anne Jellema, chief executive of climate campaign group 350.org, said the judgment should serve as a “wake-up call” to the entire climate movement, coming alongside a potential unleashing of new fossil fuel production and rollback of environmental protection in the US. 

“The ruling sends a dangerous message to environmental organisations worldwide: that corporate polluters can weaponise the courts to silence opposition,” said Jellema, adding that it is “especially concerning” for smaller, frontline groups operating in regions without strong legal protections.

“If one of the world’s most prominent environmental organisations can face financial ruin for speaking out, smaller movements with fewer resources are even more vulnerable,” she said. 

Holt said Greenpeace has been mobilising civil society organisations behind US and European anti-SLAPP coalitions since the first claim over the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2017. An open letter to Energy Transfer expressing solidarity with Greenpeace was signed by 450 organisations around the world.

The post Greenpeace’s $660m damages ruling a ‘wake-up call’ to climate movement appeared first on Climate Home News.

Mario Boccucci is head of the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD).

This year will present us with a unique opportunity to put forests at the forefront of climate implementation. As one of the most effective solutions we have to climate change, forests can be a game-changer, and we should seize the moment to ramp up investments.  

Strengthening international cooperation and unlocking finance for forests will enable forest-based mitigation to reach its potential and also make a real difference to the planet’s health and people’s lives.  

Forests are more than a network of trees. Covering a third of the world’s land mass, they are vital carbon sinks, helping to avert major climate change impacts. The conditions must be put in place to enable this to continue. Forests also provide food security and sustainable livelihoods for more than 1.6 billion people – from Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon to herders in the Sahel.   

Destroying forests also hurts economies. With an estimated economic value of US$150 trillion and contributing directly to the livelihoods of 90 percent of more than 1 billion people living in extreme poverty, forests can support more than 86 million jobs. Investments in forests will create even more jobs and support livelihoods. Furthermore, every $1 spent on forests returns an investment of $9. 

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

We have already seen that forest-based mitigation is impactful. Processes like REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) have demonstrated that investing in forests delivers real emissions reductions, strengthens economies, and secures livelihoods.

In Ghana, farmers growing sustainable cocoa earn more while keeping forests intact. In Indonesia, restoring mangroves helps fishing communities thrive while protecting them from storms. Costa Rica and Viet Nam have proven that sustainable forestry and ecotourism can lift people out of poverty and contribute to local economies. 

UN-REDD Programme gets results

Globally, over 20 countries have reported a reduction of almost 14 billion tons of carbon dioxide – real progress. The UN-REDD Programme has directly provided support to these countries, mobilizing $1 billion in REDD+ financing since inception, including $350 million in results-based payments, proving that forest protection is practical, effective, and scalable.   

Over time, we’ve also seen progress in REDD+ efforts to ensure that everyone – including Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women and youths – have a stake and role in forest protection under more equitable and fair terms. In addition, we have seen improvements in integrity, transparency,  accountability, and carbon monitoring.

At least a quarter of the world’s land area is owned, managed, used or occupied by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and they must be helped to become effective stewards of forestland. Indigenous Peoples and local communities are our real partners in achieving climate goals and curbing deforestation long-term.   

But if we fail to drastically scale-up financing and support for forests, this golden opportunity 2025 presents us with will stall. A UN Environment Programme report published late last year estimated that restoration finance needs to quadruple from 2022 levels of $64 billion to $296 billion by 2030 to reach global restoration targets while contributing to climate and biodiversity goals. Meanwhile, harmful subsidies for industries driving deforestation continue to flow.   

Funding through carbon markets – with improved transparency, human rights protections, and environmental integrity – will be part of broader elements and finance to enable countries to deliver on their specific climate goals and ensure transformational change that limits the risk of reversals, with significant additional benefits. Along with collective action, this will support decarbonization efforts and make a real difference, allowing us to change the course of the next ten years. 

COP30 turning point in the Amazon

This year’s COP climate conference will take place at the heart of the Amazon, a region that symbolizes both the promise and peril of our moment. It’s a turning point.  

Governments, businesses, financial institutions, and multilateral organizations must scale up forest finance, phase out harmful subsidies, and put forests at the center of climate action, and of economic and security strategies.  

“Not silver bullets”: COP30 CEO downplays impact of yearly climate summits

Having worked on forest conservation across the globe for 30 years, it has been a privilege to work alongside so many forest and climate champions – including UN-REDD Programme partners – who have devoted all their time and efforts to protecting forests. We have unprecedented opportunities and challenges ahead of us – and I hope this short reflection is useful to see the forests and the trees.

It is especially relevant on the International Day of Forests, which may enable people new to the forest agenda to understand and engage. 

Forest solutions are real and there is evidence they deliver. They provide multiple benefits thanks to a massively growing movement of champions across all stakeholders. REDD+ has been tested and proven to work. We now have a global mechanism for forest and climate action, finance and results that works.  

Our collective effort should now focus on massively scaling up implementation and finance. 

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Back in 2021, the CEO of BlackRock – which manages $10 trillion of assets – took to a stage in Riyadh to predict that the next 1,000 billion-dollar startups would not be media companies or search engines but businesses developing “green hydrogen, green agriculture, green steel and green cement”.

Fast forward four years, and Larry Fink has changed his tune, telling an audience of oil and gas executives in Houston last week: “Everyone talks about the opportunity with hydrogen. Well, we can have green hydrogen and blue hydrogen, but is anybody willing to pay the cost?”

Other speakers at the “CERAWeek by S&P Global” conference in Texas were similarly down on the prospects for clean hydrogen, a gas that can replace fossil fuels in sectors that are hard to otherwise clean up, like shipping, aviation, chemicals, steel and cement.

The CEO of oil company Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, pointed to the high cost of green hydrogen compared to fossil fuels as a demonstration of “the fiction that critical transition technologies are genuinely competitive and being rapidly deployed”.

“Many were aiming for $1 per kilogram [for green hydrogen] by 2030. Yet production costs alone currently range wildly from almost $4 per kilogram to $12,” he said, comparing International Energy Agency (IEA) figures on the cost today with the Biden administration’s targeted cost for 2030.

Even sellers of clean hydrogen accepted that mood has shifted down a gear. David Burns, vice-president of global clean energy at industrial gases multinational Linde, said there’s now “more a sense of realism, a more kind of pragmatic approach to what’s going to work”. But, he added, viable projects which “meet the willingness to pay for customers in different sectors” are still moving forward.

Green hydrogen costs more

According to the IEA, producing green hydrogen – which is made with renewable energy – is between 1.5 and 6 times more expensive than the traditional, most common and polluting way of making it, with unabated fossil fuels.

But this could change, the IEA says. The price of fossil gas could rise or carbon pricing could make fossil fuel-based hydrogen more expensive. Or large-scale deployment of green hydrogen could bring the cost per kilo down from the $4-$12 Aramco’s Nasser cited to $2-$9 by 2030. It could go even lower in parts of China, the IEA says, where abundant solar meets cheaper electrolysers – the equipment that turns water into hydrogen.

Carbon colonialism? Malaysia and Indonesia plan storage hubs for Asian emissions

“The future cost evolution will depend on numerous factors, such as technology development, and particularly on the level and pace of deployment,” the IEA said in its latest global hydrogen review.

But as BlackRock’s Fink noted, high prices are proving a barrier to deployment. Companies like BP and Ørsted have cancelled or delayed green hydrogen production projects in recent months, citing unfavourable economics.

Governments boost hydrogen demand

Some governments have stepped in to try and increase demand. The European Union, for example, has set a mandate that synthetic fuels, including those based on green hydrogen, must make up 1.2% of all the plane fuel at its airports by 2030 and 35% by 2050.

The EU has similar measures for shipping, while a German government programme aims to cover the extra cost of buying clean hydrogen in industries like steel, cement, paper and glass, so that it is not a financial risk.

Canada’s new leader culls carbon tax seen as burden on voters

These policies have helped, the IEA says – but “the overall scale of these efforts remains inadequate for hydrogen to contribute to meeting climate goals”. In October, the Paris-based analysts revised their forecast for 2030 hydrogen demand down by about a fifth compared to the previous year.

Green hydrogen’s supply problems

Estimates of supplies of green hydrogen also look likely to have been overstated. Experts told Climate Home recently that a planned pipeline to bring hydrogen from North Africa to Europe will struggle to deliver the quantities the European Union is hoping for.

Adrian Odenweller, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), warned that the EU should “certainly not count on the delivery” of green hydrogen from Algeria and Tunisia any time soon.

“Green hydrogen production projects have a poor track record and often get delayed. I would expect this to be even worse for massive infrastructure projects such as pipelines that require international coordination,” he said.

The SoutH2 pipeline and production facilities face opposition from campaigners too. Shereen Talaat, director of MENAFem Movement, a North African feminist justice network, said in a statement by nearly 90 NGOs criticising the huge project that it “exploits African land, water, and labour to feed Europe’s energy needs, while women – especially in rural and frontline communities – bear the brunt of water scarcity, land dispossession, and energy poverty”.

EU backs North Africa hydrogen pipeline, but is it a green dream?

Green hydrogen projects require land to build facilities and water and renewable electricity to produce the hydrogen. Areas with a lot of sun – which helps produce green hydrogen cheaply – often don’t have much water. The IEA says that 40% of green hydrogen projects are in water-stressed areas like those around the Mediterranean, Mexico and Northern India.

To address this issue, many developers in dry countries like Saudi Arabia, Australia and Mauritania are developing desalination plants to supply their green hydrogen facilities with water so they do not take it away from locals.

For all its challenges, Wood Mackenzie analyst Hector Arreola believes clean hydrogen is the “most viable pathway to deep decarbonisation” in steel, cement, chemicals and heavy transport – and the only green solution for emissions of ammonia, methanol and refining.

“While hydrogen’s broader adoption may take longer to materialise due to current cost barriers, the path to cost reduction is well-established,” he said. “As technology scales, electrolyser efficiency improves, and renewable energy costs continue to fall, production costs are expected to decline – following a trajectory similar to that of solar and wind.”

The post Clean hydrogen hype fades as high costs dampen demand appeared first on Climate Home News.

Juliana Arciniegas is a former negotiator of climate and environmental treaties from Colombia. She currently leads the Nature agenda at the Latin American Think-Tank Transforma.

With Brazil – a global leader in addressing hunger and home to the largest share of the Amazon rainforest – hosting COP30, hopes have been running high that food system transformation will finally be central to the UN climate negotiations. 

Held in the city of Belém, gateway to the Amazon, the summit places the climate-nature nexus in the spotlight, as leaders make decisions that will shape the future of the rainforest and communities they are guests of.

Yet food systems, the biggest driver of deforestation and responsible for around one-third of global emissions, have once again been sidelined. Despite being highly vulnerable to climate change, they also hold immense potential for keeping climate change in check. Overlooking them is not just a missed opportunity for Brazil to reinforce its leadership, it risks undermining critical initiatives like forest protection. 

Why, then, has one of the most powerful climate solutions been left off the agenda for COP30, recently set out by president-designate André Aranha Corrêa do Lago?

Broken food system

Worldwide, countries are facing the consequences of a broken food system which is fuelling the climate crisis threatening food production. Our current system feeds the profits of food giants while leaving family farmers struggling, consumers facing rising food costs and governments having to answer to it. This will continue unabated under business as usual. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is unambiguous. Its Sixth Assessment Report stated that climate change has already reduced food security, and will increasingly put pressure on food production and access, especially in vulnerable regions.

“Not silver bullets”: COP30 CEO downplays impact of yearly climate summits

The world’s agricultural sector is a climate culprit, as well as a casualty. Not only does it produce 30% of anthropogenic emissions, agriculture is also responsible for up to 80% of tropical deforestation around the world. There is simply no way to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement without dramatic reductions in emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU). 

The good news is the sector also holds vast potential. Practices like agroforestry, biochar, crop diversification, reduced tillage, and sustainable fertiliser use could reduce some 10-12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and shave 0.3°C off peak warming.

Support for family farmers

Brazil is acting on some of these challenges. During its G20 presidency, it launched the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. At COP28, it co-founded the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation. This year, it is set to establish the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, which promises to generate transformative funding to tackle deforestation. Nonetheless, if COP30 does not address the role of food and farming in driving this deforestation, it risks treating the symptom, not the disease. 

COP president do Lago has, rightfully, emphasised the need to elevate adaptation as a priority at the climate talks. Family farmers are key to this: they are critical to global supply chains and hold the solutions to ensuring food security in a changing climate. 

However, within the current system, they often lack the finance and political backing to do so. In 2021-22, just 14% ($1.3 billion) of international public climate finance for agriculture and land use was targeted at small-scale farmers. 

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

This is another area where Brazil is taking action. Last year, President Lula da Silva launched a National Plan for Agroecology and Organic Production which, among other things, helps family farmers become more climate-resilient. 

Do Lago is clear on the need for COP30 to deliver. “Words and text must be translated into actual practice and transformations on the ground,” he writes. What does this mean for food and farming?

Financing for sustainable agriculture

First, Andrea do Lago has rightly highlighted the importance of the Global Stocktake (GST) to shift gear from agreements to action. Building on food system transformation goals from the first GST in 2023, Belem should see countries and non-state actors decide on a roadmap, with guiding options and economic incentives, to support national efforts to transition to sustainable agricultural practices. 

