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COP31: How Ed Miliband answered Carbon Brief readers’ questions
UK foreign secretary and COP veteran Ed Miliband spoke with Carbon Brief earlier today at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, to answer readers’ questions.
Carbon Brief readers submitted questions via CB Connect on topics including the UK’s “climate leadership”, the COP31 electrification target, as well as the roadmaps on deforestation and fossil fuels.
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Despite recent criticism over the approval of the Jackdaw gas field, Miliband argued that the UK is still seen as a climate leader, due to its “ambitious targets on net-zero”.
Pushing back on a question about COP reform, Miliband explained how he is “quite pro the institution of the COP”, given its role in bringing countries together for climate action.
He emphasised the importance of action on methane and the UK’s “support” for the “35×35” electrification pledge.
Carbon Brief: Well, thanks very much for joining us. I know you’re very busy and we’ve got some reader questions. It’s great that you’ve got time to answer some.
Ed Miliband: Can I just say how much I love Carbon Brief?
CB: Thanks. Lovely to hear.
EM: Like, comment and subscribe!
CB: How, in your experience at COP31 so far, has the UK’s decision to approve the Jackdaw gas field and the rumoured rollback of its EV targets affected the UK’s standing as a climate leader?
EM: People see us as showing leadership. People don’t see us as rolling back, and I think what people see is a government that is driving the agenda on electrification and clean power. Because after all, we have a clean power 2030 target, which is world-leading.
[We] have the most ambitious targets on net-zero, the [nationally determined contributions] NDCs, of frankly, any country in the world. [We] are legislating for no new oil and gas licences.
And what I’m trying to do here is also bring a new dimension to this, which is the whole national security dimension. Because I think, if you’re serious about national security, you need to be serious about climate. And those parties – and those people – who aren’t serious about climate, I don’t think they’re serious about national security. Because this is a national security issue for, I think – frankly – every government across the world.
So I think, look, people see British leadership. People are looking forward to our [presidency of the] G20 [in 2027], where climate resilience [and] debt development will be central to the agenda as well.
CB: Are you confident that the UK can still meet its 2030 NDC target [to cut emissions 68% below 1990 levels]?
EM: Absolutely, we’re going to go all out to meet it. I think that’s so important, and that is the whole principle of the NDCs, is [that] you drive towards seeking to meet them. Obviously, it’s stretching. We inherited, from 2024, a difficult situation from the previous government, but we’re going to go all out to do what we can.
CB: Great. With the UK and other developed countries facing increasing fiscal pressures, how can you go about ensuring developing countries receive the financial and technical support that they need?
EM: Look, I think the biggest thing we need to do, cognisant of those fiscal pressures and the situation facing developing countries, is multilateral development bank (MDB) reform. So making sure that the MDBs work to the maximum for developing countries.
There’s lots of evidence out there and I was speaking about this at the World Bank annual meetings about the fact that the MDBs could do more to leverage their balance sheets. You know, potentially hundreds of billions of pounds – dollars – more that could be helping developing countries. Helping developing countries with climate resilience, helping them with relieving the debt burden in terms of the financing of the debt.
And, you know, one of the things that we’re going to be doing as part of our G20 is convening those MDBs to, in a friendly way, you know, point to the best practice of some of them, push the others to do more. I feel from our discussions that this is absolutely possible – for us to do more.
So yes, there are more fiscal constraints in developed countries, including in Britain, but it doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference. And I think it’s really, really important to say to your viewers: we are serious about, not just our national leadership on climate, but our international leadership as well, and we believe we can make a difference.
CB: It’s become part of the narrative that the COP process has run its course, and that people should focus more on mini-coalitions, groups of middle powers. What would you say to that, and how would you like to see the COP process reformed?
EM: I mean, I’m quite pro the COP process – not the process, but I’m quite pro the institution of the COP – and I’d say that in two respects.
One, if you look at the sweep of history, I was at the Copenhagen COP of 2009, [which] ended in acrimony. We were heading for a 4C world back then. Now, we’re heading for a 2.5C, 2.6C world, according to the latest UNEP emissions gap report – one of my favourite publications.
And look, 2.6C is bad, right? And we’ve got to do a lot more as a world, but we have made progress. And why? Because of multilateralism, because of the institution, being part of the COP, driving people forward.
That’s one part of it. The second part of it is [that the COP is] a place where these “coalitions of the willing” are formed. If I think about what I’ve done while I’ve been here [in Antalya] – I was at an event on forests, coalitions of the willing acting on the forest leaders’ partnership, acting to protect the forest. An event on electrification, a big focus of the Turkish presidency. An event on industrial policy, green industrial policy. Countries working together. An event this morning on methane, really crucial. We’re trying to, with a coalition of the willing, get it onto the COP agenda. And then, an event on climate security.
So that gives people, your viewers, a sense of why I think this [COP process] matters. You know, it’s not simply a talking shop. I think it is also a place where action happens.
CB: You mentioned the electrification pledge put forward by the Turkish presidency. Is the UK a signatory to that yet?
EM: We support the electrification pledge, absolutely, and you know we want to drive forward. It’s stretching for the UK, but we think it’s the right thing to do. And why? Because – it’s really important to say this – because electrification is a way of getting off the fossil-fuel rollercoaster. Clean-energy electrification is the way I think about it.
[Three hours after Carbon Brief’s interview with Ed Miliband, the UK government confirmed its endorsement of the 35×35 electrification pledge.]
UK foreign secretary and COP veteran Ed Miliband, at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey. Credit: Carbon Brief.And if there’s one lesson we’ve got to learn from these two wars that we’ve seen – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Iran war – it’s [that] you can’t have security on the basis of fossil fuels. It’s not even – even [for a] country like America, a massive fossil-fuel producer is affected by higher prices. But for fossil-fuel importers, covering 75% of the world’s population [including the UK], we are price takers. And you know the fossil-fuel rollercoaster is terrible for the cost of living. That’s why clean energy, clean electrification, is the answer. Electrify now!
CB: The UN climate convention and the Paris Agreement both commit countries, including the UK, to implement “climate-change education, training, public awareness and participation”. Why doesn’t the UK have a national programme on this, particularly given the flood of misinformation in this area?
EM: We need to do more. You’re completely right. Look, I am always ambitious to do more, and more climate education – well, more public information – is important.
I did the first annual climate and nature statement in 2025. It was repeated in 2026 by [environment secretary] Mary Creagh. I was in the House of Commons for that, and that whole institution was part of me believing, as energy secretary, that it was important to find ways to inform the public.
And I fully acknowledge we need to do more. We need to do more. But we need to do more to both tell people about what is happening, in terms of climate and nature, but also say there are answers, because it can’t just be a council of despair. It’s also got to be a council of hope – not false hope – but a council of honesty, but also hope.
CB: Great. How would you like to see the Brazilian roadmaps on fossil fuels and deforestation taken forward? Are you keen to see those as part of the formal negotiated outcome [at COP31]?
EM: I think what’s interesting about this goes back to your question about the coalition of the willing. Look, there’s obviously no secret that there are countries that are obstacles to the fossil-fuel roadmap being part of – central – to the COP decision. And we took a decision last year that there was a big enough coalition of the willing – I think there are 80 countries or more – to drive this forward.
I think the Brazilians are to be incredibly commended for having produced this fossil-fuel roadmap. I think we should now be thinking, as individual countries, how can we build on that work ourselves? Because it’s doing exactly what I hoped it would do, which is to grapple with the important issues that we face.
I think we have to accept there are some countries – in a world where you have to operate by consensus – where not every decision is going to get into the COP decision. But it doesn’t mean we can’t make progress on it, and I think that’s really true in this case.
CB: Great. One final question from my end, if I may. What’s an outcome that you’re going to be looking for at the end of this COP, that you’re going to be happy to take home to the UK?
EM: I think the most important thing is action to drive forward the climate agenda, and that’s what I want to see. You know, it goes back to the point about the cost. Some of it is about the formal decision-making, but a lot of it is about the real, tangible outcomes that have happened over a couple of weeks.
And if I think about what I’ve done here, you know, if we can get methane and the importance of methane – which, as you know, and as your viewers will know – is such an important short-term difference we can make in terms of preventing the rise in temperatures, and we can get that onto the agenda of the COP. If we can show progress on other aspects of the real economy – what’s happening in the real economy – all of those things are going to be important.
I think there’s something else, though, which is, these events of countries coming together. They contradict those people who say, you know, people are giving up on climate. Because you’ve got more than 190 countries that are coming together [at the COP], reaffirming their belief in the Paris Agreement, reaffirming their belief that they need to make efforts, as part of the Paris Agreement, to meet the climate goals – and working together on these issues.
It doesn’t mean they aren’t hard, but it does show that there is really important global commitment, which I’ve been hearing, to this agenda.
CB: Brilliant. Thanks very much, Ed.
EM: Thank you.
This interview was conducted by Simon Evans at the COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, on 12 November 2026. Filming by Leo Hickman, Josh Gabbatiss and Daisy Dunne, and editing by Joe Goodman.
RELATED Analysis: Climate-finance pledges fall 70% as countries meet at COP31 11.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Analysis: Which countries have sent the most delegates to COP31? 10.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Q&A: What is the Belém-Antalya mechanism for a ‘just transition’? 09.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP31 climate summit 05.11.2026 COP31 AntalyaThe post COP31: How Ed Miliband answered Carbon Brief readers’ questions appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Climate-finance pledges fall 70% as countries meet at COP31
The amount of public funding pledged to help developing countries tackle climate change has dropped by more than 70% in 2026, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Developed countries are required under UN climate treaties to provide “climate finance” and have traditionally announced multi-year pledges to feed into their global commitments.
Most of these pledges expired in 2025 and, since then, the US has withdrawn from international climate efforts and many European aid budgets have been cut.
A civil-society tracker shows that only five nations have announced new multi-year pledges, including just one major donor – the UK.
Germany, France and Japan are among the key contributors that have so far failed to set out plans for new climate finance, while none is expected from the US.
As a result, the total amount of public climate finance pledged over the next few years amounts to just $11.7bn a year in spending, down from recent levels of around $40bn.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that global conflict, fiscal constraints and the rise of the far right are all making it harder for developed-country governments to pledge new funds.
As the COP31 summit in Turkey gets underway, developing countries are stressing their urgent need for new finance, after nations agreed to a new global target just two years ago.
Missing pledgesUnder the Paris Agreement, developed countries are obliged to provide climate finance to help developing countries cut their emissions and prepare for climate disasters.
This financial assistance can be channelled through multilateral development banks, UN climate funds and investments “mobilised” from the private sector.
But a large chunk is also expected to come directly from the public coffers of developed countries – primarily their foreign-aid budgets. This public spending has made up roughly a third of climate finance flowing to developing countries in recent years.
The EU, the US and others agreed just two years ago that they would “take the lead” on scaling up annual climate finance from $100bn in the early 2020s to $300bn by 2035.
Donor countries have traditionally supported such goals by announcing multi-year targets that indicate how much they plan to spend on climate finance.
Nearly all of these pledges expired in 2025 – and hardly any major donors have announced new ones to replace them, covering the period out to 2030.
This lack of new commitments is captured in a tracker of old and new financial commitments by climate NGOs NRDC and E3G.
Carbon Brief analysis of this data, based on an annualised breakdown of targets, shows that developed countries had previously pledged around £42bn a year in public finance.
As the chart below shows, based on current pledges, this has fallen by around 71% to £11.8bn, on average, over the remainder of the 2020s.
Not all contributors announced public climate-finance pledges in advance for the pre-2026 period. Some did not hit their stated targets, while others exceeded them.
While official data for 2025 is not yet available, bilateral public finance reached £43.9bn in 2024, broadly in line with the amount pledged by developed countries.
Big contributorsInternational climate finance has been consistently dominated by five nations – Japan, Germany, France, the US and the UK.
These countries – together with the EU – have provided around 90% of all the bilateral, public climate finance going to developing countries in recent years.
Of these key players, only the UK has announced a new pledge, committing £6bn ($8bn) of aid between 2026-27 and 2028-29, plus £6.7bn ($8.9bn) from outside its aid budget.
This accounts for half of all the annual funds pledged from 2026 onwards – averaging $5.7bn a year.
The European Commission makes up most of the remainder, with an average annual contribution of $4.5bn promised out to 2027.
Rather than a new pledge, this is due to the commission promising to spend €28bn ($31.8bn) over its 2021-2027 budget period. Its post-2027 contribution is currently being discussed as part of wider EU budget negotiations.
Canada has promised to spend CA$5.3bn ($4.1bn) by 2030, averaging $860m a year. The Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium have also pledged relatively small sums.
Overall, despite developed countries committing to scale up climate finance, these new pledges are either less ambitious – or only slightly more ambitious – than previous ones. This can be seen in the chart below.
The UK’s pledge appears more ambitious, but this is because the government has changed how it counts climate finance to include $8.9bn in “additional” public finance. When only the like-for-like aid components are compared, the new pledge amounts to a drop in ambition. (For more details, see the methodology.)
The most significant absence is the US, which committed to reaching $11.4bn in annual support by 2024 under the Biden administration.
Since president Donald Trump took power, the US has – for the second time – withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and shrunk its aid budget. It will not provide any official climate finance in the coming years.
Another notable absence is Australia, which is jointly hosting the upcoming COP31 summit, alongside Turkey. Josie Lee, policy and advocacy lead at Oxfam Australia, tells Carbon Brief:
“If Australia fails to announce a climate-finance pledge as president of negotiations, it would send a problematic message to those resisting action on climate change that might serve to embolden their agenda.”
Japan is the largest overall contributor of public climate finance, but it has not traditionally announced targets for this type of spending. Instead, the government set out overall goals that also bundle in finance “mobilised” from the private sector.
As a result, its public-finance ambitions have not been included in this analysis.
So far, the Japanese government has not announced any new multi-year climate-finance pledges, from either the public or the private sector.
European cutsEurope provides the majority of international climate finance, but European governments have massively cut their aid spending in recent years, citing economic strain and defence spending needs.
Germany and France, the two largest European climate-finance contributors, both pledged to reach €6bn ($6.8bn) per year by 2025. Neither has committed to anything beyond that.
Both nations have slashed their aid budgets in recent years, including funding for climate programmes. Germany missed its 2025 climate-finance goal due to these cuts.
Dr Anja Carolin Gebel, a senior policy advisor at Germanwatch, tells Carbon Brief that this issue has become more politically fraught since the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the 2025 election and began leading a coalition government:
“The issue of climate change – and, subsequently, climate finance – has taken a back seat in the current government coalition.”
There has also been a political shift in France, Gaïa Febvre, international policy coordinator at Réseau Action Climat, tells Carbon Brief. She adds:
“The upcoming presidential election and the growing influence of the far right are likely to make new international financial commitments politically more difficult.”
Other significant European donors are also undergoing political turmoil.
Spain’s centre-left government has triggered a snap election for the end of November, making a new climate-finance pledge during COP31 less likely.
Following a narrow election win, a centre-left bloc in Sweden is still in the process of trying to form a new coalition government.
Some nations have signalled that their climate finance will continue flowing, even though they have not officially set out specific new pledges.
The Dutch government, for example, has said it will provide “at least” €300m ($334m) of specific climate funding annually out to 2031. However, it has also indicated that its total public climate finance is likely to be considerably higher in both 2026 and 2027.
To highlight the lack of new pledges, developing countries are championing a “climate-finance work programme” at COP31, which could provide a space to discuss scaling up public climate finance from developed countries.
In response, the EU has stressed that its member states are the “largest providers” of public climate finance and called on developing countries to submit overdue plans for cutting emissions. The EU and its member states provided a record €32.3bn ($40bn) in 2025.
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Against this backdrop, EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra recently told Bloomberg that “any conversation on new fresh money is dead in the water”.
Joe Thwaites, international climate finance director at NRDC, who runs the commitment tracker, tells Carbon Brief that “developed countries would be wise to show how they are continuing to lead on climate finance”. He says:
“The lack of new announcements is making the finance negotiations tougher than they need to be. The debate around the climate-finance work programme is arising because developing countries have little clarity about how much public climate finance there will be in coming years.”
MethodologyThis analysis is based on the climate-finance commitments tracker, run by the NGOs NRDC and E3G, supplemented with additional research.
Only the 23 “developed” countries that are obliged to provide climate finance are considered in this analysis, plus the EU. This includes western Europe, the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Japan and Norway both provide substantial sums of climate finance, but have not announced specific public-finance pledges and therefore are not included.
Carbon Brief converted multi-year pledges into single years, with 2025 used as the baseline “pre-2026” year. Some countries committed to reaching a certain amount “by 2025”, in which case that value is used. Others said they would provide a total amount over several years, in which case the average value per year is used. Belgium, Switzerland and the US only set initial targets as far as 2024, so their 2024 values were used instead of 2025.
These values were compared with the average annual contribution for the remainder of the 2020s, based on the new pledges from the UK, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Some climate finance has been committed by the Netherlands, but this is not expected to be its total contribution. The EU, Portugal and Greece have earlier pledges that extend into the latter half of the 2020s, although the latter two make very small contributions.
NRDC and E3G include all the UK’s newly pledged public finance in their tracker, including $8.9bn in “additional” public finance, which covers “equity, debt, guarantees, insurance and export credit” to mobilise private finance.
In previous Carbon Brief analysis comparing the UK’s new climate-finance target to its old one, this funding was not included. This is because the government did not previously count these funds towards its climate-finance goals, instead focusing exclusively on aid spending.
This analysis does not include pledges that some countries, including Germany and France, have made to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). However, these pledges would not substantially change the main finding, shifting the overall reduction from 71% to 70%.
related COP31: How Ed Miliband answered Carbon Brief readers’ questions 12.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Analysis: Which countries have sent the most delegates to COP31? 10.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Q&A: What is the Belém-Antalya mechanism for a ‘just transition’? 09.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP31 climate summit 05.11.2026 COP31 AntalyaThe post Analysis: Climate-finance pledges fall 70% as countries meet at COP31 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Which countries have sent the most delegates to COP31?
More than 92,000 people have registered to attend the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, potentially making it the largest COP in history.
Carbon Brief analysis of the provisional lists of delegates, published by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), reveals that more than 14,000 delegates have been registered as “host country guests”.
For comparison, the final list for COP30 in Belém, Brazil, last year included only around 1,300 delegates in this category.
As with COP30, Donald Trump’s US government has not sent a delegation. Other no-shows include Israel and Myanmar.
It was reported ahead of the summit that Taliban officials from Afghanistan had been registered for the event as observers; however, there are no delegates from observer states in the provisional lists.
With more than 3,000 “virtual” delegates signed up to attend the summit online, the total number of people registered for the event surpasses 95,000.
Party delegatesWith 92,934 participants registered, COP31 is provisionally the largest COP in history – topping COP28 in Dubai, which was attended by more than 80,000 people.
This total is based on the delegates that have registered to be at the summit in person. The UNFCCC releases the final figures – based on participants collecting a physical badge at the venue – after the summit has ended.
The chart below shows how the provisional figures for COP31 compare to the final totals in previous COPs – going back to COP1 in Berlin in 1995.
Overall totals for delegates from parties, observers and the media for all COPs, as published by the UNFCCC (see this article for more details on the data). Data for COPs 1-30 are the “final” figures, while COP31 data is “provisional”. The figures for COP31 breakdown as follows: parties (18,812), observers (13,388), media (3,645), overflow (16,726), other/staff (39,400) and virtual (3,335). Chart by Carbon Brief.The participant lists provided by the UNFCCC are divided between the different types of groups and organisations attending the summit. The largest group at COP31 is for delegates representing parties. These are nation-states, plus the European Union, that have ratified the convention and play a full part in negotiations.
This group adds up to 18,812 delegates – the second largest after COP28.
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(In keeping with recent COPs, the UNFCCC has published spreadsheets that name every single person that has registered for the summit – excluding support staff. Previously, COPs have typically included thousands of “overflow” participants in which countries and UN agencies could nominate delegates without their names appearing on their official lists.)
For consistency with Carbon Brief’s analysis of previous COPs, the above chart includes overflow delegates as a single group. However, the participant lists do divide the overflow delegates between parties and observer groups. Including the overflow numbers takes the total for party representatives to more than 34,000.
Unusually, COP31 has a very large number of “host country guests”. This is a category that has only been included in the COP participant lists over the last few years. The provisional number for COP31 – 14,285 – far exceeds the final number of host guests at COP30 (1,324), COP29 (1,651) and COP28 (4,202).
NationsThe map and table below present the delegation size – split between party and overflow badges – for all the countries registered for COP31. The darker the shading, the more delegates that country has signed up.
window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r #logocontainer { max-width: 1200px; margin-top: -4em; display: flex; justify-content: end; align-items: center; margin-left: 0.6em; } @media (max-width:490px){ #logocontainer{ margin-top:0 } } #logo { width: 150px; height: 70px; background: url(https://cbbranding.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/cb-logo-full.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: contain; } .footer { float: right; }Unsurprisingly, host nation Turkey has registered the largest delegation for COP31 – with 2,950 people.
Following behind are Brazil (1,994 people), Nigeria (1,506), China (1,021) and Indonesia (978).
The rest of the top 10 is made up of Australia (835), Uganda (627), Italy (607), Japan (588) and Kazakhstan (557).
The UK comes someway down the list with a delegation of 255.
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(It is worth noting that some countries – such as Brazil – allocate some of their party badges to NGOs, which can artificially inflate the size of their official delegation.)
window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Gender balanceThe UNFCCC’s participant lists typically provide a title – such as Mr, Ms, Sr or Sra – for each registered delegate. In the past, this has allowed Carbon Brief to work out the balance of men to women in the delegations that each country has sent to a COP.
(This analysis always carries the caveat that the titles are designated by UNFCCC and not by Carbon Brief. In addition, Carbon Brief recognises that gender is not best categorised using a binary “man” or “woman” label and appreciates that the UNFCCC’s lists may not be wholly accurate.)
Overall, the COP31 provisional list suggests an average gender balance of party delegations of 59% men to 41% women.
As the chart below shows, COP31 is slightly less balanced than the last two COPs, but broadly continues a trend that has seen COP delegations become a more even split between men and women.
(Note: Since COP28, the UNFCCC has also used titles that do not indicate gender – such as Dr, Prof, Ambassador and Honourable. Therefore, for this analysis, these non-gendered titles – which make up 1.3% of party delegates at COP31, for example – have not been included.)
The average percentage split between women (orange) and men (purple) across party delegations (excluding overflows) for each COP, according to titles given by the UNFCCC Data for COPs 1-30 collated from “final” participant lists published by the UNFCCC, while COP31 data is based on the “provisional” list. Note that a small number (<1%) of delegates are not included because there is no information on their gender. Chart by Carbon Brief.Including overflows, there are two delegations of only men at COP31 – Eritrea (three people) and North Korea (two). There are no delegations that are only women.
The full list of COP31 party delegation sizes can be found here.
(For previous COPs, see Carbon Brief’s delegate analysis for COP21, COP23, COP24, COP25, COP26, COP27, COP28, COP29 and COP30.)
Observers and mediaAfter party delegates, observers of the negotiations are typically the next biggest group at COP summits.
These delegates receive their observer status through their not-for-profit organisation. This can be a UN body, a “specialised agency” – such as the World Bank or International Atomic Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organisation – such as OPEC or the Inter-American Development Bank – or an NGO.
The vast majority of observers at COP31 – more than 12,000 – are representing NGOs. These can include charities, such as WWF, 350.org and Amnesty International, as well as philanthropic organisations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the IKEA Foundation, and lobby groups, such as the International Gas Union and the UK’s National Farmers Union.
At COP30 last year, the UNFCCC registration process introduced the option for observers to disclose the “immediate source(s) of funding” for their participation.
This option has been included again at COP31.
Of the 12,413 NGO observers registered for COP31, 14% chose not to disclose funding. The most common funders were NGOs (56%) and academic or research institutions (12%). Around 8% declared funding from “private sector or business”.
In addition, observers were “invited to declare their participation's alignment with the objective of the convention and the goals and principles of the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement”.
Overall, 13,108 delegates selected “yes” for this section, with the remaining 2,247 delegates leaving the answer blank.
Finally, there are 3,645 media representatives registered to attend COP31 in person, which is provisionally the second-largest media group in COP history – behind COP3 in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 (3,712).
The way that media organisations are described in the list is very inconsistent, which makes overall totals difficult to tally. Nonetheless, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) is comfortably the most-represented media group at COP31 with more than 200 delegates.
Other media outlets with at least a dozen participants include CNN, the Associated Press, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Sky News.
ARTICLE INFORMATION
Update: This article was updated on 11/11/2026 to add further analysis on gender balance, observers and media at COP31.
Related COP31: How Ed Miliband answered Carbon Brief readers’ questions 12.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Analysis: Climate-finance pledges fall 70% as countries meet at COP31 11.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Q&A: What is the Belém-Antalya mechanism for a ‘just transition’? 09.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP31 climate summit 05.11.2026 COP31 AntalyaThe post Analysis: Which countries have sent the most delegates to COP31? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Fossil-fuel CO2 emissions set to dip in 2026 as Iran conflict hits oil use
- Total emissions edge up as land-use emissions rise
- Land-use emissions rise in 2026
- Fossil emissions fall in most major economies
- Oil emissions fall as coal emissions slightly increase
- Land sink in 2025 is highest on record
- Clean energy is offsetting most emissions from rising energy demand
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.
The 2026 global carbon budget report also estimates that:
- Fossil emissions are projected to fall in China (-0.9%), the US (-1.3%) and the EU (-1.5%) in 2026, but rise by 4.4% in India.
- Oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region, with the largest drop in China (-4.6%).
- Land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, around 21% lower than the decade before.
- Total CO2 emissions (fossil and land-use) grew by an average 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over the decade before.
- The remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is 150GtCO2, or less than four years of current emissions.
- The land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, rebounding after being weakened during the 2023-24 El Niño. The current El Niño is expected to weaken the land sink in 2027.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels.
(For more on previous editions of the Global Carbon Project’s annual report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022.)
Total emissions edge up as land-use emissions riseTotal global CO2 emissions, which combines fossil fuels and land-use change, are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026, up from 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
The increase in 2026 comes entirely from a projected rise in land-use emissions, which are more challenging to estimate than fossil emissions.
(The global carbon budget groups emissions from fossil fuels and cement production as “fossil emissions”. Carbon Brief follows this convention throughout this piece.)
If land-use emissions had stayed at 2025 levels, total emissions would have fallen slightly in 2026 to around 42.6GtCO2.
Each edition of the global carbon budget updates the historical record as new data and methods become available. The chart below shows total emissions in this year’s budget compared with the five previous editions.
Shaded area shows the one-standard deviation uncertainty for the 2026 budget. 2026 values are projections.This year’s estimates of historical fossil emissions are around 0.3GtCO2 per year higher than in last year’s budget.
This is largely because the report now estimates a smaller “cement carbonation” sink in the wake of research published this year in Communications Sustainability. In other words, it estimates that cement is able to slowly reabsorb less CO2 over its lifetime than previously thought.
Estimates of land-use emissions have also been revised, including a spike in 2018 – visible in the chart above – linked to updated cropland data for Colombia.
The updated numbers show that total emissions have grown by 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over 2006-15.
Fossil emissions grew about 0.9% per year in the past decade, compared with 1.9% the decade before. Over the same period, land-use emissions have declined.
While the slowdown reflects real progress, a plateau in emissions is still a long way from the rapid declines needed to reach net-zero emissions and stabilise global temperatures.
With human-caused warming reaching 1.37C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) in 2025, the report estimates that the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C, with a 50% chance, is 150GtCO2 from the start of 2027. That is less than four years of 2026 emissions.
Meanwhile, the budgets for 1.7C and 2C are 510GtCO2 and 1,035GtCO2, respectively – or around 12 and 24 years of current emissions.
Fossil emissions made up around 88% of total CO2 emissions over the past decade, with land-use change making up the remaining 12%.
This is a marked change from the first half of the 20th century, when land-use emissions were larger than those from fossil fuels.
The figure below shows global emissions, split into fossil and land-use components.
Fossil emissions account for the cement carbonation sink. 2026 values are projections.Global per-capita fossil emissions peaked in the early 2010s and have since slightly declined. At around 4.6 tonnes per person in 2026, they are about 4% below that peak.
It is worth noting that this global average hides very large differences between countries. For example, 2025 per-capita emissions in India are only 2.2 tonnes, compared with 14.5 tonnes in the US.
Fossil emissions account for the cement carbonation sink. 2026 population is extrapolated from 2024-25 growth. Data for 2026 is a projection. Land-use emissions rise in 2026Land-use emissions come from deforestation, forest degradation, wood harvest, peatland drainage and fires. They are partly offset by forest regrowth and new forests.
Net land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, down from 6.2GtCO2 per year over 2006-15, marking a decline of around 21%. This decline holds across all three of the “bookkeeping” models used by the Global Carbon Project to track land-use emissions.
(For more on trends in global land-use emissions and how they are calculated, see Carbon Brief’s explainer.)
Land-use emissions are projected to rise to 5.1GtCO2 in 2026, up from 4.4GtCO2 in 2025.
The report attributes the increase to peat fires, almost all ignited by people, and forest degradation in south-east Asia due to drier conditions associated with El Niño.
Uncertainties in land-use emissions are much higher than for fossil emissions given the challenges in tracking them.
While 2026 shows a nominal increase, it is only slightly above the average over the past decade.
Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Indonesia together accounted for 2.6GtCO2 of land-use emissions per year over 2015-25, or around 54% of the global total.
The figure below shows how land-use emissions for these three countries and the rest of the world have changed since 1960.
Includes peat drainage and peat fires. Country-level land-use emissions are not yet available for 2026. Fossil emissions fall in most major economiesGlobal fossil CO2 emissions are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026. However, challenges associated with precisely measuring and projecting 2026 means this could end up anywhere between a 1.5% decline and a 0.6% increase.
The figure below provides a breakdown of fossil emissions over time by major country and region, including China, the US, the EU, India and the rest of the world.
