Carbon Brief

Carbon Brief is hosting a free webinar on the key outcomes from COP16 🎙️ The webinar features our team of five specialist reporters who reported live from Cali, Colombia: ➡ Dr Giuliana Viglione – section editor for food, land and nature ➡ Daisy Dunne – associate editor ➡ Aruna Chandrasekhar – land, food systems and nature reporter ➡ Orla Dwyer – land, food systems and nature reporter ➡ Yanine Quiroz – land, food systems and nature reporter For a breakdown of the key results from the UN biodiversity conference, register for the webinar here ⬇️ https://buff.ly/3YoKalN 🗓️ Time:  Monday, 4 November, 3pm (GMT) Another COP16 webinar will be conducted in Spanish. Register for the Spanish webinar here ⬇️ https://buff.ly/4hmGB8m Questions for the speakers can be submitted in advance by email via webinar@carbonbrief.org, or via X using the hashtag #CBWebinar.

🔎 A great deal of progress has been made over recent decades in the fight against some infectious diseases, such as malaria, yet this progress is at risk due to climate change. 🦟 For example, mosquitoes carrying the dengue virus are now a threat in France and other European countries because of warmer summers. 🌊 Extreme weather events and warming temperatures are giving many infectious diseases opportunities to expand to new regions, putting billions of people at risk. Read more about this threat from Dr Madeleine Thomson and Dr Felipe J Colón-González here ⬇️ https://buff.ly/3NA17ER #ClimateChange #Health #ExtremeWeather #Dengue

💬 “The nature crisis has to be understood as being at the same level of seriousness as the climate crisis and, therefore, also requiring the same level of political attention.” Astrid Schomaker is the new executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. She took over as the UN’s biodiversity chief in July this year, just months out from the major UN biodiversity summit, COP16, which is currently taking place in Cali, Colombia. 🇨🇴 In this interview with Carbon Brief's Orla Dwyer, Schomaker discussed progress on nature targets, key negotiation sticking points and boosting the profile of biodiversity COPs. Read the full interview here ⬇️ https://buff.ly/4eV1nKE #COP16 #Nature #Biodiversity #ClimateChange

🔥 A decline in the area burned globally by wildfires over the 20th century due to land-use change has almost entirely been offset by the increase caused by global warming, a new study says. 📖 The paper is the first attribution study to assess the impacts of climate change and land-use change on “global burned area”. 📉 It finds that changes in population distribution and land use over the 20th century have suppressed wildfires, driving down global burned area by 19%. 📈 However, this decline has been hindered by human-caused warming, which has expanded the area burned by 16% through increasingly hot and dry conditions across much of the world. Read more from Ayesha Tandon here ⬇️ https://buff.ly/3YzhrvW #GlobalWarming #LandUse #Wildfires #ClimateChange

🌍 Countries “must deliver a quantum leap in ambition" if the world is to meet the Paris goal of limiting global warming to “well below” 2C and pursuing efforts to stay under 1.5C, a new UN report says. 🕝 The report comes as countries approach the February 2025 deadline to submit their next nationally determined contributions (NDCs), setting mitigation targets for 2035. 🇺🇳 Published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the report charts the “gap” between where emissions are headed under current policies and commitments over the coming decade. 🌡️ As the chart shows, current policies put the world on track for 2.9C of warming by 2100, though this could be reduced to 2.4-2.6C, if all existing NDCs are met (with a 50% chance). 🔎 However, unless global emissions in 2030 are brought below the levels implied by current NDCs, a pathway to 1.5C with no or limited overshoot becomes “impossible”, the report says, and “strongly” increases the challenge of limiting warming to 2C. Read more from Zeke Hausfather here ⬇️ https://buff.ly/3Uq0di1 #ParisAgreement #GlobalEmissions #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

NEW: UK's next Paris climate pledge should promise 81% emissions cut by 2035, says CCC This is "consistent with" (ie the same as) the ambition legislated by prev Conservative govt: 78% with intl aviation & shipping 🟰81% without https://lnkd.in/ehaqUhZu