Second, COP30 must define concrete measures for countries to achieve the GST goal to halt and reverse forest degradation by 2030, in line with the UN biodiversity targets. This must include support for countries to tackle specific causes of deforestation including agriculture, mining and infrastructure. 

Third, with countries due to submit their new action plans – NDCs – by September 2025, these need to include targets, timetables and funds to transform their national food systems. They aren’t starting from scratch – at COP28 over 150 countries signed up to the Emirates Food Systems Declaration with measures such as reducing AFOLU emissions, access to healthy and sustainable diets, and putting farmers at the heart of implementation. 

Fourth, COP30 is a pivotal moment to bridge the climate finance gap. Brazil has consistently urged wealthier nations to fund developing countries’ adaptation and transition to sustainable agriculture. The Baku-to-Belém roadmap from COP29 must show progress in mobilising at least $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 and allocating specific funds for nature and sustainable food systems. The financial policies discussed at the climate talks must align with fair trade, tariffs, and subsidies that incentivise ecosystem protection and support farmers and local communities.

COP30 chief calls for global unity on climate action as cooperation falters

Against a backdrop of tense geopolitics and international aid spending being slashed, it’s more important than ever that leaders recognise the importance of investing in a global sustainable food system to safeguard national priorities. 

 A transformed system that addresses malnutrition, properly compensates farmers, improves productivity, and protects the environment could deliver net economic benefits of US$5-10 trillion annually. With deep expertise in addressing hunger, supporting family farmers and stewardship of the Amazon, Brazil is uniquely positioned to seize the opportunity for COP30 to inspire a food system revolution – an ecological imperative and economic necessity for us all. 

The post Food systems are the missing ingredient from the COP30 menu  appeared first on Climate Home News.

After decades of producing planet-heating fuels, depleted oil and gas fields in Malaysia and Indonesia may have a new purpose: putting carbon dioxide from some of Asia’s top emitters back underground, in a big but risky bet by state oil giants and governments. 

Malaysia’s oil company Petronas has signed at least 24 memoranda of understanding with nine countries – among them Japan and South Korea – to store their excess CO2 emissions in exploited fossil fuel sites off the coast of peninsular Malaysia and Borneo island, in the gas-producing region of Sarawak.

These plans have sparked accusations of “carbon colonialism” from climate activists, who see exporting emissions for storage in another country as a “get out of jail free” card for continued fossil fuel use.

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While large carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities exist all over the globe, with many new ones under development, the scale of Petronas’ ambition is untested in the region. 

The state-run company is looking to develop three CCS hubs and two flagship projects across Malaysia, for a total storage capacity of 15 million tonnes of CO2 per annum (mtpa) by 2030 – equivalent to Senegal’s emissions in a year. All the world’s CCS plants combined can currently hold about 51 mtpa.

Petronas plans to put 20% of its capital expenditure into decarbonisation projects between 2022 and 2026, with CCS making up a significant portion of the billions of dollars it wants to invest. 

These projects are part of Malaysia’s broader energy transition strategy and its bid to become a carbon capture and storage hub for Asia, a goal shared by neighbouring Indonesia. 

A carbon capture and storage facility in Hokkaido, Japan, a country that plans to capture CO2 and then ship it to Southeast Asian countries (Photo: ERIA)

Some of Asia’s top emitters are set to become key clients, as Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees energy policy, deemed CCS “indispensable” for reducing power-sector emissions. Out of nine projects Japan has selected to test the viability of CCS, four aim to export carbon overseas, including to Malaysia and Indonesia.

While the International Energy Agency says a small amount of carbon capture will be needed in sectors where emissions are hard to reduce, like cement production, campaigners criticised Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan’s bet on carbon capture as a bid to prolong the lifespan of fossil fuel infrastructure.

Exporting emissions

Some experts consider both Indonesia and Malaysia as favourable locations to store captured CO2 because of their abundance of depleted oil reservoirs and saline aquifers, which could in principle hold the gas below ground.

Under the proposed deals, big industrial emitters in Asia would capture CO2 released when burning fossil fuels in their plants and factories, turn it into a liquid form, and ship it to Southeast Asia for storage.

Last September, Petronas agreed with eight Japanese companies and the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security, a government body, to design a project to capture and ship CO2 from Japan, then store it in a compressed “supercritical state” in a depleted gas field off the Sarawak coast. 

The Japanese entities will be responsible for capturing and liquefying the carbon emitted from power plants and industrial facilities, including steelworks and chemical plants, in Japan’s Setouchi region. Together with Petronas, they will also design the transport, injection and storage stages.  

Meanwhile in Indonesia, Japanese utility Chubu Electric Power has expanded its CCS collaboration with energy giant BP to connect Japan’s Nagoya port with the BP-owned Tangguh gas field in West Papua.

Through initiatives like the Asia Zero Emission Community, Japan has pushed fossil fuel developments in Southeast Asia, including exporting and storing overseas the equivalent of up to one-tenth of its current emissions by 2050, according to a report by Japan’s Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth. 

In shifting their climate burden and responsibilities to tackle it onto lower-income nations, Japan and other developed countries are engaging in “carbon colonialism”, campaigners say – mimicking a pattern seen in the export of plastic waste from the Global North to the Global South. 

“Wealthy, high-emitting countries get to keep burning fossil fuels while offloading their carbon onto nations that have done far less to cause the crisis,” said Sisilia Nurmala Dewi, 350.org Indonesia team lead. 

This Australian coal community is co-designing its own green future

Risky business

Oil and gas giants like Petronas, BP and Indonesian state oil firm Pertamina, as well as the Malaysian and Indonesian governments, have proposed projects worth billions of dollars, anticipating growing demand for CO2 storage. But analysts are more cautious, citing high uncertainties in the CCS market and technical difficulties in keeping the carbon below ground.

Given its high cost, CCS is largely unfeasible in Malaysia and Indonesia without the existence of cross-border projects, said I Gusti Suarnaya Sidemen, CCUS research fellow at the Jakarta-based Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), which founded the Asia CCUS Network together with the Japanese government. These are the kind of projects Japan and South Korea are keen to develop.

By financing projects in Indonesia, Japan is creating a strong incentive for Jakarta to pursue these ventures, said Dwi Sawung of WALHI Indonesia, an environmental NGO. “It’s really Japan who will pay.”

On the back of that, both Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta are providing incentives for developers – with the Indonesian government even bearing some of the expense of enhanced gas recovery, a method that uses the captured CO2 to extract more fossil fuels, said ERIA research associate Ryan Wiratama Bhaskara.

A demonstrator at the 2024 climate strike in Jakarta, Indonesia, calls carbon capture and storage a false solution. (Photo: Agung Wilis Yudha Baskoro/350.org)

Grant Hauber, strategic energy finance advisor for Asia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a US-based think tank, said there is a “dangerous lack of knowledge in decision-makers worldwide” about the capabilities, risks and costs of CCS.

Hauber said even widely cited success stories, such as the Sleipner and Snøhvit projects in Norway, have struggled with the unpredictable nature of CO2 storage. The captured carbon has been found to leak and is difficult to measure. Gas giant Equinor’s Sleipner project, for example, overreported its carbon savings by 28% from 2017 to 2021, due to defective monitoring equipment, according to DeSmog.

Injecting carbon into depleted oil and gas fields, where there are many potential paths for leakage or failures, is particularly tricky, Hauber noted, adding that geologies change across regions, making it more complex. “The chemistry is different. The conditions are different. Storage sites will perform differently. It’s what makes it so expensive,” he said.

To date, the vast majority of captured carbon has been used for a process known as enhanced oil recovery, which uses the CO2 to squeeze out hard-to-get oil in depleted fields. But 78% of new projects planned globally are destined for CO2 storage, according to the Global CCS Institute.

The risk of these high-cost abatement schemes, experts say, is that they divert funds away from proven climate solutions, prolong the burning of fossil fuels and, ultimately, cause more emissions. “The real solution isn’t to bury carbon; it’s to stop digging up more,” said 350.org’s Dewi.

“Not silver bullets”: COP30 CEO downplays impact of yearly climate summits

Tool for meeting climate goals?

Malaysia and Indonesia, however, view CCS as essential to meeting their net zero goals while they remain dependent on fossil fuels. For example, by mid-century, Indonesia plans to fit 76% of its coal-fired power plants with CCS technology. 

According to ERIA’s estimates, Malaysia has the highest storage potential – around 130 billion tonnes of CO2 – out of all assessed Southeast Asian countries, followed by Indonesia with 51 billion tonnes of CO2. 

Both countries are building up their legal frameworks in preparation. Last year, Indonesia adopted regulation that allocates 30% of storage capacity for imported CO2. Malaysia’s parliament approved its first CCS bill this month. In both cases, critics point to a lack of clarity around who is responsible for ensuring CO2 storage in the long run, and whether companies would be liable for damages.

Some projects have already moved forward. The Kasawari gas field off the Sarawak coast is set to become the world’s biggest offshore CCS facility potentially as early as this year and Malaysia’s first large-scale project of its kind. 

Kasawari’s gas reserves contain high levels of CO2 and Petronas, the plant’s owner, aims to remove the carbon and inject it under the sea in a depleted gas field to cut the emissions of its extractive activities.

Yet, even if the facility meets its target of storing 3.3 mtpa of CO2, this would amount to only a 1% reduction in Petronas’ current emissions, says a group of Malaysia-based NGOs.

The projects have also received criticism for their lack of transparency. “The environmental impact assessment for Kasawari was approved with absolutely no consultation,” said Meenakshi Raman, president of environmental justice non-profit Sahabat Alam Malaysia. Pollution threats to fishing communities are among the concerns.

Raman also cited a 2023 report pointing to a “huge gap” between the optimistic goal of CCS plants capturing 90% of emissions and real-world results, which show capture rates of around 50% on average. 

The report by policy institute Climate Analytics warned that under-performing plants could become a source of increased emissions for many countries, Raman said, making CCS a “false solution” to the climate crisis.

*This piece was edited to correct the figures in the graph to include storage capacity from saline aquifers, depleted oil fields and enhanced oil recovery.

The post Carbon colonialism? Malaysia and Indonesia plan storage hubs for Asian emissions  appeared first on Climate Home News.

He may be dubbed “Carbon Tax Carney” by his political rivals, but upon becoming Canada’s prime minister last Friday, Mark Carney cancelled the unpopular carbon levy on consumers.

The former governor of the central banks of England and Canada, who has never before held elected office, will lead the world’s second-largest country amid a punishing trade war with Washington and threats from US President Donald Trump to annex Canada.

His first order of business? With the cameras clicking, Carney slashed the carbon tax rate to zero for consumers, effectively ending what had been the governing Liberal Party’s signature climate change policy since its national launch in 2019.

“This will make a difference to hard-pressed Canadians, but it is part of a much bigger set of measures that this government is taking to ensure that we fight against climate change, that our companies are competitive, and the country moves forward,” Carney, 60, said on his first day in office after replacing Justin Trudeau.

The move signals an about-face for Carney, a former UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, raising broader questions about the best policy tools for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in today’s tricky geopolitical environment.

“Meaningful carbon prices are a cornerstone of any effective policy framework,” the former investment banker wrote in his 2021 book Value(s): Building a Better World for All. “To meet the 1.5C [global warming] target, more than 80 per cent of current fossil fuel reserves (including three-quarters of coal, half of gas, one-third of oil) would need to stay in the ground, stranding these assets.”

Analysts said Carney’s backpedalling on the carbon tax highlights the success of political attacks by the opposition Conservatives. But, they added, it does not undermine a broader strategy of asking large polluters to pay for their climate-damaging behaviour.

Industrial carbon price remains

While individuals, farmers and small businesses will no longer pay a carbon tax at the gas pump, industrial emitters will still be charged for their carbon footprint under national regulations launched in 2019.

“When it comes to reducing emissions, Canada’s industrial carbon pricing system has done most of the heavy lifting,” said Colleen Kaiser, program director of governance and policy innovation with the Smart Prosperity Institute, a Canadian research group. “It makes sense to continue this program.”

To get voters onside, Carney’s team ditched carbon levies on gasoline and heating oil for consumers – some of whom previously got rebates according to their income – in favour of increased support to go green by retrofitting homes or installing heat pumps.

This Australian coal community is co-designing its own green future

Experts say using a carrot rather than a stick to catalyse energy-saving behaviour still needs to be funded somehow. 

“My sense is the money to pay for that, instead of coming from a consumer carbon price, will come from large heavy emitters,” Chris Severson-Baker, executive director of the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think-tank, told Climate Home. “Something will need to be done to replace what the consumer carbon price was designed to do.”

Popular attitudes on who should pay for climate action have shifted since the carbon tax was announced. In 2020, when asked to choose between protecting the environment and creating jobs, 50 percent of Canadians said jobs should come first, according to polling data from the Consortium on Electoral Democracy, a research group.

Today, amid a cost-of-living crisis, 60 percent prioritise jobs over climate action.