Total global emissions are slightly more than reported elsewhere, as data excludes the cement carbonation sink, because countries do not report this data. “Rest of world” includes international aviation and shipping. 2026 data is a projection.The global carbon budget report sets out the following projections for 2026 in major economies:
Country, region or sectorPercentage of global emissions2026 emissions projectionChina32%China is projected to see emissions fall by 0.9% (with a range of -2.6% to +0.8%), after two years of low growth.Oil emissions fall sharply by 4.6%, gas falls 0.9% and coal rises only slightly by 0.3%. The report attributes this to strong growth in renewables and milder summer temperatures than 2025’s record highs, which reduced demand for cooling.
This is in line with Carbon Brief analysis showing that China’s emissions fell in the second quarter of 2026 as oil use dropped, though it remains too early to determine if this decline reflects a peaking of emissions.US13%The US is projected to see a 1.3% decline (-3.4% to +0.8%), mainly due to a 6.7% fall in coal emissions after an unusual rise in 2025 driven by high gas prices and cold weather. Oil fell 1.1%, while gas increased by 0.5%.India8%India is projected to see emissions rise by 4.4% (+1.7% to +7.1%), which is higher than its average growth of 3.5% per year over the past decade. Coal rises 5.9%, while oil emissions fall slightly by -0.9%.EU6%The EU is projected to see a 1.5% decline (-4.0% to +0.9%), with coal down 2.9% and oil down 1.8%.Japan2.5%Japan is projected to see a 1.0% decline, continuing a trend as transport is electrified, its population ages and nuclear power stations come back online.International aviation and shipping3%International aviation and shipping are each projected to fall by 1%, partly due to reduced air and sea traffic in the Middle East.Rest of world38%The rest of the world is projected to see a 0.7% decline (-2.9% to +1.5%), mostly from oil, which the report links to high prices and supply constraints.
The figure below shows how each country or region contributed to changes in global fossil emissions in each year between 2023 and 2026.
Negative values indicate reductions in emissions. Excludes the cement carbonation sink, as national-level data is not available. “Rest of world” includes international aviation and shipping. The y-axis does not start at zero.A growing number of countries are cutting emissions while growing their economies.
The report finds that 40 countries, together accounting for 26% of global fossil emissions, significantly reduced their emissions while their economies grew over 2016-25. This compares with 22 countries in the previous decade.
Oil emissions fall as coal emissions slightly increaseCoal accounts for around 41% of global fossil CO2 emissions in 2026, oil 33% and gas 21%. Cement accounts for around 2%, after the carbonation sink is subtracted.
Oil is the main driver of the decline in global fossil emissions in 2026. Oil emissions are projected to fall by 1.9% (with a range of -2.6% to -1.2%), or 243m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2).
The left panel of the figure below shows that this is one of the largest annual falls in the record, with the exception of 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Other large declines occurred during the global financial crisis in 2009 and in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1992.
The chart on the right shows how oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region in 2026.
“Rest of world” includes international aviation and shipping.The global carbon budget links most of the oil decline to higher prices and reductions in output after the Iran conflict resulted in the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Petrol and diesel prices in the US, China and EU were 10-50% higher than in 2025, depending on the fuel and the period.
A study published in parallel by the team behind the global carbon budget reveals that growth in EVs accounted for around a fifth of the overall drop in oil emissions in 2026.
This is consistent with Carbon Brief analysis published in September that estimated that global fossil-fuel emissions were set to fall in 2026 amid the Hormuz crisis.
By contrast, coal emissions are projected to rise by 0.6% (-0.6% to +1.7%), with a strong increase in emissions in India partly offset by sharp falls in the EU and US.
Gas emissions, meanwhile, are projected to fall by 0.3% (-1.6% to +0.9%) – making them effectively flat.
The figure below shows global emissions by fuel since 1959.
Cement emissions account for the cement carbonation sink, so the stack sums to the global fossil total.Coal emissions grew rapidly in the 2000s, at around 4% per year, but have risen only slightly since 2013. Even with continued growth, 2026 coal emissions are only around 6% above their 2013 level.
Oil emissions remain about 1% above their pre-pandemic level in 2019.
The figure below shows the contribution of each fuel to the change in global emissions between 2023 and 2026.
Negative values indicate reductions in emissions. Totals account for the cement carbonation sink, with changes in the sink included in “cement and other”. The y-axis does not start at zero. Land sink in 2025 is highest on recordThe annual global carbon budget report tracks both the sources of CO2, from fossil fuels and land use, as well as the “sinks” that take it up: the ocean, the land and the atmosphere.
Over 2016-25, the ocean took up around 27% of total emissions, or 11.1GtCO2 per year, whereas the land around 22%, or 9.2GtCO2 per year. The remaining 48% accumulated in the atmosphere.
The figure below shows the sources of emissions (above zero) and where they end up (below zero) each year. The sum of the sinks is shown as a dashed line for comparison with total emissions.
The budget does not fully balance every year because of remaining data uncertainties, particularly in the sinks (bars below zero). This imbalance is indicated by the gap between the sources (bars above zero) and the dashed line (sum of the sinks). The 2026 land sink (hatched) is preliminary and based on the difference between emissions and the ocean and atmospheric sinks.The Global Carbon Project estimates that the land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, at around 13.3GtCO2 – 50% larger than in 2024.
This reflects a strong recovery in the tropics after the 2023-24 El Niño had suppressed the land sink, along with gradual growth of the sink associated with higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
The carbon budget does not always balance. In 2024, the estimated sinks exceeded the estimated sources by 6.7GtCO2, the largest “imbalance” on record. This partly offset an imbalance in the opposite direction in 2023 of 3.3GtCO2.
The report attributes much of the 2023-24 discrepancy to the timing of the atmospheric CO2 growth rate. The changes to the land carbon sink in the tropics driven by the El Niño of that year occurred late in the calendar year, so they straddle the 1 January boundary used to calculate annual growth.
A strong El Niño began in June 2026, but its effects on the carbon cycle are not yet visible, as changes in the carbon cycle lag several months behind changes in the climate. Consequently, the global carbon budget researchers expect the effect of the current El Niño to show up predominantly in 2027.
While natural sinks continue to absorb around half of human emissions, climate change is weakening them. The report estimates that the land and ocean sinks were 19% and 8% smaller, respectively, over 2016-25 than they would have been without the effects of climate change and natural fluctuations to the Earth’s climate.
Atmospheric CO2 is projected to rise by 2.2ppm in 2026, similar to the 2.1ppm rise in 2025 and well below the record 3.8ppm rise in 2024 during the last El Niño. CO2 concentrations are set to average 427.7ppm in 2026, roughly 54% above pre-industrial levels.
Clean energy is offsetting most emissions from rising energy demandWith global fossil emissions projected to fall in 2026, a natural follow-up question is whether they have now peaked.
The Nature Climate Change research suggests that the answer is not yet.
In the study, the researchers estimate the emissions “avoided” by solar and wind power and EVs, assuming that in their absence the same energy services would have been supplied by fossil fuels.
They then compare these “avoided emissions” with the emissions growth expected from rising economic activity and trends in the carbon intensity of the economy. The latter are described as “demand-driven emissions”.
This is illustrated in the figure below, which shows how increasing demand-driven emissions – which overwhelmingly come from rising energy demand – would have added around 0.78GtCO2 in 2026. However, growth in solar, wind and EVs offset 0.54GtCO2 – or about 69% – of this.
The rest of the decline in global fossil fuel emissions between 2025 and 2026 is attributed by the researchers mostly to high energy prices and supply constraints.
“Prices and other” is the remainder needed to match the global carbon budget’s 2026 fossil emissions projection. This is attributed by the researchers to high oil prices and supply constraints after the Iran conflict. Note that the y-axis does not start at zero.In other words, clean energy alone was not enough to cut emissions in 2026. The researchers’ central estimate suggests global emissions would have continued to rise had it not been for the energy shock from the Iran war.
The scale of avoided emissions is nonetheless large and growing quickly. The authors estimate that solar and wind avoided around 4.1GtCO2 in 2025 and project that they could avoid 4.6GtCO2 in 2026, up from 0.28GtCO2 in 2010. China accounts for around half of this.
Most of these avoided emissions are attributable to solar and wind. EVs avoided 0.19GtCO2 in 2025. The existing vehicle stock takes time to turn over. Currently, just 10% of the global car fleet has been electrified – a figure that drops to 6% if non-plug-in hybrid cars are excluded.
Without solar, wind and EVs, the study estimates that global fossil emissions would have grown by around 1.9% per year over 2019-25 – more than double the actual rate of 0.8% per year.
It also finds that the growth in data centres, driven largely by AI, added around 0.03GtCO2 in 2025, or about 2% of the “demand-driven” increase.
Looking ahead, the researchers explore how EV, solar, and wind might affect emissions in 2028 under two scenarios.
In the first, EV sales and solar and wind additions stay at 2026 levels. In the second, they continue to accelerate along recent trends.
As the figure below shows, rising demand for energy would add around 2.6GtCO2 between 2025 and 2028.
Clean technologies offset 63% of this in the current deployment scenario and 79% in the accelerated scenario. In both cases, overall emissions would still be higher in 2028 than in 2025.
Blue bars indicate global fossil CO2 emissions in 2025 and projected global fossil CO2 emissions in 2028 under the two scenarios. The chart starts from 2025 and assumes no long-term continuation of the 2026 energy-price shock. The y-axis does not start at zero.There are important caveats to this approach. The authors note that the avoided-emissions method is a simplified counterfactual approach. It assumes that each unit of clean energy displaces fossil fuels one-for-one without incorporating potential rebound effects, such as the impact of falling clean energy costs on energy demand and fossil fuel costs.
The researchers conclude that the 2026 decline is “not a sign that emissions have peaked from the transition to cleaner energy”, but more likely a short-term response to higher oil prices.
However, the authors add that “if further acceleration of clean technology deployment can be supported through time, a sustained peak and decline in global CO2 emissions could be a few years away”.
Even then, a peak is only a first step. Limiting warming to well below 2C – let alone 1.5C, with a remaining budget of just three and a half years of current emissions – requires emissions to fall rapidly towards net-zero, not just stop rising.
article information
Friedlingstein, P. et al. (2026) Global Carbon Budget 2026, Earth System Science Data, essd-2026-895.
Le Quéré, C. et al. (2026) A further acceleration of clean energy is needed for global CO2 emissions to peak and decline, Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02821-8.
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Q&A: What is the Belém-Antalya mechanism for a ‘just transition’?
- How has a ‘just transition’ featured in UN climate talks?
- Where did the ‘just transition mechanism’ come from?
- What role could the mechanism play in facilitating ‘just transitions’?
- What are the financial implications of the mechanism?
- What is likely to happen in Antalya?
One of the key expected outcomes from the upcoming COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, is the launch of a “just transition mechanism”.
This follows years of calls from civil society to support a “just transition” as countries shift towards low-emissions energy systems and away from fossil fuels.
At the COP30 UN climate talks last year in the Brazilian city of Belém parties agreed to establish a “mechanism” to support this goal, called the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM).
Groups that have championed the BAM want it to act as a central hub on just transitions, providing support for workers and communities around the world.
However, the details of exactly what the much-touted BAM will consist of remain vague, with developed and developing countries disagreeing about its functions and purpose.
Disagreements continued at the UN climate talks in Bonn in June 2026, including on the crucial question of how the BAM will be financed.
Here, Carbon Brief looks at where the idea for the BAM came from, how it could support just transitions and what to expect from COP31.
How has a ‘just transition’ featured in UN climate talks?A “just transition” is the idea that workers and communities should be supported in the shift to a low-carbon economy. It is a central principle behind the idea of climate justice.
Often, the term refers to those linked to the fossil-fuel industry, but it can also refer to transitions taking place in agriculture, heavy industry and various other sectors.
The concept originated in the 1980s, when US labour unions forged alliances with environmental justice groups. It has since become a key part of international climate discussions.
The preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement includes a commitment to “tak[e] into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities”.
Bert De Wel, policy officer at the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), tells Carbon Brief:
“The labour movement is very happy with the wide audience and broad political support that the concept has received since its inception in the 1980s. The inclusion in the Paris Agreement, with the reference to the creation of decent work and quality jobs was a milestone for the movement. While other demands have been added…we continue to stress the labour dimension as being central to the concept.”
Three years after the creation of the Paris Agreement, at COP24 in the former coal-mining city of Katowice, the Polish presidency highlighted the issue of just transitions.
The need for carbon-cutting policies to ensure “a just transition of the workforce” that creates “decent work and quality jobs” was included in the “Silesia declaration”, issued by the presidency during the first week of COP24.
While the declaration was only signed by 50 countries – roughly a quarter of the parties at the summit – it was still “noted” in the final COP text.
This helped to drive momentum behind the idea, culminating in formal agreement at COP27 in Egypt to launch a “work programme on just transition” (JTWP).
De Wel says the establishment of the JTWP was a “major step forward” that allowed parties to “speak about just transition in more concrete terms”.
In the years since, negotiators have worked to flesh out the JTWP, with disagreements between parties about what its purpose should be.
Broadly, developed countries would like it to focus on domestic workforces, while some nations want a more global outlook, including support for transitions in developing countries.
The JTWP has proved a challenging negotiating space, with talks at the COP29 summit in 2024 closing without an agreement, in what one observer dubbed a “betrayal”.
However, despite these frustrations, parties at COP30 in Brazil agreed to establish a new institutional mechanism on just transitions, which has become widely known as the BAM. The move was hailed as a “victory” by civil society.
Where did the ‘just transition mechanism’ come from?In the run-up to COP30, civil society began to push for the establishment of an “institutional arrangement” that would move work under the JTWP from talk into action.
(This was originally called the “Belém action mechanism” by civil society groups, who subsequently updated this to the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” following the outcome at COP30. However, in the JTWP text agreed at COP30 it is only described as a “mechanism”, sometimes also referred to as the “just transition mechanism”.)
Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at NGO umbrella group Climate Action Network (CAN) International, tells Carbon Brief:
“The idea of the mechanism emerged from the collaboration of civil society, trade unions, feminist groups, youth and Indigenous peoples in the UNFCCC.
“It was clear that the kind of activities being run under the JTWP – two dialogues a year and one ministerial – would not support the delivery of just-transition strategies on the ground, so a new approach was developed to get words into action.”
Following the inception of the idea, civil society did “tonnes of stuff to boost it up the agenda”, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want, tells Carbon Brief.
This ranged from presenting demands and proposals to different constituents, organising joint letters and writing policy papers, all the way through to designing logos, creating memes and even a song.
These efforts ultimately paid off: during the Bonn climate negotiations in June 2025, one draft text included the idea for a new institutional arrangement. One of the options in the draft text was for a “toolbox, guidance framework, global platform, technical assistance network [or] mechanism”.
Paragraph 28 of the JTWP text published 25 June 2025. Credit: UNFCCC.This inclusion was broadly welcomed as a “big win” for civil society groups, although parties acknowledged that more needed to be done to flesh out the idea.
Going into COP30, civil society groups continued to push the idea of creating a BAM, with protests, banners and badges visible around the venue.
Early in negotiations, the G77 and China – a large coalition of developing countries at UN climate talks – put forward their own proposal for a just transition “mechanism”. This, they suggested, could provide technical assistance, support international cooperation and help to foster partnerships in an effort to address implementation gaps.
Their proposal faced initial pushback from developed-country parties including Norway, the UK and others, who opposed it due to concerns that it would duplicate existing systems and require additional funding.
Developed countries also opposed the use of the term “mechanism”, with the EU suggesting an “action plan” as a potential alternative. Nevertheless, the creation of a “mechanism” was included in the final draft text on the JTWP.
This text was formally approved during the COP30 closing plenary to extended applause from many in the hall.
In a statement at the time, Chiara Martinelli, director at CAN Europe, welcomed the decision:
“Delivering BAM was a major civil society win. It creates a coordinated institutional home to drive forward progress on the just transition.”
The decision to develop the mechanism included a request for parties to work over the subsequent year – through to COP31 – on a plan to get things started.
What role could the mechanism play in facilitating ‘just transitions’?According to civil society, the BAM could help tackle the fractured just-transition landscape by centralising resources and helping to overcome a number of barriers.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Rosemberg says the just-transition space “lacks coordination and the right kind of support and is quite disconnected from climate action imperatives”. She adds:
“The BAM can play a role in bringing those [people] trying to make just transition happen together, identify gaps and barriers, foster cooperation and accelerate support.”
Civil society has put forward a number of proposals likely to inform the structure of the BAM. Most consist of a mechanism with three parts, which would encompass and expand upon the work that is currently being carried out under the JTWP.
One proposal by a coalition of five NGOs suggests the mechanism is formed of a steering body, a “knowledge arm” and an “implementation arm”.
The steering body would coordinate the work of the two arms of the BAM, including deciding the topics that should be discussed under the ongoing JTWP, which will continue to feature in climate negotiations. They suggest the body would recommend topics that require negotiation when “gaps that require political guidance are identified”.
Their proposal is illustrated in the infographic below, showing the steering body acting as a central hub for work within the BAM.
Infographic showing a suggested structure and key functions of the just transition mechanism. Credit: Women & Gender Constituency, CAN, DCJ, YOUNGO and TUNGO.The final part of the BAM, the “implementation arm”, would act as a hub to enable and coordinate technical, financial and knowledge-based assistance for those pursuing a just transition.
Rosemberg says the vision of civil society is for work to go “beyond negotiators’ dialogues”. She says the BAM could enable the organisation of a “matchmaking platform” to provide support faster, as well as dedicated groups to identify and mobilise financial resources. She adds:
“Finally, through bottom-up identification of barriers, the BAM can also allow a discussion on enabling just transition that is informed by practitioners. The BAM can show that implementation does not necessarily mean taking issues outside of the UNFCCC.”
A separate proposal for the structure of the BAM from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) – a separate coalition of NGOs – similarly proposes three elements. These would be: coordination and coherence; knowledge generation; and international cooperation and support.
Sealey-Huggins, who is affiliated with DCJ, notes:
“If it works in practice, what we’ll see is a cascade of just-transition policies implemented across countries, across sectors in a unifying, transformational moment for justice-centered climate action, and that will be the key to unlocking the transition that’s been missing so far.”
Another proposal for the BAM comes from the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics. It suggests the three functions of the mechanism should be capacity-building, technical assistance and knowledge-sharing, but it recommends a dual-arm structure comprising a policy arm and an operational arm.
De Wel tells Carbon Brief that while there is “rather broad consensus on the functions”, parties are pushing in “very different directions” on how the BAM will be set up.
What are the financial implications of the mechanism?Within UN climate negotiations, some parties have raised concerns about the potential cost of the mechanism.
The push to launch the BAM comes at a time when the UNFCCC itself is facing a funding gap, following the US withdrawal. Several other parties have also delayed or reduced their contributions, in response to changes in domestic priorities.
This has led to the UNFCCC cancelling events and not filling vacated positions, as the organisation struggles to carry out its existing functions.
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Support award-winning climate journalism Join CB+As such, some parties have expressed hesitancy about creating another mechanism under the remit of the UNFCCC, which also requires funding. However, proponents of the BAM argue that the costs of running it would be minimal.
Rosemberg tells Carbon Brief that the BAM represents “an opportunity to streamline and make efficient use of public resources”. She adds:
“The mechanism does not necessarily require the creation of a costly new institution. Instead, it can leverage existing climate-finance channels and philanthropy.”
She adds that a “similar body” to the potential mechanism, the Climate Technology Centre and Network, costs less than $10m a year. Rosemberg notes that this is “not an impossible amount to be found if there is political will to make just transition happen”.
De Wel notes that the mechanism will build on existing work inside the UNFCCC and out, including the International Labour Organization’s “just transition policy gateway”. He further emphasises that “we’re clearly not asking for a new [just-transition] fund, we want all climate finance to be just-transition proof”.
Alongside highlighting the potential efficiencies of the BAM design, many have argued that the potential benefits are well worth the cost of the new mechanism, with Sealey-Huggins telling Carbon Brief:
“The cost to the [BAM] secretariat pales in comparison to the potential benefit of the action.”
What is likely to happen in Antalya?Despite the “victory” in Belém of agreeing to set up the new just-transition mechanism, climate negotiations in Bonn in June 2026 quickly hit sticking points.
While Bonn did ultimately agree on a “skeleton” draft text to send forward for further negotiations at COP31, many details still need to be agreed in Antalya for the BAM to start functioning.
De Wel cautions that a “swift approval of the agenda of COP31 allowing parties to start the negotiations” is “crucial”. He adds:
“We can’t lose any time, there is so much work that needs to be done on [just transition]. Then we need a constructive approach by the major country blocs. If one of them starts playing tactical games, then it will be lost.”
In a submission to the UNFCCC earlier this year, CAN called for a series of measures to get the BAM up and running. This includes calling for a decision to be made on a first face-to-face meeting of a “just-transition committee” – a core part of the mechanism in the group’s proposal – to be held in April 2027.
Ahead of COP31, negotiating groups such as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the least developed countries (LDCs) and the African group expressed support for the mechanism and called for it to be focused on implementation.
The EU also supported the launch of the mechanism, but along with other parties cautioned that it should be complementary to the JTWP.
While no submissions opposed the creation of the mechanism, groups such as LDCs called for a focus on “means of implementation” – commonly understood as finance – highlighting it is likely to continue to be a key point of discussion in the upcoming summit.
Sealey-Huggins tells Carbon Brief what his “pie in the sky best-case scenario vision” for the outcome at COP31 would look like. He continues:
“G77 and China make the case again that the mechanism must be equally resourced. It must be well-designed. It must include people’s participation. It must address the barriers to implementation of just transition. It must facilitate the means of implementation. It must ensure justice at the very heart of climate action.
“And then it’s agreed and it’s implemented immediately. So this work begins straight after Antalya to start forming committees and other bodies that can undertake the implementation.”
However, Rosemberg cautions that there is still a “question mark [remaining over] the level of ambition of the [COP31] presidencies, who need to move from simply talking about establishing any [just-transition] mechanism to engaging parties, so that we get a mechanism that is fit for purpose”.
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‘Simply staggering’: Rapidly developing ‘super El Niño’ on track to peak in December
The ongoing “super El Niño” is likely to peak at the end of 2026 and push average global temperatures to record levels next year.
That is according to Carbon Brief’s latest “state of the climate” update, which analyses El Niño forecasts from more than a dozen climate models, as well as six global temperature datasets.
Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor, described this year’s El Niño as “simply staggering” when answering questions from CB+ members during a CB Connect “ask me anything” session.
El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere and temporarily boosts global temperatures.
This year’s El Niño event – which has been underway since June – has already broken a number of records and reshaped the world’s weather, fuelling fires in Indonesia and “super typhoons” in the west Pacific.
The strength of an El Niño is tracked using the “Niño3.4 anomaly”, which is a measure of how much warmer sea surface temperatures are than average in a section of the central Pacific.
Analysis of more than 600 forecasts from 14 different climate models by Hausfather for Carbon Brief’s “state of the climate” update shows how models project this year’s El Niño will peak with an anomaly of around 4C. This would be more than a degree above the previous record in 2015-16.
Niño3.4 region sea surface temperature peak anomaly projected from 656 runs of 14 different dynamical El Niño models. Y-axis denotes the share of model runs in each 0.2C “bin”.Writing on CB Connect on 5 November, Hausfather wrote:
“This El Niño event is developing so quickly and is reaching sea surface temperatures so warm that it’s simply staggering. We haven’t seen anything like this in the historical record and it may end up being the strongest El Niño event in the past millennium.”
This year’s El Niño has already chalked up a number of milestones.
On 18 September, the daily anomaly in the Niño3.4 region broke the satellite-era record set in 2015 when it reached 3.11C.
Meanwhile, September as a whole recorded the highest monthly Niño3.4 region temperature anomaly – 2.84C – since sea surface temperature records began in the mid-1800s.
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Support award-winning climate journalism Join CB+Hausfather wrote on CB Connect that this year’s El Niño had been “running well above any prior El Niño event since June, at times by a full degree [Celsius]”.
Carbon Brief’s “state of the climate” analysis indicates that El Niño is set to continue to intensify into December, with 10 out of 14 models expecting temperatures in the Niño3.4 region to peak in the final month of this year. The remainder anticipate a November peak.
Average of 656 forecasts across 14 dynamical models. The lighter shaded area reflects the period when only seven models are available.While human emissions of greenhouse gases are responsible for almost all of long-term global warming, temperatures in specific years are strongly influenced by El Niño events.
The “state of the climate” analysis explains that this year’s El Niño event will have its largest effect on global temperatures in 2027. This is because global temperatures typically lag warming in the tropical Pacific by around three months.
Carbon Brief projects that the 2027 average global temperature will reach around 1.74C above pre-industrial levels. It calculates a 96% chance that next year will be the warmest on record.
This projection is based on the historical relationship between year-on-year temperature changes and El Niño conditions the preceding autumn. It also factors in uncertainty around how global temperatures will develop across the remainder of 2026.
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Analysis: China’s quarterly CO2 falls 3% in largest drop since Covid
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 3.1% in the third quarter of 2026, as the Hormuz crisis continued to hit oil demand and coal use also dropped.
This guest post is by:Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air
This was the largest quarterly reduction since the 2022 Covid lockdowns and means that China’s CO2 emissions have now fallen by an estimated 0.5% in the year to date.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, shows that coal use fell by 3% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2026, while oil was down 4%.
The main drivers were a fall in power-sector coal consumption, a continued sharp reduction in transport oil consumption and slowing growth in the coal-to-chemical industry.
The sharp decline in China’s CO2 emissions extends a “flat or falling” trend that began in March 2024 and has now lasted more than two years, as shown in the figure below.
Data sources as listed in previous iterations of this analysis.The outlook for China’s CO2 emissions depends on the balance between rising energy demand, clean-energy growth and the government response to a GDP slowdown.
Decline driversKey drivers of the fall in CO2 in the third quarter of 2026 included a 3.3% drop in coal-power generation, after demand growth slowed and the amount of “wasted” wind and solar fell.
Power generation from solar, wind and nuclear increased by 110 terawatt hours (TWh) year-on-year, more than twice as much as the growth in total electricity demand. This added clean-power generation equal to Germany’s total power output in the same time period.
The fall in coal-power output and CO2 emissions came despite the fact that China continues to build new coal-power capacity at near-record rates. This means that average running hours for coal plants are falling even faster than total generation, eroding their profits.
Meanwhile, transport oil consumption continued to fall sharply, down 9% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2026. Electric vehicles (EVs) continued to gain market share, hitting a record 67% of passenger car sales and 50% of heavy trucks in September.
The amount of electricity used by EVs grew by 53%, much faster than the number of EVs on the road, showing increased usage of the existing fleet in preference to fuelled vehicles.
Elsewhere, growth in the coal-to-chemical industry continued to slow down in the third quarter of 2026. The sector has been a key source of emissions growth, but high coal prices have weakened profitability and higher output prices hurt downstream demand.
Finally, CO2 emissions from cement and steel production continued to fall in the third quarter, as the contraction in construction volumes accelerated.
Outlook for emissionsEnergy consumption growth has been falling after a period of exceptionally high growth during Covid, while clean-power growth has been robust.
This makes it likely that the growth in clean-power generation will exceed total energy demand growth this year, maintaining the structural fall in fossil-fuel use.
Looking ahead, this balance also relies on progress in removing barriers to new solar and wind power being added to the grid, which result in some clean electricity being “wasted”.
The recent slowdown in energy demand growth is partly – but not fully – explained by exceptionally mild weather in the third quarter.
Another key factor is weaker GDP growth. Since reported GDP growth remains within target, however, there is reduced pressure for further stimulus policies.
The focus of the economic stimulus announced to date is “six networks”, which includes the power grid and the transportation network.
These networks are highly relevant for energy and emissions – and they are already covered by policies that emphasise “green” and zero-carbon solutions.
‘Simply staggering’: Rapidly developing ‘super El Niño’ on track to peak in December 06.11.2026 El Niño and La Niña Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP31 climate summit 05.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Q&A: What is the Brazil-led ‘deforestation roadmap’? 04.11.2026 UN climate talks Q&A: What is in the global ‘roadmap’ for transitioning away from fossil fuels? 04.11.2026 International policyThe post Analysis: China’s quarterly CO2 falls 3% in largest drop since Covid appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP31 climate summit
The centrepiece of every UN climate summit is for countries to negotiate the wording of a large number of legal agreements – and COP31 in the Turkish city of Antalya is no different.
These texts are hashed out behind closed doors in the “blue zone” at the COP, where diplomats from nearly 200 nations – not including the US – will be haggling over each individual verb.
Over the course of the two-week summit, negotiators will be trying to reach consensus on more than 100 separate agreements – but, first, they must agree which issues are on the agenda.
The complexity of this process can make it challenging to keep track of what countries are fighting about and how negotiations are progressing.
Carbon Brief’s real-time text tracker, below, offers a helping hand by decoding the agenda and keeping a searchable record of every document for each part of the negotiations.
The first column of the interactive tracker lists the topic of each agenda item, with further columns including dates, page counts and links to the original PDFs.
The table is searchable via the interactive text box and can be sorted using the arrow icons.
(() => { const iframe = document.getElementById('cop31-text-tracker'); const iframeOrigin = new URL(iframe.src).origin; window.addEventListener('message', (event) => { if (event.origin !== iframeOrigin || event.source !== iframe.contentWindow) { return; } const message = event.data; if ( !message || message.type !== 'cop31-text-tracker:resize' || !Number.isFinite(message.height) || message.height < 0 ) { return; } iframe.style.height = `${Math.ceil(message.height)}px`; }); })();This year’s talks come with a twist: Turkey holds the presidency and is hosting COP31, but Australia is jointly running the show as “president of negotiations”.
The pair have already announced their intention to produce a “cover text” – an overarching political document summarising key negotiated outcomes, along with issues not on the official agenda.
This could include a recognition that warming is set to “overshoot” the 1.5C limit and the impacts this is already causing. It may also include potential solutions, such as the Turkish presidency’s “electrification” target, for 35% of global final energy to come from electricity by 2035.
While the summit is not seen as a banner year for the negotiations, falling half-way between two “global stocktakes” of progress, there are still plenty of major topics up for discussion.
These include efforts to finalise the “global goal on adaptation” and whether to continue a contested process on how to cut emissions, known as the “mitigation work programme”.
