The Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets, launched last week at London Climate Action Week, also includes the governments of France and Panama, and is supported by the government of Peru. 

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A new coalition created by the governments of Kenya, Singapore, and the UK will work to develop the emissions trading markets for corporations and other entities seeking to invest in carbon credits.

The goal of the new group is to boost demand for carbon credits not only in the so-called compliance markets, which help nations meet their emission reduction commitments from the Paris Climate Agreement, but also in the voluntary markets, where companies can buy credits to establish claims such as “Net Zero” or “carbon neutral”. In its launch announcement, the founders stated that they recognize “the critical role of carbon markets and corporate use of carbon credits in delivering climate-positive growth globally.” 

Public confusion and disappointment continues to arise from poorly executed or fraudulent initiatives that failed to deliver on their promises. For example, a November 2024 study found that less than 16% of the carbon credits issued to the investigated projects constitute real emission reductions. Meanwhile, auditing alone does not guarantee that the projects will perform what they claim. The result, according a new report by Accenture on behalf of the Voluntary Carbon Markets Initiative (VCMI), is that concerns about credit quality, transparency and integrity are the biggest barrier to companies participating in voluntary carbon markets.

Last month, a UN body known as the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) adopted a global set of standards to help verify carbon reduction projects, making them more credible and reliable in the face of global skepticism. While the new UNFCCC standards initially only cover afforestation and cook stove projects, they were welcomed by international market players as an important step towards making carbon credits more credible.

The Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets has committed to releasing a set of shared principles on the voluntary use of high-integrity carbon credits by businesses to provide consistency in approach across jurisdictions. VCMI will host the secretariat for the new initiative.

“The world will miss its climate targets unless more finance flows to projects and businesses that can cut emissions quickly and affordably while boosting growth,” the new coalition’s leadership said in the launch announcement. “Carbon markets are an under-used tool to value carbon, enable more ambitious climate action, and drive private sector investment into the global low-carbon transformation.”

The coalition hopes that their shared principles will help restore private sector demand for carbon credits in order to increase the flow of private finance to activities that accelerate the pace of global emissions reductions, restore nature, cut pollution, and deliver lasting benefits for local ecosystems and communities.

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The Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change is crowdsourcing concrete solutions to address disinformation and related tactics seeking to delay and derail climate action. 

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The COP30 Presidency has called on governments, civil society, academia, and the private sector to submit concrete initiatives that promote information integrity in addressing climate change disinformation.

The Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, established by UNESCO, the UN and the Brazilian government, is crowdsourcing concrete solutions to address disinformation and related tactics seeking to delay and derail climate action, to be submitted by August 31. Selected initiatives will be presented at the global COP30 conference in November.

Despite widespread agreement by experts around the world and increasing attempts to raise the alarm, vast swaths of the general public are still confused or apathetic about climate change. 

In the US, for example, more than a third of adults are not at all concerned about climate change, as emerged in a survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and published earlier this year. Among those who agree that it exists, only 60% think it is caused by human activity. This trend is set to increase as mainstream media around the world have made a dramatic shift away from covering the topic during the past year.

According to the Media and Climate Change Observatory, media coverage of climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe in June of this year dropped 28% compared to June 2024.

The first-ever UN Global Risk Report released this month also named mis- and disinformation the world’s top vulnerability, while environmental risks represent five of the top 10 most important risks across all regions.

The COP30 presidency’s initiative, which brings together the UN, UNESCO, UNFCCC, Brazil, and six other countries – Chile, Denmark, France, Morocco, the United Kingdom, and Sweden – along with civil society partners – represents the first time the issue of information integrity has been included in the COP Action Agenda. 

At the G20 Leaders’ Summit where the initiative was launched, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for strengthening action against “coordinated disinformation campaigns impeding global progress on climate change, ranging from outright denial to greenwashing to harassment of climate scientists.”

Last year, the UN chief called on countries to ban fossil fuel advertising in the same way they restricted tobacco.

“Many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action – with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns. They have been aided and abetted by advertising and PR companies – Mad Men fuelling the madness,” Guterres said.

Public confusion also directly impacts how governments regulate greenhouse gas emissions and support solutions. “Worldwide, there are influential people who keep denying that the world is facing climate threats, which has slowed down the implementation of policy measures and actions that can tackle the climate crisis for humankind,” Edwin Lau, founder of The Green Earth, told Earth.Org in an emailed response.