Election politics in play

Against this backdrop, the opposition Conservative Party has rallied around the slogan “axe the tax,” suggesting Carney isn’t serious about doing that beyond a national election expected in the next few months.

“Carbon Tax Carney is pausing the carbon tax until after the election when he no longer needs your vote but still needs your money,” Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre posted on social media on March 14, when Carney became PM. “He’s flip-flopping on his beliefs to trick Canadians into a 4th Liberal government.”

The Conservatives had been far ahead in opinion polls prior to Carney coming onto the national scene and Trump’s tariffs. However, polling data released by Angus Reid this week, indicates a major shift in the political landscape. 

“With the Liberals at 42 percent in vote intention, what was a tired, discardable brand just three months ago would be on its way to a fourth term, this time with a majority,” the pollster said.

“Not silver bullets”: COP30 CEO downplays impact of yearly climate summits

Aside from ending the consumer carbon tax, specifics on Carney’s green policies remain sketchy. In his first speech after being sworn in as prime minister, he did not mention climate change or carbon taxes.

A spokesperson for Carney referred Climate Home to his official website but did not immediately provide responses to detailed questions about his proposals.

A spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada, the national government department responsible for climate policy, said it “is currently in a period of transition”.

Former Canadian environment minister Catherine McKenna said Carney’s decision to end the carbon tax was “unfortunate”. “Ironically, we’re killing a policy that works and now people are going to be less well off,” McKenna, a Carney supporter, told “Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast”, released on March 20.

She said she understood the political calculation behind the move, even though she still supports the idea of a carbon tax. “There are definitely lessons learned but we’re just going to move forward,” she added, calling for the carbon price to rise for heavy emitters of oil and gas.

The oil lobby

In his acceptance speech to lead the Liberal Party, Carney said he wants to make Canada “an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy”, echoing phrasing from a former Conservative prime minister who had close ties to the oil patch.

Canada is the largest foreign oil exporter to the US and fossil fuels are its most valuable export by far, worth $152 billion CAD in 2023, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the main oil industry lobby group.

Much of this crude comes from the Alberta tar sands, which environmentalists consider some of the world’s dirtiest oil for carbon dioxide emissions. Expanded tar sands production stands in direct opposition to Canada’s pledge to hit net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, analysts say.

But public discussions around building new pipelines from western Canada’s tar sands to consumers in the country’s east have intensified amid Trump’s annexation threats.

Tar sands are relatively energy-intensive and costly to exploit (Pic: Flickr/ The Cooperative) Tar sands are relatively energy-intensive and costly to exploit (Pic: Flickr/ The Cooperative)

The Pembina Institute’s Severson-Baker expects “lots of talk” about new pipelines in the coming months, even though he said “there is no actual economic case behind them”.

“The government truly has failed to reduce emissions from the oil sands sector,” he said. “That highlights how difficult it is for any government in Canada to regulate that sector.”

The CAPP did not respond to specific questions on Carney’s record and Canada’s shifting climate policies, but provided a statement.

“Canada is in a precarious position partly because for too long the federal government neglected the importance of our own energy and economic security,” said the group’s president and CEO, Lisa Baiton. “Following the imminent federal election, the next Government of Canada will need to address these critical issues with urgency, both for Canadians and for the oil and natural gas industry.”

Shifting business priorities

In what analysts consider an olive branch to the oil sector, Carney has removed carbon tax supporter Steven Guilbeault from the environment ministry, shuffling the former Greenpeace activist who regularly drew ire from Alberta politicians to culture minister and other roles.

The new environment minister is Terry Duguid, a lawmaker from Manitoba province who had not previously held a cabinet role.

Carney may also feel the need to appease members of the financial elite he once courted, as they jettison their support for net-zero investment goals.

Back in 2021, the central banker helped spearhead the the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, an initiative of major investors that pledged to support companies with clear climate goals.

After the election of Trump, US stalwarts including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock quit the initiative. Most of Canada’s big banks followed later in another sign of shifting commercial priorities.

The world’s biggest climate finance coalition is in crisis. Is it worth saving?

Back in 2021, making the financial case for investing in net-zero, Carney told an interviewer at the UN: “Don’t assume that your politician cares about this issue as much as you do.”

How much Canada’s new prime minister cares about the climate today – and the amount of political capital he’s willing to invest in protecting it – will be tested in the coming months by electoral pressures and businesses emboldened by the US dumping its climate promises.

This story was updated on March 20 to add comment from former Canadian environment minister Catherine McKenna.

The post Canada’s new leader culls carbon tax seen as burden on voters  appeared first on Climate Home News.

The world expects too much from the annual COP climate summits, said the CEO of COP30 to be held in Brazil this November, stressing the importance of implementing climate action all year round and outside of the UN climate talks.

Brazil’s National Secretary for Climate Change Ana Toni told a conference at Chatham House in London on Tuesday that “COPs are not silver bullets – people are expecting COPs to deliver things that COPs cannot deliver, because change happens every day.”

“We don’t need to wait for COP to start implementing,” she added, emphasising the crucial roles of the private sector and sub-national governments like provinces and cities. She also recommended celebrating green measures as a way of inspiring more such action.

One limitation of COPs, she said, is that country delegations are usually led by their climate or environment ministers whereas a lot of key climate decisions are made by ministers of finance, transport, agriculture and energy who “are not there”. “We have to go beyond the walls of the Paris Agreement,” she urged.

Brazil decides leaders will speak before COP30, easing logistics crunch

At COP29, where governments agreed a collective annual finance target of $300bn by 2035, the UK’s delegation was led by climate minister Ed Miliband. Three months after that COP last November, the UK cut the aid budget, which is its main source of climate finance, despite Miliband’s reported unease.

Emissions still rising

COP30 CEO Toni’s words this week contrast with the grandiose rhetoric of some previous COP leaders. At the opening of COP26 in Scotland in 2021, then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Glasgow summit “must mark the beginning of the end” of climate change, and in his closing speech in Dubai, COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber proclaimed that the summit “set the world in the right direction”.

But global greenhouse gas emissions have yet to peak and temperatures look set to breach the lowest 1.5C warming limit in the Paris pact, leading many campaigners and climate-change sceptics to question the value of UN climate negotiations and their flagship annual conferences. COPs attract tens of thousands of government officials, business executives, activists and journalists each year.

Rich nations ignore polluting past to claim climate plans are 1.5C-compatible

Sitting beside Toni in London, the UK’s climate envoy Rachel Kyte said that, in hindsight, governments had been too slow to act on the 2015 Paris Agreement. “A lot of countries went OK, we’ve done Paris” – and have put little effort into aspects of the agreement like Article 2.1c, which says finance flows should be “consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development”.

Two key tasks for Brazil’s COP30 presidency team will be to encourage governments to publish more ambitious climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), and to oversee the development of the “Baku to Belem Roadmap” which aims to mobilise $1.3 trillion a year from all sources, including the private sector, for climate action in developing countries by 2035.

The post “Not silver bullets”: COP30 CEO downplays impact of yearly climate summits appeared first on Climate Home News.

One balmy summer’s day in 2007, a trade union veteran with a Hells Angel beard and a penchant for disruption turned up at a town-hall meeting in Collie, Western Australia (WA), with the unwelcome news that the local coal industry was living on borrowed time. 

“Absolutely got my head kicked in,” recalled Steve McCartney, state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), whose no-nonsense, invective-prone manner belies a deep-seated altruism and care for those on the frontline of the energy transition. “They weren’t interested in anything I had to say. They kept reminding me there was 150 years of coal left in that hill outside town.”

Collie came into being in the 1880s after coal was discovered in the area. It soon became the heart of coal mining and coal-fired energy production in the state, and its two coal mines and three coal-fired power plants have powered the South West Interconnected System, WA’s main electricity grid, since 1931. 

Today, 130 years on, coal still runs as deep through its culture as the rich seam of fossilised carbon beneath the ground, with around 1,800 of the town’s 9,000-strong population working in coal-related jobs.

But as the planet heats up and the need to move away from the main culprit – fossil fuels – becomes more urgent, this small town is a microcosm of the transformation underway in the global coal industry. As the world’s coal-producing regions grapple with how to decarbonise their economies by mid-century without devastating local communities, Collie offers a promising blueprint for a “just transition” away from coal. 

Ending Australia’s coal dependence

The energy transition is set to cost nearly 1 million coal-mining jobs worldwide by 2050, and Australia is particularly exposed. The country is the world’s second-largest coal exporter, and nearly three-quarters of its electricity generation is coal-dependent – contributing over a third of its carbon emissions.

But as the country aims to shut 90% of its coal-fired power plants by 2035, Collie has successfully garnered close to A$700 million (US$445 million) in investment to help it attract new green industries, including battery energy storage, green steel, graphite processing and magnesium refining. The money will also go to retrain and repurpose the coal workforce and revitalise the town’s high street and tourist economy.

This plan, however, was not imposed from above by officials or corporate executives. Rather it is the result of a community-led, cross-sector collaboration, forged by almost two decades of painstaking struggle. 

Having powered the region for over a century, Collie’s public coal-fired power plants, the Muja and Collie power stations, will gradually be switched off by 2029. That clearly threatens the future of the town’s coal mining firms, Griffin Coal and Premier Coal, and its sole private coal power station Bluewaters.

The Muja coal-fired power plant in Collie (Photo: IHRB/Oliver Gordon) The Muja coal-fired power plant in Collie (Photo: IHRB/Oliver Gordon)

In response, the government, unions, businesses, and – most importantly – local people have jointly developed a transition plan that will support jobs, community stability and economic diversification. 

“The world has no choice but to move on from coal – but coal communities like Collie need to have a renewed future that guarantees workers the support, income and opportunities they need to transition to new sustainable industries,” said Sharan Burrow, special advisor to the International Energy Agency’s Global Commission on People-Centred Clean Energy Transitions and former head of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). 

“Collie is a remarkable example that has all the right ingredients…  It’s not a done deal yet, but it’s certainly on the right track.”

After Baku setback, activists call for ‘just transition’ to be front and centre at COP30

Anger, acceptance, action

After a decade of efforts by the likes of McCartney, Collie’s transition began in earnest in 2017 when the WA Government first announced plans to close Synergy’s Muja A and B sites. Initially, much of the community was in denial, recounted Ian Miffling, current President of the Shire (Mayor) of Collie. “People thought, ‘It won’t happen’. But gradually, it dawned on people that it was inevitable.” 

Over the subsequent years, initial conversations evolved into hard plans. By the time the state government arrived to announce the staged retirement of Muja C in 2019, the town was ready for them, armed with a solid vision and principles to guide the transition. 

“We wanted the town to decide its future, not the government,” McCartney explained. Residents emphasised the need for sustainable “jobs that create other jobs”, utilising the town’s long-established industrial skills – ones that wouldn’t leave future generations in the same plight. They also wanted to evolve from being a “one-job town,” recognising the vulnerabilities of relying solely on coal.

Steve McCartney, WA State Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (Photo: IHRRB/Oliver Gordon) Steve McCartney, WA State Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (Photo: IHRRB/Oliver Gordon)

Jodie Hanns, member of WA’s Legislative Assembly for Collie-Preston, remembered the emotionally fraught task of announcing the coal-plant closure timelines alongside WA Premier Mark McGowan. “I had to stand in front of my husband, friends and neighbours and tell them their jobs at Muja power plant would have to end. It was one of the hardest days of my life.”

The establishment of the Just Transition Working Group (JTWG) in 2019 – and its state-run secretariat the Collie Delivery Unit (CDU) – was a pivotal moment. The JTWG brought together all the partners in the transition – the community, employers, government and unions. “We had everyone at the table,” said trade unionist McCartney. “Decisions could then be made without going back and forth to Perth.” 

Sub-committees tackled specifics, from job creation to retraining, ensuring every worker had a personalised plan. “We wanted paid training to happen while people were still working, so they didn’t fall behind,” he added. “We saw what happened when Australia’s car industry transitioned: if you wait until after the closures to retrain the workers, it’s already too late.” 

In 2020, the JWTG and the State Government published a Just Transition Plan for Collie built on four pillars: maximising opportunities for affected workers, diversifying the local economy, celebrating Collie’s history and promoting its future, and committing to a just transition as defined in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Financing the transformation

Collie’s approach has already yielded results. The WA Government has so far committed A$662 million to the cause, earmarked for retraining programmes, industrial diversification and infrastructure projects. The town will also benefit from the state’s wider A$3.8-billion renewable energy development programme, including a A$1-billion battery energy storage system (BESS) currently being constructed in Collie.

The funding support for the transition started in 2019, with the State Government committing $115 million to Collie support initiatives. As part of this, $38 million was allocated for new tourism attractions including public murals, adventure trails, redeveloping recreation sites and renovating the high street, which has since seen a surge of visitors. 

In 2022, the WA Government announced that, alongside A$300 million for decommissioning Collie’s state-owned coal assets, $200m would be allocated to the Collie Industrial Transition Fund to support new large-scale industrial projects in priority sectors such as green manufacturing, minerals processing and clean energy. 