Negotiators will also be trying to agree on the details of a new “just transition mechanism”, also referred to as the “Belém-Antalya mechanism for global just transitions” (BAM).
While most of the items on the agenda are agreed in advance, parties can suggest late additions. These must be signed off before negotiations can begin, often resulting in an “agenda fight”.
COP30 agreed to put two new items on the agenda for future summits.
These are the provision of climate finance by developed countries, under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and making global “finance flows” consistent with the treaty, under Article 2.1c.
Ahead of COP31, the African group of nations filed a request to add climate-related trade tariffs to the agenda. COP30 had agreed to annual “dialogues” on this matter at the Bonn climate talks.
The African group also wants further items added, on tripling adaptation finance and on funding for the Green Climate Fund, a flagship UN body designed to support climate action.
Ahead of the opening of the summit, Carbon Brief’s text tracker counts 104 substantive items on the agenda, not including procedural matters, such as the election of COP officials.
The figure below illustrates the status of the COP31 negotiations overall, in a traffic-light format. Each agenda item is colour-coded according to its current status.
(() => { const iframe = document.getElementById('cop31-text-chart'); const iframeOrigin = new URL(iframe.src).origin; window.addEventListener('message', (event) => { if (event.origin !== iframeOrigin || event.source !== iframe.contentWindow) { return; } const message = event.data; if ( !message || message.type !== 'cop31-text-chart:resize' || !Number.isFinite(message.height) || message.height < 0 ) { return; } iframe.style.height = `${Math.ceil(message.height)}px`; }); })();For topics shown in red, negotiators have not yet managed to put anything down on paper, perhaps because parties have fundamentally different views on how they should proceed.
For items in orange, negotiators are working on an “informal text”, which is an early draft setting out the views of different parties, but not yet expressed in formal legal language.
Once a draft legal agreement becomes available, topics will be colour-coded yellow. At this point, areas of remaining disagreement will be denoted in the text with [square brackets] and “options”.
As such, texts with many square brackets or options tend to be an indicator of a high level of disagreement between parties. For this reason, the tracker table above counts and displays the number of outstanding brackets and options in each document.
During the course of the summit, negotiators may work through many iterations of texts on each agenda item. These documents may include “bridging text”, designed to resolve differences of opinion and to find a “landing zone” that all groups can agree on.
Agreement is reached on a given topic once all brackets and options have been resolved, at which point the item will be coloured green in Carbon Brief’s traffic-light chart.
Where agreement cannot be reached, discussions may be subject to “rule 16”, meaning negotiations are postponed until the next session. These topics are colour-coded grey.
The figure below gives an at-a-glance overview of the status of the main topics up for negotiation.
(() => { const iframe = document.getElementById('cop31-agenda-status'); const iframeOrigin = new URL(iframe.src).origin; window.addEventListener('message', (event) => { if (event.origin !== iframeOrigin || event.source !== iframe.contentWindow) { return; } const message = event.data; if ( !message || message.type !== 'cop31-agenda-status:resize' || !Number.isFinite(message.height) || message.height < 0 ) { return; } iframe.style.height = `${Math.ceil(message.height)}px`; }); })();As parties narrow down the options and brackets towards the end of each summit, they start to generate “clean” texts, which contain no areas of disagreement and can be converted into “draft decisions” that are ready for formal adoption at the closing plenary of the meeting.
Finally, at the closing plenary, each draft decision must be gavelled through by the COP president, signifying its formal adoption as a legal agreement and outcome of the summit.
This last step is usually a formality, but dramatic exceptions are possible.
During the closing plenary at COP29, the president of the meeting failed to adopt a deal relating to the “global stocktake” from 2023, which had called for “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.
Carbon Brief also ran text trackers for COP28, COP29 and COP30.
Words by Simon Evans. Tracker maintained by Ho Woo Nam.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit 02.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Experts: What China wants from the COP31 climate talks 29.10.2026 China policy Interview: COP31 president says electrification is ‘surest way to protect citizens’ 10.07.2026 COP31 Antalya Bonn climate talks: Key outcomes from the June 2026 UN climate conference 19.06.2026 AdaptationThe post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP31 climate summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What is the Brazil-led ‘deforestation roadmap’?
- What is a deforestation ‘roadmap’?
- What does the roadmap say about reducing deforestation?
- Why did some countries not sign onto the roadmap at COP30?
- What are the barriers to implementing a deforestation roadmap?
On 3 November, the Brazilian presidency of the COP30 climate talks released its long-awaited “roadmap” on ending deforestation.
Ahead of the Belém summit, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a call for a “roadmap” to halt and reverse deforestation.
Although this voluntary roadmap was outside the COP’s official agenda, it snowballed into a rallying point at the “Amazon” COP.
Some 93 countries called for a reference to a new roadmap for ending deforestation to be part of COP30’s formal negotiated outcome.
However, at the end of the summit, the COP30 presidency announced that there was not the consensus needed for the deforestation roadmap to be part of the final text – but that Brazil would work to create a voluntary roadmap outside of the UN climate process.
This call was answered by 18 countries and four negotiating blocs that offered their inputs on the roadmap, along with scores of NGOs, research centres and other groups.
Now that the roadmap has been published, Carbon Brief explains where it came from, what it entails, why some did not sign on – and what’s next.
What is a deforestation ‘roadmap’?The “deforestation roadmap” was one of the signature announcements of the Brazilian presidency of the COP30 climate summit in Belém – albeit one that fell outside the official, negotiated outcomes.
Brazilian president Lula first proposed the deforestation and forest degradation roadmap, alongside one on the fossil fuel transition, at the leaders’ summit in Belém a few days before COP30 began.
By the end of COP30, nearly 100 countries had expressed their support for such a roadmap. This includes the EU, with its 27 member states, as well as the 56-member Coalition for Rainforest Nations.
Map of countries that supported the call for a deforestation roadmap by the end of COP30. Source: Carbon BriefHowever, this was still short of the 196 parties needed for consensus at a COP, meaning that, ultimately, the roadmap was not a formal outcome.
Instead, COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago announced during the closing plenary session that the presidency would work towards creating both deforestation and fossil-fuel phaseout roadmaps outside of the COP process.
The deforestation roadmap is the latest in a series of international pledges to put an end to forest loss.
In 2014, 39 countries pledged to end natural forest loss by 2030 at UN Climate Week, as part of the New York Declaration on Forests.
Seven years later, at COP26, more than 140 countries signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use. The declaration stated that countries “commit to working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030” – although conflict subsequently arose over what, exactly, countries had agreed to.
The objective of halting and reversing deforestation by 2030 was ultimately agreed in a negotiated text for the first time two years later, at COP28 in Dubai, where it was part of the global stocktake.
Paragraph 33 of the first global stocktake, which references halting deforestation by 2030. Source: UNFCCCUnlike these previous pledges, the roadmap does not make any new commitments. It also does not “seek to reopen agreed decisions”.
Instead, the roadmap’s stated objective is to “translate forest-related outcomes into coordinated, country-led action while respecting different national circumstances, priorities and implementation challenges”.
Following the conclusion of COP30, the presidency – along with the Climate Policy Initiative thinktank – began soliciting inputs from countries, civil society organisations, Indigenous peoples, academic researchers, the private sector and other groups.
(The Climate Policy Initiative was chosen to serve as the secretariat and technical partner to the roadmap process.)
The secretariat notes that it received more than 200 contributions following this invitation. However, just 18 of these came from countries, and four from blocs – the EU, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries (LDC) blocs – themselves.
What does the roadmap say about reducing deforestation?The roadmap was released less than a week before the COP31 climate summit is due to begin, at an event hosted by the UN Development Programme in Brasilia.
During the launch event, Do Lago highlighted recent figures showing that Brazil’s deforestation rate had fallen to its lowest level on record – dropping by more than 70% since 2022.
“Even the optimists wouldn’t believe that we were able to decrease deforestation” by as much as the country has managed in recent years, he said.
Corrêa Do Lago said that he hoped the roadmap would be a “living document” and that it could provide countries with a “practical pathway for climate action”.
The roadmap divides forest action into three complementary parts: national action, international action and financial mechanisms.
For each of the three, the document highlights current actions or instruments and the enabling conditions required to promote action. Then, it offers “COP30 presidency proposals on the way forward” on each pillar.
Under “national efforts”, the roadmap addresses the challenge of halting and reversing deforestation across five “forest dimensions”:
- Maintaining existing forests.
- Using forests sustainably while generating value for communities.
- Combatting forest degradation.
- Combatting deforestation.
- Restoration, reforestation and afforestation.
The roadmap identifies 18 policies or “implementation approaches” that countries can use to address forest loss and degradation, although it notes that the list is not intended to serve as an “exhaustive or prescriptive classification”.
This includes a wide range of approaches, including establishing or maintaining protected areas, recognising the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples, managing the spread of pests and plant diseases and restricting permits for activities associated with forest conversion.
Forests in the Siang valley in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Credit: Cyrille REDOR / Alamy Stock PhotoFor each of these policies, the roadmap explains the approach and gives an overview of the evidence of its effectiveness. It also gives examples of how countries are implementing that policy.
Then, the roadmap discusses the enabling conditions that need to be ensured for action to occur at the national level, such as supporting land governance and promoting environmental education.
Finally, for national action, the roadmap proposes a five-step process for countries to follow. It provides “guiding questions” that countries may consider in their work to support each step.
On “international architecture for forest action”, the roadmap discusses how various international environmental and human-rights instruments address the problem of deforestation in different ways. It says:
“Climate change, biodiversity, land degradation, Indigenous peoples and local communities’ rights, ecosystem conservation and species protection are addressed through distinct international regimes, but their objectives and implementation intersect in important ways in relation to forests.”
The roadmap highlights some of the global forest-monitoring initiatives that can support national efforts, while noting that countries’ capacity for accessing and using such information “remains uneven”. It calls for improving technical cooperation between countries and increasing capacity-building.
Finally, the roadmap discusses two cross-border issues: crime and trade. On the latter, it notes that trade measures that reward compliance are generally more effective than those that impose “additional economic and administrative burdens on exporters”.
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Support award-winning climate journalism Join CB+The roadmap’s final proposals for international action include strengthening national capacity for investigating environmental crime and prioritising trade policies that reward sustainable, deforestation-free production.
The roadmap notes that countries need an estimated $300bn per year by 2030 to halt and reverse deforestation, yet current finance reaches less than one-third of that figure.
Of this, nearly 90% comes from domestic public finance, as forest countries already dedicate “substantial effort” to protecting their domestic policies and budgets, the roadmap notes.
The roadmap offers 10 proposals for action on forest finance, including aligning domestic finance flows to support forest action, enacting effective benefits-sharing measures and strengthening the position of forests in carbon markets.
It concludes with an appeal to countries to “keep the collective dialogue going” through the conclusion of the second global stocktake in 2028.
In a statement, Kelly Stone, coordinator of the civil society network Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance, said:
“The forest commitments in the first global stocktake and this roadmap process are important steps, but these commitments need to translate into actual urgent action on the ground.
“This roadmap needs to be taken forward in a process where countries are working together for rapid, ambitious action on the ground to address deforestation and degradation and protect food security. We cannot afford to wait.”
Why did some countries not sign onto the roadmap at COP30?In Belém, discussions around the deforestation roadmap were highly charged and several countries did not sign on.
Historically, India has opposed and raised concerns about top-down commitments around mitigation and land-use change. For example, the country did not sign the original Glasgow pledge on forests and land-use at COP26, objecting to “trade” being linked to forests and climate action.
In Belém, India – as part of the Like Minded Developing Countries bloc – objected to the inclusion of voluntary roadmaps outside of the COP agenda in the formal COP30 outcome.
However, in an interview after the talks concluded, the country’s minister for environment, forests and climate, Bhupender Yadav, told the Times of India that India “welcomes” the forest roadmap. He added that it additionally “endorses” Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility fund.
Russia was an early objector to the deforestation roadmap, laying out its position as early as April last year. While the country reiterated its commitment to the Glasgow forest declaration and the first global stocktake, it “does not support the development of a universal roadmap”, arguing that:
“…such initiatives are not mandated under the agreed international climate architecture and go beyond adopted decisions under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.”
A satellite image of a large wildfire burning in northern Russia’s Yakutia region in 2024. Credit: NASA Earth ObservatoryRussia hosts the world’s largest boreal forests, which are seeing more intense wildfires. In its submission on the deforestation roadmap, Russia “underscored” that there is no “universally agreed, legally binding definition” of forest degradation, although it adds subsequently that wildfires are a “key driver” of degradation.
Like India, it also opposed the roadmap on trade grounds.
Other countries were wary of signing on to new non-negotiated mitigation commitments outside of the official COP agenda, at the expense of other agenda items, such as adaptation finance.
At the recently concluded Yerevan COP17 nature talks, the deforestation roadmap’s coordinator Marco Túlio Scarpelli Cabral told Carbon Brief it does not make sense to talk about more countries signing up to the non-negotiated roadmap, when countries have agreed by consensus to tackle deforestation within the global stocktake and biodiversity COPs. He added:
“All countries have already taken this [deforestation] commitment, both in the Kunming-Montreal [Global Biodiversity Framework] with some converging targets, but also in the global stocktake…
“We have all accepted [it]. So we don’t need any country to subscribe to the roadmap.”
The first global stocktake was undertaken at COP28 in Dubai. As mentioned above, within the mitigation section of this document – which was adopted by consensus – the importance of “halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation” is emphasised.
The newly published roadmap therefore is not designed to convince countries to agree to tackle deforestation; instead it seeks to build on this assumed consensus by drawing on previous agreements such as the global stocktake.
Speaking at a press conference attended by Carbon Brief on 3 November, COP30 president Corrêa do Lago said they took into account the agreement in Dubai and then began looking for “instruments and ways to go ahead and take next steps”. She added:
“The climate change agenda is advancing faster than the negotiations [themselves], so we restructured the agenda.”
What are the barriers to implementing a deforestation roadmap?In February 2026, the Brazilian COP presidency asked countries to describe specific barriers to implementing a forest roadmap and the tangible support they need.
From political strife to wildfires and reliance on firewood during an energy crisis, countries listed a number of overlapping challenges to halting and reversing deforestation in their submissions.
Gold mining in Guyana. Credit: Nature Picture Library / Alamy Stock PhotoFor example, Guyana and Suriname have both highlighted that keeping existing “forests intact” is undervalued compared to “pressures from extractive industries”, such as mining or agriculture.
Meanwhile, the EU, Switzerland and Mexico point to the role of agricultural expansion in the loss of forest and pasture land. Norway and Mexico highlighted illegal loggers offering higher rewards than conservation.
Both Canada and Russia pointed to an “inconsistent definition” of forest degradation.
Biodiverse countries with significant forest cover, such as Suriname and Azerbaijan, meanwhile called for more “predictable” and “affordable” access to climate finance to keep forests standing.
The Coalition of Rainforest Nations called for “a clear financial assessment of the total funding required to halt forest loss” in its submission.
However, many donor countries emphasised domestic, private and innovative finance in their solutions. The UK, for instance, called for more “blended finance to de-risk private investment at scale” for forest conservation and high-integrity carbon markets.
While Norway spoke of the need to “repurpos[e]” harmful subsidies, Australia highlighted the role of its controversial biodiversity credit and nature markets in “restor[ing] and protect[ing] land and biodiversity and reduc[ing] emissions at the same time”.
Monitoring deforestation and restoration progress was another common challenge across countries. AOSIS, Armenia and Azerbaijan all raised this challenge and called for technical support for monitoring forest restoration, including satellite monitoring.
At the same time, Canada, Indonesia, Russia, Azerbaijan and Australia all cited the increasing risk of intensifying wildfires as threats to forests, with countries calling for early detection systems and support for monitoring fires in remote areas.
AOSIS called for coastal mangroves and inland terrestrial forests to be included in the definition of forests, adding that climate-driven impacts are already degrading mangrove forests.
Dead zone in mangrove forests destroyed by Hurricane Irma. Credit: Francisco Blanco / Alamy Stock PhotoMany barriers are deeply specific to the geographical and socioeconomic contexts of individual countries. Small island states such as Mauritius, for instance, point to pressures arising from a “limited availability” of land. Sudan, meanwhile, draws attention to 70% of its population relying on firewood as an energy source amid conflict.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP31 climate summit 05.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit 02.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Experts: What China wants from the COP31 climate talks 29.10.2026 China policy Interview: COP31 president says electrification is ‘surest way to protect citizens’ 10.07.2026 COP31 AntalyaThe post Q&A: What is the Brazil-led ‘deforestation roadmap’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What is in the global ‘roadmap’ for transitioning away from fossil fuels?
- Why has Brazil produced a fossil-fuel ‘roadmap’?
- What does the fossil-fuel roadmap say?
- How will the fossil-fuel roadmap be discussed at COP31?
Transitioning away from fossil fuels is “urgent, inevitable and, yet, possible”, according to a first-of-its-kind global “roadmap” produced by Brazil.
The host of last year’s climate summit, COP30, has set out a voluntary plan for how countries can move away from coal, oil and gas.
The roadmap says there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to transitioning away from fossil fuels and asks countries to “diagnose” their own “readiness” to start the process.
After mapping out their specific circumstances, countries should then pursue “tailored levers” to take action, according to the roadmap.
These efforts should culminate by 2033, it says – 10 years on from when the COP28 climate summit in Dubai called on all countries to contribute to a global transition away from fossil fuels.
Below, Carbon Brief examines what the roadmap says and how it could influence debates about fossil fuels at the upcoming COP31 climate summit, which begins next week in Turkey.
- Why has Brazil produced a fossil-fuel ‘roadmap’?
- What does the fossil-fuel roadmap say?
- How will the fossil-fuel roadmap be discussed at COP31?
Calls for a global “roadmap” away from fossil fuels dominated debates at COP30, which was held in the Amazonian city of Belém.
A group of 85 countries called for a reference to a new roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels to be part of COP30’s formal negotiated outcome.
This call came the first “global stocktake” of action towards the world’s climate goals at COP28 in 2023 called on all countries to contribute to transitioning away from fossil fuels.
However, another group of countries opposed such an inclusion.
It was claimed that this group included 84 countries. However, Carbon Brief’s analysis of the “informal list” revealed inconsistencies and errors, meaning the total number of countries opposing the roadmap was likely smaller.
After two weeks of fierce debate, Brazil announced that the fossil-fuel roadmap would not be part of COP30’s negotiated outcome – but that the presidency would work to create a roadmap outside of the UN climate process.
This roadmap is voluntary and countries are not obligated to respond to its findings.
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Support award-winning climate journalism Join CB+At COP30, the presidency also announced that the roadmap would be informed by a first-of-its-kind conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels taking place in Santa Marta, Colombia.
These talks, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands in April, saw ministers and climate envoys take part in informal discussions about the barriers they face in transitioning away from fossil fuels. (See Carbon Brief’s full coverage of the talks.)
As well as the fossil-fuel roadmap, Brazil has also produced a new roadmap for ending deforestation. (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth breakdown of the deforestation roadmap).
What does the fossil-fuel roadmap say?The roadmap acknowledges that, after decades of delayed action on fossil fuels, the world is no longer able to meet its ambition to limit global warming to 1.5C without first “overshooting” the target.
It also notes that the global transition to clean energy is already underway – and that the policies needed for transitioning away from fossil fuels already exist and are readily deployable.
It continues, however, by saying that transitioning away from fossil fuels is “as much a development question as a climate one, especially for emerging markets and developing economies”.
In this context, it sets out plans for what it calls a “Belém readiness index”. This is a “voluntary self-assessment tool” that countries can use to calculate their dependency on fossil fuels and their capacity for transitioning away.
At a press briefing announcing the roadmaps, COP30 CEO Ana Toni described this as the “diagnosis” stage of the roadmap, “instead of imagining there is a one-size-fits-all answer”.
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.preheader p{ margin-top: 0; font-family: 'PT Sans', sans-serif; font-weight: var(--type--3--font-weight--bold); color: var(--button--color); font-size: var(--button--font-size, inherit); } .newsletter-inline{ display: flex; border: solid 1px #333333; padding: 1em; background: #ffffff; } .inline-email{ display:inline-block; margin-right:1em; margin-top:0 !important; margin-bottom:0.5em; } #field_submit{ display:inline-block; margin-top:0 !important; } .gform_wrapper .gfield+.gfield{ margin-top:0 } Email gform.initializeOnLoaded( function() {gformInitSpinner( 7, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery('#gform_ajax_frame_7').on('load',function(){var contents = jQuery(this).contents().find('*').html();var is_postback = contents.indexOf('GF_AJAX_POSTBACK') >= 0;if(!is_postback){return;}var form_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_wrapper_7');var is_confirmation = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_confirmation_wrapper_7').length > 0;var is_redirect = contents.indexOf('gformRedirect(){') >= 0;var is_form = form_content.length > 0 && ! is_redirect && ! is_confirmation;var mt = parseInt(jQuery('html').css('margin-top'), 10) + parseInt(jQuery('body').css('margin-top'), 10) + 100;if(is_form){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').html(form_content.html());if(form_content.hasClass('gform_validation_error')){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').addClass('gform_validation_error');} else {jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').removeClass('gform_validation_error');}setTimeout( function() { /* delay the scroll by 50 milliseconds to fix a bug in chrome */ jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').offset().top - mt); }, 50 );if(window['gformInitDatepicker']) {gformInitDatepicker();}if(window['gformInitPriceFields']) {gformInitPriceFields();}var current_page = jQuery('#gform_source_page_number_7').val();gformInitSpinner( 7, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery(document).trigger('gform_page_loaded', [7, current_page]);window['gf_submitting_7'] = false;}else if(!is_redirect){var confirmation_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('.GF_AJAX_POSTBACK').html();if(!confirmation_content){confirmation_content = contents;}jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').replaceWith(confirmation_content);jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gf_7').offset().top - mt);jQuery(document).trigger('gform_confirmation_loaded', [7]);window['gf_submitting_7'] = false;wp.a11y.speak(jQuery('#gform_confirmation_message_7').text());}else{jQuery('#gform_7').append(contents);if(window['gformRedirect']) {gformRedirect();}}jQuery(document).trigger("gform_pre_post_render", [{ formId: "7", currentPage: "current_page", abort: function() { this.preventDefault(); } }]); if (event && event.defaultPrevented) { return; } const gformWrapperDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_wrapper_7" ); if ( gformWrapperDiv ) { const visibilitySpan = document.createElement( "span" ); visibilitySpan.id = "gform_visibility_test_7"; gformWrapperDiv.insertAdjacentElement( "afterend", visibilitySpan ); } const visibilityTestDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_visibility_test_7" ); let postRenderFired = false; function triggerPostRender() { if ( postRenderFired ) { return; } postRenderFired = true; gform.core.triggerPostRenderEvents( 7, current_page ); if ( visibilityTestDiv ) { visibilityTestDiv.parentNode.removeChild( visibilityTestDiv ); } } function debounce( func, wait, immediate ) { var timeout; return function() { var context = this, args = arguments; var later = function() { timeout = null; if ( !immediate ) func.apply( context, args ); }; var callNow = immediate && !timeout; clearTimeout( timeout ); timeout = setTimeout( later, wait ); if ( callNow ) func.apply( context, args ); }; } const debouncedTriggerPostRender = debounce( function() { triggerPostRender(); }, 200 ); if ( visibilityTestDiv && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent === null ) { const observer = new MutationObserver( ( mutations ) => { mutations.forEach( ( mutation ) => { if ( mutation.type === 'attributes' && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent !== null ) { debouncedTriggerPostRender(); observer.disconnect(); } }); }); observer.observe( document.body, { attributes: true, childList: false, subtree: true, attributeFilter: [ 'style', 'class' ], }); } else { triggerPostRender(); } } );} );After identifying their “readiness” for transition, countries will be sorted into four “archetypes”, says the roadmap, leading to the identification of specific policy “levers” for taking action.
The roadmap calls for action in three distinct “phases”.
The first phase should be from now until 2028, when the second global stocktake of progress towards the Paris Agreement is due to conclude at COP33.
In this phase, “efforts focus on institutions and long-term signals”, says the roadmap.
The second phase is from 2028-2030, when the next round of UN climate pledges, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), are due.
This phase should focus on the “physical transformation of energy systems”, says the roadmap.
The final phase is 2031-2033 – 10 years after the call for all countries to help with “transitioning away from fossil fuels” in “this critical decade” at COP28.
This phase should focus on the scaling up of the transition, according to the roadmap.
All of these elements are summarised in the graphic below, which was presented to journalists and civil society during a press briefing.
Credit: COP30 presidencyAt the press briefing, Toni added that each stage of the roadmap was designed to be “extremely pragmatic and easy for countries to take a look at it”.
The approach has broadly been welcomed by civil society and experts.
Dr Natalie Jones, a senior policy adviser at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), tells Carbon Brief that the roadmap sends an “important political signal that the transition away from fossil fuels remains firmly on the international agenda”. She adds:
“It also gives governments practical guidance to plan that transition in ways that reflect their national circumstances, strengthen energy security and protect livelihoods.”
Avantika Goswami, a climate policy expert at the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, India, tells Carbon Brief that the roadmap is a “unique and consultative method of multilateralism”. She says:
“[The roadmap] is one that is put forth by a developing country, via a consultative process that invited submissions from all parties and civil society.
“The analytical framework proposed captures the complexity of the fossil-fuel transition. Countries must now use it to chart out pathways in line with their historical responsibility and current capacity.”
Ploy Achakulwisut, a former UN adviser on fossil fuels, wrote on LinkedIn that she was “deeply impressed” with Brazil’s approach, including its use of a “readiness index”. She added:
“[The index] provides a method for identifying countries that face similar transition conditions and for understanding how different exposure-capacity ‘archetypes’ can generate distinct implementation needs and opportunities.
“The latter can ‘support more targeted international cooperation’, helping the international community to align finance, technology, capacity-building, and technical assistance with country-specific needs and existing capabilities.”
How will the fossil-fuel roadmap be discussed at COP31?Brazil’s fossil-fuel roadmap comes just a week before the next round of UN climate talks, COP31, kicks off in Antalya, Turkey.
COP31 co-presidents Turkey and Australia have set out a wide range of priorities for the summit, including a target to increase the share of global final energy consumption met by electricity from almost 24% in 2023 to 35% by 2035.
Speaking at the press briefing, COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago said that this electrification goal was “complementary” to the aims of the fossil-fuel roadmap.
Carbon Brief understands that some parties feel that Turkey and Australia’s focus on electrification over fossil fuels is an attempt to avoid a re-hashing of the lengthy debates at COP30.
Both Corrêa do Lago and Toni were reluctant to speculate on how the fossil-fuel roadmap might be taken up and discussed during COP31, with Toni telling journalists that they were “hoping for the best”.
When asked about how Brazil hoped the roadmap would be received by those that specifically opposed its inclusion at COP30, Corrêa do Lago declined to address other countries directly, but said:
“Let’s remind ourselves we already have a consensus [on transitioning away from fossil fuels, agreed at COP28] and we already have the instruments.”
Jones tells Carbon Brief that, following on from the roadmap, the “task now is to build on that signal with action”, adding:
“At COP31, more governments should announce national fossil-fuel transition roadmaps and explain how these will inform their national climate plans. The conference should also [formally] recognise the global roadmap and establish a route for its findings to inform the second global stocktake.
“For vulnerable countries dependent on fossil-fuel revenues, credible plans must be matched by international finance and support to diversify their economies and sustain public services. This roadmap can help turn a shared commitment into practical progress.”
Related Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP31 climate summit 05.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit 02.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Experts: What China wants from the COP31 climate talks 29.10.2026 China policy Interview: COP31 president says electrification is ‘surest way to protect citizens’ 10.07.2026 COP31 AntalyaThe post Q&A: What is in the global ‘roadmap’ for transitioning away from fossil fuels? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
CB Live: Carbon Brief’s team at COP17 on the nature talks’ key outcomes
Following this year’s UN COP17 biodiversity conference, Carbon Brief’s journalists hosted a livestream to explain what happened at the summit.
Carbon Brief’s Orla Dwyer and Aruna Chandrasekhar have been on the ground in Yerevan, Armenia, over the past two weeks, covering the negotiations.
They were joined on the livestream by associate editors Dr Giuliana Viglione and Daisy Dunne, who were following the talks from Washington DC and London, respectively.
Carbon Brief has also published its 10,000-word explainer of COP17, which lays out the key outcomes in detail.
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Support award-winning climate journalism Join CB+Orla and Aruna kicked off the livestream by explaining the biggest issues at the event, including biodiversity finance and the first “global review” of progress towards reversing nature loss.
The four journalists then took live questions from the audience in an “ask me anything” format, covering issues such as “nature-harming subsidies”, marine biodiversity and the status of the Cali fund, which is meant to raise private-sector finance.
A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.
COP17: Key outcomes agreed at the UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan 31.10.2026 COP17 Yerevan COP17: Which countries have released new pledges to tackle nature loss? 16.10.2026 COP17 Yerevan COP17: Tracking progress towards the UN’s 2030 nature targets 15.10.2026 COP17 Yerevan COP17: Developed countries ‘fall far short’ of UN targets for nature finance 15.10.2026 COP17 YerevanThe post CB Live: Carbon Brief’s team at COP17 on the nature talks’ key outcomes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UK climate minister Katie White: COP31 must respond to ‘really scary’ science
The upcoming COP31 climate talks in Antalya, Turkey need to respond to the latest science on global warming, which is “really scary”, says UK climate minister Katie White.
In an interview with Carbon Brief setting out the UK’s priorities for the summit, White also responds to suggestions that the government is walking back its climate policies.
White says the “shocking” impact of extreme heat and wildfires this summer makes it clear that climate change “isn’t something far off; it’s something we’re living through”.
She adds that the UK will be working to “hold up the science”, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that should be the “basis of discussions”.
The COP31 presidency push on electrification is “going to be key”, says White, who points to other priorities for the UK that include tackling methane emissions and reducing deforestation.
White says the recent approval of the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea is “fully in line” with carbon budgets and that the UK continues to support the “transition away from fossil fuels”.