The call-to-action – “mutirão”, Portuguese for “joint effort” – seeks existing actions in areas including:

• Research on disinformation and other threats to climate information integrity
• Tools and methods to promote climate information integrity
• Communication strategies and campaigns
• Support for environmental journalism
• Protecting scientific data and data sets related to climate change
• Transparency in the advertising supply chain
• Media, information and digital literacy related to climate change

COP30 will take place in Belém, Brazil, from November 10 to 21, 2025. Interested organizations can access the application form until August 31, 2025.

Finding the Right Communication Approach

Experts are divided as to what types of initiatives will be most effective. 

In an email to Earth.Org, podcaster Michael Gold of Climate Swings predicted, “Inspiring, uplifting stories about people doing awesome things are always going to land better than wonky scientific explanations or doom-and-gloom narratives about the end of the world.” This is an approach popularized by climate optimists like Anne Therese Gennari, author of The Climate Optimist Handbook, and Abby Hopper, CEO of Solar Energy Industries Association.

However, according to a 2024 report from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), fundamental facts are even more important. According to this analysis, climate deniers on mega platforms such as YouTube have recently moved from an older approach of denying global warming and its causes to a “new denial” where they claim that climate solutions will not work and that climate science and the climate movement are themselves unreliable. 

In a speech earlier this year, CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed said, “The climate crisis isn’t just a scientific or political issue, it’s a communications issue. If lies spread unchecked, actions will stall.” 

More on the topic: YouTube Makes up to $13.4 Million a Year From Videos Containing Climate Denial Narratives that Undermine Green Solutions, Watchdog Says  

Likewise, INTOSAI, the working group on environmental auditing, has highlighted the need for “Supreme Audit Institutions” to present data-driven insights and clear, evidence-based analysis to counter denialist claims.

Effective solutions are likely to require both of these approaches, reflecting the multiple, aggressive strategies of denialism and conspiracy theorists. In a LinkedIn post this week, renowned climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe noted that most climate denial falls into one of five general categories: it’s not real; it’s not us; it’s not bad; we can’t fix it; it’s too late. 

Existing actions around climate information integrity include support for climate journalism, academic initiatives such as the Yale Program on Climate Communication, and meta-analyses on climate change information. Along with this, an increasing number of programs such as the Hollywood Climate Summit and the Climate Fiction Writers League also support the inclusion of climate information in popular film and fiction.

Featured image: Mark Dixon/Flickr.

The post COP30 Presidency Calls For Initiatives to Promote Information Integrity Amid Rampant Climate Disinformation appeared first on Earth.Org.

The world’s hottest year on record may also mark the beginning of the end for carbon-intensive, conventional farming. Several factors have converged to bring regenerative practices into the mainstream, while a new study demonstrates that farmers can produce just as much food while improving land productivity by transitioning away from conventional practices. 

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Regenerative farming first hit headlines as part of “living systems thinking” in the 1960s, later gaining interest among health-conscious foodies when the concept was popularized by food author Michael Pollan. Today, techniques such as cover-cropping and integrated pest management are being embraced not only by environmental activists but also by multinational food companies. The difference is that now, this approach is celebrated for its practical effectiveness in maintaining a consistent food supply in an era of climate change-driven supply shocks.

What Is Regenerative Agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture has its roots in Indigenous agricultural traditions, according to Heidi Yu Spurrell, Founder of regenerative agriculture consultant Future Green Global. “Conventional agriculture systems are focused on economies of scale and maximizing calories, while regen is focused on maximising nutrition and public health,” she told Earth.Org. 

Techniques used for regenerative agriculture include cover cropping, where another crop such as a legume is planted between the rows of the main crop, to add nutrients to the soil and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers. Reducing tillage is also important. 

“[Conventional agriculture] is the opposite of a forest floor, which is always vibrant and resilient. You don’t want to leave soil uncovered to get washed away by the flood or blown away by the wind. Tillage is losing the top soil, with its water storage. Instead, you’re stacking your nutrients, leaving a living root system,” Anastasia Volkova, CEO and Co-Founder of Regrow Ag, told Earth.Org. The company works with food and agribusiness giants such as Cargill and Oatly to power their insights on these areas.

Cover cropping is in turn part of what specialists call enhanced fertilization. When speaking about enhanced fertilization, “We use four-R nutrient stewardship to help farmers design their fertilization plan: the right source, the right quantity, the right amount, in the right place,” explained Bianca Dendena, a Senior Project Manager at PUR, a nature-based solution project implementer. 

Other practices include interventions aimed at improving water efficiency and integrated pest management, where farmers use methods such as moth pheromones as an alternative to conventional pesticides.