Magnium’s new green magnesium pilot plant has been one of the beneficiaries. The facility produces low-carbon magnesium metal, a critical material for electric vehicles and other green technologies. It opened in January 2025, aiming for full-scale production by 2030. “We’re targeting 5% of global magnesium demand,” explained CEO Shilow Shaffier. “The full-scale facility will span 40 hectares, create over 1,000 construction jobs, and provide 400 permanent positions.” 

Similarly, the Collie Battery Energy Storage System, run by state utility Synergy, will be one of the world’s largest battery systems. It will provide 500 megawatts of power with 2,000 megawatt hours of storage to the South West Interconnected System, which can power 785,000 average homes for four hours. Liz Baggetta, Synergy’s head of transition, said it offers a “great opportunity” to the company’s employees, with some already working on the project as part of their individual transition plans.

The town is pinning even greater hopes on Green Steel WA, another cornerstone of Collie’s economic diversification strategy. The company plans to build a 450,000-metric-tonne electric arc furnace, powered by renewable energy. The facility will recycle scrap steel into low-emission products, with the potential to cut 800,000 tonnes of CO2 annually compared to traditional steelmaking. The company is hoping to generate around 220 direct jobs in Collie, and hundreds more in supporting roles.

A drone shot shows Magnium’s green magnesium pilot plant, which opened in January 2025. (Credit: Bill Code) A drone shot shows Magnium’s green magnesium pilot plant, which opened in January 2025. (Credit: Bill Code) Tailored plans for workers

The final piece in Collie’s transition puzzle is its retraining programme. In 2022, the government announced a training support package that would expand the existing Collie Jobs and Skills Centre (JSC) to deliver a facility situated – very deliberately – in the middle of the high street to provide tailored career and training assistance to residents.

“We can’t train everyone at once – new industries are still evolving,” explained JSC manager Nat Cook. “So we adapt to meet changing needs, offering everything from resume writing to on-site consultations.”

Separately, Synergy has set up a Workforce Transition Program to provide individualised pathways for workers affected by the closure of the Muja and Collie power stations, offering retraining, redeployment, voluntary redundancy or retirement. “When the closure announcements were made, we spent six months listening to workers to understand their concerns and goals,” explained Baggetta, who heads up the programme. Based on these conversations, Synergy developed tailored plans to help employees navigate their futures.

Coal workers hold a union meeting. (Photo: IHRB/Oliver Gordon) Coal workers hold a union meeting. (Photo: IHRB/Oliver Gordon)

And while Collie’s transition is still in its infancy, these efforts are starting to bear fruit. Maintenance workers at Griffin Coal have received a 43% pay rise, paid-time training, a 25% uplift to their redundancies, a A$30,000 retention package and the establishment of ‘work councils’. Similarly, Synergy workers have agreed wage increases of inflation plus 1.5% guaranteed until 2029, paid-time training and a three-month uplift to their redundancies. 

“Just transition should change people’s lives right now, not sometime in the future; that is how you start to make the connection in a worker’s mind between climate action and their life changing for the better,” said Darcy Gunning, AMWU’s campaigns organiser. 

The transition’s early successes are also filtering through to the town’s wider economy. Since 2019, Collie’s labour force has grown by 5.4%, its population by 4%, and building approvals have risen fivefold. Median house prices have surged 21% in the past year, while annual visitor numbers have also climbed. 

A global blueprint?

The global push toward net-zero emissions is accelerating the decline of coal, but the polluting fuel still provides 36% of the world’s electricity and supports the livelihoods of 8.4 million workers worldwide, with many regions almost entirely dependent on it to fuel their economies. For instance, the half a million coal workers of India’s Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh states, 90,000 of South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, and 80,000 in Poland’s Silesian coal basin are all staring down the barrel of their countries’ energy transitions.

Without proper transition strategies, these communities face high unemployment, social dislocation and growing inequality – the impacts of which will reverberate throughout their societies for decades to come.

Coal-reliant South African provinces falling behind on just transition

Globally, effective transition strategies are still thin on the ground, explaining why policy-makers and researchers in Australia and beyond are taking notice of Collie’s nascent success. Australia’s new Net Zero Economic Authority (NZEA) has recognised its potential as a model for other transitioning coal towns in the country. And according to mayor Miffling, the town has received enquiries about its plans from the United Arab Emirates, the US Eastern Seaboard and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

The Ewington coal mine near Collie (Drone shot: IHRB/Bill Code) Rehabilitated mining land at Ewington coal mine (Photo: Oliver Gordon / IHRB) The Ewington coal mine near Collie (Drone shot: IHRB/Bill Code) Rehabilitated mining land at Ewington coal mine (Photo: Oliver Gordon / IHRB)

Collie has benefited from a set of unique conditions: a highly unionised workforce, historic ties to the Labor Party and state ownership of key assets like the Muja and Collie power stations. Such conditions, which enable collaboration across different economic actors, can also be found in Germany and Scandinavia, but remain rare elsewhere. “In places like in Appalachia [in the US], the absence of organised labour and political commitment often leads to disaffection and even the rise of far-right politics,” said Bradon Ellem, labour historian and co-author of a recent paper on coal transitions in WA. 

Additionally, Collie’s compact size and proximity to emerging industries like green steel and renewables are a distinct advantage. Because of these specific factors, Caleb Goods, senior lecturer of management and employment relations at the University of Western Australia (UWA) Business School, and a leading expert on labour and energy transitions, believes the model’s replicability will be limited.

Large and more dispersed coal regions like Appalachia and Poland’s coal basin will find it much tougher to create enough new jobs and infrastructure, he said. “Even in Collie, bridge transition opportunities are only beginning to emerge,” he noted. “Reaching the finish line, where a community has secure, green job opportunities, is an incredibly hard task – and one that will look different for every region.”

Nonetheless, Goods praised Collie’s approach as a leading example of a “progressive and dynamic” consultation process that prioritises the voices of workers. “Not all are enthusiastic about the transition; some are sceptical or see coal as part of the town’s future. But they recognise the transition’s value for their children and the community,” he explained.

Union veteran McCartney knows how hard it is to get them onside, but is convinced there is no other route to success.

“If we don’t empower local people when we’re trying to create wholesale change inside their communities, then we’re in the wrong game,” he said.

This is an abridged version of original reporting by Oliver Gordon for JUST Stories – a global project from the Institute for Human Rights and Business dedicated to finding and telling stories of people working together to advance just transitions.

The post This Australian coal community is co-designing its own green future appeared first on Climate Home News.

A dozen countries ravaged by conflict and humanitarian crises have joined forces to urge the international community to deliver the funding they need to absorb and respond to worsening climate shocks, calling for a growing gap to be tackled at critical talks this year.

In a statement agreed on Monday and seen by Climate Home News, the newly created network – which includes countries such as Chad, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen – said fragile states, which are “so often forgotten by climate action”, bear the brunt of climate change despite being among the least responsible for its causes.

As “hundreds of millions of the world’s most climate vulnerable remain left behind by climate finance”, the group said it is “determined to bring this issue to the forefront and centre in climate discussions”.

A united voice

The call to action follows the network’s first meeting in Abu Dhabi last month, when fragile states discussed how to make the intersection of climate, conflict and humanitarian needs a priority in climate negotiations.

Representatives from 13 fragile nations attended the meeting, including ministers from Burundi, Chad, Somalia and Yemen and high-level officials representing Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Iraq and South Sudan.

The network, created at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan last December, aims to be a diplomatic force advocating for more and better climate financing tailored to conflict and humanitarian settings.

It will allow fragile states to speak with a united voice in climate negotiations, where their experiences are “overlooked”, Liban Obsiye, executive director of Somalia’s National Climate Fund, told Climate Home.

US approves multi-billion-dollar loan for troubled Mozambique gas plant

Failure to build long-term resilience

More than half of the world’s 25 most climate-vulnerable countries are affected by armed conflict, violence or high levels of humanitarian need, according to think-tank ODI Global, which is supporting the network.

Poor governance and conflict leave people more vulnerable to climate change, with every flood, drought and storm making it more difficult to develop the ability to cope and adapt to future impacts.

Yet funding for these countries falls seriously short, amid real and perceived risks associated with working in unstable settings, including weak institutions, lack of data and limited capacity to formulate proposals and manage projects. Available funding often focuses on short-term humanitarian needs rather than longer-term climate resilience.

Between 2014 and 2021, a group of 13 states identified as “extremely fragile” by the OECD received only $2 per person in multilateral climate finance compared to $162 per person for non-fragile states, a UN study found.

“This conflict blind spot represents a damning failure at the heart of the international climate system,” said the network.

Brazil decides leaders will speak before COP30, easing logistics crunch

“Our message to all countries is clear: we can no longer afford to ignore this,” Yemen’s minister of water and environment Tawfiq al-Sharjabi told Climate Home in a statement.

“We urge governments, climate funds and international organisations to take immediate action to close this funding gap by increasing finance dedicated to climate change adaptation, simplifying bureaucratic procedures, and building capacity in developing countries,” he said.

Iraqi workers harvest potato crops, damaged by a heatwave and environmental and climatic changes, in Mosul, Iraq, July 15, 2023. REUTERS/Khalid Al-Mousily A key issue for COP30

To make their case, the network has written to COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago urging him to keep the issue “high on the agenda” of the UN climate summit Brazil will host in November.

In a letter dated Tuesday and seen by Climate Home, countries representing the alliance called on Brazil to ensure fragile states are “kept front and centre of efforts to scale up climate finance” and to hold a thematic day on climate, relief, recovery and peace, which took place at COP28 and COP29.

“COP30 is an irreplaceable moment to bring the agenda forward, to align the needs of climate-vulnerable and conflict-affected countries with global development objectives,” the letter says.

Brazil’s COP30 president: Climate summits must move from words to real action

Setting out his vision for COP30 last week, Brazilian diplomat Corrêa do Lago, who is the country’s chief climate negotiator, emphasised the need to remove barriers for developing countries to access climate finance and to scale funding for them from all sources to at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 – a goal agreed at COP29 last year.

Large and growing gap

Collectively, fragile countries need an estimated $41.5 billion annually by 2030 to mitigate and adapt to climate change, nearly four times the $11 billion they received in 2022, according to ODI analysis shared with Climate Home.

The projection is based on the needs of 37 countries on the World Bank’s 2025 fragility list (excluding Palestine and Ukraine, whose conflicts would raise it substantially) as identified in their carbon-cutting and adaptation plans submitted to the UN.

The US contributed nearly 9% of the climate finance committed by wealthy nations to fragile states in the decade to 2022 – financial flows which President Donald Trump, a climate change-sceptic, has now halted.

The US retreat and cuts to European aid budgets could further increase the existing funding gap and create more competition for already-scarce funds, said Habib Ur Rehman Mayar, deputy general secretary of the g7+ Secretariat, a grouping of conflict-affected countries.

Age of “climate whiplash” puts residents of Africa’s fast-growing cities in danger

Closing that gap will be a first step. But fragile nations’ needs will continue to grow as climate impacts intensify, said Mauricio Vazquez of ODI. “That makes it more urgent to invest in adaptation today before it becomes loss and damage. What these countries need is resilience finance to anticipate, adapt to and absorb shocks,” he told Climate Home.

Green Climate Fund invests in Somalia

The lack of funding could have catastrophic implications for countries like Somalia, which has been gripped by political instability, ethnic tensions and an Islamist insurgency. In recent years, the East African country suffered a deadly drought made more severe by rising temperatures and devastating flooding, compounding an existing humanitarian crisis.

Today, there is “an enormous gap” to finance flood defences and roll out measures to address soil erosion and curb impacts on food security and farmers’ livelihoods, said Obsiye, who heads the country’s climate fund.

Last year, the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) announced plans to invest $100 million in Somalia under the first national programme of its kind. Stephanie Speck, the GCF’s head of special initiatives, told Climate Home the fund has been “laser focused“ on getting finance to under-served countries and is currently discussing how to support climate action in South Sudan.

Once disbursed, the money will partly help strengthen Somalia’s capacity to access more finance from other donors and institutions, said Obsiye. It’s a “historic” but small start to meet the country’s huge needs, which run into the billions, he added.

The post “Forgotten” fragile states unite to end climate-finance blind spot appeared first on Climate Home News.

In 2024, carbon emissions hit a record high, with more than 41 billion tonnes of planet-heating CO2 pumped into the Earth’s atmosphere. From aviation to agriculture, every industry contributed a share of those emissions, mainly through the use of fossil fuels.

If the world is to start reducing emissions and reach net zero in the second half of the century, as promised under the Paris climate agreement in 2015, we need to know exactly where those emissions are coming from. Crunching the data offers up estimates of which sectors release the most greenhouse gases – but this is a far harder task at the corporate level.

There are the major fossil fuel firms, both state-run and private – such as Shell, Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil or Coal India – which we know play an outsized role. But according to the World Bank, 90% of global businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises.

Understanding their environmental impact – and how they contribute to the emissions of larger companies further up the value chain – is complex but essential if climate action goals set by both governments and the private sector are to be met, experts say.

While businesses have long been aware of the need to curb their emissions, the process of collecting data on their supply chains, and knowing what to do with it, can serve as a barrier to action. And without regulation to make companies set and meet targets to reduce their carbon pollution, monitoring and analysing emissions has so far been a voluntary effort.