She adds that the Hormuz crisis has helped drive the “biggest uptake…we’ve ever seen” in the UK for solar, electric vehicles and heat pumps.
Finally, White defends the new approach set out in the budget by chancellor John Healey, including a greater focus on affordability, as a “natural evolution” of UK government policy.
Carbon Brief: Katie White, thank you very much for joining Carbon Brief today. Next week we’re going to be heading to COP31 climate talks in Antalya in Turkey.
We’ve seen this year the UN warning that a temporary overshoot of 1.5C degrees is now inevitable. We’ve had 50,000 excess heat deaths across Europe this summer. We’ve had extreme weather events hitting Nepal, deadly floods there. Heading into the talks, what would you say the UK’s priorities are?
Katie White: Thanks, Simon. Look, just to say, it’s great to be here. I’m a big fan of Carbon Brief and the work you’ve been doing. I think it’s incredibly important that there are people who are focused on the facts and have really excellent commentary. So just to say thank you, and it’s good to be here to discuss with you.
Look, this year has been a very significant year in terms of climate, particularly sat here in the UK. I think we have really felt the impacts of climate change for the first time. For you and me, who’ve been working on this for a long time [and] we talk about it. But even so – I don’t know how you felt – but I was even shocked by the implications of what that was for everyday life, for people actually sleeping at night. You know, in terms of parliament, I had colleagues who had to go pick up their children because their schools weren’t available, and you know, tragedies in terms of older people struggling in the heat.
Not to mention the wildfires that we had across the country. I went to visit one in Romford and I think just standing – literally in the ashes – and seeing people’s homes really close by. My colleague in Stourbridge, obviously, they had burnt-out houses – you know, devastating. And you think about it – and I talked with her about – the actual real-life implications of that.
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Support award-winning climate journalism Join CB+Obviously, people think about it, but then the after-effects, and you know the challenges with insurance and the challenge with all these sky boxes, and all of the things that come – those smaller things, as well as the tragedies around your photos, and all of that being lost.
So I think it’s really opened, sadly, another door for us in terms of the climate-change journey. This isn’t something far off; it’s something we’re living through. I know that’s been the case for many countries for a long time, but it really felt like a shift here in the UK.
You’re right, the science, once again, is really scary. The overshoot report is incredibly concerning. Scientifically, obviously, they look for a longer period. But I think the main message – for me as a politician – is this is really worrying. And every year we have another call to action. How do we translate that call into actual delivery? And that’s the bit we need to make sure of, because you know, I think we have to be listening to the science, and the science is fundamental and key. And we might talk about the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and all the elements of that. But also, for me, how do we translate that?
It’s not, as you all know, it’s not the big global stocktake COP [this year in Antalya]. So it’s not going to be that big event, where we have it every five years. But we still need to be making significant progress. So we really focus a lot on the science, on the “action agenda” and on those political decisions – that “cover decision” that the Australian presidency [of negotiations] has said that they’re going to pursue.
So in terms of the action agenda, which obviously the Turkish [presidency] has led on and [has] been really forthright about leading on this, I think electrification is going to be key. It’s something that shot up the agenda.
I think most of your audience will know what electrification is, but for anyone outside of the climate bubble [it is] around electrifying our homes, electrifying our transportation. And in the UK, we’ve done a good job of decarbonising our electricity system, but we need to be pulling down on that and increasing demand to make sure that we take full advantage of the clean electricity that we have, which would be good for bills, but also around reducing our emissions as well. So something around electrification, we’re expecting a lot of talk of that. [It is] something the Turks have been talking about a lot.
Methane is another area which we’ve been working on, but I expect there will be some progress in terms of methane. Forests, you’ll know that we’ve pledged an investment to the [Tropical Forest Forever] TFFF, so we will be hoping for some momentum around that forests agenda.
So, I think, those are some of the really practical areas of action, as well as making sure we’re moving forward, holding up the UNFCCC [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change], holding up the science, so we can keep moving forward and making progress on any of those areas within the cover decision that the Australians will obviously steer us through.
CB: Great, thank you. You mentioned electrification. Obviously, that’s a target announced by the Turkish presidency earlier this year. They said they want to see the adoption of a global target for 35% of final energy to come from electricity by 2035.
At the moment, it’s a voluntary sign-on pledge, but presumably that’s something that could enter into the cover decision, as you mentioned. I guess I’m wondering: is the UK going to sign up to that, if it remains as a voluntary pledge? And would the UK like to see that in the cover decision, brought formally into the [COP31] outcome?
KW: Good questions. Look, so we’ll wait and see how we manage the next couple of weeks in terms of [that]. I think we have definitely, domestically, been looking at electrification and how we take advantage of the clean electricity that we have more effectively. Because of the Middle East crisis, broadly, we’ve seen interest in EVs, in solar panels and heat pumps, just shoot up this year, as people have got increasingly concerned about energy prices. And for those who are in a position, you know, a lot of them have taken advantage.
So we are seeing shifts in the market, and we’re looking at what role we can play to encourage and accelerate that. Whether it’s supporting the rollout of charging points for electric vehicles. You’ll probably know this, Simon, but there are more public charging points in the UK now than petrol pumps, which I think is an incredible fact – and most people don’t know. That’s not including those within driveways, of which nearly 70% of the UK has access to a driveway, so all of those people who might have their own home charging, there is more public.
We are making this infrastructure more easy, more accessible, so that people can make that shift. But we are [already] seeing the shift, you know, we’ve got two million EVs on the road. Super excitingly for the motor geeks, the second-hand [EV] car market is really starting to – excuse the pun – “motor”. Actually, that does mean a big shift in terms of accessibility.
So we’re seeing this happen within the UK. We’ll look at whether that’s a helpful target for us, but in terms of the focus, the ambition on electrification in the UK will remain. And I’m really pleased to see it as part of the negotiations this year or the action agenda.
It was interesting to see the Europeans do their own electrification – I don’t know whether they called it a plan or a roadmap, everybody gets caught up on these words – but they also brought forward [an “action plan”]. So obviously, we’re looking at where we can, you know, be a little bit more aligned with them.
CB: You mentioned roadmaps. Now, obviously, last year at the COP, the big debate, slightly outside of the formal negotiations, was around the idea of a roadmap away from fossil fuels and the UK was one of more than 100 countries that were really pushing for that to again be brought into the formal outcome of the summit in Brazil. Is that something that the UK is going to be pushing again this year?
KW: For sure. So look, we very much support the agenda around the transition away from fossil fuels. You know, in terms of, how do we support countries, how do we work together in terms of moving away from that? You’ll know that Rachel Kyte, our special representative, was in Santa Marta in April of this year to talk through [this topic] and we hosted a follow-up event at Wilton Park around the London Climate Action Week. So you know, very keen to support and work that through.
It’s obviously a hard agenda, but it’s something that I think we should have been discussing for a while in terms of the COP processes. So it was great that we managed to do that. I think it was as a result of lots of different people talking about it, different campaigns, different, you know, how do we work together around this, in terms of managing the resources we have most effectively, and transitioning away. [That’s] for climate reasons, for health reasons and, in large part, economic reasons as well.
UK climate minister Katie White during a Zoom interview with Carbon Brief. Credit: Carbon BriefCB: Great. You mentioned the IPCC timeline. This is obviously something that’s been rolling on for quite a while. There’s been a group of countries making a concerted effort to delay the publication of the next IPCC assessment report, so that it won’t align with the next global stocktake under the Paris Agreement.
The UK, as far as I understand, is pushing for that timeline to be accelerated, or to at least align with the stocktake. I just want to confirm that that’s the UK’s position and then ask, what is your understanding of the arguments being made for not doing that, for not aligning those timelines?
KW: So look, we obviously would like to have as much of the science ready for the global stocktake. That would be the ideal outcome in terms of what we are looking for, and we have said that we will continue to say that we would also like an outcome.
So, in a sense, we would like to make sure that we have a decision and we are moving this forward, and we don’t get caught up in having longer negotiations, which stall us making any progress at all.
I wasn’t at the [IPCC] meeting this autumn, but in terms of [what] I understand, [IPCC chair Prof] Jim Skea did a good job of trying to navigate that and making sure that this is inclusive. We want to listen to concerns around inclusivity, but we also want to make progress, because of the reasons that we talked about right up front: there is some really scary science going forward. The IPCC is peer-reviewed, it’s the best in the world, and we want to make sure that that is the basis of discussions.
So the more we can align that together, the better. But we’re also practical. We want to work with everybody. We want to listen to everybody. But we are keen to move that forward and hold up the IPCC in the way it has been. It’s become the most respected, established platform for all that the negotiations are based on.
CB: Great, thank you. I want to turn to the UK now, if I can. So, under the Paris Agreement, the UK has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 68% below 1990 levels by 2030. In June, the Climate Change Committee, in its assessment, said something like 17% of the cuts required to meet that target just didn’t have plans in place.
The government’s own carbon budget delivery plan said that current policies were falling short of what would be needed. And then, obviously, since then we’ve had a number of cuts. We’ve had cuts to heat pump subsidies, cuts to hydrogen and carbon-capture and storage. We’re expecting to see further watering down of the zero-emission vehicles mandate for electric vehicles. We just had approval of new drilling at Jackdaw. We may also see Rosebank being approved.
When you’re at the COP in Antalya, how will you be reassuring UK partners that the UK remains committed to its climate pledge?
KW: So look, it’s absolutely right that you pick out any of the challenges – and say where the challenges are to our evidence. That’s really helpful, as part of our process of doing that. I would also then say, there are a whole bunch of other things – on the side of positives – that are moving forward, some of which we have touched on.
We put forward a carbon budget growth and delivery plan last year that we had to redo, because obviously there had been a legal challenge. We did that. It was a very comprehensive process. You know, a huge amount of work to make sure that we were on track to deliver that. So that is the case. The Climate Change Committee was obviously coming back on what was happening now, and we will report to parliament [in response to the committee] in the normal way. I will leave that report to talk for itself when it comes out to parliament.
We also – the great thing about the Climate Change Act and the carbon budgets is that it does allow flexibility over time. You have that trajectory, you have the volume of emissions over time, but it does allow you to adjust and course correct. There are things, in terms of challenges, that come forward.
So let’s take the Middle East crisis. Obviously, that’s been a big disruption to our energy and climate system. Arguably, one of the biggest disruptions we’ve ever had. Now, that has led to a few things happening.
One is to say that electrification – you know, people are moving towards the biggest uptake in solar, heat pumps and EVs that we’ve ever seen. So we’re seeing that trajectory go up. That’s great, and that is on the positive side. At the same time, it has meant geopolitically, people are looking at their energy security and where you do have access to fossil fuels, people are considering those options.
We made the Jackdaw decision fully in line [with our carbon budgets]. We looked at the emissions – and emissions would actually be a tiny bit lower because of transportation from Norway. So it is absolutely within those boundaries.
But of course, I’m constantly keeping an eye on how that budget is moving. In the same way that over the road [in Whitehall] at HMT [the Treasury], they’re keeping an eye on their financial budget, as they should do, I will keep an eye on the carbon budget, as will the secretary of state [Miatta Fahnbulleh]. So we will be keeping a look.
But I think let’s also be clear that the UK has got a good story to tell. I of course want it to be better, and that’s part of my job, to make sure that we have the next chapter evolving and we can keep telling our story.
UK climate minister Katie White during a Zoom interview with Carbon Brief. Credit: Carbon BriefBut right now, we have a pretty good story to tell. You know, we’ve got over [a] 50% reduction in emissions, whilst having 80% [economic] growth since 1990. So we have got a good story to tell. We are making those transitions and we will continue to say that. But also, we’ll continue to listen and learn because nobody has got the perfect plan for this. No one country has got all the answers or the solutions.
So I think, being clear where we’ve had success, being honest where it’s not worked, and having a bit of humility to learn from others along the way, is how we’re going to approach the COP.
CB: Great, thank you. I want to ask about climate finance. The UK is one of the only major donors to have made a new climate-finance pledge, offering £6bn, I believe, over three years. However, that is, relative to the last financial year, roughly halving; it was about £4bn in 2025-26 and it’s [now] £6bn over three years, so roughly £2bn a year.
Again, I’m just curious how you’re going to be talking about that with the UK’s international partners, the developing countries that will be looking to the UK for that kind of support.
KW: In terms of the £6bn, so look, let’s also be clear. So you’re absolutely right that we – the [previously pledged] £11.6bn was over a five-year period. The £6bn is over a three-year period, and we’re also talking about an additional £6bn in terms of other sources that we’re looking at. So it is still a sizeable amount of money and investment.
Of course, it’s not enough in terms of what the need is, and as the need increases over time, we need to be exploring other options, which is why I’m very excited about the TFFF, because it starts a new way of mobilising finance, which might unlock a whole other range of capital, which is urgently needed.
So, look, we have the £11.6bn [and] we delivered absolutely every bit of it. So I think we’re seen as someone who is a credible donor, who delivers what they say we’re going to do. We’ve also laid out a plan. We’ve been working across government with my colleagues at the Foreign Office and with Defra [Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] in terms of how we’re going to do that. Which, again, was something that developing countries were really keen [on], that we laid out that plan beforehand, so that there is some element of expectation, and it’s not, you know, done at the last minute, and they can plan ahead at the same time.
We are, you know, the biggest donors of the Green Climate Fund as well, and we’ve looked at how we protect the climate element of our resources within the ODA [overseas development aid] cuts, which have been a cut to our international development aid, I can’t say anything different to that. So we have looked at how we protect [climate] within it. [In fact, the UK is now the fourth-largest contributor to the Green Climate Fund, following a government decision earlier this year to only honour half of its most recent pledge.]
So, look, of course, I will be talking about what we have done and what we continue to do, and how we’ve listened to countries and laid that [plan] out, so there is some element that they can help plan ahead. But also, looking at what those alternative sources, for instance, around the structuring of the TFFF, to make sure we’re looking at other options, because we do need to meet the need. The need is growing, and the finance pot needs to do the same.
CB: Thank you. One final question, if I may. Last week we obviously had the first budget from the new chancellor, John Healey. There’s been a lot of conversation and media coverage since that budget about what he described as a new path for energy policy in the UK. There’s been quite a lot of media coverage – and perhaps briefing from government insiders and so on – suggesting that this is a real shift in the government’s approach. Effectively, giving up on – or putting slightly to the side – the clean power 2030 target.
Again, you’re going to be going into the COP next week. People, I’m sure, will have been reading the papers. I wonder how you will explain to them what’s going on?
KW: So, look, the first thing I’d say is it was great to hear the chancellor say on the floor of the house [of parliament] about net-zero, his commitment to net-zero by 2050 and our steadfast approach to delivering that. I think it’s really helpful. You know, the chancellor’s voice counts for a lot. We’ve heard the prime minister say it twice. He’s written articles on it as well, so it’s great to see that commitment from the top. There has been a lot of politicisation around net-zero, so I think the direction of travel is absolutely clear.
[The] secretary of state has said that her number one aim is around affordability. We know that we are in a cost of living crisis. At the same time, the Climate Change Committee has said the best thing we could do [to lower emissions] is bring down electricity prices, and so I think there is a really great alignment between those three things [cost, climate and security].
The clean-power mission has been incredibly effective in terms of getting a lot of clean power built. We now need to make sure we’re utilising that clean power across the board, and we need to, and we want to do it in the most cost-effective way possible.
As you can probably hear from my accent, I’m from Yorkshire. We’re a little bit tight [careful with money] and I want to make sure that we are using that energy most effectively. And the system at the moment is not set up to do that. There are some pretty ineffective elements of it, that we want to make sure that we’re using far more effectively.
So I think that is the shift we’re looking at. We’re now in the next chapter of, how do we make sure that energy – and specifically electricity – is as affordable as possible for consumers, for our constituents up and down the country, but also for small businesses. And how do we make sure that demand, that use of the grid, is [met by] connecting some of these great [clean-energy projects].
You know, the last government did build some of these offshore wind turbines. They just didn’t connect them all, so we need to make sure that we’ve got all of these things connected, and then we’re utilising it really effectively, and we’re supporting consumers and businesses to draw down on that.
So I think it’s a really exciting opportunity for us. But I think it’s just a natural evolution of the next step, to make sure that the UK citizens are getting the best value from the infrastructure that we already have.
CB: Brilliant, very, very quickly, before you have to go, the UK is going to be leading the umbrella group of countries at the COP. So coming back to the COP, I’m just curious how the UK is going to deal with being in that spotlight [and] make use of that position?
KW: Look, we are sending a great team of ministers to the COP. Obviously, the secretary of state, it’s going to be her first time leading the delegation, but our ex-secretary of state [Ed Miliband] is there in his new role. He’s going as the foreign secretary and the prime minister [Andy Burnham] is going, and I will also be there as well. So I think we are turning up, making sure that Britain is fully part of the conversation.
We do that in lots of different ways, whether it’s part of the umbrella group or whether it’s on our own or whether it’s part of – I co-chair the Forest and Climate Leaders Partnership. We’re always looking at ways where the UK can show up and try to make a positive difference.
So again, I think we’ll be doing that, but working closely with our umbrella colleagues. We’ve been in the group, so it’s a natural step for us to step up and do that. But I think operating in different areas of the ecosystem helps us to make sure we can bring forward a really comprehensive, thoughtful approach to the negotiations.
CB: Brilliant! Thanks very much, Katie, and great to have you.
article information
This interview was conducted by Dr Simon Evans via Zoom on 2 November 2026. Video editing by Joe Goodman.
Related UK budget 2026: Key climate and energy announcements 28.10.2026 UK policy Analysis: How the UK spent more than £11.6bn on climate aid since 2021 28.10.2026 UK policy Revealed: UK relied on £2bn of ‘questionable accounting’ to hit its climate-aid goal 28.10.2026 UK policy Q&A: Why are UK energy bills so high – and how could they be lowered? 27.10.2026 Oil and gasThe post UK climate minister Katie White: COP31 must respond to ‘really scary’ science appeared first on Carbon Brief.
State of the climate: 2026 likely to tie with 2024 as the warmest year on record
- A record August and the second-warmest year to date
- A record-setting El Niño event
- Record heat across much of the world
- Good odds of being world’s warmest year
- Datasets are split on whether 2026 is headed for a record
- 2027 very likely to be the warmest year on record
- Earth’s energy imbalance has more than doubled
- Arctic sea ice minimum tied for 10th lowest, Antarctic near record lows
With three-quarters of the year now past, it is virtually certain that 2026 will be the warmest or second-warmest year on record.
A rapidly strengthening El Niño, alongside human-caused global warming, made this year’s August the warmest on record and September the second-warmest.
El Niño is the warm phase of a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere and temporarily boosts global temperatures.
Carbon Brief’s analysis gives 2026 a 67% chance of surpassing 2024 as the warmest year on record across an average of six global temperature datasets.
In January, it is likely the groups that report global surface temperatures will be divided on whether 2026 officially beat 2024’s record.
Currently, the odds for a record year range from as high as 97% in Berkeley Earth’s dataset to less than 20% in European Copernicus/ECMWF’s ERA5 reanalysis product.
With El Niño expected to intensify into the winter, Carbon Brief projects that 2027 will be 1.7C above pre-industrial levels, with a 96% chance that it is the warmest year on record.
In this latest “state of the climate” quarterly update, Carbon Brief finds:
- August 2026 was the warmest August on record in all six major datasets, at around 0.12C above the previous record. September was the second-warmest September, behind 2023.
- January-September was the second-warmest such period on record, at around 1.45C above pre-industrial levels, behind only 2024.
- El Niño broke the daily “Niño3.4” region record in September and has stayed above the previous record every day since. Nearly all forecast model runs have it as the strongest El Niño on record, with a peak of around 4C occurring this winter.
- Around 22% of the world’s surface saw its warmest July-September on record, including much of the tropical Pacific, the western Mediterranean and Iberia. Western Europe had its hottest summer on record and Spain its warmest September, beating the previous record by 0.7C.
- Carbon Brief projects that 2026 will end up around 1.52C above pre-industrial levels, with a 67% chance of beating 2024’s record.
- Whether 2026 is declared the warmest year depends on the dataset; a record is likely in Berkeley Earth and NASA GISTEMP, is too close to call in HadCRUT5, JRA-3Q and NOAA and is unlikely in ERA5.
- Earth’s energy imbalance has more than doubled since the start of the satellite record, from around 0.5 watts per metre squared (W/m2) in the 2000s to around 1.25W/m2 over the past decade.
- The Arctic sea ice minimum was tied for 10th lowest in the satellite record, while Antarctic sea ice saw its third-lowest winter peak.
- This year’s record-setting El Niño will have its largest effect on global temperatures in 2027. Carbon Brief projects 2027 at around 1.7C above pre-industrial levels, with a 96% chance that it will be the warmest year on record.
Carbon Brief analyses records from six different groups that report global surface temperatures:
- NASA’s GISTEMP
- NOAAGlobalTemp
- The Met Office Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia’s HadCRUT5
- Berkeley Earth
- Copernicus/ECMWF’s ERA5 reanalysis product
- The Japan Meteorological Agency’s JRA-3Q reanalysis product
There are a number of additional groups that feature in Carbon Brief’s annual “state of the climate” update, but are not included here due to a lack of regular monthly updates.
The first nine months of 2026 were the second warmest on record in all six datasets, behind only 2024.
The figure below shows annual temperatures in each dataset since 1970, along with the 2026 average to date.
Global mean surface temperatures datasets aligned on a common 1981-2010 baseline, then shifted by the average 1850-1900 to 1981-2010 warming (0.67C) in HadCRUT5, NOAA and Berkeley Earth. 2026 to-date dots are staggered horizontally to avoid overlaps and the HadCRUT5 is for January-August as September data was not available at time of publication.The year got off to a comparatively slow start. Each month from January to June ran cooler than the same month in 2024, as the lingering effects of weak La Niña conditions gave way to a developing El Niño.
La Niña and El Nino are the cool and warm phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that reshapes weather patterns around the world.
That changed in the third quarter of the year. July 2026 was the second-warmest July in the six-dataset average and a narrow record in the NASA GISTEMP and NOAA datasets. (NOAA’s own assessment described it as tied with July 2024.)
August then set a new record for the month by around 0.12C in the six-dataset average. It was the warmest August on record in every one of the six datasets, by margins ranging from 0.07C (HadCRUT5 and NOAA) to 0.13C (ERA5).
September temperatures stalled a little following the rise in July and August. At around 1.62C, it was the second-warmest September on record in all five datasets to have reported so far, around 0.08C below the record set in September 2023.
The figure below shows each month of 2026 alongside every year since 1940, with 2023, 2024 and 2025 highlighted.
Monthly averages of six global mean surface temperature datasets. The September datapoint excludes HadCRUT5 which had not reported at the time of publication.Across the six-dataset average, July-September 2026 was effectively tied with the same period in 2023 as the warmest on record, at around 1.57C. It ranked first in GISTEMP and NOAA (and in HadCRUT5 for July-August), and second in Berkeley Earth, ERA5 and JRA-3Q.
The figure below shows the January-September average for every year since 1850. It shows how temperatures in 2026 to date sit at 1.45C – around 0.06C below 2024.
A record-setting El Niño eventIn September, El Niño crossed a milestone. The daily sea surface temperature anomaly in the “Niño3.4” region of the tropical Pacific – the area most widely used to gauge El Niño strength – broke the record, previously set in November 2015, to become the strongest event since the satellite era began in 1981.
This year’s El Niño has remained above that record every day since. September recorded the highest monthly Niño3.4 region temperature anomaly since records began in the mid-1800s.
As of 18 October, the daily value stood at around 3.5C above the 1996-2025 average for the time of year and around 0.4C above the 2015 peak.
The figure below shows how El Nino is projected to keep intensifying until the end of this year.
Average of 656 forecasts across 14 dynamical models. The lighter shaded area reflects the period when only seven models are available.Carbon Brief examined 656 forecasts from 14 different climate models that were run between late September and mid-October. On average they estimate that this year’s El Niño will peak around 4C in December – more than 1C above the prior record.
(Ten models expect a December peak and four anticipate a November peak.)
Based on an analysis of tree rings and coral sediments, it is possible that this will be the strongest El Niño event in a millennium.
Niño3.4 region sea surface temperature peak anomaly projected from 656 runs of 14 different dynamical El Niño models. Y-axis denotes the share of model runs in each 0.2C “bin”.The forecasts have strengthened since Carbon Brief’s July “state of the climate” update, when El Niño was expected to peak around 3.6C.
While human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are responsible for effectively all of the Earth’s long-term warming, temperatures in any given year are strongly influenced by short-term variations to the Earth’s climate associated with El Niño and La Niña events.
Global temperatures tend to lag the tropical Pacific by around three months, which means an El Niño peaking around the end of 2026 will have its largest effect on global temperatures in 2027.
Record heat across much of the worldIn addition to high global average surface temperatures, the past three months have seen records broken across many parts of the planet.
The map below shows July-September 2026 temperatures relative to the 1981-2010 average in the ERA5 reanalysis.
Globally, temperatures were 0.96C above that 30-year period and 1.58C above the ERA5 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.
The El Niño is clearly visible as a band of exceptional warmth stretching across the eastern and central tropical Pacific, with temperatures more than 4C above average off the coast of Ecuador and Peru.
Western Europe and the Mediterranean were also unusually warm, with temperatures around 3C above average over France and the western Mediterranean Sea. North-west Russia, the Canadian Arctic, south-central North America, eastern Africa and parts of west Antarctica were also exceptionally warm.
The most notable part of the planet that was colder than usual was the Weddell Sea sector of Antarctica, which came in at more than 2C below average for the season.
The map below shows how July-September 2026 ranked against every year in the ERA5 record (1940-2026) at each location. Areas in dark red saw their warmest July-September on record; blues show areas among the five coldest.
Areas where hot and cold records were set from July-September 2026 compared to the same period in all other years since the ERA5 dataset began in 1940. Share of global surface: 21.5% record warm, 49.9% top-five warm, 0.5% top-five cold and <0.1% record cold.Around 22% of the world’s surface saw its warmest July-September on record and around half experienced one of its five warmest. By contrast, around 0.5% of the world saw one of its five coldest July-September periods.
Record warmth covered most of the El Niño region (including more than 90% of the Niño3 and Niño3.4 regions) along with sizeable parts of the south Atlantic (39%), the tropical Indian Ocean (34%) and the subtropical North Atlantic (25%, with 85% in its five warmest).
On land, around 85% of France and Iberia saw a record-warm July-September.
In September alone, around 20% of the world’s surface saw its warmest September on record.
Overall, 55 countries set national records for September average temperatures, including Chile, Colombia, Italy, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, US and Venezuela.
Europe had an exceptional summer, with the western part of the continent experiencing its hottest summer on record.
Copernicus reported that western Europe’s summer averaged 21.7C – 2.5C above the 1991-2020 average – beating the previous record set in 2003. A record 52% of the continent was exposed to “very strong” heat stress by the end of the season.
Europe as a whole had its third-warmest summer, behind 2024 and 2022.
France had its warmest July on record, at 3.8C above the 1991-2020 average. Switzerland had its hottest summer since records began, averaging 17.2C.
The heat persisted into the autumn in south-west Europe. Spain had its warmest September on record, at 3.4C above the 1991-2020 average. This beat the previous record set in 1987 by a remarkable 0.7C.
Rivers across Europe saw their lowest summer flows since the European Flood Awareness System’s records began in 1992. By early September, the area burned across the EU was almost twice the 2006-25 average for the time of year, according to Copernicus, extending what had already been a severe fire season.
Elsewhere, the contiguous US had its hottest summer on record and its warmest September, with around 59% of the country in drought conditions.
India’s monsoon, which tends to weaken during El Niño years, ended with 12.6% less rainfall than normal, the driest in 11 years.
This year’s El Niño event has strongly impacted the hurricane season, suppressing the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic while contributing to a record-setting number of tropical cyclones in the Pacific.
Good odds of being world’s warmest yearCarbon Brief’s projection for average global temperature for 2026 combines observed temperatures through September with the latest forecasts of the strength of El Niño. It uses a statistical model trained on the historical relationship between year-to-date temperatures, El Niño conditions and annual temperatures.
The figure below shows the six-dataset average for each year since 1970 (dark blue), the year-to-date January-September 2026 average (blue circle) and Carbon Brief’s 2026 estimate (red circle) with its 90% likelihood range (vertical red line).
The dark red dot marks Carbon Brief’s median projection for 2027, the bar the 50% range and line the 90% range.The best estimate for 2026 is now around 1.52C above pre-industrial levels, with a 90% range of 1.50C to 1.55C. This is slightly higher – but effectively tied with – the prior record of 1.52C set in 2024.
It marks a slight increase from Carbon Brief’s previous projection of 1.51C, set out in its July’s “state of the climate” update.
There is an approximately 67% chance of setting a new record this year in the average of the six-datasets examined.
The year 2026 also has a 93% chance of coming in above 1.5C in the six-dataset average (though not in every individual dataset), which would make it the second year above 1.5C, after 2024.
However, a single year above 1.5C does not itself constitute a breach of the Paris Agreement goal, which reflects a longer-term average.
These odds also depend on assumptions that are hard to pin down.
The El Niño forecast for October-December lies beyond any event in the record the model is trained on. The projection assumes the historical relationship between the strength of El Niño and its impact on global temperatures holds for an event this large. If the warming effect of this El Niño turns out to be no larger than that of the strongest past events, the odds of a record year for global temperature would be closer to 50%.
Datasets are split on whether 2026 is headed for a recordDifferent groups of scientific researchers around the world will announce their own results for 2026 in January.
Across the six datasets that Carbon Brief explores there will likely be mixed results, with some datasets showing 2026 as the warmest year on record – and others showing it as the second warmest year.
Likelihood of a 2026 record in different datasets using Carbon Brief’s model. Carbon Brief’s projection is based on each dataset’s observations and record. Probability for HadCRUT5 is based on data through August, as September data was not available at time of publication.Based on temperatures to-date and the current El Niño forecast, Carbon Brief estimates that a 2026 record is very likely in Berkeley Earth (97%) and likely in NASA GISTEMP (82%). It is about as likely as not in JRA-3Q (48%) and NOAA (34%) and unlikely in ERA5 (18%).