Regenerative Agriculture Goes Mainstream

From their grassroots origins, these approaches are now showing their effectiveness when adopted at a large scale. A study by the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA) benchmarked 78 regenerating farms in 14 countries covering over 7,000 hectares against their neighbouring and national average conventional farmers. It found that by transitioning to regenerative agriculture, European farmers can produce the same amount of food with fewer inputs compared to average conventional practices. 

The study, published last month, determined that from 2020 to 2023, pioneering regenerating farmers achieved, on average, just 1% lower yields in terms of kilocalories and proteins, while using 62% less synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and 76% less pesticides (grams per active substance) per hectare. In total, from 2020 to 2023, they delivered over 27% higher “Regenerating Full Productivity” than the average European farmer, with gains ranging from 24% to 38% across the 14 countries studied. 

“The Green Revolution can be put to the dustbin of history,” said Simon Krämer, Executive Director of EARA and lead author of the study. “The 4th agricultural revolution is here, led by farmers joining forces with nature, relearning ancient wisdom and holistic worldviews, combined with the newest science and autonomy-enhancing technology.” 

Meanwhile, international food companies are now making increasing demands on farmers to adopt regen practices. “The impetus to do this is coming from downstream,” Peter Bracher, who owns a regenerative rice farm in Thailand, told Earth.Org. “We were asked by one of the biggest Asian retailers, whose CEO wanted to do low carbon rice but wanted a robust claim, and a major US ingredients manufacturer wanted regenerative farming of cassava.” 

What Is Driving Adoption?

According to an analysis by the European Commission, climate change will have a decisive impact on agricultural yields: forced by the projected changes in daily temperature, precipitation, wind, relative humidity, and global radiation, grain maize yields in the EU will decline between 1% and 22%. In addition, wheat yields in Southern Europe are expected to decrease by up to 49%.

For this reason, food and agribusiness enterprises are taking a closer look at techniques that can maintain more consistent agricultural outputs. Farmers got an unpleasant sneak preview of this future when the double disruptions of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine hit supply chains. 

“The supply chain experienced what it is like to not have access to proximity. The same thing is happening as climate change hits,” Volkova told Earth.Org.

The financial impact of supply disruption can mean billions in investment lost, for agribusiness giants and for smaller farmers alike. “So the agriculture and food industry started investing in regenerative agriculture to fortify their supply chains. And farmers wanted a system that would be more self-sustained and more profitable,” she said.

At the same time, increased sophistication on the supply side is making it easier for companies to demand regenerative agriculture practices from their suppliers. According to Dendena, “we are getting better at acknowledging the impact that greenhouse gas emissions have on the environment and what role companies have in reducing them. Higher awareness among consumers and companies has raised the bar in terms of active engagement.”

Many farmers in Asia look to regenerative agriculture as a tool to maximize profits. “When I spoke with farmers I heard about nothing but debt, grinding debt: they borrow for the seeds, the contractors, the labor, 25% compounded interest,” said Bracher. “The goal is to demonstrate that this is a financially better model for farming.”

You might also like: Climate-Smart Agriculture: Adapting Farming Practices to a Changing Climate

The Future of Farming?

Several new techniques are currently in development that will further enhance opportunities. 

One area is the innovative use of insects. Insect Biotech, a start-up in this area, uses black soldier fly larvae to convert olive waste from a mill to a protein for a regenerative soil amendment fertilizer. This can be used to replace fishmeal and other unsustainable animal feed, since chitin is an excellent soil health enabler. “You’re dumping a whole load of microbiology into the soil and stimulating the plants’ immune system. The insect business is an enabler for regenerative agriculture,” Tobias Webb, the company’s Co-Founder and Chief Sustainability Officer, told Earth.Org.

But regenerative practices still face major challenges. Among them is farmers’ reluctance to adopt new systems. “We have experienced this from Turkiye to Canada, that farmers don’t want to bear the risk of changing something at their own expense. But this is gradually changing, as they are really experiencing the higher impact of climate change on their production year after year,” said Dendena.

Additionally, while most experts agree that monitoring and verification is important, there is not yet a single globally recognized certification system for regenerative practices. The EU Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation, published in late 2024, created the first EU-wide voluntary framework for certifying carbon removals; in the US, the Regenerative Organic Alliance combines certification for both organic and regenerative farming; and in Australia, Global GreenTag offers a “Nature Positive” certification.

“Certification is a bridge that builds trust between the manufacturer and the market, the manufacturer and the customer,” said David Baggs, CEO of Global GreenTag. “But Life Cycle Analysis and product declarations are much more complex than other forms. To take the Nature Positive example, you need to measure ecosystem services. Can you give me a Life Cycle Analysis for a tree?”

