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Faltering governments will be blamed for famine and conflict abroad, and face stagnation and inflation at home, says climate chief at start of Cop30
Governments failing to shift to a low-carbon economy will be blamed for famine and conflict abroad, and will face stagnation and rising inflation at home, the UN’s climate chief warned on Monday at the start of the Cop30 climate talks.
Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, addressed the gathering of ministers and high-ranking officials from nearly 200 countries, in a stark portrayal of the price of failure on the climate crisis.
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His mother had lived in the same house for 83 years. When the floods came, no one was ready. This is Paul Gilbert’s story
Location Chesterfield, UK
Disaster Storm Babet, 2023
Paul Gilbert’s mother, Maureen, lived in Chesterfield. In 2023, Storm Babet claimed seven lives across the UK, led to more than 10,000 people being evacuated from their homes and caused in excess of £450m in property damage. Extreme rainfall is more common and more intense because of human-caused climate breakdown across most of the world, and experts have linked some of the damage caused by Storm Babet tothe climate crisis.
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World’s biggest polluter on track to hit peak emissions target early but miss goal for cutting carbon intensity
China’s carbon dioxide emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, analysis reveals, adding evidence to the hope that the world’s biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO2 emissions well ahead of schedule.
Rapid increases in the deployment of solar and wind power generation – which grew by 46% and 11% respectively in the third quarter of this year – meant the country’s energy sector emissions remained flat, even as the demand for electricity increased.
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A regenerative scheme has shown early promise, with herders hopeful it can restore degraded pastures
Ibrahima Ka, dressed in flowing indigo robes, gathers his herd with those of his neighbours before a stretch of lush, untouched pasture. The bellowing, heaving and trampling of 350 impatient zebu cows behind a wire perimeter marks a break with centuries of herding tradition in Senegal, west Africa. Rather than roaming freely across the country’s vast grasslands, shepherds tightly pack the herd together, confining them to graze in short, intensive bursts before being moved to a new plot.
Ka, the village chief of Thignol, is spearheading the first pilot of “mob grazing” in Senegal, aiming to mimic, on a much smaller scale, how wildebeest flow across the Serengeti, moving to protect themselves against lions and cheetahs. The idea that intense grazing can regenerate grasslands rather than accelerate their decline has been controversial. Initially, proponents argued it could help to solve the climate crisis through storing carbon in regenerated grasslands – a claim with little scientific basis. But there is some evidence that the method can boost biodiversity and grassland health in dry areas such as Senegal.
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How do you plan for an event whose timing is unknown? For residents of Tofino on Vancouver Island the threat is distant but signs of preparedness are everywhere
Justin Goss was in the shower when he first heard the piercing wail of a nearby tsunami early-warning siren. Still dripping wet, he threw on clothes, grabbed his dog and rushed to the truck. The pair made it 3 metres and no further.
“The whole parking lot across the street was jammed up. It was complete gridlock within three minutes,” he says. “I thought, ‘Oh shit, this is not good.’”
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The failure by state governments to do anything about pollution means it has often been met with apathy. But at a rare protest anger and frustration were rife
As a familiar smoky evening haze gathered over Delhi, the crowd began to assemble in their hundreds. Mothers and children, students, retirees and environmentalists were all united by a basic but desperate demand: the right to breathe safely in India’s capital.
“Delhi is not a liveable city any more, it’s a death trap,” said Radhika Aggarwal, 33, an engineer who joined the protest on Sunday.
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Environmentalists seeking to end logging, smuggling and pollution in DRC’s Mangrove Marine park faced threats, violence and rape
People who have tried to expose unlawful ownership and profit-making from protected land in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have faced threats, violence and rape, an investigation has found.
The DRC government hired the conservation worker Kim Rebholz in 2022 to safeguard the Mangrove Marine park, an internationally recognised nature reserve on the country’s tiny coastline. The Congo basin rainforest, to the east, is the largest rainforest after the Amazon.
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Climate summit in Brazil needs to find way to stop global heating accelerating amid stark divisions
“It broke my heart.” Surangel Whipps, president of the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, was sitting in the front row of the UN’s general assembly in New York when Donald Trump made a long and rambling speech, his first to the UN since his re-election, on 23 September.
Whipps was prepared for fury and bombast from the US president, but what followed was shocking. Trump’s rant on the climate crisis – a “green scam”, “the greatest con job ever perpetrated”, “predictions made by stupid people” – was an unprecedented attack on science and global action from a major world leader.
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Host uses Indigenous concepts and changes agenda to help delegates agree on ways to meet existing climate goals
Shipping containers, cruise ships, river boats, schools and even army barracks have been pressed into service as accommodation for the 50,000 plus people descending on the Amazon: this year’s Cop30 climate summit is going to be, in many ways, an unconventional one.
Located in Belém, a small city at the mouth of the Amazon river, the Brazilian hosts have been criticised for the exorbitant cost of scarce hotel rooms and hastily vacated apartments. Many delegations have slimmed down their presence, while business leaders have decamped to hold their own events in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
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Brazil’s president welcomes world leaders while navigating divided government, promising action on deforestation and emissions
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has welcomed world leaders to Belém for the first climate summit in the Amazon, where conservationists hope he can be a champion for the rainforest and its people.
But with a divided administration, a hostile Congress and 20th-century developmentalist instincts, this global figurehead of the centre left has a balancing act to perform in advocating protection of nature and a reduction of emissions.
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