HadCRUT5 currently shows a 72% chance of a 2026 record, but this is based on data only through August. Plausible values for September – which the other datasets suggest was slightly cooler than August – would put its odds somewhere between around 50% and 80%.
The difference in odds comes down to how far each temperature group’s data for 2026 trails the prior record set in 2024.
For example, over January-September, Berkeley Earth has 2026 around 0.03C cooler than the same months of 2024, so its final three months need to beat those of 2024 by around 0.08C.
ERA5, by contrast, has 2026 around 0.09C behind 2024 over the same period, meaning October-December would need to run around 0.27C warmer than the last three months of 2024.
None of these datasets is “right”. They differ in how they fill gaps in regions where fewer observations are taken, such as the poles, and in which sea surface temperature records they use.
The two reanalysis products, ERA5 and JRA-3Q, take a different approach altogether, using a weather model constrained by observations to estimate air temperatures everywhere, rather than combining land and ocean measurements.
There is precedent for a split decision. In January 2015, NASA and NOAA announced that the year 2014 was most likely the warmest on record, while the Met Office described it as tied with 2010. January 2027 could see something similar.
2027 very likely to be the warmest year on recordThe biggest temperature effect of this year’s El Niño event will be felt next year. Just as the 2015-16 El Niño helped make 2016 the then-warmest year on record, an event peaking around the end of 2026 will have its largest influence on global temperatures in 2027.
Carbon Brief projects 2027 will end up at around 1.74C above pre-industrial levels, with a relatively wide 90% uncertainty range of 1.54C to 1.95C.
This is based on the historical relationship between year-on-year temperature changes and El Niño conditions in the preceding autumn, factoring in the remaining uncertainty around where temperatures in 2026 will end up.
The figure below shows the six-dataset average for each year since 1970 (dark blue), along with Carbon Brief’s projections for 2026 (orange) and 2027 (red).
The dark red dot marks Carbon Brief’s median projection for 2027, the bar the 50% range and line the 90% range.This gives 2027 a 96% chance of being warmer than any previous year, including 2026. There is a 98% chance that at least one of 2026 or 2027 will set a new record.
The estimate for 2027 is necessarily much more uncertain than for 2026. None of the year has been observed yet and the result depends on both the peak strength of the El Niño and how quickly it fades.
As noted above, this year’s El Niño strength is currently projected to peak well beyond the strongest event in the record on which Carbon Brief’s model is trained. Carbon Brief predicts a rise in temperatures between 2026 and 2027 of around 0.2C due to El Niño – larger than the jump that followed any previous El Niño events. The projection assumes the historical relationship between El Niño and global temperatures will hold for an event this large, but it remains to be seen whether this is the case.
Nevertheless, even an average global temperature on even the low end of the range (1.54C) would exceed 2024 and, while Carbon Brief’s central estimate of 1.74C would beat it by more than 0.2C.
If these projections bear out, the 2020s will have delivered new records in 2023, 2024, 2027 and, quite possibly, 2026.
Earth’s energy imbalance has more than doubledThe rise in global temperatures is a symptom of Earth’s rising energy imbalance. This is the difference between the energy the planet absorbs from the sun and the energy it radiates back to space.
As long as this energy imbalance is positive, the Earth system accumulates heat, around 90% of which ends up in the oceans.
Earth’s energy imbalance has more than doubled in recent decades. This growing imbalance means the planet is accumulating heat ever faster and that global warming is accelerating.
NASA’s CERES satellite instruments have tracked changes in this imbalance at the top of the atmosphere since March 2000.
The figure below shows the Earth’s energy imbalance from 2000 to August 2026, with monthly values (faint line), 12-month averages (dark blue), calendar-year averages (dots) and the linear trend (red dashes).
Earth energy imbalance measured by NASA’s CERES satellites.The Earth’s energy imbalance rose from an average of around 0.53W/m2 over the first decade of the record (March 2000 to February 2010) to around 1.25W/m2 over the most recent decade (March 2016 to February 2026) – a 2.4-fold increase.
The highest annual energy imbalance recorded to date was in 2023 at 1.79W/m2, while the most recent 12 months (September 2025 to August 2026) averaged at 1.59W/m2.
Several studies, including 2026 research covered by Carbon Brief, have noted that the imbalance appears to have risen faster than most climate models simulate, though the reasons remain unclear.
The measurements also come with some caveats. CERES tracks changes in the imbalance well, but its absolute level is anchored to ocean heat content measurements. Changes to satellite orbits over time add a further uncertainty of around 0.1W/m2 per decade to the trend.
A 2021 study found that independent satellite and in situ observations “each yield statistically indistinguishable decadal increases” in the imbalance between 2005 and 2019.
Over longer periods, CERES shows more energy being accumulated than ocean heat estimates set out by Institute for Atmospheric Physics data and by the authors of the Indicators of Global Climate Change report.
The imbalance typically dips as a strong El Niño peaks and the ocean releases heat to space, as it did in 2024. Next year’s energy imbalance may be slightly lower.
Arctic sea ice minimum tied for 10th lowest, Antarctic near record lowsAround mid-September of each year, Arctic sea ice drops to an annual low, whereas Antarctic sea ice grows to its largest area of the year.
On 12 September, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent, at 4.60m square kilometres (km2) on the five-day average used by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
The 2026 minimum shares the 10th lowest spot – alongside 2008, 2010 and 2025 – in the nearly 48-year satellite record and was 1.21m km2 above the record low set in 2012, according to NSIDC.
That represents a modest recovery from earlier in the year, when Arctic sea ice set, or tied, record daily lows on 39 days between January and 2 July, following a joint-lowest winter maximum.
Arctic sea ice extent has not set, or tied, a daily record low since 2 July and has been within the 1979-2010 range for the time of year since the start of August, though still well below the long-term average.
(As Carbon Brief has previously explained, conditions earlier in the year are a poor predictor of the September minimum).
In the southern hemisphere, Antarctic sea ice reached its winter maximum on 14 September, at 17.59m km2. This was the third lowest on record, behind only 2023 and 2024. It recently fell sharply and hit record daily lows for much of the period since early October.
The figure below shows daily Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent in 2026 (solid lines), compared with the 1979-2010 range (shading) and the record low for each day (dotted line).
Daily Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent in 2026 compared to the prior record low and the 1979-2010 historical range. 2026’s data runs until 17 October. Arctic minimum and Antarctic maximum calculated using NSIDC’s five-day mean. related Experts: How are climate scientists using artificial intelligence? 22.10.2026 Climate modelling UNEP: Opportunity has ‘been lost’ to meet 1.5C warming limit without ‘overshoot’ 21.10.2026 Climate pollutants Guest post: Why tough methane cuts are crucial for keeping warming ‘well-below’ 2C 01.09.2026 Climate pollutants Explainer: The CMIP7 emissions scenarios – and how they explore future climate change 01.09.2026 Climate modellingThe post State of the climate: 2026 likely to tie with 2024 as the warmest year on record appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit
- Just transition
- Climate finance
- Adaptation and mitigation
- Global stocktake and NDCs
- Action agenda and other issues
Delegates will soon gather in the Turkish resort city of Antalya for UN climate negotiations, against a backdrop of war, energy crisis and climate extremes.
At COP31, nations will try to find agreement on various issues, including climate finance for developing countries and a global “just transition” towards a cleaner economy.
This summit is unusual due to its joint presidency, which means that Australia is leading the negotiations while Turkey hosts the conference.
Outside the formal negotiations, Turkey is also pushing its own priorities as part of a wider “action agenda”, including electrification, oceans and “green industrialisation”.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points and wider issues at COP31, Carbon Brief has analysed around 100 documents and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second shows the topics up for debate and the third indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the positions that the parties have expressed on each topic. These range from “priority” – meaning the party is likely to be pushing the issue – to “oppose”, meaning it is likely to push against it.
This is a “living document” that will be updated over the course of COP31.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Brief explanations of the key issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
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Key aspects of this "Belém-Antalya mechanism" (BAM) – often referred to as the “just transition mechanism” (JTM) – were agreed during the June climate negotiations this year, but many details are missing and dividing lines remain between parties.
Parties have disagreed about the scope of the mechanism and whether it should be tied to the provision of finance.
Nevertheless, following progress in June within the “just transition work programme” (JTWP), civil society groups highlighted that getting the mechanism up and running is a “key expected outcome” from COP31.
Climate financeClimate finance is always a highly contested issue at UN climate negotiations.
Developing countries have successfully pushed for a “work programme” on climate finance to feature on the conference agenda.
These parties see this programme as a way to pressure developed countries into providing more funding from their public coffers, specifically under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. Some are even proposing a “burden sharing” arrangement for climate-finance provision.
This comes against a backdrop of major donors cutting their aid budgets and the Trump administration in the US pressuring multilateral development banks (MDBs) to drop their climate objectives.
Developed countries, which have traditionally been responsible for providing finance, would prefer to keep a broader focus on issues such as improving access to existing finance and broadening the range of donors. Some developing countries, such as small-island states, also support these goals.
Nations have also been discussing Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement under the “Veredas dialogue”. This focuses on making all global “financial flows” consistent with climate action.
Countries have different views about what this involves, with developing countries again hoping to keep the focus on developed countries’ responsibilities to financially support them.
Adaptation and mitigationAt negotiations in June, parties were unable to agree on the details of a “global goal on adaptation” (GGA), which is intended to drive climate adaptation worldwide.
Having agreed at COP30 on a list of 59 “indicators” – ways to assess progress towards the GGA – nations now need to refine these before COP32 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a highly technical process that involves a taskforce working out how to use and track these indicators.
Broadly, developing countries stress the importance of finance to fund adaptation efforts, rather than simply to track progress. They also want reassurances about a pledge made last year to “triple adaptation finance”.
At the June climate negotiations, negotiators also failed to make any progress when discussing the mitigation work programme (MWP) – the only formal agenda item that concerns cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Among other things, parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue running over the next few years, or simply be brought to a close.
Global stocktake and NDCsBack in 2023, the first “global stocktake” (GST) of the Paris Agreement set out the state of climate action and what needed to be done to set the world on course.
On mitigation, nations agreed to a package of measures, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, tripling renewable energy and “halting and reversing deforestation” by 2030.
Some of these outcomes remain contentious among certain parties, particularly large, developing countries and those with economies that rely on fossil-fuel exports.
Developing countries have persistently argued that they need more climate finance to implement the global stocktake outcomes.
Parties were meant to update their climate plans under the Paris Agreement, informed by the first global stocktake, by 2025. These plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), cover the period out to 2035.
So far, only 150 parties – responsible for three-quarters of global emissions – have submitted new NDCs.
Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and Argentina are among those without new NDCs – and the US has withdrawn its climate plan under the Trump administration.
Some parties, such as the EU, have stressed the need for countries to submit their new NDCs ahead of COP31 – and to ensure they are aligned with the 1.5C temperature limit.
COP31 will also see the launch of the second global stocktake, which will conclude in 2028.
Action agenda and other issuesTurkey will be pushing its “action agenda” priorities at COP31, including global targets for electrification, reducing waste and reducing building-sector emissions.
(The Australian “presidency of negotiations” is intending to pursue a “cover text” decision at COP31 that may capture some of these wider targets, such as the electrification goal.)
The action agenda is meant to provide a complementary track to the formal negotiations, where governments and non-state actors can advance specific, real-world solutions.
A new COP31 presidency effort dubbed the “climate implementation bridge” is also meant to complement these ambitions by turning NDC goals into an “investable project portfolio”
Some parties have explicitly signalled their support for various elements beyond the formal negotiations, in the run-up to COP31.
For example, a joint letter signed by 105 parties called for COP31 to “put the ocean at the heart of climate action” by embedding ocean-based climate action in the UNFCCC architecture.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP31 climate summit 05.11.2026 COP31 Antalya Experts: What China wants from the COP31 climate talks 29.10.2026 China policy Interview: COP31 president says electrification is ‘surest way to protect citizens’ 10.07.2026 COP31 Antalya Bonn climate talks: Key outcomes from the June 2026 UN climate conference 19.06.2026 AdaptationThe post Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
COP17: Key outcomes agreed at the UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan
- Formal negotiations
- Finance
- Global review
- Global report
- Digital sequence information
- Harmful subsidies
- Marine biodiversity
- Planning, monitoring, reporting and review
- Article 8(j) implementation
- Biodiversity and climate change
- Links with other bodies
- Around the COP
- Armenian presidency
- Protests
- Lobbying and influence
- Carbon and biodiversity markets
Countries have completed the first “global review” of their progress towards reversing nature loss by 2030 at the COP17 biodiversity talks in Yerevan, Armenia.
The review “notes with deep concern” that, unless action is “rapidly accelerated”, the goal to reverse nature loss and meet a set of 23 targets by 2030 “will not be achieved”.
It “urges” countries to accelerate action, including by “increased ambition in addressing the gaps”.
Much of the discussions in Yerevan focused on how to raise the necessary funds to help developing countries protect nature.
Some major economies pushed to expand the range of nations that are expected to provide finance, with countries agreeing at the end of the two weeks of talks that non-donors that want to contribute can “signal interest” before COP18.
This came after developed countries failed to meet a target to significantly ramp up nature finance over the last few years.
It also came as a landmark fund agreed at COP16 in Colombia to pay communities for the genetic resources derived from nature stands nearly empty two years on.
The Yerevan talks marked the halfway point of the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature” first made in 2022 and due to be achieved by 2030.
During the nearly 12-hour-long final plenary, countries voted for Quito, Ecuador, to host the COP18 nature talks, which will be held in 2028.
Countries managed to sign off on all the major negotiation texts, marking a stark contrast to COP16, which ran so far over time that the Colombian presidency lost “quorum”, forcing talks to resume in Rome months later.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed analysis of all of the key outcomes from COP17.
Formal negotiations FinanceFinance, predictably, was at the heart of the discord and deadlock at the Yerevan talks.
At COP17, discussions on finance had to achieve several outcomes.
The first part – to take stock of biodiversity finance mobilised so far to meet the nature deal’s goals – fell under the global review.
As the global report noted, developed countries failed to meet their commitments to raise “at least $20bn a year by 2025” for nature. Delegates pointed to falling aid levels and a sharp 27% decline in environmental funding for the 2026-30 period.
The second part was to agree on how to mobilise resources for the next four years, to meet the GBF’s goals and targets.
Calls to “broaden the contributor base” of who pays to protect nature – and whether that should include emerging economies – became the most fraught element of the talks.
Eventually, countries agreed on what Switzerland described as a “super, mega-delicate” text. It hinged on major “political compromises”, with “no major winner or loser”, according to Kenya.
Per the decision, countries that want to be included on a list of developed country donors can “signal interest” through bilateral, confidential consultations before COP18 and every alternate COP after.
Finally, countries also agreed on criteria to shape and resource a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature after 2030.
However, this did not immediately take the form of a new fund under the COP that biodiverse countries have demanded since 2022, deferring the mechanism’s institutional structure to COP18.
Resource mobilisation discussions at the GBF’s halfway mark were supposed to agree on how to close the “biodiversity finance gap” and to “increase resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030, as set out in target 19 of the GBF.
The talks were largely dominated by a push, led by the JUSCANZ bloc of developed countries, to “broaden the contributor base”. This could see emerging economies, such as Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia and India, being added to the list of countries that pay to protect nature.
Article 20 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) states that developed countries “shall provide new and additional financial resources” to developing countries to meet the costs of implementing measures to protect nature.
The second paragraph of Article 20 of the UN biodiversity convention. Source: UN CBDThe text states that other countries – including emerging economies – may “voluntarily assume” these obligations to pay. However, it adds that this list of developed countries “shall” be reviewed periodically and amended “if necessary”.
The list was last amended in 2006.
(See this “jargon buster” which explains the specific meaning and legal weight of various terms and verbs used in UN formal documents.)
Discussions around this fraught subject had reached a dead end at intersessional talks this year, but resurfaced in Yerevan.
The first “non-paper” had four different options for expanding the contributor base. These ranged from using the World Bank’s country income groups “as a proxy” to identify high-income countries, to commissioning a study on the impacts of being included on the list.
By 21 October, the number of options swelled to eight, including two from Saudi Arabia and one from Peru.
Some countries “expressed concern” that certain options were based on a CBD secretariat study on “what constitutes a developed country”, Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported.
By the end of the first week, it was clear that the finance deadlock would have to go into informal ministerial consultations for any consensus to emerge.
At a press conference on 28 October, Christopher O’Sullivan, Ireland’s nature minister and representing the EU delegation, told Carbon Brief:
“Our position isn’t that we want to pull back in terms of contributing…but it’s been 20 years since that list was added to, times have changed and there are new realities. We just simply want those new realities reflected. I don’t fully understand why there’s so much opposition to that.”
The EU chose not to comment on which countries it would like to see on that list.
Lim Li Ching from the Third World Network, meanwhile, called the push for others to “assume the obligations” of developed countries “sheer hypocrisy”, adding that any country could make a voluntary contribution. She told Carbon Brief:
“At a forum like the CBD, this linking of income status with finance does not take into account where historical and current responsibilities lie. If you want to generate more funding for biodiversity, let’s look at sovereign debt burdens and rules, which are inequitable for developing countries. But if you can fund wars, and provide resources for your defence industry, then you know where the priorities are.”
On 29 October – at a plenary meant to adopt final texts for the most contentious subjects – Norway’s Gaute Hanssen announced that resource-mobilisation discussions would go into a smaller “friends of the chair” meeting.
Facilitated by Carolina Caceres from Canada and Imèn Meliane from Tunisia, the meeting would discuss the most contentious elements of a draft decision that had swelled to 112 brackets, denoting areas of disagreement on specific details in the text.
While the meeting was open to all, countries that were called to be present included Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, the EU, Fiji, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UK.
At the same time, a “non-paper” text by finance and environment ministers laid out countries’ red lines and compromises.
A key paragraphs from a minister’s non-paper on nature finance published on 29 October. Source: UN CBDAt the end of COP17, countries welcomed a final compromise text, with Kenya thanking the “strong women” co-chairs who strove to strike a “delicate” balance.
China, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Fiji cautioned against any further interventions, with Brazil warning: “If we open this text, we will never close it again.”
While the final decision “recognises” that “contributions from more parties would improve the mobilisation” of biodiversity finance, it steered away from issuing criteria to expand the list of donor countries.
The text makes it clear that no additions to the list would be made without inviting and confidentially consulting with interested countries, to secure their explicit consent.
Instead, the CBD secretariat “invites” countries keen to be on the list and “assume the obligations” of developed countries to “signal interest” before COP18 and at every alternate COP thereafter.
At the same time, developing countries can contribute to meeting the GBF and biodiversity convention’s goals on a “voluntary basis”, with contributions not implying inclusion on the list.
A negotiator for China told Carbon Brief at the closing plenary:
“We welcome this balanced document. It was a very long discussion that has gone [on] since [2022 nature talks in] Nairobi. But actually this time, there were a lot of sensitive issues, [there were] a lot of critical things we didn’t open in the contact groups; it mainly went to the high-level discussion.”
The decision also establishes a financial mechanism for nature funding after 2030 under the governance of the COP, a key ask from developing countries.
However, it defers decisions on what form this mechanism would take – whether this would be a new fund or based on existing arrangements – until COP18.
Oscar Soria at the Common Initiative told Carbon Brief that the decision on the financial mechanism leaves things “very open”, with “no movement” towards a new fund or money and no upgrades to existing funding arrangements.
The text acknowledges the links between debt and biodiversity eight times, mentioning how debt-related instruments can be included in biodiversity plans, but does not go further.
“It is almost as if the debt studies they called for at COP16 didn’t happen,” said Soria, who had earlier flagged serious methodological issues with the first-ever COP-commissioned report on debt and biodiversity.
Global reviewIn Yerevan, countries agreed on the first stocktake of progress towards the 2030 nature targets – known as the “global review”.
The review was one of the keenly anticipated outcomes from COP17 and was seen as less controversial than some of the other major negotiation strands.
It was swiftly signed off by countries at the start of the final COP17 plenary, with just one last-minute addition.
The concept of carrying out a global review on “collective progress” was set out in the GBF and its underlying documents.
The details of how this review would be carried out were supposed to be agreed at COP16, but it was not discussed before the plenary in Cali was suspended for loss of “quorum”. It was instead adopted at the resumed COP16 negotiations in Rome in February 2025.
The global review was based largely on the findings of the global report and other information provided by countries.
The final text “welcomes” and also “notes with deep concern” the findings of the global report. It then homes in on various ways countries can increase their biodiversity action to get on track to meet the targets.
As of 19 October, when COP17 officially began, the non-paper contained 152 brackets, which indicate areas of disagreement in UN texts.
Smaller “contact group” discussions took place to try and reduce the number of brackets throughout the first week. This group was co-chaired by Sanne Kruid from the Netherlands and Sivendra Michael from Fiji.
A few days into the talks, Kruid told Carbon Brief that the progress on the global review was “relatively positive”, with countries “engaging quite well”.
One contentious section of the 11-page text was paragraph 15, which “urges” countries to accelerate implementation of nature targets, “including by increased ambition” in addressing key challenges.
Some developing countries were wary of including the word “ambition” in this section, arguing that higher ambition requires more nature finance, which is already falling “far short”.
Kirsty Leong, a policy expert at WWF, told Carbon Brief:
“You have one side wanting to have very strong language and high ambition in what countries should do…and the other side of the room saying the main problem in implementation is that they don’t have the means to do it.”
But the word made it into the final text, which “urges” parties to accelerate implementation of the GBF, “including by increased ambition”, while recognising that developing countries need more support to “allow for higher ambition in their actions”.
Another hotly debated section was paragraph 26, which “encourages” countries to accelerate reform of nature-harming subsidies, “in accordance with national circumstances”.
Earlier in the talks, it was also unclear whether this would feature in the final version due to pushback from countries including Saudi Arabia and Russia. (See: Harmful subsidies)
Earlier drafts of paragraph 16 – another key section – focused on supporting increased action to address biodiversity loss, and also mentioned transforming global financial systems and economic sectors.
This was heavily stripped back in the final version, which “emphasises that accelerating implementation would need to be supported through increased action to address the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss.”
The review also “notes with deep concern” that the 2050 nature goals “may be at risk” if 2030 targets are not achieved.
The COP17 presidency and others frequently discussed a “Yerevan pathway” during the negotiations.
It was unclear whether this would feature in a separate cover decision text, similar to those agreed at climate COP summits, or in another way.
In the end, the “pathway” referred to the sections of the global review outlining calls for countries to scale up action to meet the 2030 nature targets.
A CBD statement said it “sets out a shared response to those findings [of the global report], identifying priorities for action through 2030 and areas where progress will need to be accelerated”.
Elsewhere in the global review talks, Earth Negotiations Bulletin said a small group was also set up to address references to “actors other than national governments”.
These “actors” include Indigenous peoples and local communities. Joji Carino from the not-for-profit Forest Peoples Programme called for this wording to be “discontinued”.
She told a 20 October press briefing that the phrase is a “major regression”, believing it makes it sound like “governments were always the central actor” and Indigenous peoples were “just there on the side”.
This phrase featured a number of times in the final global review document, with Indigenous peoples and local communities also highlighted several times.
On 28 October, rumours circulated that the COP17 president, Hambardzum Matevosyan, wanted to bring the global review text for agreement at a plenary session that evening, two days before talks were due to end.
When Carbon Brief ran into Matevosyan in a lift that afternoon, he said this would only occur if countries reached a consensus on the text. They did not manage this and he confirmed in the evening plenary that consultations would continue.
Carbon Brief understands that Brazil was the main blocker on movement of the text at this stage. The issues were not necessarily with the text itself, but with progress on other texts – namely, resource mobilisation.
(Similarly, at COP16, the Democratic Republic of the Congo called for the full monitoring framework text to be put in brackets due to dissatisfaction over resource mobilisation.)
In the final plenary on 30 October, countries supported the presidency’s proposals to clear the remaining 28 brackets in the text.
Brazil made a last-minute request to mention people of African descent in paragraph 35, which “emphasises” the contributions of actions from various groups of people to the GBF.
Colombia supported the proposal, and no country objected, so the COP17 president approved the addition before gavelling through the document, saying “we have started very good”.
Daudi Sumba, the chief conservation officer at WWF International, said in a statement:
“Negotiators returning home must now turn the global review into clear dedicated action, scaling nature’s recovery by transforming the most damaging sectors and activities across our food and finance systems.”
Global reportJust ahead of COP17, the UN released a global report finding that the world is falling behind on 22 out of 23 of its nature targets for 2030.
It said that the GBF has led to “unprecedented” interest in tackling biodiversity loss, but added:
“However, unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly, the 2030 targets and mission will not be achieved.”
The global report provided a basis for the global review of progress towards meeting the targets of the GBF, which was undertaken by countries in Yerevan.
The scheduling of both the global report and the global review were agreed as part of the GBF and its underlying documents in 2022.
The global report draws on countries’ national reports, which were due to be submitted to the UN in February of this year. It also draws on countries’ national nature plans, known as “national biodiversity strategies and action plans” (NBSAPs) and national targets, which were both due in 2024.
Not all countries have met the call to publish these documents and targets. According to the UN, 45% of countries published NBSAPs in time to be considered for the report, 83% had submitted at least one national target and 66% had produced their new national report.
The first draft of the global report was published on 29 June 2026. This draft was subject to a “peer-review process”, which invited countries and observers, such as NGOs and businesses, to submit comments on all aspects of the report.
The second draft, which has been revised based on the peer review, was published on Sunday 26 July, just ahead of COP17 preparatory talks being held in Nairobi.
The final version – titled “The state of biodiversity action: The global report on collective progress” – was published on 24 September.
The second draft of the global report included a scorecard showing numerical data on progress towards each of the GBF’s 23 targets, based on different metrics. (See Carbon Brief’s article.)
Some of these figures featured in the finalised report, but a “decision was made” to leave them out of the final scorecard, the CBD confirmed to Carbon Brief.
Instead, the final scorecard solely uses a colour-coding system to rank progress on these metrics. But the colours are not that straightforward to interpret.
The rankings from worst (red) to best (green) are based on where progress on each metric ranks relative to the highest and lowest scores achieved in each instance.
This means that, for example, a poor-performing target can have certain figures coloured green on scores as low as 43%, while this same score appears as yellow in other instances.
Digital sequence informationDigital sequence information (DSI) – the genetic data derived from nature – was one of the most keenly watched “fights” by countries, companies, academia and Indigenous peoples alike.
This data is used in a wide range of industries, including pharmaceuticals and agribusiness companies, to develop products such as medicines, cosmetics, supplements and crop varieties.
At COP16, countries agreed to the first-ever global fund – the Cali Fund – to which companies using DSI “should contribute”, along with a unique multilateral mechanism to support it.
They established a steering committee to conduct studies and provide advice to the COP on the small print still left unresolved on the Cali Fund and mechanism.
In Yerevan, countries were supposed to consider and finalise these details, such as who “should” pay into the fund and how this money would reach countries and Indigenous communities protecting the world’s genetic diversity.
However, following two weeks of deep divisions, delays and then fears of rushing crucial details in the plenary, most of this work has been pushed to intersessional negotiations leading up to COP18 in 2028.
Countries did, however, finalise a review methodology to assess how the mechanism and thinly lined fund are working by COP18.
Money in vs money outCountries had a lot to achieve on DSI at COP17. This task list had been broadly grouped by the steering committee into two categories: “money in” and “money out”. The Cali decision gave the steering committee two years to prepare studies and documents to support COP17 deliberations on both tracks.
“Money in” refers to which – and by how much – companies pay into the fund, defined by “thresholds” and contribution rates. Thresholds mean deciding which companies – small, medium or large – “should” contribute to the Cali Fund and whether that is decided on the basis of size, revenue or their “proportional” use of DSI.
Contribution rates refer to how much companies pay. Days before COP17, the CBD secretariat submitted a 209-page study, conducted by an external consultant, on thresholds and contribution rates.
Contributions to the fund, however, are voluntary, with indicative rates already set out in the COP16 decision – 0.1% of revenue, or 1% of profits. According to a DeSmog investigation, pharmaceutical trade lobbies “challenged” these rates and called for a radical rethink of the fund itself. (See: Lobbying and influence.)
“Money out”, meanwhile, refers to how the Cali Fund’s resources are allocated, disbursed and spent.
As Carbon Brief reporting has shown, there has been barely any “money in” to the Cali Fund over the past two years. At the start of COP17, the fund had only $6,000 in it. By the end of it, pledges went up, but not by much: totalling $10,565 and less than $9,000 in actual deposits.
To date, not a single large company among the sectors identified as reliant on DSI has contributed to the fund.
Observers and government delegates across blocs told Carbon Brief that the bulk of the steering committee’s work leading up to COP17 was focused on the “money out”.
This included an emphasis on certificates and other “incentives” for companies to pay. Obtaining such a certificate for a full contribution, for instance, could indemnify companies from paying any more for DSI use that year. Right now, every voluntary contribution, no matter how small, gets a receipt from the Cali Fund.
“Money out” also comprises how funds would be allocated and disbursed to countries and Indigenous communities, as well as transparency on how it would be spent.
At the talks, Brazil – supported by other developing countries – called for Cali Fund contributions to reach at least $200m in its pilot phase before discussing allocation.
Dr Siva Thambisetty, associate professor of law at the London School of Economics, told Carbon Brief:
“We seemed to collapse the entire question to certificates. I question whether we should have spent so much time on allocation strategies when the ‘money in’ has been so insignificant.”
Through most of the talks, industry – supported by the EU and UK – sought “legal clarity” on “certificates” for potential contributions.
At an informal dialogue on DSI on 23 October attended by Carbon Brief, industry representatives echoed calls for more “legal certainty” before they would pledge more. They also warned of “obligation stacking” from having to share benefits from using genetic resources under other treaties.
While the first non-paper on DSI on 20 October had 154 brackets, countries worked over the weekend to remove contentious elements.
However, disagreements on these details underpinning the text were still substantive. At 6am on 28 October, the COP president sent out a letter calling for informal ministerial consultations, steered by Norway and Zimbabwe. The letter also set out “overarching questions” to resolve.