While many multinational agribusinesses in Europe, along with some North America and Asia, are embracing regenerative agriculture, some smaller farmers are expected to struggle with the transition. Recent US legislation will further widen the gap, increasing funding to large-scale agriculture commodity support programs by $52 billion.

Still, experts agree that the practical benefits outweigh the risks. “From the farmers’ perspective, what they can expect is higher resilience for what will come. We are dealing with a greater impact of climate change, and farmers are experiencing very high fluctuations  in market prices. Giving them the tools to go that direction will make them stronger to cope with these challenges. And from the consumers’ side, we are going to have better, higher quality produce,” said Dendena.

“I am optimistic. We can get there, but only if everyone takes their own responsibility.”

Featured image: European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA).

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The COP30 Local Leaders Forum will be held in Rio de Janeiro from November 3-5, aiming to link the global agenda of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its COPs with local realities.

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Local leaders will gather in Rio de Janeiro for three days ahead of this November’s COP30 summit in Belém, focusing on how cities, states, and regions can accelerate progress on global climate goals, the COP30 Presidency and Bloomberg Philanthropies have announced.

Michael R. Bloomberg, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, and COP30 CEO Ana Toni unveiled the initiative at London Climate Action Week on Tuesday. Bloomberg, a businessman who served as mayor of New York City for more than a decade, also chairs the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

The COP30 Local Leaders Forum – a meeting of city mayors, provincial governors, and other local leaders from cities, states and provinces around the world – will be held in Rio de Janeiro from November 3-5. It aims to link the global agenda of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its COPs with local realities. These include urban issues such as housing, mobility, sanitation, urban development, disaster risk reduction, and green infrastructure. 

The event will bring together several global conferences under one roof, including the C40 World Mayors Summit, the Global States and Regions Summit, the Local Leaders Awards Ceremony, the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnership (CHAMP) High Level Political Dialogue, and the America Is All In Exchange.

“To hit the targets under the Paris climate agreement, nations must do more, faster — and cities and states are leading the way. By teaming up with Brasil to bring together forward-thinking mayors and governors, we’re putting local action at the heart of international efforts — and laying the groundwork for more progress at COP30,” Bloomberg said in a statement. 

Worldwide, cities already account for 75% of global energy consumption and its resulting emissions, a figure set to increase as urbanization accelerates. At the same time, cities will be impacted by climate change: by 2050, ten urban areas in the Global South can expect up to 8 million migrants if emissions do not fall, while over 800 million people, living in 570 cities, will be vulnerable to sea level rise and coastal flooding. In Brazil, which will host the upcoming meeting, 87% of the population already lives in urban areas.

Christine Loh, an Asia climate leader who convened the 2010 C40 Cities summit, emphasized that global cooperation is needed to ensure local needs are met. “There is a realization that decarbonizing cities, where the bulk of our populations live, is where urgent action is needed. [But] Asian cities are very different from North American and European cities – on the whole, Asian cities have much higher population densities, and the richer cities are also much more vertical with high-rises. These conditions require different solutions – hence Asian cities need to share their experiences with each other,” she told Earth.Org in an emailed response.

Along with the meetings and high level exchange sessions, a series of innovation events will also take place at the November event. Following the forum, a delegation of local leaders will travel to Belém to connect the events in Rio to COP30 by formally representing a unified subnational climate agenda at COP30.

The summit, scheduled for November 10-21, will bring together world leaders to review ongoing efforts to address climate change.

Featured image: Carlos Ortega/Flickr.

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Follow Earth.Org’s COP30 updates.

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More than two decades ago, a simple idea was introduced to financial and environmental communities around the world, a clever solution to help countries that signed the Paris Climate Agreement meet their commitments while providing a new income for countries in the Global South. That idea was international emissions trading. Now, a new set of international standards may help it take off.

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Through international emissions trading, countries unable to reduce enough greenhouse gas emissions through conventional methods would be able to purchase credits from other countries that implemented emission-reduction projects such as afforestation. Alongside these large-scale “compliance” markets – those designed for countries aiming to comply with their commitments – smaller “voluntary” markets would allow corporations to purchase carbon credits to offset their emissions. The companies buying voluntary offsets could then confidently make claims such as “net-zero emissions” or “carbon neutral”.