Problem with a wide scope

The first attempt to properly account for company-level emissions started almost 25 years ago with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Its corporate standard was developed in 2001 in response to the UN’s Kyoto Protocol on limiting the emissions of wealthy countries, and covered reporting of the seven greenhouse gases covered by that agreement.

The GHG Protocol was formed by two non-profit organisations: the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Its work has become a standard bearer in the field of carbon accounting, with its guidance used by thousands of corporations, and updates to its rules closely followed.

The protocol’s lasting contribution was to create the concept of ‘scopes’, which separate a company’s emissions into three distinct categories. Scope 1 covers all emissions from direct sources a company owns or controls. Scope 2 is indirect emissions from purchasing energy. Scope 3 emissions are all other indirect emissions within a company’s supply chain.

Comment: SBTi needs tighter rules on companies’ indirect emissions

Defining Scope 3 – and how to adequately account for and offset those emissions – has proved a difficult task. These emissions can include everything from business travel to a company’s financial investments. The GHG protocol has 15 separate categories on Scope 3 emissions, reflecting the wide range of where they might be found.

These categories are themselves divided into ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’; for example, upstream could include the use of any vehicle a company doesn’t own but is in the service of its business. Downstream can cover activities such as how products are treated at the end of their life.

“Scope 3 has proven to be one of the most challenging topics to be addressed among the business community,” said Ramiro Fernandez, campaign director at Race to Zero, a UN-backed climate campaign. “For years the climate business community has been developing methodologies and metric frameworks to account for the emissions of companies’ value chains.”

The knottiness of the issue means that many companies are reluctant to engage with tackling this category of emissions. A 2024 survey of 300 large public companies by consultancy firm Deloitte found that while three-quarters disclose their Scope 1 emissions, and around half Scope 2, the figure falls dramatically to 15% for Scope 3.

Threat to 1.5C goal

Sustainability experts warn that ignoring Scope 3 emissions is self-defeating and puts at risk the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial times, given that an estimated 75% of the average company’s emissions fall into that category, according to CDP, a non-profit that helps businesses disclose their environmental impact.

“If we fail to address Scope 3, corporate net-zero pledges cannot be achieved,” said Sanda Ojiambo, CEO and executive director of the UN Global Compact, a voluntary initiative supporting sustainability in business.

“Most business-related emissions come from Scope 3, which means neglecting them keeps us on a dangerous path to exceeding 1.5C [of global warming],” she added.

The Science Based Targets initiative, originally set up to ensure that corporate climate plans are in line with the Paris Agreement, has approved 7,000 targets over the past 10 years. Notably, the initiative requires all companies to include Scope 3 emissions in their long-term emissions reduction targets.

Ojiambo told Climate Home the UN Global Compact is working with thousands of businesses to ensure that Scope 3 emissions are “no longer an afterthought but a core pillar of corporate climate strategies”.

Comment: SBTi’s rigid emissions rules don’t reflect business reality

In tech we trust

The thorny challenge of reducing Scope 3 emissions has given rise to a host of solutions aimed at making it easier. Ways to tackle the problem include engaging with suppliers, investing in data collection and using technology to track emissions across the whole life cycle of products.

German software company SAP, for example, is attempting to integrate carbon data with financial data to create a “green ledger”. This system assigns carbon emissions to a company’s transactions, with a dashboard showing the impact of greenhouse gas intensity on operating income, gross margin and net revenue. The hope is that this process will generate real-world numbers rather than relying on estimates, as most businesses do today.

James Sullivan, global head of product management at SAP Sustainability, said the software will “change business practice… to accurately account for, analyse and report carbon footprints”. The ledger is the latest in a range of data-driven services the company and its peers are putting into the market to help businesses wrestle with emissions that are beyond their immediate control.

Locating accurate data on all Scope 3 emissions – and then calculating how they have reduced over time – can seem like a Herculean task. Where data gaps exist, the GHG Protocol advises using secondary data based on industry averages, government statistics, or public databases that are representative of a company’s activities. But using such generic data at scale may not provide an accurate picture of emissions or the impact of corporate action to stem them.

Sullivan believes that better data is key to solving the Scope 3 puzzle. “A major advancement is the widespread understanding that managing Scope 3 emissions requires high-quality data and transparency into supply chains,” he said. “It is crucial for businesses to integrate sustainability data into core business processes.”

Getting ahead of competitors

Companies like SAP are confident their technological solutions are having a tangible impact on that front. Sullivan pointed to one of its customers, Martur Fompak International, a Turkish supplier of seats for the automotive sector. As a result of using SAP’s technology, Sullivan said the company has reported a 52% reduction in transportation-related carbon emissions and a 34% decrease in emissions linked to its automotive seats.

Martur Fompak achieved this, in part, through tracking emissions across its products’ entire lifecycle, from where the materials were sourced to where they were sent and used. The software analysed the carbon footprint of different fabrics and suggested lower-impact alternatives. It also provided real-time monitoring of the company’s energy consumption at more than 600 work centres, and created new delivery routes for its drivers.

Ojiambo noted that many large companies are making emissions reductions a condition of doing business with them and weaving such criteria into their procurement contracts. This could give suppliers like Martur Fompak a major incentive to lower their emissions in order to gain a competitive edge.

“Suppliers are feeling the pressure, but the smartest ones see this as an opportunity rather than a burden,” she added.

Business contribution to NDCs

The current global political climate has made sustainability concerns a convenient punchbag, with US President Donald Trump’s anti-green agenda already encouraging many companies to scale back their environmental ambitions. Across the Atlantic, the European Commission is planning to water down a package of sustainability rules originally intended to be world-leading.

The mood music is not exactly positive. According to the Financial Times, some participants at January’s World Economic Forum in Davos reported that ambition around tackling Scope 3 emissions was “crumbling” among business executives.

This comes at a time of record heat and more frequent extreme weather events, when scientists are concerned at the pace of change in the Earth’s climate and its effects. To tackle this, countries are due to submit stronger national climate plans by September, including emissions reduction targets for 2035, as required by the Paris Agreement.

These plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), are a clear example of where businesses could play a bigger role in supporting government efforts to fight climate change but currently lack the capacity, partly due to a lack of data and other resources.

How can corporates ‘course correct’ on climate?

Tom Cumberlege, a director at The Carbon Trust, who leads the consultancy’s work on value chain analysis and strategy, said NDCs that are able to leverage both public and private funding for implementation “could be a win-win” for governments and businesses.

“It can reduce the risk of investing in projects – such as energy efficiency improvements or renewable assets in the supply chain – and contribute to effective emissions reductions at a national level,” he explained.

Achieving NDC targets will require businesses to align their own climate action plans with those of governments and their suppliers. “Companies have an increasingly important role to play in engaging and supporting their own value chain to be part of the contribution [to NDCs],” said Fernandez of Race to Zero.

“Transitioning to net zero requires a whole of society approach,” he added. “Even with all the uncertainties and lack of clarity, companies have to reduce their Scope 3 emissions if we want to have any chance of remaining within the 1.5C threshold.”

The post Neglecting ‘Scope 3’ emissions could sink corporate climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.

The United States will provide a $4.7-billion loan to a fossil gas plant in Mozambique that has been described as a “carbon bomb” and is beset by allegations of human rights abuses.

The US Export-Import Bank (EXIM), a government agency, on Thursday approved financial support for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) project run by French energy giant TotalEnergies in the country’s northern Cabo Delgado region.

US EXIM has yet to publicly confirm the deal, but its approval has been widely reported.

The US backing was seen as key to unlocking financing for what is set to be one of Africa’s largest-ever energy projects, with a total expected cost of $20 billion. The loan also marks a U-turn from a possible ban on public funding for oil and gas developments abroad that rich countries, including the US, were on the verge of agreeing at the end of last year.

Risky investment

The US export credit agency had already agreed to finance the Mozambique project in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first stint in office, but fresh approval was required after TotalEnergies triggered a contractual “force majeure” pause in 2021.

The French energy giant halted construction on the facility following an attack by the Al-Shabaab militant group in the Cabo Delgado region where the plant is located. Up to 1,200 civilians are estimated to have died or gone missing in the assault.

Age of “climate whiplash” puts residents of Africa’s fast-growing cities in danger

French authorities began investigating Total last year for possible involuntary manslaughter after survivors of the attack accused the company of failing to ensure the safety of its subcontractors. Total has rejected the accusations.

An investigation by Politico also alleged that Mozambican soldiers operating out of Total’s plant abducted, raped and killed dozens of civilians. The company’s Mozambican subsidiary told Politico it had no knowledge of the events.

Total had hoped to restart construction at the site in 2024 but conceded this January that it would not begin operations before 2029 amid security concerns and funding uncertainties.

Rich nations ignore polluting past to claim climate plans are 1.5C-compatible

Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies, launched a lobbying blitz at the end of last year, hoping to secure the backing of the Biden administration for the project, but his efforts ultimately failed.

Speaking to Bloomberg this week on the sidelines of CERAWeek, Poyuanné asserted, “now you have a functional US EXIM” after President Trump appointed a new board at the agency.

The Total boss added that “most of the contracts have been awarded to US companies”, which he described as the “driver” of the US government’s support for the project.

‘Carbon bomb’

Opposing the mega-project, climate campaigners have described the Mozambique LNG venture as a “carbon bomb” that threatens the world’s chances of keeping global warming in check. It could produce up to 121 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent every year over its life-cycle of close to four decades, including emissions generated from the final use of the gas, according to calculations by Friends of the Earth.

Collin Rees, US campaign manager at Oil Change International, called the project “a climate and human rights nightmare”.

“The Trump administration is committing billions in taxpayer funds to a fossil fuel project linked to severe human rights violations, while simultaneously cutting federal jobs and essential public services for working families [in the US],” he added.

A community activist stands in an accommodation center for displaced people in Cabo Delgado, near the site of the LNG development. Photo: UNFPA Mozambique/Mbuto Machili A community activist stands in an accommodation center for displaced people in Cabo Delgado, near the site of the LNG development. Photo: UNFPA Mozambique/Mbuto Machili

Kate DeAngelis, economic policy deputy director at Friends of the Earth US, described EXIM’s decision as “the pinnacle of government waste and an egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars”.

Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has cancelled more than 80% of US international aid programmes – including dozens of projects in Mozambique – claiming they did not serve the country’s national interests.

“Clearly, the only aid Trump supports is foreign aid for billionaires and foreign gas companies,” DeAngelis added.

Decision time for UK and Netherlands

Total’s LNG venture in Mozambique also won support from the British and Dutch export credit agencies before the project’s halt in 2021. The two lenders have been reportedly reassessing their financial commitment and have yet to announce a final decision.

The Financial Times reported last month that the UK government was taking legal advice on whether it could withdraw its £1.15-billion ($1.49-billion) support for the project without facing legal repercussions.

Oil Change’s Rees said UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer should “show courage and break with the previous UK government’s foolish decision to support this nightmare”.

Brazil decides leaders will speak before COP30, easing logistics crunch

US EXIM approved billions in support for oil and gas developments abroad under former President Joe Biden, even though the US had joined 33 other countries at the COP26 climate summit in pledging to end direct public finance for overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.

The Biden administration made a late attempt to change course before Trump’s return to the White House by belatedly backing a proposal to ban export credit support for oil and gas abroad, put forward by member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).

But the push, led primarily by the EU and the UK, failed after opposition from South Korea and Türkiye stalled the discussions. Negotiators met again in Paris this week, but an observer told Climate Home that the deal now appears to be off the table given the seismic geopolitical changes since Trump took office in January.

The post US approves multi-billion-dollar loan for troubled Mozambique gas plant appeared first on Climate Home News.

COP30 host Brazil has announced that world leaders will deliver their speeches on climate action several days before UN negotiations officially kick off on November 10, in a bid to ease pressure on hotels and transport in the medium-sized Amazon city of Belém.

For the past decade – since COP21 which adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015 – most heads of state and government have attended and spoken during the first two or three days of the UN climate conference. But this year, leaders will convene in Belém on November 6 and 7, before the November 10-21 talks.

“The [World Leaders’] Summit is part of the COP, and the decision to bring it forward was made by Brazil,” Valter Correia, extraordinary secretary for COP30, said in a statement. “This will give us time for more in-depth reflection, without the pressure from hotels or the city, and will help us better organise the event’s official opening.”

Climate campaigners gave the decision a mixed response, with some criticising the move and others arguing it would have little effect on the summit outcome.

Rich nations ignore polluting past to claim climate plans are 1.5C-compatible

Natalie Unterstell, president of Brazilian think-tank the Talanoa Institute, said bringing forward the two-day leaders’ summit may mean less media attention and opportunity to put pressure on negotiators.

“Splitting the World Leaders’ Summit from the actual negotiations is like having the opening act perform after the main show – it disrupts the flow and weakens the impact,” said Unterstell. “The risk is that leaders make grand statements in one room while negotiators, days or weeks later, water them down in another room.”

But Alden Meyer, senior associate with international think-tank E3G, said the change “makes sense” and still provides “political momentum around Brazil’s vision of a COP that cements a shift from negotiations to implementation and accelerates climate action on the ground”.