Extract from a letter issued by the COP17 president on 28 October listing key issues for ministers to resolve on DSI. Credit: COP17 Presidency.The penultimate DSI text only emerged late on the final day of COP17, with parties such as Fiji saying that many countries had very little time to read it.
After multiple interventions from countries including Fiji, India, the EU, Brazil, China and Argentina, parties could find no way forward.
The chair of a working group tasked with resolving some of the most contentious negotiations before the final plenary called for a “friends of the chair” group to determine intersessional work on DSI, led by Fiji. He urged these consultations to continue in parallel with the COP17 plenary, or risk having no COP decision at all.
At 5am on 31 October, the COP president proposed a draft decision on DSI, as the final plenary entered its seventh hour.
The text “reaffirms” the indicative contribution rates agreed at COP16. It sets out an allocation methodology on how funds from the Cali Fund will be disbursed after COP18, while “allow[ing]” the steering committee to make payments “on an exceptional basis” if contributions to the Cali Fund reach $150m.
The allocations from the Cali Fund for Indigenous peoples in the COP17 decision. Credit: UN CBDOnly contributions by companies amounting to “1% of their profit or 0.1% of their revenue” will be entitled to a Cali Fund certificate for the year, it clarifies.
The president’s text was adopted without objections at 5:25am, with the emptying plenary hall bursting into applause.
Speaking to Carbon Brief minutes after the DSI decision was adopted, Fiji’s Sivendra Michael said he was “so glad I was given the opportunity to chair and bring this decision to a close”. He added:
“It matters a lot, especially for Indigenous people back home, because any work that is done in the methodology and how benefits get distributed should respect the rights of Indigenous peoples.
“I knew I would land it before I left here. It also shows Pacific leadership in this space, because Pacific islands may be small, but our leadership has really been demonstrated across the room, when we can come in and offer bridging proposals and push countries to show what flexibility looks like.”
Despite Michael welcoming the decision, others were more critical.
Dr June Rubis, Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC) representative from Asia on the Cali Fund’s steering committee, said:
“Many wealthy nations asked for a voluntary fund, got one, and business has spent the last two years stalling contributions, throwing doubt on the multilateral mechanism.
“The commitment made in Cali still stands and Indigenous peoples and local communities cannot keep waiting while companies free-ride off nature’s genetic information. While setting the rules for new funds like this does take time to get right, governments need to start treating this as a matter of economic resilience and human survival.”
Thambisetty told Carbon Brief after the talks concluded:
“The Cali Fund is on life support. We leave Yerevan with an open-ended working group. It became clear that work in the run-up to COP17 was distorted by industry echo chambers, a receptive steering committee and lack of close engagement and oversight.
There is much work ahead, but we need transparency, a robust and imaginative public narrative and, inevitably, a hardening of the regulatory ecosystem by states where large DSI users are based.”
Industry-led initiativesIn addition to the work on DSI by parties, there was an industry-led initiative announced at COP17.
The proposal – seen by Carbon Brief – aims to start a separate philanthropic fund, called the Biodiversity Foundation Initiative.
This initiative argues that the Cali Fund and national benefit-sharing measures “create complex payment obligations, compliance requirements and unpredictable financial exposure”.
Rubis expressed concern that industry was “picking up on our language of ‘different pathways’” to start its own fund with the expectation it would then receive particular certificates from key governments.
While the initiative says it “intends to complement – not replace” – the Cali Fund, it also notes that it hopes to “engage key governments” and “build political support”, with little clarity on whether communities would receive benefits.
Other Indigenous leaders and academics told Carbon Brief they were being “actively lobbied” at COP17 to support this initiative, although its architects described their outreach as a “co-design” phase for the fund.
Harmful subsidiesNature-harming subsidies were a central point of discussion throughout COP17 – both inside negotiation rooms and at side events in Yerevan.
Governments spend as much as $1.8tn each year on subsidies and incentives that could be “harmful” to biodiversity across a range of sectors, particularly fossil fuels and agriculture.
Target 18 of the GBF sets out the aim to identify – by 2025 – and then “eliminate, phase out or reform” these harmful incentives. It also outlines that subsidies should be reduced by at least $500bn each year by 2030.
Carbon Brief analysis published in July found that 84% of countries missed the 2025 identification deadline. Countries have also shown “insufficient” progress so far on target 18, according to the global report.
At an event on 26 October, UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker described subsidy reform as “politically charged and socially sensitive”. This was evident throughout the negotiations, despite countries already agreeing to the terms of target 18 four years ago.
Harmful subsidies featured in several negotiated outcomes from Yerevan – most notably in the global review. (See: Global review)
Earlier versions of a subsidy-related paragraph in the review “urge[d]” stronger action on target 18.
In a non-paper released on 25 October, this was softened to “encourage” countries to scale up identification, elimination, phase-out or reform of harmful incentives, “in accordance with national circumstances”.
Bracketed text on subsidies from a 25 October non-paper on the global review. Source: UN CBDCarbon Brief understands that Colombia, the UK, Norway, EU nations and many others were in favour of including a paragraph on harmful subsidy reform in the global review. Countries opposed to this included Saudi Arabia and Russia. Near the end of the negotiations, India also proposed removing this paragraph from the text.
The final global review text agreed at COP17 “encourages” countries to “accelerate the implementation of target 18”, but in “accordance with national circumstances”.
Eva Zabey, the chief executive of Business for Nature, said in a statement:
“This COP is a turning point on incentive reform. Through the adoption of this decision, parties have made it a key priority. Incentive reform has moved from the margins to the mainstream of the biodiversity agenda.”
Ahead of COP17, more than 130 businesses and financial organisations signed an open letter calling for governments to reform nature-harming incentives.
On 19 October, a Conservation International report estimated that harmful subsidies result in $11-24.7tn of “hidden environmental and social damage costs” every year.
COP17 also saw the launch of several initiatives focused on subsidy reform, with a number of related announcements on 26 October.
On this day, the COP17 presidency launched the “Yerevan call” on positive biodiversity incentives – a political declaration to increase action and reaffirm commitments to target 18.
It formed one of four “flagship” priorities for the COP17 presidency, with the others focused on conservation measures, mountain and freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity monitoring.
A new group called the “friends of target 18” was also announced. The initiative, put together by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), will be co-chaired by Colombia and Finland.
Armenia is the only other country currently officially involved in the group, while France, Malawi and Guinea have indicated they will join.
The “friends” group has already held several informal meetings since March 2025, said Farooq Ullah, a senior policy advisor at the IISD. He told Carbon Brief that the group intends to help countries share information and solutions on subsidy reform, and to strengthen “political will” on tackling subsidies.
Ullah said more information and the full list of countries involved will be published in May 2027, during the first planned in-person meeting of the “friends”.
The IISD also published a report on national-level progress on target 18, finding that countries are “not on track” to meet their commitments on subsidy reform.
Throughout COP17, the narrative around harmful subsidies focused primarily on economic – rather than environmental – benefits of reform. Ullah told Carbon Brief:
“Something is different now. Governments are taking this seriously for the first time and, honestly, it may not be for environmental reasons. It is because they are out of money.”
Dozens of countries around the world increased their fossil-fuel subsidies this year to ward off energy price rises after the US-Israel war on Iran disrupted supplies flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Marine biodiversityThere were three main points of contention around the text on marine and coastal biodiversity in Yerevan.
The main sticking point concerned references to the agreement on marine biodiversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction, known as BBNJ, or the “High Seas Treaty”. The BBNJ agreement entered into force in January of this year and it has been ratified by more than 100 countries.
The initial non-paper presented for discussion contained six direct references to the treaty – all in brackets. While most parties were in agreement about the importance of recognising the treaty in this text, Russia remained adamantly opposed to most of these references.
Similarly, while many parties wanted to include text in the decision that “welcomes with appreciation” the treaty’s entry into force, Russia said it “could not accept” anything other than “takes note of”.
Ultimately, references to the BBNJ agreement were removed from the preambular paragraphs and several other places in the text, with the decision saying it “takes note of” the treaty’s entry into force.
Parties did agree to establish an informal advisory group on work conducted under the CBD in relation to marine areas beyond national jurisdiction.
The establishment of this group was a “very important” part of the text, said Lolita Couchene, advocacy officer at Nausicaá. Couchene pointed out that the Yerevan summit is the first CBD COP since the entry into force of the BBNJ treaty. She told Carbon Brief:
“There are really high stakes around how it will be addressed…It’s really important, because the entry into force of the BBNJ agreement is a major milestone for ocean governance, and its implementation will also depend on how it connects effectively with the other international frameworks – especially the Convention on Biological Diversity.”
The second sticking point was around one of the annexes to the decision, which concerned ecologically or biologically significant marine areas, known as “EBSAs”.
At COP16 in Cali, negotiators finally came to a decision on the process for scientifically describing EBSAs, after eight years of negotiations. Alongside this, parties requested “voluntary guidelines on peer-review processes” for describing EBSAs.
That language proved contentious in Yerevan, even though it had already been agreed two years earlier. Some parties felt that the word “guidelines” – even directly following “voluntary” – could be seen as too binding. However, many other parties were dissatisfied with the proposed alternative of “voluntary reference elements for good practice”.
As of the second week of the COP, both of these options remained bracketed in the text, along with a compromise option of “voluntary guidance”.
Annex I from the marine and coastal biodiversity text released on 25 October. Source: UN CBDUltimately, it was this third option that made it into the text adopted during the closing plenary.
The final sticking point with the text was around explicit mentions of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), as well as women and youth. These mentions were also contested by Russia.
All of the bracketed mentions of these groups were removed before the text went to the plenary for approval, although the final decision does retain one reference that had not been bracketed.
Xiomara Acevedo, founder and director of the civil society organisation Barranquilla+20, told Carbon Brief that the “regression” on language around IPLCs, women and youth is “concerning because this is already agreed language”. She added:
“We cannot achieve global biodiversity targets by weakening the recognition of the peoples, communities and knowledge systems that have contributed to protecting biodiversity for generations.”
When the marine biodiversity text was discussed in the final plenary session, several parties noted their unhappiness with Russia’s resistance to certain elements of this text. A Chilean delegate said she had “deep concern in the steps we are taking back”. She added:
“We are erasing with our elbow what we have just written.”
Her statement was met with lasting applause in the plenary room.
Planning, monitoring, reporting and reviewAlongside the global review, delegates negotiated a separate text on “further enhancing” planning, monitoring, reporting and review (PMRR).
This included additional work on the monitoring framework, which was one of the last issues to get resolved at COP16 – ultimately, it was agreed at the resumed session in Rome in February 2025.
Coming into Yerevan, there “wasn’t really a mandate to continue working on the monitoring framework”, Victoria Romero, senior policy officer for biodiversity at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told Carbon Brief. Rather, she said, the discussions were very “process-oriented”.
The PMRR decision “welcomes with appreciation” parties’ efforts to provide information in a timely manner, but also “notes with concern” the “institutional, technical, capacity and resource challenges” that made it difficult for parties to do so.
Much of the discussion in Yerevan centred on those challenges. Romero told Carbon Brief:
“There’s an acknowledgement that the monitoring framework wasn’t used as much as it should have. But then one of the gaps identified – that is addressed at this COP – is this expression of needs of capacity to be able to use the monitoring framework.”
The decision “requests” that the Global Environment Facility ensure that “timely, adequate and accessible resources” are available for parties as they prepare their eighth national reports.
In a non-paper released on the first day of the talks, disagreement was clear on several issues, including the level of detail of reporting; the post-2030 work of the convention; development and addition of indicators; and specific references to Indigenous peoples and local communities, women and youth.
An annex to the decision laid out more than a dozen additional, optional indicators that parties could use to report on their progress towards the global targets. Parties were split on how to refer to these indicators, with some supporting text that “agrees” to their inclusion and some wanting weaker text that “takes note” of the additional indicators.
The entire annex was also placed in brackets at one point, but parties later agreed to remove those, with the provision that a footnote be added to clarify that the indicators themselves had not been negotiated by the COP or its subsidiary bodies, according to Earth Negotiations Bulletin.
The final text “takes note” of the additional proposed indicators, while adding that their use is “optional and subject to national circumstances”.
Parties also diverged on how to refer to the convention’s work after 2030: as a post-2030 strategic plan; a possible follow-up to the Framework; or continued implementation of the GBF towards its 2050 goals. Some parties felt it was important not to prejudge the outcome of COP19 by specifying what the post-2030 work would look like.
Text on post-2030 work submitted by the working group chair for plenary consideration. Source: UN CBDUltimately, parties agreed to a compromise, brought forward by the EU at the final plenary, to ask the subsidiary bodies for “recommendations on an inclusive, transparent and party-driven way forward for the period post-2030 without prejudging the outcome” in reference to future work.
The decision also agreed to establish an ad hoc technical expert group on the “further operationalisation” of the monitoring framework. This group, which will support parties in preparing their eighth national reports, was a “positive outcome” from the PMRR decision, Romero said.
Article 8(j) implementationOne of the major outcomes from COP16 was the agreement to create a new permanent body for Indigenous peoples.
This would provide a space to advise and offer the views of Indigenous peoples directly at biodiversity COPs for the first time.
Discussions on the role of Indigenous peoples take place at UN biodiversity COPs under Article 8(j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
This mandates that countries “respect, preserve and maintain” the knowledge of Indigenous peoples and local communities related to biodiversity conservation, and to “encourage the equitable sharing of benefits”.
At COP17, countries negotiated several documents related to figuring out how this mechanism would be implemented within the CBD, its budget and other organisational matters.
At the end of the final plenary session on 30 October, countries agreed on the “modus operandi” of the permanent body. This was widely celebrated after two weeks of tense and divided negotiations.
The divisions centred on a number of things, including the composition between Indigenous peoples and local communities in a “friends of the bureau” group, plus the geographical rotation of nominations for co-chairs of the subsidiary body.
Several “contact group” negotiations took place on 8(j) at COP17, co-chaired by Jennifer Corpuz from the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity and Sikeade Oluwakemi Egbuwalo from Nigeria.
On 27 October, Corpuz told Carbon Brief that countries showed “constructive spirit”, but a lot of “red lines” remained. She added:
“We’re trying our best to get past them, but we know that there are very, very strong views on either side of the table.”
It would be a “failure of COP17” to not agree on the modus operandi, said the DRC on behalf of the African group in the final plenary session on 30 October.
The DRC claimed the plenary would lose “quorum” in “30 minutes” as the talks ran well into overtime, calling on countries to “show courage” on the issue.
In the end, countries signed off on the terms of how the permanent body would be implemented.
More detailed coverage of 8(j) negotiations and outcomes will be added to this article shortly.
Biodiversity and climate changeCountries in Yerevan agreed to a new text on biodiversity and climate change, which included new voluntary guidance for scaling up nature-based solutions, but left out references to a landmark legal climate opinion and new biodiversity science.
Though recognising the links between climate change and biodiversity was a key objective of the Colombian presidency in Cali at COP16, the mood at COP17 was distinctly different, observers told Carbon Brief.
In Cali, countries agreed to a text that “recognises” that biodiversity loss and climate change are “interdependent” issues that “need to be addressed urgently and in a coherent and balanced manner”.
Despite finding agreement two years ago, negotiators decided to revisit this passage again in Yerevan, explained An Lambrechts, head of the Greenpeace delegation at COP17. She told Carbon Brief:
“They actually went to having this exact same debate about some words in the text that they had at COP16. For example, if they refer to interconnected ‘crises’ or ‘challenges’ – and that kept going in circles for a long time.
“[There is] a feeling that there is some backtracking because the world has changed, compared to Cali.”
One key area of contention this year was a movement to cite the International Court of Justice’s landmark advisory “opinion” on climate change within the biodiversity and climate change text. (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth summary of the ICJ opinion.)
Several draft versions of the text contained a reference to the ICJ’s opinion in brackets (illustrated below).
A draft version of the biodiversity and climate change text from 30 October. Source: UN CBDDebates on whether or not to include the reference continued into COP17’s last scheduled day.
The Pacific small island states, Panama, the EU and Brazil supported citing the advisory opinion in the text, Carbon Brief understands, with small islands indicating it was a “red line”.
Meanwhile, Russia, Saudi Arabia and India were “in favour of deletion”, an observer said.
During the final plenary, Russia restated that it would not be willing to agree to the text unless the reference to the ICJ opinion was removed, telling the presidency:
“We are just not willing to move on that, particularly at this time of night.”
Russia also asked the presidency to delete other passages of text referencing IPBES assessments on how to achieve “transformative change” for nature and on the “nexus” between biodiversity, water, food and health.
This was opposed by the UK, which noted that past COPs had “previously welcomed” new scientific assessments and reports.
In a further intervention, the UK suggested a “compromise” of deleting a reference to the transformative change assessment, but keeping a reference to the nexus assessment – arguing this was the more “relevant” report for the biodiversity and climate text.
Russia accepted this compromise.
The text was adopted without references to the ICJ opinion on climate change and the IPBES transformative change assessment.
Another key passage in the climate text refers to the development of new “voluntary guidelines” for helping countries scale up nature-based solutions to climate change.
The text “invites” countries to “consider using the voluntary guidelines” to “integrate” nature-based solutions and “social and environmental safeguards in mitigation and adaptation measures”.
It also “requests” that CBD executive secretary Astrid Schomaker “invites” countries and civil society to submit their “views and reflections” on the voluntary guidelines.
Links with other bodiesFollowing a strong outcome for “links with other bodies” at COP16, negotiations stalled on a number of agenda items in Armenia.
These links were discussed explicitly within agenda item 13, which covers “cooperation with other conventions and international organisations”.
However, references to other “bodies and synergies” across the three Rio conventions were also contentious across several other agenda items, including biodiversity and climate change, as well as the text on marine and coastal biodiversity.
Work mandated by the final COP16 decision led to two documents on cooperation with other bodies being produced during intersessional meetings, which formed the basis of negotiation in Yerevan.
However, not all parties supported these documents and disagreements quickly arose.
View of the room during an event on cooperation among the Rio Conventions. Credit: IISD/ENB | Mike MuzurakisNegotiations at COP16 had led to some “really ambitious text” on synergies within the biodiversity and climate change item, according to Bethan Laughlin, senior policy specialist at the Zoological Society of London.
Laughlin told Carbon Brief:
“What we saw was real pushback against the ambition that these annexes brought to the table, with significant resistance from a small number of parties to strengthening synergies, in general. There was also resistance from some to anything that might not be in line with some governments’ national priorities…[This] manifested in the [final] decision, really whittling it down and weakening it.”
Across the first week, in discussion on links with other bodies, contentious elements included the development of a multilevel road map to enhance synergies across the Rio conventions and a “supplement to the voluntary guidelines on ecosystem-based adaptation and disaster risk reduction”.
A heavily bracketed “non-paper” published during the second week of COP17 highlighted the lack of consensus.
Observers told Carbon Brief that some parties pushed back against any references to mitigation within the voluntary guidelines text, alongside references to the recent “nexus” and “transformative” change IPBES assessments.
This mirrors a wider trend of objecting to science and implementation language, both at COP17 and within the wider multilateral space.
There was also significant pushback in the marine and coastal biodiversity negotiations on references to the agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (the “High Seas Treaty”), which entered into force in January. (See: Marine biodiversity)
A reference to the High Seas Treaty was bracketed in early versions of the cooperation text, but remained in the final version.
Ultimately, parties decided to pass the multilevel roadmap to peer review, providing parties and stakeholders with more time to provide additional views on the roadmap.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Camila Jardim, an international political expert at Greenpeace Brazil, said negotiators “struggled to uphold the commitments made in Cali”, adding:
“There was pushback against the synergies agenda – even regarding the use of the term ‘synergies’ itself.”
A draft text was gavelled through during the final plenary for cooperation; however, it pushed work on a number of elements into future meetings.
In the closing days of COP17, the CBD presidency alongside the presidencies of other Rio conventions – the UNFCCC’s COP31, UNCCD’s COP17 and UNCCD’s COP18 – released a joint statement declaring their intention to accelerate work on biodiversity through the use of synergies. It added:
“We call for elevating Rio convention synergies higher on the political agenda, providing opportunities for parties, other governments and relevant stakeholders to engage and contribute in an open, inclusive, transparent, balanced and participatory manner.”
Around the COP Armenian presidencyArmenia was chosen over Azerbaijan as the host of COP17 in a vote held at the previous UN nature summit in 2024.
(At UN biodiversity talks, countries vote in a secret ballot for the next host nation, at the end of each COP.)
This year’s summit took place in the mountainous nation’s capital of Yerevan – one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
Several delegates told Carbon Brief that the COP17 president, Hambardzum Matevosyan, was engaged and well-organised throughout the talks.
During the summit, Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, kept a relatively low public profile outside the walls of the official negotiation rooms.
He spoke at high-level events and a small number of press conferences – alongside frequent Facebook updates – but remained tight-lipped to the media about how the talks were progressing.
He told journalists on 22 October that he had discussed key negotiation issues with countries in the months leading up to the summit, to expedite progress at the talks.
At a mid-point press briefing on 26 October, Matevosyan described “encouraging momentum” and cooperation in the negotiations. He added that he believed COP17 would be judged by its “lasting results”, beyond the final gavel falling.
Speaking at a press conference after the all-night, 12-hour final plenary session, Matevosyan said: “We have achieved more than we could have expected”.
CBD executive secretary Schomaker said the COP achieved “remarkable things at a moment when multilateralism is supposedly not functioning”.
Attendees also widely praised the logistics in Yerevan, with free buses to the conference venue and efforts to ease city congestion, including traffic restrictions and closing local schools.
However, Armenia’s hosting of the COP also drew attention to its own environmental record.
Civil-society groups criticised the launch of operations at a gold mine in the south-east of the country just over one week before COP17 began. (See: Protests)
Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s framing of the mine as a “success” also drew criticism, according to Armenian investigative outlet Hetq.
Mining is a key economic sector in Armenia, with the nation holding reserves of rare minerals, copper and gold. Land-use change – mainly for agriculture, but also partly for mining – is one of the key drivers of biodiversity loss.
Hetq also reported that “construction waste” from the COP17 negotiations venue “spilled” into a gorge that was recently recognised as a specially protected natural area.
Hetq said Armenia’s ministry of environment “noted that it is not a body that exercises supervisory functions over environmental protection norms”.
ProtestsProtests at COP17 were muted, compared to the loud marches seen at most climate COPs, with many “silent” demonstrations inside the blue zone when negotiations were under way.
On the first day of the talks, Armenian activists wearing t-shirts and carrying signs drawing attention to the controversial Amulsar gold mine were prevented from entering the venue.
Two days later, one of the same activists, Anna Shahnazaryan, was again denied entry to the venue – although she was later allowed to speak at an event organised by the CBD women’s caucus.
In a press conference, Shahnazaryan said that the mine – which began operations one week before COP17 – “undermines and obstructs all 23 targets” of the GBF. She added:
“This is similar to the climate COPs, where the whole world gathers to discuss the climate crisis, but oil industry representatives attend and strike deals. The same thing is happening here at our COP. We must not allow the discourse on biodiversity conservation to be cynically turned into mining rhetoric.”
The UN special rapporteur for environmental defenders, Michel Forst, told Carbon Brief:
“Biodiversity [loss], climate [change] and pollution are the main threats to the planet currently. And my concern as special rapporteur is that I see many people could not participate in COP meetings. I’m there also to prevent attacks from occurring, but to ensure people have the full right to participate and express themselves safely in these premises.”
As wildfires raged in Indonesia, activists wearing pollution masks in the foyer of the COP17 venue drew attention to the extinction risk facing Tapanuli orangutans.
According to a new report by conservation NGO Mighty Earth, around 7% of the species’ population was wiped out by Cyclone Senyar, which struck Sumatra last year. The report noted that the storm was “supercharged” by climate change.
Prof Serge Wich, a primatologist who helped identify the Tapanuli orangutans as a distinct species only in 2017, said in the report:
“[Extinction of these orangutans] would be a terrible failure by humanity, the conservation community and governments. With all the knowledge and money we have in the world, if we can’t save charismatic species like this… what is the hope for all the other species that we care about?”
The largest protest by far at COP17 was held by Brazilian Indigenous groups ahead of the country’s presidential run-off election on 25 October. Protesters said the vote was crucial to “defend democracy”, Brazil’s sovereignty and biodiversity.
According to a statement by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the “electoral advance of the far right” in Brazil’s Congressional elections earlier this month brought back issues that are “not abstract” to Indigenous peoples, but are tied to their safety, autonomy and survival.
Prior to the election, Carbon Brief analysis showed that Lula’s third term as president prevented the deforestation of an area of Amazon rainforest roughly the size of the US state of New Jersey.
Camila Jardim from Greenpeace Brazil told Carbon Brief at a press briefing that the incoming Brazilian Congress will, nonetheless, have a stronger ability to “dismantle” environmental protections due to the large majority won by far-right parties.
As ministers huddled behind closed doors on 29 October, human-rights organisations held a silent protest in the main hallway to draw attention to frontline environmentalists killed defending biodiversity.
Protest in the COP17 corridors drawing attention to the killings of environmental defenders. Credit: ENB/IISD | Mike Muzurakis Lobbying and influenceThroughout the talks, advocacy groups highlighted the role of lobbying within negotiations on key texts.
Investigative outlet DeSmog said a leading pharmaceutical group had tried to weaken the terms of the Cali Fund, since it was first announced in 2024.
DeSmog said it had seen documents in which the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) called for a “radical rethink” of the fund.
The outlet quoted Guilherme Cintra, director of innovation policy at IFPMA, saying the group had “long supported the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity and continues to deliver against the targets set out in the Global Biodiversity Framework”.
However, DeSmog also quoted the industry group stating that the “modalities of the decision” to establish the Cali Fund should be “significantly reviewed, revised and clarified”.
Various charities raised concerns about the potential role of lobbying in the run-up to COP17, including Amnesty International, which warned in a briefing document:
“Companies and industry associations have massively stepped up their lobbying to counter and roll back biodiversity protections, which they see as limiting their business opportunities. To do this, they turn up in large numbers at the COPs, and take up space that could be used for the voices of affected communities.”
As the negotiations continued into their second week, charities continued to caution about the potential for lobbying.
For example, Greenpeace called on governments to “get their act together and…prevent corporate lobbyists from capturing the negotiations”.
Carbon and biodiversity marketsDespite controversy surrounding biodiversity offsets and credits, they are officially accepted as one of the official means of achieving the GBF’s target 19.
Amid a shortfall in international public finance for biodiversity, these markets were expected to feature prominently in Yerevan.
“One area the discussion has moved forward quite a lot is the area of biodiversity credits,” said UN biodiversity chief Schomaker at a nature finance press conference ahead of COP17 in September.
She admitted that credits were “rather controversially discussed” at COP16 and “among the messages” from Indigenous communities and civil society was the “need to really learn from carbon credits”. Schomaker added that they “remain an important instrument”, if they can be “high-integrity”.
At a press conference on the first day at COP17, Indigenous leaders opposed the use of “charismatic species” – such as lions or rhinos that are generally popular with people – as credits to “offset” biodiversity loss.
Speaking to reporters, Tom Goldtooth, Dakota environmentalist and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, called biodiversity credits a “violation of the sacred, of Indigenous peoples’ values”.
Criticising “buffalo bonds” for carbon storage, Goldtooth continued:
“It’s Chevron, it’s Shell leasing trees using colonial structures of property rights. I cannot comprehend a world where they use whales as carbon sponges. We come from the buffalo, but markets do not understand this. For us, nature is not an asset class; nature is Mother Earth and Father Sky.”
On 27 October, the EU environment commissioner Jessika Roswall launched an initiative called “Friends of Credits for Nature and Biodiversity” at an event co-hosted with France and Peru.
According to the EU’s statement, the “informal” initiative aims to build “governmental support” and international cooperation on nature credits. It has been “welcomed” by Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, as well as Australia, Botswana, Canada, Chile, Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand.
When asked why the EU was focusing on “broadening the contributor base” through biodiversity markets at COP17, Roswell told Carbon Brief that nature credits were part of the EU’s attempts to close the nature investment gap as part of target 19.
She told Carbon Brief that biodiversity finance is not just a “question of will”, but also the “bigger horizontal risk” of not working on the areas. As such, Rosland said the EU is “working on a broader perspective” and looking at a range of solutions, “not only public money”.
In Yerevan, China also announced that it would be testing nature markets, with a pilot in Sichuan, reported Carbon Pulse.
During the COP17 plenary, however, Peru called for biodiversity offsets to be scrutinised as a financial instrument listed in the GBF’s Target 19.
Peru’s call for a study to examine whether biodiversity credits and offsets “generate additionality in biodiversity conservation” was included in the final resource mobilisation decision.
Peru’s call for an amendment to scrutinise biodiversity offsets in the resource mobilisation decision at COP17. Credit: UN CBD. COP17: Which countries have released new pledges to tackle nature loss? 16.10.2026 COP17 Yerevan COP17: Tracking progress towards the UN’s 2030 nature targets 15.10.2026 COP17 Yerevan COP17: Developed countries ‘fall far short’ of UN targets for nature finance 15.10.2026 COP17 Yerevan Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit 12.10.2026 COP17 Yerevan .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }The post COP17: Key outcomes agreed at the UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Experts: What China wants from the COP31 climate talks
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.
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On the more traditional topics of mitigation and finance, Li highlighted the need to “address insufficient emission reduction efforts by developed countries and inadequate financial support” for developing countries.
Carbon Brief asked six leading experts on China what they believe China wants from COP31 and what signals they will be watching for.
Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Article Contents Expand menu Kate LoganDirector of the China climate hub and climate diplomacy, Asia Society Policy Institute
In an era where global climate cooperation is severely challenged, China’s top priority at COP31 will be upholding multilateralism. With most “big ticket” items under the Paris Agreement now complete and constrained expectations for major new breakthroughs at COP31, China may be satisfied with a conference that produces no major drama and little else.
Nevertheless, expect China’s vision for multilateralism to have a distinct flavor to it. Chinese officials may again leverage the COP stage to oppose unilateralism and promote an open and fair international trade system, reflecting Beijing’s persistent frustration with tariffs and other measures that have inhibited the global flow of Chinese clean technologies. One question is whether they will do this through existing spaces or push for a dedicated agenda item on trade, given that COP30’s trade outcomes, championed by China, mostly relegated discussions to mid-year technical meetings.