Keir Starmer said yesterday, on his way to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) that he is focused on “current future-facing challenges”, such as climate change: “When I was meeting with Commonwealth countries that was the thing that was among their concerns most…Whether it’s the Caribbean or the Pacific islands, climate is a very real problem right now." So how is the UK responding to these concerns from the Commonwealth? Well, it appears to be providing less and less international climate finance to help Commonwealth countries tackle climate change, as the chart below shows. Climate finance for projects involving these countries has dropped from a high of £282m in 2017 to roughly £132m in 2023. This means direct funds for the Commonwealth have fallen from around 40% to less than 10% of total UK climate finance spending And 32 of the Commonwealth's 49 aid-eligible members have never received any direct, country-specific climate finance from the UK. These include the CHOGM host nation, Samoa 🇼🇸 and many other small island states in the Pacific and Caribbean such as 🇻🇺 🇦🇬 🇸🇧 , as well as various African nations 🇹🇬 🇧🇼 🇱🇸 This mirrors a wider collapse in bilateral aid spending by the UK in Commonwealth countries. Last year the UK's overall aid contributions to these nations had fallen about 75% from their peak in 2015, according to the latest ODA figures. And the Labour government is going to continue cutting the aid budget – continuing a trend established under the previous government, according to recent reporting by the Financial Times. Of course, we are just weeks away from #COP29, where countries will come together to decide on a new, global climate finance goal, which developing countries hope will involve trillions of dollars being sent their way to help them achieve their climate goals. Notes: These figures are based on project-level climate finance data provided to Carbon Brief via FOI by the UK government (see article below for details and to download the data). However, the UK has changed its methodology for calculating climate finance since the data was obtained, so i have accounted for that in the chart below. The 2023-24 data was obtained earlier this year, and may be subject to accounting changes. This analysis only considers direct, bilateral projects where the recipient country is labelled. The UK labels projects by recipient country, but much of the UK's climate finance goes to large, multi-country projects. Where possible, i've identified projects involving at least one Commonwealth country, indicated by the "multi country" bars below. Most of the UK's climate aid goes to broad projects or funds where the recipient is just labelled as "developing countries" or as a large region. Some of this money will also be spent in Commonwealth countries. https://lnkd.in/eyq9Jh22 #CHOGM #climatefinance #aid

Congratulations to our 2024 Environmental Journalism Award Winners! We are proud to celebrate these twelve brave and resourceful people whose investigations and reporting elevate the public discourse on ecology and climate justice. Read more: https://lnkd.in/emwq8Yif

What’s happened this week in climate change? Read the latest issue of Carbon Brief’s weekly newsletter, DeBriefed, here ⬇️ https://buff.ly/3NGie7U In this issue... 🇨🇴 The largest ever biodiversity COP has kicked off in Cali, Colombia. 📚 US, UK and Brazil are reportedly releasing new climate plans at COP29 💼 Key dates for next week and pick of the jobs 💡 Spotlight | Where countries stand on reversing nature loss This week, Carbon Brief reports on how countries plan to get back on track after the majority of them missed a deadline to release new nature pledges ahead of COP16. 📊 Captured | Greenhouse gas emissions remain far off track to meet global climate goals, according to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) 2024 emissions gap report covered by Carbon Brief. ✍ Written by Aruna Chandrasekhar Daisy Dunne Orla Dwyer Yanine Quiroz Giuliana Viglione Sign up to DeBriefed here ⬇ https://bit.ly/4a4gsGR #DeBriefed #ClimateNews #ClimateChange

Thank you for joining our pre-COP16 webinar on Tuesday. If you missed the webinar, which focused on what’s at stake at the UN biodiversity conference in Cali, Colombia, you can watch it in full here ⬇️ https://buff.ly/3YhryUS #COP16 #Cali #Biodiversity #Nature