Meyer added that security has always been tight around the presence of world leaders at the UN climate conferences, so climate lobbyists would not lose access to them if their segment is held slightly earlier.

Since COP21 in Paris, the World Leaders’ Summit has been held at the beginning of the annual UN climate conference. At that key COP, which delivered a new global accord on tackling climate change, 150 heads of state arrived at the start to deliver speeches. At previous COPs, they had done so around the middle of the conference, usually with far fewer showing up.

Claudio Angelo, head of international policy at Observatório do Clima, a coalition of Brazilian civil society organisations, said bringing the World Leaders’ Summit forward this time was “the only way” to hold the event in Belém, but added it may be “detrimental to inclusivity”.

“We will certainly lose on mobilisation pressure, since not everybody will be able to afford being in Belém so far in advance,” said Angelo. “Political damage will happen – make no mistake. But since those hard choices had to be made, it’s important that we make sure the highest number of leaders attend.”

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva walk with leaders to the World Climate Action Summit during COP28 in Dubai. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto) Belém under pressure

This year, the annual UN climate summit will be hosted for the first time in the Amazon rainforest, in the northern city of Belém – largely seen as an emblematic location given the importance of forests in holding down planet-warming carbon emissions. Yet some officials have expressed concerns over whether the city of 1.3 million people is capable of hosting tens of thousands of delegates flocking in over two weeks.

In a letter issued on Monday setting out his vision, COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa Do Lago defended the decision made by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to host the UN talks in the Amazon, arguing it will showcase the “extraordinary role” of rainforests in fighting climate change.

Just days before, at an informal UN plenary in New York, at least three country delegations expressed concerns over security and accessibility. Corrêa Do Lago responded by saying that, while Belém was “not designed for this kind of event”, its symbolism is more important than the challenges it poses.

Brazil’s COP30 president: Climate summits must move from words to real action

The Brazilian government has announced a plan to supply 26,000 new beds by utilising river cruise boats, rental apartments and even military facilities and schools.

Yet the massive construction efforts aimed at improving the city’s ability to host the summit smoothly have also been called in question.

This week, the BBC reported that a new 13-km highway cutting through the rainforest around Belém, seen as key for COP30 logistics, threatens protected land, as well as the homes and livelihoods of forest communities living along the route. The Brazilian government denied that the project is part of its infrastructure plans for the UN climate conference.

This story was updated after publication to add comment from Observatório do Clima.

The post Brazil decides leaders will speak before COP30, easing logistics crunch appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate change is intensifying rainfall in Southern Africa, where rapid urbanisation and poor drainage made recent flooding in Botswana and South Africa deadly, a group of scientists said, while a separate study showed some of the continent’s biggest cities are being squeezed by wet and dry extremes.

Last month, southern Botswana and eastern South Africa suffered five consecutive days of heavy rainfall which caused severe flooding across the region, killing at least 31 people, including six children, and displacing about 5,000 others.

Such episodes are becoming more frequent in a warming world, found scientists working with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, based in Botswana, South Africa, the UK, Denmark, the US and elsewhere. 

Alongside heavier precipitation, a key driver of disasters in cities is inadequate infrastructure, they said. For instance, in Botswana’s capital Gaborone, drainage systems have not kept pace with its growing population density and fast-expanding construction, making low-lying areas particularly susceptible to severe flooding. 

Rich nations ignore polluting past to claim climate plans are 1.5C-compatible

With today’s global warming of 1.3C, a warmer atmosphere is holding more moisture and leading to more extreme downpours, said Ben Clarke, one of the WWA research authors. “To limit the damage, we need to cut fossil fuel emissions and adapt to a warmer climate,” he added.

Piet Kenabatho, a professor of environmental science at the University of Botswana, said investment in better storm water management systems “is more than urgent if Botswana is to cope with the effects of climate change”.

While the researchers could not quantify the precise contribution of climate change to February’s flooding, they said historical weather observations show an increasing trend in five-day rainfall over the last few decades. Based on the data, they estimated that similar rainfall events are about 60% more intense today than in pre-industrial times, before humans started burning fossil fuels.

Clarke warned that climate models show the situation will become even more dangerous in the future. 

To understand the broader implications for Botswana and its development, Tiro Nkemelang, of the Botswana Institute for Technology Research, called for more investment to study local weather and climate. 

Water woes worsen

At the same time, in East Africa, more severe droughts are giving way to heavier floods, a back-to-back pattern that is becoming more pronounced, with three capital cities – Nairobi in Kenya, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and Kampala in Uganda – experiencing this so-called “climate whiplash”, according to research issued this week by international charity WaterAid.

The phenomenon, also affecting Cape Town, sees prolonged droughts that can cause water shortages, food insecurity and electricity disruptions interspersed with intense rainfall, overwhelming urban drainage and resulting in flash floods that displace communities, damage roads and spread waterborne diseases.

“The rapid shift between these extremes makes it difficult for people to prepare and recover, damaging economies and endangering lives,” the report said.

Timeseries of the wetting/drying index of Addis Ababa shows an intensification of climatic extremes (both wet and dry). (Graphic: WaterAid) Timeseries of the wetting/drying index of Addis Ababa shows an intensification of climatic extremes (both wet and dry). (Graphic: WaterAid)

Sudan’s capital Khartoum and Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, meanwhile, are experiencing a flip in their prevailing climate trends from wet to dry extremes, with the opposite happening in the Nigerian city of Kano, the study found.

Women bear brunt of South Sudan’s heatwave made worse by climate change

The research comes at a pivotal time, when a sweep of global aid cuts “could leave basic human rights hanging in the balance”, warned Tim Wainwright, WaterAid UK’s Chief Executive. He said the devastating impacts of the shifts in extreme climate patterns across all continents are being most keenly felt in low-income countries, where the lack of water is not just a challenge, but a matter of life and death.

Trends in wetting and drying over the 112 cities. The more intense the colour (blue or red) is, the stronger the trend in either wetting or drying respectively. (Graphic: WaterAid) Trends in wetting and drying over the 112 cities. The more intense the colour (blue or red) is, the stronger the trend in either wetting or drying respectively. (Graphic: WaterAid)

The research – which looked at the world’s 100 most populated cities – revealed that cities in Southern Asia are becoming overwhelmingly flood-prone and European cities are exhibiting significant drying trends, all of which can impact people’s clean water access and water security.

“Floods and droughts are stripping away people’s foundation of survival – water,” said Wainwright. “But with a reliable supply of clean water, communities can recover from disasters, stay healthy and be ready for whatever the future holds.”

The post Age of “climate whiplash” puts residents of Africa’s fast-growing cities in danger appeared first on Climate Home News.

Claims by wealthy nations that their new emissions reduction targets for 2035 are compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C have been questioned by experts concerned about fairness.

In Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) plans submitted to the United Nations in recent months, countries including the UK, Canada and Switzerland have argued that if every nation cut emissions as fast as they aim to, then the Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times would be achieved.

But scientists and campaigners – as well as the Canadian government’s official climate advisers – say this view overlooks the fact that historically the people of these rich countries have done, and continue to do, more to cause climate change than those in poorer nations – and so should reduce emissions more sharply than average.

Commenting on the NDC claims of 1.5C compatibility, Imperial College London climate scientist Robin Lamboll noted that “the Paris Agreement requires wealthier countries to lead the way towards net zero much faster than the world as a whole”.

He added that reaching net zero emissions globally by 2050 “should have been enough to keep us below 1.5C if everyone started moving towards it in 2015”. “Unfortunately, global emissions have yet to clearly peak, and every year of rising emissions makes staying below 1.5C harder,” he added.

Most cookstove carbon credits ruled out of quality scheme in integrity push

Most developing countries do not have goals to reach net zero by 2050, citing a lack of funding to invest in the green transition, their low responsibility for climate change, and the need to develop economically. China – today the world’s biggest emitter – aims to reach net zero by 2060, for example, while India targets 2070.

Meanwhile, 2024 marked the first calendar year that global temperature rise topped 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, although scientists said that does not mean the 1.5C Paris goal has been breached because that refers to an average over at least two decades.

Fears of ‘1.5-washing’

At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023, all countries agreed that their next round of NDC climate plans, due to be issued this year before COP30, would be “aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5C, as informed by the latest science, in the light of different national circumstances”.

Just over a dozen of these NDCS have been published to date, with a mandatory section on how the government considers its plan “fair and ambitious in light of its national circumstances”.

Most developed countries so far have used this section to argue their plans are 1.5C-aligned, based on a 2018 recommendation by scientists working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the world should reach net zero by 2050 to have a good chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

The UK, New Zealand, Canada and Switzerland say in their latest NDCs that because they plan to reach net zero by 2050, their plans are therefore 1.5C-compatible.

This argument, however, is based on an assumption that every country should reduce emissions at the same rate, even though relative to the size of their populations, these countries have polluted – and still pollute – more than most other nations.

Avantika Goswami, climate lead at the India-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home that because of their “higher historical burden of greenhouse gas emissions”, developed nations should cut emissions faster than the average for all countries.

She said a flaw in the 2015 Paris climate accord is that it allows countries to determine their own targets rather than obliging developed nations to do more, as its predecessor did. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol set emissions reduction targets only for developed countries. “A loose voluntary system is likely to lead to creative interpretations by polluters,” Goswami said.

Neither the IPCC’s scientists nor governments have agreed on a methodology to determine what makes a climate plan compatible with 1.5C. Commenting on this last June, Brazilian climate negotiator Liliam Chagas said “it’s up to each [government] to decide”.

The Net-Zero Advisory Body (NZAB), which advises the Canadian government, says in advice included in an annex to Canada’s NDC that Canada is likely to have already used up its 1.5C-compatible carbon budget by the end of 2024 and will burn through its 2C-compatible budget by 2030.

Brazil’s COP30 president: Climate summits must move from words to real action

To do its fair share of limiting global warming to 1.5C, the NZAB says Canada should be carbon-negative – absorbing more greenhouse gas from the atmosphere than it emits – around now. Instead, Canada only aims to reach net zero by 2050.

As a result, the NZAB argues it’s not possible for the Canadian government to use a “science-driven budget approach” for setting emissions reduction targets for the future without assuming “substantial negative emissions or international transfers”.

“Less stringent and hence more realistic and achievable interim targets embed a structural injustice in that they imply Canada is claiming a disproportionate share of the remaining global carbon budget” if the world is to stay below the warming limits in the Paris Agreement, the advice says.

Canada should pay for additional emissions reductions abroad to address this unfairness, it recommends. The Canadian government itself echoed this position in its NDC, saying that climate finance is “essential for Canada to contribute to emission reductions beyond its borders”.

Differentiated responsibilities

Many developing countries do not have a target to reach net zero by 2050. The NDCs of those like Zimbabwe, Zambia and the Maldives stress their disproportionately small contribution to climate change and their vulnerability to its effects.

Zambia’s latest NDC says the plan was developed taking into account the UN climate regime’s agreed principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (CBDR) and, in a nod to carbon budgets, “equitable access to atmospheric space”.

The concept of CBDR is broadly understood to mean that, while all countries should tackle climate change, countries that have put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and have greater financial and technical resources should take on a larger share of the action required to tackle climate change.

Despite being a developing country, this year’s COP30 host Brazil aims to reach net zero by 2050. Its recent NDC says that developing countries should try to get to net zero “as close as possible to 2050 while developed countries should move faster – by 2045”.

To back up this 2045 call for richer nations, the Brazilian NDC cites the International Energy Agency and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Germany is currently the only major nation with a net zero target for 2045.

In 2023, Guterres called for a “quantum leap in global action”, with governments “immediately hitting the fast-forward button on their net zero deadlines to get to global net zero by 2050”. To achieve this, he said developed countries should reach net zero “as close as possible to 2040” – but none have responded to his plea.

The post Rich nations ignore polluting past to claim climate plans are 1.5C-compatible appeared first on Climate Home News.

Yulia Indrawati Sari is a lecturer in international relations at Parahyangan Catholic University, in Bandung, Indonesia, specialising in environmental issues. Frans Siahaan is an independent consultant on environmental governance.

At COP29 in Baku, Indonesia made an ambitious pitch for its carbon market, with newly elected President Prabowo Subianto’s brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, leading the charge.

The delegation presented Indonesia as a global carbon trading powerhouse, signalling a dramatic shift from the previous administration’s caution. Prabowo has pledged to raise $65 billion by 2028 through carbon credit sales to fund reforestation and conservation. 

With the official launch of international carbon trading in January 2025, Indonesia is positioning itself as a major supplier. But who will benefit from this booming market – and at what risk?  

In a study seeking to answer this question, we applied a political economy approach to the forestry and land use sector. Our findings – published here for the first time – draw on interviews with carbon developers, government officials, palm oil representatives and civil society groups, conducted between November 2023 and October 2024, during the Jokowi administration. 

Big business takes the lead 

Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest, has long been a prime candidate for carbon trading. Large corporations, especially those in palm oil and timber, are seizing the opportunity, leveraging their vast land concessions to shift business models from exploitation to conservation.

Based on data from the Indonesian Forest Concession Holders Association (APHI), in November 2023, some of the 600 companies holding Forest Utilization Business Licenses have already started investing in carbon-related services. One industrial timber estate company plans to set aside 60% of its 130,000-hectare concession for carbon trading. 