China may also seek clarity on implementation pathways for existing targets, including nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and the $300bn climate finance goal. Amid US withdrawal, officials remain anxious about additional pressure that Beijing may receive. After vice-premier Ding Xuexiang shared at COP29 that China has provided and mobilised over 177bn yuan ($26.5bn) in climate finance for developing countries since 2016, China has refrained from issuing further quantitative updates, while maintaining the imperative for developed countries to take the lead on climate finance. China may be happy to let other developing countries push this agenda while serving as a broker in the end game to ensure its own interests are protected.
Ma JunFounder and director, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs
I think China wants COP31 to reaffirm confidence in multilateral climate cooperation and translate commitments into action. With the risk of overshooting 1.5C almost unavoidable, I expect China to seek clearer delivery of climate finance for developing countries; encourage reductions in potent, short-lived greenhouse gases such as methane; support a just transition; and highlight trade barriers affecting clean technologies.
I will be watching whether negotiations produce credible plans for delivering finance, particularly for adaptation, as well as practical support for implementing national climate pledges. The climate-trade debate will also matter. Can countries address their differences while keeping renewable energy and other clean technologies affordable and accessible? It will be an important test of whether countries can achieve global energy-transition targets by 2030 and turn shared ambitions into measurable emissions reductions.
Yao ZheGlobal policy advisor, Greenpeace East Asia
At COP31, I expect a continued push from China to integrate more trade perspectives into the climate negotiations. Beijing’s new five-year plan on climate action envisions a constructive leadership role in global climate governance, specifically calling for the proper handling of climate-trade issues and the free flow of low-carbon products. It will be critical to watch how this grand strategy plays out on the negotiation floor.
I will also be watching how China responds to the COP presidency’s electrification initiative. Beijing increasingly views climate diplomacy through the lens of clean-energy diplomacy – an approach that directly leverages its industrial strength on renewables, electric vehicles (EVs), batteries and grid infrastructure. While China should naturally welcome a global electrification initiative that will lead to larger overseas markets, it likely remains reluctant to link these targets to any commitments regarding transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Prof Ryna CuiAssociate research professor and research director, University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability
There isn’t much on the formal negotiation agenda for this year’s COP. The core theme will continue to focus on implementation and delivery, which I think China has strong interests in. This is because of both progress made domestically with the clean energy transition and the overseas economic opportunities to support other countries’ implementation with low-cost Chinese clean technologies.
One thing exciting for me to watch is that, as China reaches its coal and oil peak, it may open up space for increased interests and leadership in the global “transitioning away from fossil fuels” agenda. This may not happen immediately through formal government negotiations, but more likely through broader bilateral and multilateral engagements.
As the world navigates options and challenges for the 1.5C overshoot future, China can also contribute critically beyond the energy transition, especially on opportunities for rapid abatement of methane, industrial nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons and other non-CO2 gases as part of its 2035 all-sector, all-greenhouse gas NDC.
Dr Joseph DellatteResident fellow and head of energy and climate studies, Institut Montaigne
China will likely seek recognition as a climate leader while defending its position as the world’s cleantech manufacturing hub, amid growing trade tensions. I’ll watch whether it continues to frame the global transition primarily around access to Chinese technologies and open markets for its exports, or shows greater willingness to discuss cooperation that shares industrial benefits through local manufacturing, joint ventures and technology sharing. Its delegation and pavilion messaging will reveal how Beijing responds to partners seeking their own place in cleantech value chains.
In the negotiations, I’ll watch whether China accepts greater responsibility for climate ambition while maintaining its leadership role among developing countries, including through additional voluntary climate finance. Electrification will be another test. Will Beijing support commitments linking electrification to cleaner grids and use its influence to bring reluctant fossil-fuel producers on board?
Prof Jeremy WallaceA Doak Barnett professor of China studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
China seems to hold many cards in the notional game of global climate leadership. Its firms have innovated and scaled up production to make solar, batteries and EVs cost-competitive with or cheaper than fossil alternatives. It has led in deployment of these technologies.
Yet, in preparation for COP31, China seems more interested in fighting battles abroad about “unfair” tariffs on these products than about demonstrating their effectiveness by accelerating adoption of the green-tech revolution at home. China’s renewables buildout has slowed dramatically in 2026, while new coal power and coal chemical facilities continue to be built. The Chinese government has restricted firms from taking their best manufacturing innovations out of the country when building factories abroad.
Climate leadership is up for grabs. I’m watching to see if Beijing will play its cards and show that they are a winning hand.
Related Analysis: China’s clean-tech exports in 2026 to avoid as much CO2 as Brazil emits in a year 29.10.2026 China policy Chart: A record two-thirds of car sales in China are now electric vehicles 23.10.2026 China policy Interactive: What China’s dozens of ‘five-year plans’ say about climate and energy 24.09.2026 China policy Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions fall in Q2 2026 due to plummeting oil use 03.09.2026 EmissionsThe post Experts: What China wants from the COP31 climate talks appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: China’s clean-tech exports in 2026 to avoid as much CO2 as Brazil emits in a year
- Clean-tech exports
- Solar exports are the biggest enabler
- Global South dominates avoided emissions
- Clean-tech exports span the globe
- Overseas clean energy projects double over three years
- China’s exports enable market growth
- Electrification export implications
- About the data
China’s exports in 2026 of clean-energy technologies, such as solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles, are on track to cut emissions beyond its borders by 2%, reveals new analysis.
This guest post is by:Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and senior fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute
The impact of these Chinese exports on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions around the world grew by 26% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2026, having already risen by 36% in 2025.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief is based on detailed data for clean-tech product exports, the electricity system in destination countries and emissions during manufacturing in China.
If the latest trends continue for the rest of the year, then Chinese clean-tech exports in 2026 alone will avoid around 450m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) – roughly equivalent to Brazil’s annual emissions.
Other key findings from the analysis include:
- Electric car and heavy vehicle shipments grew by 61% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2026, wind-turbines by 45%, batteries 39%, solar 22% and electric two-wheelers by 21%.
- Over the lifetime of the equipment, exports in 2026 are on track to avoid 8,400MtCO2, equivalent to the annual emissions of the US and India combined.
- This lifetime avoided emissions total for exports in 2026 is up by a quarter from 6,800MtCO2 in 2025 and up by two-thirds from 5,000MtCO2 in 2024.
- Wind- and solar-equipment exports from China in 2026 will generate as much electricity each year as roughly 100 coal-fired power plants.
- While the majority of clean-tech exports by value went to the global north in the first three quarters of 2026, some 76% of lifetime avoided emissions were in the global south.
- This includes 52% of lifetime avoided emissions being in south and south-east Asia, reflecting solar shipments from China being installed onto high-carbon power grids.
- Chinese-owned clean-energy projects built in other countries doubled from 2022-25, but the amount of CO2 avoided remains small compared to equipment exports.
The analysis shows that most of China’s clean-energy exports have been built on new or expanded markets, enabling other producers to maintain their own sales volumes.
In addition, clean-energy sales within China are larger than exports for most technologies, but a domestic solar slowdown could exacerbate trade tensions, if it continues.
Clean-tech exportsChina has become the pre-eminent producer of clean-energy technologies, from solar panels and wind turbines through to batteries and electric vehicles.
The majority of China’s clean-tech production is destined for the domestic market. But it has also become a major exporter – and these exports are avoiding significant amounts of CO2.
Previous analysis for Carbon Brief showed that these clean-energy exports in 2024 would cut emissions in countries outside China by around 1%.
The latest analysis shows that China’s clean-tech exports in 2026 are on track to avoid around 450MtCO2, as shown in the figure below, which is nearly 2% of global emissions outside China. It is also roughly equivalent to Brazil’s annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
The estimate for the final quarter of 2026 is projected from the year-on-year growth rate in the first three quarters. CO2 emissions outside China from Energy Institute data. For further details see: About the data.The analysis accounts for the impact of the clean-tech exports in the destination country, as well as the emissions due to manufacturing the products in China.
Looking at the full-year data for 2025, manufacturing clean-energy equipment resulted in emissions of around 170MtCO2 within China, while avoiding 370MtCO2 in other countries. This implies that, in aggregate, it takes six months for the exported goods to pay back the CO2 from manufacturing.
Solar exports are the biggest enablerChina’s solar-equipment exports continue to be the biggest enabler of decarbonisation in other countries, according to the analysis.
In the full-year data for 2025, China exported finished solar panels and intermediate products that correspond to a total generating capacity of 436 gigawatts (GW) once assembled and installed.
(Note that this is measured in gigawatts DC, which reflects the capacity of the panels, whereas capacity measured in AC refers to the size of the wire that connects them to the grid.)
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.preheader p{ margin-top: 0; font-family: 'PT Sans', sans-serif; font-weight: var(--type--3--font-weight--bold); color: var(--button--color); font-size: var(--button--font-size, inherit); } .newsletter-inline{ display: flex; border: solid 1px #333333; padding: 1em; background: #ffffff; } .inline-email{ display:inline-block; margin-right:1em; margin-top:0 !important; margin-bottom:0.5em; } #field_submit{ display:inline-block; margin-top:0 !important; } .gform_wrapper .gfield+.gfield{ margin-top:0 } Email gform.initializeOnLoaded( function() {gformInitSpinner( 6, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery('#gform_ajax_frame_6').on('load',function(){var contents = jQuery(this).contents().find('*').html();var is_postback = contents.indexOf('GF_AJAX_POSTBACK') >= 0;if(!is_postback){return;}var form_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_wrapper_6');var is_confirmation = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_confirmation_wrapper_6').length > 0;var is_redirect = contents.indexOf('gformRedirect(){') >= 0;var is_form = form_content.length > 0 && ! is_redirect && ! is_confirmation;var mt = parseInt(jQuery('html').css('margin-top'), 10) + parseInt(jQuery('body').css('margin-top'), 10) + 100;if(is_form){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_6').html(form_content.html());if(form_content.hasClass('gform_validation_error')){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_6').addClass('gform_validation_error');} else {jQuery('#gform_wrapper_6').removeClass('gform_validation_error');}setTimeout( function() { /* delay the scroll by 50 milliseconds to fix a bug in chrome */ jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gform_wrapper_6').offset().top - mt); }, 50 );if(window['gformInitDatepicker']) {gformInitDatepicker();}if(window['gformInitPriceFields']) {gformInitPriceFields();}var current_page = jQuery('#gform_source_page_number_6').val();gformInitSpinner( 6, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery(document).trigger('gform_page_loaded', [6, current_page]);window['gf_submitting_6'] = false;}else if(!is_redirect){var confirmation_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('.GF_AJAX_POSTBACK').html();if(!confirmation_content){confirmation_content = contents;}jQuery('#gform_wrapper_6').replaceWith(confirmation_content);jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gf_6').offset().top - mt);jQuery(document).trigger('gform_confirmation_loaded', [6]);window['gf_submitting_6'] = false;wp.a11y.speak(jQuery('#gform_confirmation_message_6').text());}else{jQuery('#gform_6').append(contents);if(window['gformRedirect']) {gformRedirect();}}jQuery(document).trigger("gform_pre_post_render", [{ formId: "6", currentPage: "current_page", abort: function() { this.preventDefault(); } }]); if (event && event.defaultPrevented) { return; } const gformWrapperDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_wrapper_6" ); if ( gformWrapperDiv ) { const visibilitySpan = document.createElement( "span" ); visibilitySpan.id = "gform_visibility_test_6"; gformWrapperDiv.insertAdjacentElement( "afterend", visibilitySpan ); } const visibilityTestDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_visibility_test_6" ); let postRenderFired = false; function triggerPostRender() { if ( postRenderFired ) { return; } postRenderFired = true; gform.core.triggerPostRenderEvents( 6, current_page ); if ( visibilityTestDiv ) { visibilityTestDiv.parentNode.removeChild( visibilityTestDiv ); } } function debounce( func, wait, immediate ) { var timeout; return function() { var context = this, args = arguments; var later = function() { timeout = null; if ( !immediate ) func.apply( context, args ); }; var callNow = immediate && !timeout; clearTimeout( timeout ); timeout = setTimeout( later, wait ); if ( callNow ) func.apply( context, args ); }; } const debouncedTriggerPostRender = debounce( function() { triggerPostRender(); }, 200 ); if ( visibilityTestDiv && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent === null ) { const observer = new MutationObserver( ( mutations ) => { mutations.forEach( ( mutation ) => { if ( mutation.type === 'attributes' && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent !== null ) { debouncedTriggerPostRender(); observer.disconnect(); } }); }); observer.observe( document.body, { attributes: true, childList: false, subtree: true, attributeFilter: [ 'style', 'class' ], }); } else { triggerPostRender(); } } );} );In addition, China exported 8GW of wind turbines. Together with the solar equipment, this will generate approximately 720 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year, based on the average output per unit of capacity for solar and wind in each destination country.
For 2026, China’s exports of wind and solar equipment are on track to generate approximately 800TWh of electricity, equivalent to the generation from around 100 coal-fired power plants.
Over their lifetimes, based on the power sources expected to be displaced in each destination country, the solar exports in 2025 will avoid an estimated 6,400MtCO2.
(For more details on the basis for these calculations, see: About the data.)
Solar is therefore the largest source of lifetime avoided CO2 emissions by far, with wind-turbine exports in second place displacing just 180MtCO2, as shown in the figure below.
Note the variable y-axes. Avoided emissions are net of manufacturing and assume lifetimes of 20 years for solar and wind, 10 years for cars and batteries or 5 years for two-wheelers. For further details see: About the data.The 39m electric vehicles exported from China in 2025 included 36m two-wheelers, 2.2m battery electric cars, 160,000 plug-in hybrid cars, 15,000 buses and 30,000 trucks.
In addition, China exported batteries with a capacity of 305 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2025, enough to power another 5m battery electric cars once installed, based on typical battery sizes.
Based on typical driving distances and fuel consumption for corresponding fuel-burning vehicles, as well as the CO2 intensity of the electricity grid in destination countries, the EVs and batteries exported in 2025 will avoid an estimated 170MtCO2 over their lifetimes.
Given the sheer number of electric two-wheelers, the amount of oil and resulting CO2 they displace is a key uncertainty. Real–world e-bike studies support an assumption that roughly half of e-bike travel displaces the use of motor vehicles, either cars or motorbikes depending on location.
This suggests that, when taking into account the electricity grid in importing nations, China’s electric two-wheeler exports in 2025 will avoid an estimated 40MtCO2 over their lifetimes.
Global South dominates avoided emissionsIn 2025, some 73% of the lifetime emissions avoided by China’s clean-tech exports were in global-south countries, which also accounted for 87% of the growth year-on-year.
In the first three quarters of 2026, global-south countries were responsible for almost all of the increase in avoided emissions compared with a year earlier, as shown in the figure below.
Final destinations for solar exports account for re-export, including post-tariff re-routing to the US via assembly or transit in third countries. For further details see: About the data.The high share of the global south in avoided emissions reflects large export volumes and power grids that are more carbon-intensive on average, as well as better average solar conditions that result in larger avoided emissions for each gigawatt of solar exported.
Clean-tech exports span the globeOn the regional level, South Asia has the largest avoided emissions due to imports of Chinese clean-tech, with strong year-on-year growth both in 2025 and the first three quarters of 2026.
Other top regional destinations in 2026 to date, in terms of lifetime avoided emissions, include south-east Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East.
However, the exports span the globe, as shown in the map below, avoiding billions of tonnes of CO2 across every continent and in nearly every country of the world.
Among countries, the US has the second-largest avoided emissions after India. It registered a further increase of 12% in 2026, despite increased tariffs, and exceeds the EU as a bloc. The US is followed by Thailand, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Australia.
The EU imports more of every clean energy technology than the US, but the US has higher avoided emissions. This is because average US solar output per unit of capacity is higher – as is the average CO2 intensity of power generation. As a result, every gigawatt of solar installed in the US results in three-times more avoided CO2 emissions than in the EU.
The resilience of Chinese clean-tech exports to the US indicates strong demand for the technology, despite the Trump administration’s steps to slow down deployment and discourage imports.
The data suggests that reducing reliance on technology supply from China – a policy aim of recent administrations from both parties – is likely to require scaling up of domestic and third-country manufacturing of the key technologies, in order to meet that resilient demand.
The largest change in the national rankings for avoided emissions from clean-tech exports in 2026, compared with the previous year, has been a fall in exports to the Gulf countries affected by the war in the region.
For electric cars and heavy vehicles, western Europe was the largest destination in the first three quarters of 2026, followed by Latin America and south-east Asia, both of which more than doubled, reflecting the impact of the oil crisis. Exports to the EU gained 39%.
Regional aggregation according to UN subregions, including “western Asia”, which encompasses Turkey, the Caucasus and the Middle East Final. Destinations for solar exports account for re-export, including post-tariff re-routing to the US via assembly or transit in third countries. For further details see: About the data.When including batteries and electric two-wheelers, North America and Europe are the largest destinations for avoided emissions due to EV-related exports, followed by Latin America and south-east Asia.
Exports of Chinese solar equipment to the US rose 13% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2026, once re-routing through different channels is considered. This is a reversal of the dip early in the year, due to a sharp increase in tariffs in June 2025. Exports of EVs and batteries to the US also increased slightly, by 3% in the first three quarters of 2026.
Overseas clean energy projects double over three yearsIn addition to its clean-tech exports, China is also increasingly becoming directly involved in the development of overseas clean-energy projects.
This can be traced back to the 2021 pledge by Chinese president Xi Jinping, in which he said:
“China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”
As of July 2026, some 69GW of China-linked renewable energy projects were in operation overseas. An additional 100GW are being built, with 280GW in planning but not yet under construction. This renewable energy capacity is supported by 3.5GW of China-linked energy storage projects in operation, with a further 21.4GW of storage in the pipeline.
China has also financed and built six operating nuclear reactors overseas, with a total capacity of 3.3GW. These are all located in Pakistan and, in 2023, they had a total generation of 26TWh. China began construction on the 1.2GW Chashma-5 reactor in 2024, also in Pakistan, with the plant expected to be operational around 2030.
The expected electricity output of China’s newly operating overseas clean-power projects doubled from 2022 to 2025, with a further 6% year-on-year increase in the first seven months of 2026.
The countries with the largest estimated generation from China-linked clean-power capacity are Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Zimbabwe, Laos, Turkey and South Africa.
The list looks slightly different when considering the impact of operating, under construction or planned China-linked capacity on avoided CO2 emissions.
As shown in the figure below, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Indonesia and Pakistan are expected to see the largest avoided CO2, once under-construction projects are completed.
Based on renewable project data from DCore, nuclear data from World Nuclear Association and grid CO2 intensity data from Ember.The increase in overseas clean-energy projects has changed China’s role in the power-sector development of other emerging countries. Having previously been the main financier of coal-power projects, it is now an important force in developing clean-power generation.
Nevertheless, there are gaps in the implementation of Xi’s pledge to end overseas coal-power development, which could be seen to affect its effectiveness and credibility. These gaps are particularly with respect to “captive” coal-power plants linked to industrial projects in Indonesia.
China’s overseas clean-energy project portfolio is growing, but remains small compared with the country’s equipment exports. For example in 2025, some 8.4GW of solar-power projects with Chinese financing or involvement entered operation and 18GW were newly announced. That year, China also exported 436GW of solar panels and intermediates.
This implies that financing, project development and construction using solar panels and other clean-tech from China is overwhelmingly carried out by local and other non-Chinese actors.
China’s exports enable market growthA key concern in countries around the world is that Chinese industrial “overcapacity” is crowding out domestic industries, from automotive to steel or chemicals.
However, analysis of China’s clean-tech exports suggests that they have generally been additional, meaning they have not displaced exports by other producers. This could be a sign that China’s exports have either captured or enabled market growth for these clean-energy technologies.
For example, the value of EV exports from other countries has grown much more than those from China, as shown in the figure below. These EV exports have been led by the EU27 – particularly Germany – as well as Mexico, Japan, the UK and South Korea.
Similarly, there has been growth in the value of exports of heat pumps, solar inverters and electrolysers from both China and from other countries.
This pattern has not been universal. In the case of wind, China’s exports have grown while exports by other producers have declined, representing displacement on the global level.
However, on the level of importing countries, there has not been displacement. China’s wind-turbine exports have mostly headed to countries with growing markets, while incumbent producers have seen a decline in sales, in some of their previously important markets.
For some clean-tech, exports from other producers have displaced Chinese supply. For example, tariffs and restrictions on the use of Chinese components have seen other producers expanding into existing markets for solar panels, solar inverters and heat pumps.
At the same time, China’s exports of these technologies have been redirected into new markets, which previously imported little solar equipment.
Another indication of additionality is that Chinese clean-tech exports often target different market segments. For example, in the case of EVs, solar inverters and heat pumps, Chinese exports have much lower unit prices than equivalent exports from other producers.
Finally, it is worth noting that there has been much clearer displacement in the case of fuel-burning vehicles, where low-cost products from China have replaced exports from other suppliers.
Electrification export implicationsChina’s clean-tech exports have become a key enabler of the global clean-energy transition, driving down the cost, opening up new markets and responding to the rapid increase in demand.
China’s role as a major supplier of electrification technologies could give it a reason to support a push by the COP31 presidency for a global electrification target.
The country also has a large and growing role in financing and building clean-energy projects in many emerging countries, although this remains much smaller in scale than its exports.
When analysed on the country level, China’s clean-tech exports have, by and large, not displaced exports by other producers in absolute terms. Rather, it has captured market growth and opened up clean-energy development in countries that previously did not import the technologies at all.
However, the sharp drop in clean-tech prices means that exporters that have only held their sales volumes steady have seen the value of their exports dwindle. They have also lost market share to China’s exports. To retain market share, other exporters would need to expand production capacity.
Clean-energy technology has also become a cornerstone of China’s economy, responsible for 16% of all net growth in total exports in the first half of 2026, although the share fell in the third quarter due to the broad surge in exports, even as cleantech growth accelerated as well.
More broadly, clean energy sectors contributed a third of China’s GDP growth in 2025. This means that the country has a clear economic self-interest in the success of the global energy transition.
EV and wind deployment has continued to grow also in China domestically, but for solar and battery energy storage, the domestic market has dived after record volumes in 2025.
China’s domestic clean-energy market is larger than the export market for most technologies. Only 43% of solar cells and panels, 13% EVs, 17% of batteries and 7% of wind turbines produced in China were exported in 2025, highlighting the importance of the home market for producers.
For solar, however, exports continue to expand and could outweigh China’s domestic deployment after a slowdown in the sector in 2026. This could exacerbate overseas concerns about “unfair” trade practices, unless the domestic market picks up again.
About the dataThis analysis estimates the fossil fuel and CO2 emissions avoided outside China as a result of China’s exports of solar, wind, electric-vehicle and battery technology.
Each exported unit of generating capacity is assumed to displace electricity from the grid of its destination country. Similarly, each exported electric vehicle is assumed to displace fuel in an equivalent internal-combustion vehicle.
Export volumes: Solar exports include finished modules as well as intermediates (wafers and cells), each expressed by Ember as finished-panel-equivalent gigawatts, with data taken from Ember’s China solar exports tracker. Wind and battery export totals are taken from Chinese industry bodies the China Wind Energy Association (CWEA) and the China Automotive Battery Innovation Alliance (CABIA). They are distributed across destination countries and months using customs-value shares from Ember’s China clean-tech exports tracker. Electric-vehicle volumes use vehicle counts from China Customs. Exports to Hong Kong are excluded and replaced with Hong Kong’s onward re-exports, treated as Chinese exports.
Avoided emissions: For each technology, the analysis combines the destination country’s average capacity factor and grid CO2 intensity, both derived from Ember’s yearly electricity data. Missing or implausible values are filled with UN sub-regional and then global medians, while all EU destinations are assigned the EU-average grid to correct for re-export hubs such as the Netherlands. For vehicles and batteries, avoided oil and CO2 is estimated based on per-vehicle assumptions compiled from the literature, net of charging emissions at the destination grid. Electric two-wheelers are credited with displacing conventional two-wheeler use for 48% of their travel. Lifetime figures multiply annual avoided emissions by assumed operating lives of 20 years for solar and wind, 10 for vehicles and batteries, or five for two-wheelers. “Embodied” manufacturing emissions are subtracted from these totals. Manufacturing emissions are calculated using average Chinese emission intensities compiled from the literature. National emissions used for comparison are from the Energy Institute statistical review of world energy.
Attributing solar exports to final markets: Because customs data records only a shipment’s first destination, the analysis traces Chinese wafers, modules and cells to their final destination using UN Comtrade bilateral import data. It identifies countries that import large amounts of solar modules and intermediates from China and export them further, classifying these onward exports as exports of Chinese goods, as long as they do not exceed the volume each country imported from China. It converts customs values to capacity using Ember’s monthly module and cell prices.
The post Analysis: China’s clean-tech exports in 2026 to avoid as much CO2 as Brazil emits in a year appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UK budget 2026: Key climate and energy announcements
- ‘New course on energy’
- Energy bills
- Warm homes plan
- Fuel duty and EVs
- CCS and hydrogen
- Data centres
- Other announcements
Chancellor John Healey has announced a “new course on energy” for the UK, focused on keeping bills low amid the global crisis triggered by war in the Middle East.
As he laid out his first budget, Healey said the Labour government would still prioritise the expansion of clean power and remain “unshakably committed to net-zero”.
The budget sets out what the chancellor calls a “radical reform of energy”, including a longer-term effort to “break the grip of gas on bills”.
There are also a variety of short-term measures to curb energy bills, including a council-tax rebate and the removal of the gas “standing charge”, though these fell far short of pre-budget calls to tackle high prices.
Moreover, in order to fund defence spending, the government is cutting £1bn from its “warm homes plan” and £700m from hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.
The budget also appears to cut up to another £4.7bn from the warm homes plan – as well as ending zero-rated VAT for solar panels and extending a “temporary” 5p cut in fuel duty.
Finally, the government set out plans to ensure new data centres meet strict environmental regulations, while leaving the door open to on-site fossil-fuel power generation.
Below, Carbon Brief runs through the key climate- and energy-focused announcements from the budget.
- ‘New course on energy’
- Energy bills
- Warm homes plan
- Fuel duty and EVs
- CCS and hydrogen
- Data centres
- Other announcements
Conflict in the Middle East has driven up energy bills for people in the UK, as the global trade in oil and gas has been thrown into disarray.
In this context, the new budget sets out a “shift in the government’s approach to energy”, focusing on “cheaper energy” as the main priority.
At the same time, Healey was clear that fossil fuels were driving the price increases and that clean power would be essential for the government’s cost-cutting agenda.
In its accompanying analysis, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) notes that “fossil-fuel prices rose by 83% in the year to September 2026”.
In his speech, the chancellor announced a “radical reform of energy to reduce bills”, stating:
“Today, I’m setting a new course on energy. To get UK energy costs down in line with Europe, from this point, our Labour government priority is first and foremost cheaper energy, with clean power key to achieving this. This is possible because of the progress we have made towards clean power over the last two years.”
Conservative and Reform politicians have argued that the UK should abandon its net-zero targets, including Labour’s “clean power by 2030” goal, in order to cut energy prices.
This is despite expensive gas driving most of the recent price increases and renewables saving the UK billions in gas imports since the start of the Hormuz crisis.
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.preheader p{ margin-top: 0; font-family: 'PT Sans', sans-serif; font-weight: var(--type--3--font-weight--bold); color: var(--button--color); font-size: var(--button--font-size, inherit); } .newsletter-inline{ display: flex; border: solid 1px #333333; padding: 1em; background: #ffffff; } .inline-email{ display:inline-block; margin-right:1em; margin-top:0 !important; margin-bottom:0.5em; } #field_submit{ display:inline-block; margin-top:0 !important; } .gform_wrapper .gfield+.gfield{ margin-top:0 } Email gform.initializeOnLoaded( function() {gformInitSpinner( 7, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery('#gform_ajax_frame_7').on('load',function(){var contents = jQuery(this).contents().find('*').html();var is_postback = contents.indexOf('GF_AJAX_POSTBACK') >= 0;if(!is_postback){return;}var form_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_wrapper_7');var is_confirmation = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_confirmation_wrapper_7').length > 0;var is_redirect = contents.indexOf('gformRedirect(){') >= 0;var is_form = form_content.length > 0 && ! is_redirect && ! is_confirmation;var mt = parseInt(jQuery('html').css('margin-top'), 10) + parseInt(jQuery('body').css('margin-top'), 10) + 100;if(is_form){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').html(form_content.html());if(form_content.hasClass('gform_validation_error')){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').addClass('gform_validation_error');} else {jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').removeClass('gform_validation_error');}setTimeout( function() { /* delay the scroll by 50 milliseconds to fix a bug in chrome */ jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').offset().top - mt); }, 50 );if(window['gformInitDatepicker']) {gformInitDatepicker();}if(window['gformInitPriceFields']) {gformInitPriceFields();}var current_page = jQuery('#gform_source_page_number_7').val();gformInitSpinner( 7, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery(document).trigger('gform_page_loaded', [7, current_page]);window['gf_submitting_7'] = false;}else if(!is_redirect){var confirmation_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('.GF_AJAX_POSTBACK').html();if(!confirmation_content){confirmation_content = contents;}jQuery('#gform_wrapper_7').replaceWith(confirmation_content);jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gf_7').offset().top - mt);jQuery(document).trigger('gform_confirmation_loaded', [7]);window['gf_submitting_7'] = false;wp.a11y.speak(jQuery('#gform_confirmation_message_7').text());}else{jQuery('#gform_7').append(contents);if(window['gformRedirect']) {gformRedirect();}}jQuery(document).trigger("gform_pre_post_render", [{ formId: "7", currentPage: "current_page", abort: function() { this.preventDefault(); } }]); if (event && event.defaultPrevented) { return; } const gformWrapperDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_wrapper_7" ); if ( gformWrapperDiv ) { const visibilitySpan = document.createElement( "span" ); visibilitySpan.id = "gform_visibility_test_7"; gformWrapperDiv.insertAdjacentElement( "afterend", visibilitySpan ); } const visibilityTestDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_visibility_test_7" ); let postRenderFired = false; function triggerPostRender() { if ( postRenderFired ) { return; } postRenderFired = true; gform.core.triggerPostRenderEvents( 7, current_page ); if ( visibilityTestDiv ) { visibilityTestDiv.parentNode.removeChild( visibilityTestDiv ); } } function debounce( func, wait, immediate ) { var timeout; return function() { var context = this, args = arguments; var later = function() { timeout = null; if ( !immediate ) func.apply( context, args ); }; var callNow = immediate && !timeout; clearTimeout( timeout ); timeout = setTimeout( later, wait ); if ( callNow ) func.apply( context, args ); }; } const debouncedTriggerPostRender = debounce( function() { triggerPostRender(); }, 200 ); if ( visibilityTestDiv && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent === null ) { const observer = new MutationObserver( ( mutations ) => { mutations.forEach( ( mutation ) => { if ( mutation.type === 'attributes' && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent !== null ) { debouncedTriggerPostRender(); observer.disconnect(); } }); }); observer.observe( document.body, { attributes: true, childList: false, subtree: true, attributeFilter: [ 'style', 'class' ], }); } else { triggerPostRender(); } } );} );The government has not explicitly rolled back any climate targets and Healey stressed in his speech that “this government remains unshakably committed to net-zero by 2050”.