Brazil’s COP30 president: Climate summits must move from words to real action

With strong political and economic connections, these companies are actively acquiring forest concessions, merging firms, and lobbying the government to shape regulations in their favour. Industry associations such as APHI and the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN) have pushed for policies that prioritise corporate interests. Yet their history of environmental destruction and Indigenous rights violations raises concerns about whether this shift is truly about emissions reductions – or just another revenue stream. 

As one civil society representative working with Indigenous communities put it: “These companies see carbon trading purely as an economic transaction. Their approach is simple: ‘How much do you have? We’ll buy it.’ There’s no real discussion about emissions, climate justice, or Indigenous rights.” 

Regulatory hurdles  

Despite the enthusiasm, regulatory challenges remain. Companies are concerned that current policies make international carbon trading less attractive, particularly the emission reduction buffer requirement. Under Ministry Regulation No. 21/2022, companies must set aside 10–20% of their carbon credits as a buffer. Designed to safeguard against emissions loss from risks like fires and natural disasters, the buffer ensures credibility, but is viewed by companies as excessive. 

“We already allocate 35% for risk management. With the government’s buffer, we’re left with only 45–55% of our credits to trade. The margin is just too tight,” said a representative from an international green investment firm entering the Indonesian market. 

Most cookstove carbon credits ruled out of quality scheme in integrity push

Certification is another concern. Indonesia’s National Registry System for Climate Change Control (SRN PPI) is still underdeveloped and not yet ready to meet widely used global references, making the country’s carbon credits less competitive. The government has also chosen not to make mutual agreements with well-established certification bodies such as Verra or Gold Standard, further complicating credibility issues. 

“The carbon trading regulations are still not clear. Although regulations exist, there is still a lack of clarity, especially in the technical processes. Almost all actors who care about the climate – not those in the timber and oil palm industries – are still taking a wait-and-see approach in the carbon market,” one green investor told us. 

Risk of greenwashing  

Several environmental NGOs have actively prepared to engage in carbon trading, with local organisation WARSI developing best practices for ensuring benefits reach communities. Through the Plan Vivo scheme, WARSI directs carbon revenues into village development and community benefit. The organisation has also created Forest Reference Emission Levels (FREL) to monitor deforestation reductions. 

Despite such efforts, scepticism remains. Civil society groups such as the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), Greenpeace, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI) and Forest Watch Indonesia have warned that carbon trading risks becoming a tool for greenwashing, allowing industries to continue polluting while buying credits to claim climate action on paper. 

“The real winners in this market are those who already control concessions – especially in a situation where access to financing is difficult. Companies that hold concessions are ‘not clean companies’, [but] often businesses with close ties to political and military elite,” one environmental activist told us. 

Without strict safeguards, critics argue, carbon trading could exacerbate existing inequalities instead of driving real emissions reductions. Ensuring fair benefit-sharing and preventing speculative trading will be crucial to maintaining the market’s integrity. 

The road ahead 

Indonesia’s carbon market is now a reality, but whether it delivers genuine climate benefits remains to be seen. The Prabowo administration’s push for international trading must be balanced with environmental and social safeguards. Will this be a true climate solution – or just another way for big players to profit? 

As carbon trading takes off, all eyes will be on how the government enforces regulations, ensures transparency, and protects vulnerable communities. 

For now, the rush is on – and the stakes are high. 

Ridwan, Alam Surya Putra, and Margaretha Wahyuningsih also contributed to this study. 

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Global climate diplomacy must shift focus from highly “politicised” negotiations to advancing real collective action on the ground to remain credible, Brazil’s COP30 presidency has warned.

In a long letter setting out his vision, André Aranha Corrêa Do Lago, president-designate for this year’s UN climate summit in the Amazon city of Belém, called for a “new era” in which “words and texts” agreed by countries bring about economic and social transformation.

The seasoned diplomat set out his belief that it is necessary to find solutions beyond the multilateral climate regime and “create levers” in other institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, while working more closely with regional governments, civil society and the private sector.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the letter’s publication on Monday, Do Lago suggested a more pragmatic approach could help circumvent some of the longstanding divisions in climate talks. “There are few negotiations that are as politicised as climate change negotiations,” he said.

“You can see very clearly that there are limits to what the UNFCCC [the UN climate body] and the Paris Agreement can do in implementation,” Do Lago added. “We need to be much more practical, much more objective, much quicker so that we can use other institutions in the best way possible. We have to think of those who are really going to implement the COP decisions.”

New approach for challenging times

Marking ten years since countries agreed to the landmark Paris pact, COP30 will have to contend with an unprecedented geopolitical context.

US President Donald Trump is pulling the US out of the international climate agreement, while slashing financial support for global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a warming world. While, on paper, major European nations have reiterated their commitment to climate action, their attention is increasingly shifting towards security concerns, with defence spending taking precedence.

Trump’s aid cuts make Malawians more vulnerable to climate change

Ambassador Do Lago acknowledged the world has changed in just a few months, ushering in a “really challenging context” for climate diplomacy.

But, he added, this creates an opportunity to be “very open”, engage as many actors as possible and find a better path towards combating climate change.

The US remains a “central” country for climate discussions and solutions, Do Lago told reporters. “There is the US government that will probably limit its participation [but] the US is a country with such amazing technology, amazing innovation – this is the US that can contribute,” he added.

‘Circle of Presidencies’

Brazil wants to set up a new mechanism called the “Circle of Presidencies” to advise on the political process and the implementation of climate action. The country presidencies of the last nine climate COPs – from Paris to Baku – and the current presidencies of the UN talks on biodiversity and desertification will be invited to join the body and provide suggestions on the future of global climate governance.

COP30 letter

As all countries are due to submit their updated national climate plans this year, before COP30, Brazil plans to “stimulate a frank collective reflection on bottlenecks that have been hampering climate ambition and implementation”, Do Lago wrote in his letter.

He also indicated that Brazil will work together with COP29 host Azerbaijan on a “roadmap” to scale up climate finance to developing countries from all public and private sources to at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035. Countries agreed to that headline figure in the final moments of last year’s summit, without specifying where the money would come from.

“Experts are clear: we only have a few years. If climate goals are to be achieved, both adaptation and mitigation financing will need to be increased many-fold,” Do Lago said.

‘Ethical stocktake’

The incoming president then spotlighted some of the thorny negotiating issues that still need to be resolved in Belém after flopping at COP29, including the work programme on just transition and the dialogue on implementing the outcomes of the Global Stocktake, issued at COP28 after a review of the world’s climate plans.

The COP30 presidency has also announced it will hold an “ethical stocktake” through which a “diverse” group of scientists, religious leaders, philosophers, indigenous people and others can suggest ways of dealing with climate change.

Nigeria bids to host COP32 climate summit in Lagos

Observers broadly welcomed the vision announced by Do Lago.

Ilan Zugman, Latin America and Caribbean director for climate campaign 350.org, called the detailed letter “an encouraging sign” that “signals an intent to shape the agenda” and “emphasises unity”.  

But he warned that COP30 “must be about delivering action, not just having discussions and announcing commitments without clear ways for them to be implemented”.

Adaptation no longer a choice

Do Lago also called on countries to embrace the spirit of mutirão – a Brazilian concept inherited from Indigenous culture, meaning communal effort – in historically fraught discussions over measures to cut emissions.

Negotiations on the so-called mitigation work programme (MWP) ended in deadlock at COP29 amid bitter divisions between the vast majority of countries – including developed and Latin American nations, small-island states and least developed countries, on the one hand – and China, Arab and African states on the other.

“Instead of suspicion in polarized negotiations, the MWP has the vocation of becoming a platform for breakthroughs and trust-building through action and cooperation when leveraging opportunities, overcoming barriers, and exploring actionable solutions,” Do Lago wrote. The letter did not specify how the gaps could be bridged.

The COP30 president also emphasised the importance of making progress on adaptation. Countries are expected to agree on a series of indicators for the global goal on adaptation which experts hope could unlock more financial support for efforts to boost climate resilience. This work remains critically underfunded.

“Adaption is no longer a choice, nor does it compete with mitigation,” Do Lago wrote. “Climate adaptation is the vehicle for care and repair towards collective transformation”.

Forests in the spotlight

With COP30 being held in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil is also keen to showcase the “extraordinary role” played by carbon-absorbing forests, and those who protect them, in keeping global warming in check. “Forests can buy us time in climate action in our rapidly closing window of opportunity,” Do Lago wrote in the letter, calling for an increase in efforts to reverse forest loss.

Toya Manchineri, of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations in the Amazon Basin, said that “while forest protection is essential”, the root causes of the climate crisis need to be addressed, including phasing out fossil fuels.

“The cautious approach in the letter on this issue calls for more courage and ambition,” he added.

The post Brazil’s COP30 president: Climate summits must move from words to real action appeared first on Climate Home News.

Researchers have found that women and girls in the conflict-torn nation of South Sudan are facing greater health risks and worsened inequality due to the negative impacts of climate change as the country battles record-breaking heat.

The findings published ahead of International Women’s Day marked on March 8, by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group of scientists, said February’s heatwave was made about 10 times more likely – and 2 degrees Celsius hotter – by human-caused climate change. 

Last month, heatwaves in the country saw dozens of students collapse from heat stroke in the capital Juba, causing the country to close down schools for weeks, making it the second time the country has shut schools during a heatwave in the periods between February and March. It did the same when temperatures reached as high as 45 degrees Celsius in March last year.

These occurrences are unusual as the hottest temperatures of the year are not usually expected to occur as early as February, when this year’s extreme heat was observed, said the researchers.

Most schools in the country are built with iron roofs that trap heat and do not have air conditioning, creating very hot conditions for students, WWA said in a statement. High temperatures are expected to persist throughout March.

In the face of these extreme weather events, women and girls tend to suffer more as school closures disrupt children’s education and make it harder for girls to return to learning, the researchers said. Additionally, jobs and household chores typically done by women expose them to dangerous temperatures and increase the risk they will suffer heat-related illnesses, the analysis found.

Improving ventilation, planting trees and painting schools lighter colours can help reduce temperatures in classrooms and keep schools open, said Kiswendsida Guigma, a climate scientist at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre in Burkina Faso. Adapting the school calendar and class schedules can also help avoid severe disruptions to education, he added.

A tale of two women: What climate vulnerability actually looks like

Friederike Otto, WWA’s lead and a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, said the study reiterated how people who are already struggling under unequal conditions experience the most harm from extreme weather worsened by the burning of fossil fuels.

“Unyielding gender roles, the need to care for children and a lack of other options than exposing themselves to excruciating heat, means that in war-torn South Sudan, each of the now frequent heatwaves hits women more, deepening the divide between the genders,” Otto said.

Globally women are more likely to “die during extreme weather events”, as well as experience food shortages and violence after them, she added. The solution, she said, is to reduce these inequalities and cut planet-heating emissions from using fossil fuels.

Miscarriages and stillbirths

The study, carried out by 17 researchers and scientists from universities and meteorological agencies in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda, the US, the UK and elsewhere, found that the seven-day maximum heat in the South Sudan region this year would have been “extremely unlikely” if the world had not warmed by roughly 1.3 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times. A similar week-long heat event would have been around 4C cooler without global warming of 1.3C, they added.

The researchers also found that the intensifying heatwaves increased the chance of miscarriage and stillbirths, making pregnancy and childbirth even more dangerous in South Sudan, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with 1,223 women dying for every 100,000 births.

Emmanuel Raju, one the study’s authors from the University of Copenhagen, said women and girls continue to bear disproportionate climate change impacts globally as a result of existing social inequities.

In the Global South, this “vicious cycle” often places an ongoing debt burden on women and leads to increased responsibilities and hardships such as care-giving, reduced work – particularly in the informal sector – and walking longer distances for water.

Trump’s aid cuts make Malawians more vulnerable to climate change

Intense heatwaves with temperatures as high as 40C are no longer rare events in South Sudan because of climate change, the researchers found. In today’s climate, with around 1.3C of human-caused global warming, similar extreme heat events in February can be expected about once a decade, they added.

Unless countries rapidly move away from fossil fuels, such heatwaves are expected to occur every year once warming reaches 2.6C as expected by 2100, they warned.

Sarah Kew, a WWA researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said dangerous 40C-plus heatwaves are becoming the new normal in South Sudan.

“Once rare, these episodes of high temperatures are occurring every two years,” she said, posing huge challenges for people in South Sudan and particularly women. “Without a rapid transition to a world without fossil fuels, heatwaves will continue to get even more dangerous.”

The post Women bear brunt of South Sudan’s heatwave made worse by climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

Sponsored by the Adaptation Fund. See our supporters page for what this means.

Climate change has a habit of exploiting weaknesses. Existing problems are made worse and new ones are created in its wake.

How the climate crisis unequally impacts women is well-documented – but no less shocking. According to the UN, women and girls are estimated to make up around 80% of the people displaced due to climate change. This often forces them into extreme poverty and a heightened threat of violence.

Researchers attribute this disparity to a range of factors. Women are typically among the majority of the world’s poor, with fewer decision-making powers and a greater reliance on their country’s natural resources for survival. The crisis brings deeply entrenched inequalities to the surface and makes them hard to ignore. 

This year’s International Women’s Day takes up the issue with the theme of “For All Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment”.

Many women in Peru, for example, are experiencing these inequalities firsthand as climate change forces them to adapt.

But they aren’t alone in the effort. Profonanpe, the Peruvian environmental fund, was established in 1992, and is at the forefront of conserving the country’s globally significant biodiversity.

As part of this work, the fund empowers women to take a central role in their future, by moving into new roles in their communities, and contributing vital local knowledge to adaptation responses.

Business leaders

Profonanpe is spearheading two climate projects, financed by the Adaptation Fund, and women’s rights are a main priority throughout. One of these initiatives, located in the Andes, is about to get underway, while another on the coast has recently reached completion.

Both present different challenges. In the mountains, women often participate in the same activities as men. The new project will increase adaptive capacity and reduce the vulnerability of forests, grasslands and wetlands using an inclusive approach that combines ecosystem monitoring and resilience-building.

A tale of two women: What climate vulnerability actually looks like

Along the coast it is uncommon to find women who work on fishing boats, but they play a crucial role in processing and marketing the day’s catch. Acknowledging this fact and finding alternative lines of work was a key consideration.

Peru’s significant fishing industry accounts for an estimated 10% of all fish captured around the world, but as fish stocks plummet, local communities need to diversify fast. Profonanpe’s approach was to help women create their own community associations, and run their own businesses.

New industries popped up using fish waste as a biofertiliser, aquaponic plants were created to cultivate fish stocks, and eco-tourism was promoted in marine protected areas.

José Zavala, a general coordinator on the project, explained: “The work of women within the productive chain of artisanal fishing was invisible for a long time. That is why it was decided, in a participatory way, to include activities exclusively for them and that would adapt to their way of life.”

Gloria Tarazona, president of the Women’s Association of Aquaponics in Huacho, said many women in Peru – particularly mothers of young children – can’t get paid work because they have to take care of their family. The project changes this dynamic by allowing them to join part-time with manageable schedules. “We are generating food and jobs for many people,” Tarazona said.

“The food is natural and organic, and little by little with climate change and pollution these products are becoming more necessary. The positive change that I’ve seen in all the women of the project is that they like what they have learned. I always tell them they have to continue forward because this is a project of the future,” Tarazona added.

Gloria Tarazona, president of the Women’s Association of Aquaponics in Huacho Gloria Tarazona, president of the Women’s Association of Aquaponics in Huacho Inspiring change

Claudia Godfrey, Profonanpe’s director of innovation and strategic management, told Climate Home how women’s stories from the project are a strong motivator. 

“Daughters have seen the change in their mothers, and felt inspired. They realise that their mothers can be leaders and entrepreneurs,” she said.

“Seeing younger generations inspired by their mothers reminds us how important it is to include women in climate adaptation.”

Strong gender policies, including setting high targets for female leadership on projects, have helped embed women’s rights in other organisations. These policies ensure fewer women are overlooked for leadership positions.  

The Adaptation Fund’s own social and gender policies are aimed at empowering women and marginalised groups. They do this by providing equitable access to resources and livelihoods, and inclusive decision-making.

Sustainable fishing offers lifeline to communities hit by climate crisis

“It’s moving to see how women have grown in confidence and recognition within their communities. Many of them have told us that they now have a voice in decision-making and how their lives have changed. Not just economically, but socially,” Godfrey added.

She added that climate change is increasing awareness of women’s roles and pushing them to have a stronger voice on the issue. The crisis has been a catalyst for changing how women within the environmental sector are viewed.

“In Peru, there has been great progress in recognising women’s role in environmental management. But there is still a lot to do,” Godfrey said.

Women leaders at the closing of the marine coastal adaptation project. Women leaders at the closing of the marine coastal adaptation project. Tracking progress

Mikko Ollikainen, head of the Adaptation Fund (AF), said the fund’s gender policies and monitoring approaches are continually being enhanced.

“For me, this resonates deeply with the fund’s ongoing efforts to promote gender equality and empower women and girls.”

“Women are a vulnerable group at risk of being overlooked in the design and implementation of adaptation projects. We need to actively ensure that women’s specific adaptation needs are duly considered. This in turn improves adaptation work on the ground,” he added.

“Lessons learned about considering the needs of women and girls will help us address the needs of other vulnerable groups.”

“We are continuously tracking progress on our gender work. We will continue to increase gender responsiveness so no one is left behind.”

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

The post Advancing women’s rights and empowerment in climate adaptation appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nearly all existing carbon credits generated by cleaner cookstove projects cannot use a market-leading quality label unless they switch to more stringent methods of calculating emission reductions approved by a leading voluntary carbon market watchdog.

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) announced on Friday that it has rejected two popular rulebooks for carbon-offsetting activities that aim to cut emissions by introducing more fuel-efficient cookstoves in households primarily in the Global South. The carbon savings are then sold as carbon credits.

Credits issued under the methodologies, currently used by most cookstove projects, cannot claim the “Core Carbon Principles” (CCP) seal of approval after the ICVCM judged their criteria to be “insufficiently rigorous”. Another rulebook used by hundreds of projects was withdrawn from the assessment process after carbon standard Verra developed a replacement methodology.

Nearly two-thirds – 64% – of all cookstove offsets available in the market at the end of 2024 were based on those methodologies, according to an analysis of data published by the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project. The projects have been questioned for overstating their climate benefits.

Cooking the books: cookstove offsets produce millions of fake emission cuts

More rigorous rules approved

On Friday, ICVCM also approved Verra’s new method and two other rulebooks proposed by Gold Standard for developing cookstove activities on the condition that projects also comply with stricter technical criteria to assess emission reductions and reduce the risk of generating too many offsets.

Carbon credits produced under the approved methodologies accounted for less than 3% of available cookstove offsets at the end of 2024. It is not yet clear how many of those credits respect the additional requirements imposed by ICVCM.

A spokesperson for Gold Standard said “further assessment” will be required to ensure compliance, adding that more specific guidelines for projects seeking CCP-labelling will be made available soon.

Additionally, ICVCM still needs to rule on the eligibility of over 28 million cookstove credits – 33% of the total – issued under older versions of a Gold Standard methodology.

Annette Nazareth, ICVCM chair, said “we understand many existing projects will choose to use the new methodologies and conditions we have approved today”.

Verra will require developers to update their current projects to the new methodology approved by ICVCM by 2027, a spokesperson said, adding that the body’s decision represents “an important shift towards higher integrity in the market”.

“We recognise the importance of this type of project for unlocking climate finance and enabling sustainable development as well as the positive impact of cookstoves at the household level,” added ICVCM’s Nazareth.

Trump’s aid cuts make Malawians more vulnerable to climate change

A faltering market

Carbon markets have long been touted as key for funding programmes that help communities in the Global South shift towards cleaner and healthier way of cooking. Over 2 billion people worldwide – half of whom are in Africa – lack access to clean cooking methods, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Carbon project developers provide households with improved cookstoves that are either powered with cleaner energy or require less firewood or charcoal to run. Project owners can then sell the savings in carbon emissions as credits to third parties seeking to reduce their carbon footprint.

A tale of two women: What climate vulnerability actually looks like

But cookstoves projects developed under the methods rejected by the ICVCM have been found to grossly overestimate their climate benefits by issuing more carbon credits than justified by the real-world impact of their activities.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found in a large-scale study published last year that on average cookstove projects produced over 10 times more offsets than they should have done. They said that is because the rules allowed project developers to overestimate the impact of fuel collection on deforestation and to overstate how often people use the new cookstoves.

A Climate Home investigation found similar issues across a number of projects in India.

Reeling from scandals

ICVCM said on Friday that older methodologies lacked either “best practice” measurement methods or effective controls on avoiding overestimation from fuel savings.

Its CEO Amy Merrill said that the approval of new methods “will strengthen the sector for the future” and “provide the confidence needed to ensure that carbon finance can flow into these projects”.

ICVCM said it expects “several hundred thousand” CCP-labelled cookstove credits to be issued in the coming year thanks to a “large pipeline” of new projects planning to use the approved methodologies.

US withdraws from coal-to-clean JETP deals for developing nations

The market for cookstove carbon credits has been reeling from a major scandal over the past several months.

Kenneth Newcombe, former CEO of leading developer C-Quest Capital, was charged in October 2024 with fraud by US authorities which accused him of faking the emissions-reduction data of cookstove projects across Africa and Asia, as part of a scheme to obtain millions of carbon credits. A spokesperson for Newcombe denied the allegations at the time.

In the aftermath of the investigation, Verra cancelled 5 million credits generated by C-Quest Capital projects to compensate for the excess issuances.

At the end of February 2025, C-Quest Capital filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the US state of Delaware citing financial distress. Private equity firm Vision Ridge, a major investor in the company, sought $170.6 million in damages, according to court filings.

The post Most cookstove carbon credits ruled out of quality scheme in integrity push appeared first on Climate Home News.

The US has quit the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) initiative it helped launch to support several developing countries in their shift away from coal to clean energy, ending its contribution to the $45 billion in climate finance pledged to back their efforts.

The withdrawal is the latest in a rapid-fire series of US funding cuts for work in developing countries after President Donald Trump, a climate change sceptic, came to power in late January. His right-wing administration has since given notice that the US will leave the Paris Agreement, rescinded pledges of $4 billion to the Green Climate Fund, and given up the US seat on the loss and damage fund board.

The JETP initiative was launched in 2021 to great fanfare, with South Africa signing the first deal with the International Partners Group (IPG) – including the European Union, Germany, the UK, France and the US – at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

The group pledged to mobilise an initial $8.5 billion between 2023 and 2027, a total that increased by several billion dollars as the Netherlands and Denmark joined. In 2022, Indonesia negotiated a JETP deal with a $20-billion commitment from the IPG, including $10 billion from commercial investors, followed by Vietnam with $15 billion.

Trump’s aid cuts make Malawians more vulnerable to climate change

Last week, the US wrote letters to those three recipient countries – Indonesia, Vietnam and South Africa – informing them of its decision to withdraw funding as part of the IPG, a coalition of donor countries and financial institutions providing funding and other technical support to the deal.

A fourth JETP was agreed with Senegal, but the US was not part of that from the beginning.

Germany described the US decision to exit as “regrettable”. However, German Development State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth said his government is convinced the work of the JETPs “can be continued successfully”.

As Climate Home News reported last year, Germany and the UK disclosed at the COP29 climate summit last year that they were hesitant to pursue additional JETPs and set out the lessons learned so far.

Why rich countries are “reluctant” on additional JETP coal-to-clean deals

But in his statement on the US withdrawal, Flasbarth said the partnerships “have grown”, adding that “the decision to share responsibility between so many partners is now turning out to be very helpful”.

He added that while public funding plays an important role in the JETPs, the mobilisation of private investment “is far more important”. The partnership has been working on the “conducive environment and reliable regulations” to stimulate such investment flows, he noted.

In South Africa, for example, energy legislation reforms laid the foundation for “a market-led boom in renewable energy”, Flasbarth said, meaning that renewables are now mostly cheaper than fossil fuels.

UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte said in South Africa this week that while the US exit is “regrettable”, she believes there is a “clear path forward”, in comments reported by the Financial Times.

Kyte went on to announce additional funding support for South Africa’s JETP to help prepare the country’s wholesale electricity market and explore interim transmission solutions. 

‘Dangerous precedent’

While the IPG plans to move on without the US, environmental group 350.org said the US remains morally bound to deliver on its financial obligations to developing countries, adding that the exit is “deeply concerning” for the future of the planet and communities dealing with escalating climate chaos.

“Big polluters like the United States are financially obligated to support climate-vulnerable nations,” said Norly Mercado, Asia regional director at 350.org. Mercado said the US exit sets a “dangerous precedent” and signals to the rest of the world that the second-biggest emitter of planet-heating gases will no longer be accountable for its climate obligations.

Mercado added that the JETP withdrawal by the world’s richest country should not serve as an excuse for developing countries to roll back their commitments to phase out coal and urged them to accelerate the adoption of cleaner renewable energy sources.

Oil giant Pemex fails to control methane emissions, threatening Mexico’s net zero goal

Joanne Yawitch, head of South Africa’s Presidential Just Energy Transition Project Management Unit, said in a statement on Thursday, that the government remains “steadfast in its commitment to achieving a just and equitable energy transition”. She added that the country will seek alternative funding, while other partners in the IPG remain “firmly committed to supporting South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan” .

The US pledge to South Africa included grant funding of $56 million and $1 billion in commercial investments, which the JETP unit said did not amount to a significant reduction from the total investment of $13.8 billion.

Thandolwethu Lukuko, Climate Action Network’s director for South Africa, said South Africa had not relied heavily on aid from the US for its JETP – which accounted for about 10% of the initial investment – and could proceed without it, with other partners able to fill the space left by the US.

But, he warned, broader climate policy changes and funding cuts by the US to mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund are “more worrisome” and could affect other countries’ ability to meet their climate goals.

The post US withdraws from coal-to-clean JETP deals for developing nations appeared first on Climate Home News.