Nevertheless, the budget document speaks of a “new energy pathway” on which the government’s upcoming “10 year plan” will build. It also states:
“Cheaper electricity will boost electrification, increasing the UK’s energy security and helping to decarbonise the whole economy.”
The budget mentions short- and long-term measures to bring costs down, including expansion of the electricity grid. (See sections below for more details.)
It says the government will “consult on market arrangements for gas”, potentially a nod to the idea of putting gas-power plants into a strategic reserve.
Healey also used his speech to welcome the recent approval of the controversial Jackdaw gasfield, which he framed as a “pragmatic” decision that would boost UK “energy security”.
The government is yet to make a decision on the Rosebank oilfield, but OBR forecasts released alongside the budget assume that it will be approved.
Energy billsThe budget offers short-term relief on household and industrial energy bills, as well as promising longer-term sectoral reform.
Nevertheless, it falls far short of proposals for cutting bills that had been set out by industry bodies, thinktanks, charities and energy companies ahead of the budget.
This has stoked expectations that the government may be forced to offer further support on energy bills after the price cap for January 2027 is announced later this year.
Forecasts suggest bills could rise by a quarter – some £470 – to around £2,200 a year.
The only substantive and immediate new bills measure in the budget is a £100 council-tax rebate for English households in bands A-D, which Healey said would cost £2.6bn.
Devolved governments will receive a share of the funding to provide their own support. Meanwhile, local authorities will receive an additional £100m to provide targeted support to households “acutely impacted” by rising energy bills.
In addition, Healey announced that the temporary removal of VAT from household electricity bills – worth around £45 per year – will be extended by three months, from April to July 2027.
Healey also made a commitment that no new policy costs would be added to energy bills until a comprehensive “cost-control framework” is in place. This is expected at the spending review in 2027. The budget says:
“The government will introduce a new comprehensive cost control framework (CCF) at the spending review in 2027 that will set budgets for components of energy costs, including policy costs, to ensure government action drives bills down over the next 10 years.”
“As part of this, the budget specifies that going forward, the government will only procure new clean-power projects that lower bills and can easily connect to the grid.
It specifically notes that the upcoming eighth “contracts for difference” (CfD) auction (AR8) “will lower bills, as well as deliver[ing] a good outcome for energy security and climate”.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, James Dyson, senior researcher at E3G says that an effective framework should “set out a specific, timebound commitment to remove the hidden costs from energy bills which have accumulated over the last two decades”, as well as providing oversight of system costs in the future.
A planned levy on gas bills – a long-term funding mechanism for the low-carbon hydrogen dubbed the “gas shipper obligation” – will be moved into general taxation, so that “government rather than consumers fund the costs of hydrogen projects”.
On the morning of the budget, the government announced that the “unfair and outdated” gas standing charge would be removed for around 23m homes in the UK.
A standing charge is a fixed daily fee paid by households as part of their bill, regardless of how much gas they use. This costs around £108 a year for a typical household.
The government says it will ask energy regulator Ofgem to move the cost of the standing charge onto gas unit rates in 2027, or as soon as possible. It says this will save 60% of households an average of around £45 a year on their gas bill
The change will disproportionately benefit the poorest households, according to analysis from thinktank Nesta shown in the figure below.
Nesta says the shift will reduce the “spark gap” – the ratio between electricity and gas prices – by around 0.3 points, from 3.3 under the current price cap to 3.0. This could help encourage a shift to electrified technologies, such as heat pumps and electric vehicles (EVs).
The budget also includes a commitment to “reform” standing charges on electricity bills, with further details to be published in 2027.
However, Jess Britton at UKERC tells Carbon Brief that “simply moving [electricity standing] charges on to unit costs risks disincentivising electrification”.
From next year, the government will introduce a new “energy debt circuit breaker”, which will save billpayers £30 by 2030, according to the budget.
This is designed to “tackle the scourge of energy debt”, which currently adds around £60 to typical household energy bills each year, according to Carbon Brief analysis. .
The initiative follows warnings from trade association Energy UK that customer energy debt is on course to hit £7bn by the end of 2026, potentially adding another £10-15 to bills.
The budget also confirmed additional support for business energy bills. It says the “British industrial competitiveness scheme” (BICS) will be expanded to provide a 20-25% electricity discount to 10,000 energy-intensive manufacturing firms from April 2027. This will include back-payments for 2026-27.
According to the OBR, the treasury will indirectly cover the cost of expanding BICS by taking a portion of CfD levies off electricity bills for other consumers.
In the longer term, the budget includes a commitment to “breaking the grip of gas on bills”.
A consultation published alongside the budget fleshes out the options for a proposed “wholesale contracts for difference” (WCfD) scheme, initially outlined in April. This would offer fixed-price contracts to eligible renewable-energy generators.
The expansion of renewables is already helping to decouple gas and power prices, with gas setting wholesale electricity prices around 60% of the time in 2025, down from around 90% in the early 2020s.
Warm homes planFollowing speculation in the run-up to the budget, chancellor Healey confirmed a cut to the UK’s flagship energy efficiency programme.
His budget cuts £1bn from the “warm homes plan” to help cover a shortfall in defence spending.
The warm homes plan is supposed to provide up to 5m households with £15bn of grants and loans to support the installation of heat pumps, rooftop solar panels and insulation.
The budget states that the “government remains committed to heat-pump deployment”.
It says it will continue to fund the “boiler upgrade scheme” (BUS) at current funding levels of £400m in 2027‑28, after which it will rise broadly in line with inflation.
However, this represents a significant cut in funding for heat-pump deployment of around £800m, relative to previously announced levels. Analysts tell Carbon Brief that this could lead to around 100,000 heat pumps not being installed over three years.
Andrew Sissons, director in sustainable future at Nesta tells Carbon Brief:
“The chancellor has announced that funding for future heat-pump subsidies will be reduced by nearly £800m over three years. This is a backward step at a time when Britain urgently needs to move away from using gas.”
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Support award-winning climate journalism Join CB+In an emailed statement, Yara van Ingen, lead buildings and heat analyst at BloombergNEF said the cut would make the government’s ambition to reach 450,000 heat-pump installations a year by 2030 “harder to achieve”.
In addition to the £1bn in lost grants for the warm-homes plan, the budget also suggests that significant additional funding for the scheme has been cut.
It says a new £4.7bn “your first home” scheme is being funded by reallocating “financial transactions” previously allocated to the energy and environment departments.
While the details of this shift remain sparse, this suggests funding for the warm homes plan could end up being reduced from the headline £15bn to as little as £9bn, analysts tell Carbon Brief.
E3G’s Dyson adds:
“An unknown amount of funding has been cut from the ‘financial transactions’ pot, which is money that is used to loan to businesses and households. The cut is between £1.5bn and £5bn.
“The government’s not even tried to spend this money, it only officially launched its [warm-homes] loan scheme today. Businesses and households need certainty to invest in decarbonising homes and this kind of reaction does not support it.”
Ben Westerman, director of policy and advocacy at campaign group Electrify Britain, tells Carbon Brief that “all in all, [the budget is] really disappointing for electrification”.
The budget comes the day after the government launched its “warm homes loan” scheme, which offers households no- and low-interest loans of between £7,500 and £35,000 for installing technologies such as solar panels, batteries and heat pumps.
According to the government, households that install a heat pump, a battery and solar panels could save £550 a year on their energy bills. This could rise to £800 a year when combined with a time-of-use tariff.
Fuel duty and EVsThe budget froze fuel duty once again – for the 16th year in a row.
Chancellor Healey also confirmed the extension of the 5p per litre fuel-duty cut announced in 2022 under Conservative then-chancellor Rishi Sunak, in response to the energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The cumulative cost of these freezes has now reached £139bn since 2010-2011, according to the OBR. If fuel duty continues to be frozen until 2029-30, the OBR says that public-sector net borrowing will rise by £4.3bn.
.cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }Alongside the budget, the government published an independent review of the cost of public EV charging. This includes plans to cut prices at local, lower-powered public chargers, saving drivers around £150 a year on average, according to the government.
This will be funded through £100m of government money over two years from spring 2027.
Additionally, the government states that it is “laying the groundwork for a better system in the future” by taking forward a recommendation by the review to launch a “tariff porting” taskforce. This will explore ways to allow drivers to use cheaper domestic tariffs at certain public chargers.
However, the budget also specifies that “electricity supplied through publicly accessible and workplace electric-vehicle charging points is subject to 20% VAT and is not considered domestic use”. This definition will take effect from 1 November 2026, as part of legislation in the finance bill 2026-27.
Industry bodies criticised this categorisation, with Shane Brennan, CEO of ChargeUK, writing in a statement on LinkedIn that it will “do serious damage to the EV transition”. He continues:
“Instead of listening to the call of EV drivers for fairness on VAT, the government has slammed the door shut on ending a rank unfairness between at-home and out-of-home charging…[which] even the courts ruled to be illegal earlier this year.”
Within the budget, the government confirmed some changes to the electric-vehicle excise duty (eVED) pay-per-mile tax, announced in last year’s budget. This includes introducing a mileage estimate tool, developing an opt-in system for connectivity and other changes.
The government will publish its response to the zero-emissions vehicle mandate review by the end of 2026, with a view to changes taking place in 2027.
CCS and hydrogenThe government has confirmed a £200m cut in capital-grant funding for CCS and £500m for low-carbon hydrogen projects.
This is part of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) “reprioritising its budget” to contribute more to the UK’s defence spending.
There are four planned CCS “clusters” in the works across the UK – part of a government-backed effort to make the nation an “early leader” in the sector.
The budget says the government will “prioritise” the two “mature” clusters under development on Teesside, and on Merseyside and North Wales. These include “blue-hydrogen” production, gas power with CCS and industrial uses.
It also says the government will “maintain grant funding” for the Viking cluster in the Humber region.
The £200m in removed funding will therefore come from the Acorn cluster, which was planned for north-east Scotland.
At the same time, the government says it is “actively looking at how loan or equity investments can support the continued development of future CCS and hydrogen projects…including for the Acorn cluster”.
While the Labour government has stressed the importance of CCS for reaching the UK’s net-zero targets, the billions in public spending committed to these projects have drawn criticism from both climate activists and climate sceptics.
Details of the cuts remain limited, but Prof Rob Gross, director of the UK Energy Research Centre, tells Carbon Brief:
“The history of CCS investment in the UK is not a happy one and if the government wishes to retain investor confidence and the regional economic benefits that the clusters could bring then a repeat of the precipitous cuts made in 2015 must be avoided. It appears that the government is aware and treading carefully.”
Data centresAs part of efforts to boost the UK’s use of artificial intelligence (AI), the budget sets out a “data-centre covenant”, with “tests” that data centres must meet to gain approval.
These include a stipulation that developers must pay for “any energy costs they create”, while also “support[ing] grid resilience, flexibility and clean power”.
The “covenant” will also require data centres to “adhere to the highest environmental standards”, including protecting nature, curbing water use, publishing energy-use data and using waste heat to heat nearby buildings “wherever practical”.
In return, the government will use new planning powers to accelerate the grid connection of data centres, alongside other “strategically important” projects.
When grid connection is not immediately available, the government says it will set out a framework to allow on-site generation until a grid connection can be secured.
The government stresses that on-site generation will be “tightly controlled” and “only…available for exceptionally strategic projects”.
Nevertheless, NGOs raised the likelihood that “on-site power” would come in the form of gas or diesel generation, rather than clean power, potentially threatening the UK’s climate goals.
Other announcementsThere were various other climate- and energy-related announcements in the budget, including:
- The government has not extended zero-rated VAT for “energy saving materials” – including solar panels – when installed on homes beyond the end of March 2027.
- The budget confirms the establishment of an “energy wealth fund”, which was recently announced as a way to invest revenues from North Sea oil and gas into low-carbon energy infrastructure.
- The government is legislating for the “oil and gas revenue levy” to replace the “energy profits levy” when that ends by April 2030 at the latest.
- It freezes the electricity main rates of the “climate-change levy” from April 2028, in order to “reduce electricity costs in real terms for businesses”.
- As part of the government’s efforts to promote housebuilding, it has introduced an exemption from “biodiversity net gain” requirements for residential brownfield developments on sites up to 1.5 hectares in England.
The post UK budget 2026: Key climate and energy announcements appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: UK relied on £2bn of ‘questionable accounting’ to hit its climate-aid goal
The UK has beaten its target to provide £11.6bn of climate aid to developing countries by 2026 – but only through “questionable accounting”.
As part of its obligations under the Paris Agreement, the UK pledged to give at least £11.6bn in overseas “climate finance” between 2021 and 2026.
Now, Carbon Brief analysis reveals that around £2.1bn of the funds the UK counted towards this goal did not come from new spending.
Instead, the government relabelled existing funding for development banks, private-sector investment and aid for Afghanistan, Sudan and other war-torn nations as “climate finance”.
Without these changes, the UK would have fallen nearly £1bn short of its target.
Carbon Brief’s analysis is based on numerous FOI requests and reveals the otherwise-unpublished details of the UK’s climate-finance spending.
Experts and MPs say the use of “questionable” accounting shows the UK is “cutting corners” to hit its climate goals, while making unprecedented cuts to its foreign aid budget.
‘Moving the goalposts’The UK and other developed countries are obliged under UN climate treaties to provide “new and additional” climate finance to help developing countries tackle climate change.
They also have specific targets to “mobilise” $100bn of climate finance per year through to 2025 and “at least” $300bn by 2035.
As the UK’s contribution to international climate finance, in 2019 the Conservative government pledged to provide £11.6bn between the financial years 2021-22 and 2025-26. This amounted to “doubling” its previous five-year target.
Since then, successive governments have slashed the amount of money going towards foreign aid, citing economic strain and a need for more defence spending. This has placed great pressure on the £11.6bn target, which comes from the UK aid budget.
In order to retain the target while cutting aid, the Conservative government decided in 2023 to loosen the criteria for what it defined as “climate” spending.
This enabled the UK to remain committed to the £11.6bn goal, without spending more on new climate projects, by simply relabelling existing funds. The current Labour government has opted to maintain this approach, while pledging to cut aid spending even further.
The move has been strongly criticised by campaigners, MPs and even the UK’s official aid watchdog, who have described it as “creative accounting” and “moving the goalposts”.
‘£1bn shortfall’The UK government has announced that it met the £11.6bn target, but has not released the full details of how it did so – or even the total amount provided by 2025-26.
FOI data obtained by Carbon Brief over the course of several months reveals that, in fact, total climate finance over the past five years reached £12.8bn – with a record £4bn in the past year alone.
However, Carbon Brief analysis of government data also shows that around £2.1bn – nearly a fifth of the total – comes from the government’s accounting changes.
Without these changes, as the chart below shows, cumulative UK climate finance would only have reached around £10.7bn by 2026, leaving a shortfall of £924m.
This final figure of £2.1bn is higher than forecast by the UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), which estimated in 2024 that the total amount of “reclassified” climate finance would reach £1.7bn.
The government has stressed that its accounting changes are “consistent” with “internationally agreed ways of calculating ICF”, used by other major donors.
(Experts have noted that, traditionally, the UK was viewed as taking a more rigorous approach to climate-finance accounting, which is notoriously unregulated and opaque.)
A recent International Development Committee (IDC) report noted that developed countries have committed to providing “new and additional” climate finance to developing countries, which is generally interpreted as extra funds on top of existing aid.
Evidence gathered by the IDC concluded that, alongside aid cuts, the UK’s accounting changes have “eroded” the “additionality and credibility” of its climate finance.
Responding to Carbon Brief’s findings, IDC chair Sarah Champion said the data “shines a new light” on the committee’s findings:
“The picture is not getting any better. If questionable accounting has been used to get around a £1bn shortfall on ICF spend between 2021-22 and 2025-26, this only underlines my concerns that the government has been cutting corners to maintain headline climate-spending commitments, rather than working to deliver genuine climate and nature outcomes.”
These accounting changes remain relevant as the UK begins its next phase of international climate finance, while cutting the aid budget further.
The government has pledged £6bn of foreign aid for climate projects over the next three years. This makes the UK one of the only major donor countries to set out a new climate-finance target for the period after 2025, despite a global pledge to scale up support.
Nevertheless, the new UK goal amounts to a halving from £4bn in the financial year 2025-26 to £2bn a year, on average. Previous Carbon Brief analysis also shows that the continued use of “questionable accounting” is likely to make up around a third of the new target.
Responding to Carbon Brief’s analysis, a UK government spokesperson says:
“We are proud to have both hit, and exceeded, our third international climate-finance target – and will continue to work hard on protecting climate and nature.
“Climate change and nature loss pose a real and significant threat to global security and prosperity. That is why the UK is leading action on climate and nature, and prioritising climate finance in its aid budget.”
Accounting changesThe UK’s accounting changes break down into three major components, which are behind most of its upward revision in climate-finance spending.
The first is counting a share of “core” funding for multilateral development banks (MDBs) as climate finance.
This refers to un-earmarked contributions that governments provide to support these banks in their work, which includes providing loans and grants to developing countries.
Counting this spending as “climate finance” adds £1.1bn to the total of £12.8bn, split mainly between the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
As the chart below shows, this is by far the largest chunk of extra climate finance resulting from the UK’s accounting changes.
A spreadsheet with details of these accounting changes can be viewed here.This revision has been justified on the grounds that the World Bank and other banks have clear targets for funding climate-relevant projects, using their core funding.
However, MDBs have also faced criticism for their lack of transparency around climate finance and their reliance on loans, rather than grants. (In contrast, nearly all of the UK’s climate finance so far has been grant-based.)
Moreover, the US has been pressuring MDBs to drop their climate plans altogether. Indeed, the Trump administration has already forced the World Bank to abandon its overall target to put 45% of its funds towards climate finance.
Jon Sward, environment project manager at the Bretton Woods Project NGO, tells Carbon Brief:
“One thing removing the overall [World Bank] target definitely does is it adds…a lack of predictability of the flows going forward.”
The second-largest UK accounting change – contributing nearly £600m – comes from automatically counting 30% of humanitarian aid as climate finance, if it is going to one of the countries judged most vulnerable to climate change.
This includes some of the most war-torn and low-income nations in the world, such as Afghanistan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Crucially, this means projects are counted even if they have no discernible link to climate change, such as helping “conflict-affected” people in Yemen and orphans in Zimbabwe.
The Center for Global Development (CGD) has described this revision as “arbitrary”, given every aid project is already screened for any climate-relevant components.
The third significant portion comes from counting more of the government’s private-sector investments via British International Investment (BII) as climate finance. BII is a publicly owned, for-profit company that invests in developing-country businesses and is partially funded with injections of UK aid money.
The UK government decided to start calculating the climate share of its BII spending based on real-world BII investments, rather than a default, fixed share of 30%.
Data obtained by Carbon Brief via FOI suggests that £133m of extra BII funding was labelled as climate finance over the first four years of the £11.6bn target.
However, government records of BII climate finance have been inconsistent, making it difficult to estimate the total impact of accounting changes. Therefore, Carbon Brief has used an earlier internal government forecast that estimated this change would add a total of £266m over the five-year target period.
BII has increasingly turned its attention to investing in clean power in recent years, reaching more than £1bn in “climate investments” in 2025.
However, the company has faced criticism for investments that “conflict” with UK priorities – including legacy fossil-fuel investments – as well as channelling aid money to “billionaires”.
There was also some extra spending that the government decided to count as climate aid – notably, £99m of “spending on COP26”, from when the UK hosted the climate summit.
Shruti Agarwal, senior climate finance adviser at Save the Children UK, tells Carbon Brief the reduction in overall “financial effort” by the UK is a “concerning pattern that must cease”. She adds:
“[The UK should] strengthen transparency by publishing timely, detailed data on international climate spending and stop classifying expenditure as climate finance retrospectively, as seen with COP26 expenses.”
MethodologyCarbon Brief obtained the full datasets of international climate-finance spending via FOI, covering the five-year period 2021-22 to 2025-26. For more details and to access the full dataset, see Carbon Brief’s analysis of the £12.8bn in spending over this period.
In addition, Carbon Brief requested details from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of what climate-finance spending would have been prior to the 2023 accounting changes, for the period 2021-22 to 2024-25.
Carbon Brief then used this information to calculate the impact of accounting changes in 2025-26, combining the figures to work out the full impact.
A spreadsheet with the full details of the accounting changes can be viewed here.
UK climate-finance figures have been subject to regular revisions. While this analysis is based on final figures provided via FOI requests in recent months, it is possible that departments will still change the figures in future releases.
Related UK budget 2026: Key climate and energy announcements 28.10.2026 UK policy Analysis: How the UK spent more than £11.6bn on climate aid since 2021 28.10.2026 UK policy Q&A: Why are UK energy bills so high – and how could they be lowered? 27.10.2026 Oil and gas Revealed: Expensive gas behind ‘nearly 90%’ of rise in UK electricity bills 21.10.2026 Oil and gasThe post Revealed: UK relied on £2bn of ‘questionable accounting’ to hit its climate-aid goal appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: How the UK spent more than £11.6bn on climate aid since 2021
- The UK has supported around 500 climate projects since 2021
- UK climate aid has reached record levels – but is set to drop
- Afghanistan received more bilateral climate aid than any other country
- Development banks and private-sector funders are among the biggest beneficiaries
- Methodology
The UK has spent £12.8bn on climate aid for developing countries since 2021, according to official figures obtained by Carbon Brief.
Freedom-of-information (FOI) requests reveal how the UK has used its “climate finance” to support everything from solar projects in Mozambique to carbon offsets in the Amazon.
UK climate funding, which reached a record £4bn this year, has supported roughly 500 aid projects, climate funds and private-investment initiatives over the past five years.
With this spending, the UK has surpassed its £11.6bn climate-finance target for this period, although Carbon Brief analysis shows that it has partly relied on “questionable accounting”.
This target is part of the UK’s ongoing responsibility under UN climate treaties to financially support developing countries in their efforts to tackle climate change.
Despite being central to its international climate policy, the UK government does not routinely release data on progress towards its climate-finance goals.
Here, Carbon Brief has published the data in full for the first time and pulled out key trends since 2021.
The UK has supported around 500 climate projects since 2021According to the FOI data obtained by Carbon Brief, at least 493 projects, funds and institutions received UK climate finance between 2021-22 and 2025-26.
These included £45m to help Ukraine curb its reliance on fossil fuels, £40m in cash transfers for Kenyans affected by drought and £30m to provide flood resilience in Nepal.
Larger sums were provided to projects spread across multiple countries, often with the stated goal of “mobilising” additional finance from the private sector.
For example, the UK channelled £198m into a World Bank-backed project to help Colombia, Cambodia and others create and sell “high-integrity” carbon offsets.
The UK also provided £229m to a group that uses foreign aid to attract private capital for projects in predominantly low-income nations, such as a solar farm in Uganda and a “sustainable aviation fuel” project in Pakistan.
All of the funded projects can be viewed in the interactive table below.
(function(){function e(){window.addEventListener(`message`,function(e){if(e.data[`datawrapper-height`]!==void 0){var t=document.querySelectorAll(`iframe`);for(var n in e.data[`datawrapper-height`])for(var r=0,i;i=t[r];r++)if(i.contentWindow===e.source){var a=e.data[`datawrapper-height`][n]+`px`;i.style.height=a}}})}e()})();The UK has been criticised by campaigners and MPs for its lack of transparency around climate finance data.
In line with its international obligations, the government routinely releases its climate-finance figures to the UN – albeit with a two-year delay.
However, it does not publish this data broken down by financial year, making it impossible to accurately gauge progress towards the £11.6bn goal.
The data gathered by Carbon Brief is therefore the most comprehensive attempt to track this information to date. Carbon Brief has been periodically tracking this data since 2017.
UK climate aid has reached record levels – but is set to dropThe UK government committed in 2019 to spending £11.6bn of the nation’s aid budget on “climate finance”, between 2021-22 and 2025-26.
This is the nation’s contribution to an international goal to mobilise $100bn of climate finance a year between 2020 and 2025.
Developed countries are obliged under UN climate treaties to financially support developing countries, assisting their efforts to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.
However, alongside other major donors, such as the US, the UK has dramatically cut its aid budget, placing significant strain on the nation’s climate finance.
Despite this, FOI data shows that UK climate finance reached a record £4bn in 2025-26, as shown in the chart below.
Not accounting for inflation, this amounts to a tenfold increase from 2011-12, when the UK started providing climate finance.
The £11.6bn target was met comfortably, with £12.8bn provided over the five-year period.
However, as separate Carbon Brief analysis shows, the target was only met due to the government reclassifying £2.2bn of existing foreign aid as climate finance, without spending any more.
Rather than setting a new five-year goal, in March 2026 the Labour government committed to spending “around £6bn” of UK aid as climate finance over the next three years. On average, this would mean £2bn in climate aid annually – roughly half the level achieved in the financial year 2025-26.
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Alongside the £6bn in climate aid, the government has also pledged to invest £6.7bn from outside the aid budget to “drive climate and nature outcomes”.
Rather than grant funding, this support will include private investments, export credit and guarantees to development banks. The UK already provides such finance, but has not previously counted it towards its climate-finance targets.
Afghanistan received more bilateral climate aid than any other countryThe vast majority of UK climate finance was delivered “multilaterally”, meaning it supports large funds or institutions working in multiple countries.
More than 80% of the funding since 2021 is therefore listed as helping “developing countries” in general, or whole regions such as “Africa”.
Of the £2.1bn (17%) that was delivered “bilaterally”, with the UK directly supporting climate projects in specific countries, the biggest beneficiaries are nations in east Africa and south Asia. Around two-thirds of this funding goes to nations classified as “least developed”.
For many years, Ethiopia has been the top recipient of bilateral UK climate finance, largely due to long-running projects supporting ecosystem restoration and drought resilience.
However, Afghanistan overtook Ethiopia over the £11.6bn period, with £256m of its aid labelled as climate-related, compared to Ethiopia’s £226m. (The UK does not provide aid via the Taliban, instead channelling it through partners, such as UN agencies.)
Afghanistan is struggling with floods and low electricity access. However, the UK’s apparent surge in support for the nation is not, in fact, due to new climate-related initiatives.
Instead, it is the result of the UK automatically labelling 30% of aid for all humanitarian projects in this country as “climate finance”, following a controversial accounting change.
This shift affected other climate-vulnerable and war-torn nations, meaning Somalia (£139m), Sudan (£136m) and Yemen (£130m) were also among the top recipients of “climate aid”.
Where the UK has provided large sums of climate finance to projects in middle-income nations, they are typically aimed at “mobilising” private-sector investment, rather than achieving humanitarian goals.
Examples include £83m to support Brazil’s Amazon Fund – a carbon offsetting initiative – and £43m to boost UK investment in India’s low-carbon infrastructure.
Development banks and private-sector funders are among the biggest beneficiariesThe largest chunks of UK climate finance are channelled via international climate funds and other bodies, which in turn use that funding to support climate projects in developing countries.
Despite recently cutting its 2024-27 support for the Green Climate Fund, the UK still provided £1.5bn to this flagship UN fund – more than any other initiative.
British International Investment (BII), a publicly owned, for-profit company that invests in developing-country businesses and is partially supported with UK aid money, received almost £1.4bn.
The UK has increasingly been relying on BII to meet its climate-finance goals, partly reflecting the body’s decision to prioritise clean-energy investments, rather than fossil fuels.
Other major recipients of UK climate finance are multilateral development banks, particularly the various arms of the World Bank and the African Development Bank. This reflects the UK’s decision to start counting “core” funding for these banks as climate finance.
The government’s accounting changes – which have boosted the significance of BII and MDBs in UK climate finance – have faced criticism from experts, MPs and the UK’s aid watchdog. For more, see Carbon Brief’s full analysis of these changes.
MethodologyAll of the international climate-finance data used in this piece was obtained via FOI requests. Carbon Brief has compiled the data into a spreadsheet, which can be accessed here.
UK climate finance comes from the aid budgets of four departments, with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) providing three-quarters of the total.
The remainder comes predominantly from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), with much smaller sums from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST).
BIST has also released a dataset detailing the hundreds of climate-science projects in developing countries – or benefiting those countries – that have been supported with UK climate funds.
UK climate-finance figures have been subject to regular revisions. While this analysis is based on final figures provided via FOI requests in recent months, it is possible that departments will still change the figures in future releases.
Related COP17: Key outcomes agreed at the UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan 31.10.2026 COP17 Yerevan Experts: What China wants from the COP31 climate talks 29.10.2026 China policy Analysis: China’s clean-tech exports in 2026 to avoid as much CO2 as Brazil emits in a year 29.10.2026 China policy UK budget 2026: Key climate and energy announcements 28.10.2026 UK policyThe post Analysis: How the UK spent more than £11.6bn on climate aid since 2021 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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