At the national level, emissions trading markets have been established in Europe – the largest market – and in many other jurisdictions including China, Korea, Japan, and Australia. In November, Brazil introduced a cap-and-trade system, and new domestic markets across Asia – Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Malaysia and Taiwan –  are following suit. Collectively, these global markets stand at US$100 billion per year.

Trading such credits internationally is a different story. 

While individual countries already conduct limited trading with each other on a bilateral basis, there is still no standard today that allows the establishment of robust international markets. In 2015, the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement agreed to set up a mechanism to do so – also known as the 6.4 mechanism, which refers to Article 6, Paragraph 4 of the accord. 10 years later, however, both the financial community and project owners are still waiting. A key roadblock is the lack of means to establish credible and verifiable emissions-reduction projects. 

“There has been frustration at the very low speed,” Andrea Bonzanni, International Policy Director for the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), told Earth.Org. “There were still negotiations ongoing until COP29, and the fact that the mechanism is not yet operational led several countries to hold back. Some projects are not really additional; they already existed. And monitoring and verification is not always impactful.” 

More on the topic: Explainer: What Is Article 6 of the Paris Agreement?

Aiming to address these issues, a UN body has now adopted new standards to guide how emission-reduction projects measure their impact. Known as the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM), it fulfills the promises of the 6.4 mechanism, enabling countries and other actors to collaborate on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by exchanging carbon credits that are more credible and verifiable.

Last month, two standards were agreed. The first is a standard for estimating the baseline emissions that would have happened without a project under the mechanism. This is designed to help avoid over-crediting, or using the same project more than once. The second is a standard for accounting for any unintended increases in emissions that might happen elsewhere as a result of a project, referred to as leakage.

Along with the adoption of the baseline and leakage standards, the Supervisory Body for PACM also decided on ways to support implementation of the standards. One goal is to ensure that the project benefits can be shared equitably with host countries, where the projects are taking place, as well as with the countries purchasing the credits. Another is to build capacity so that more host countries can take part in the mechanism.

Jean-Marc Champagne, Managing Director of Seneca Impact Advisors, a development finance advisory firm, is optimistic about the potential of the new standards. “One of the biggest challenges we’ve seen from the financing side has been the lack of consistency and transparency in emissions calculations and verification,” Champagne told Earth.Org in a written response. 

“I expect this to help unlock much-needed climate finance in markets like those in Southeast Asia. There, we see a high potential for emissions-reduction projects, and the new PACM standards can help scale these efforts by improving credit integrity.”

Bonzanni said PACM is expected to set a “very high bar in terms of environmental integrity – ensuring that everything that generates a carbon credit under this mechanism is absolutely representing tons of carbon that is being produced or removed, and there are no loopholes down the line.” 

“The key delegations, the expert community, want this to be a stringent and ambitious mechanism to increase the trust in carbon markets,” he continued.

The Supervisory Body also adopted a decision on how cookstove activities can be credited and monitored, aligning earlier projects with the latest guidance. However, major emissions-reduction initiatives like regenerative agriculture and other nature-based solutions may still be excluded under the new system.

A new study by the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture estimates European farmers across the board could mitigate 141.3 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year already in the first years of transition, which is about 84% of the net greenhouse gas emissions from the EU agricultural sector. Despite this enormous potential, Climate Farmers, a major European regenerative agriculture group, announced last week that it was stepping back from carbon markets after years of attempting to pioneer soil credits. “The current carbon market system is not built for the kind of agriculture we set out to support,” Co-Founder Ivo Degn said in a statement. 

“For nature based projects like carbon farming, it will be challenging to meet the requirement to ensure the emissions are permanent,” Bonzanni told Earth.Org. “There’s always been a bias in UNFCCC that’s made nature-based solutions more difficult to credit. But the expectation is that raising the bar of quality will raise prices and demand.”

Champagne also highlighted the importance of this area: “Southeast Asia has a very high potential for nature-based solutions and coastal restoration projects.” 

Ultimately, the expert community agrees that emissions trading is only one element of what is necessary to counter climate change. In a post on social media LinkedIn about voluntary markets, Lisa Sachs, Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, said activities financed through carbon markets, such as conservation, ecosystem restoration, and regenerative land use, are “essential.” But, she continued, “they deserve robust financing on their own terms: not as a way to justify ongoing pollution, and not through a patchwork of project developers, verifiers, standard-setters, brokers, traders, registries, and data platforms that each absorb capital, shape incentives, and extract value from the system – and collectively divert scarce financial and political capital away from the kinds of strategic, publicly guided financing frameworks we urgently need.”

Greenwashing Risk

Greenwashing of carbon credits is a serious problem in particular in voluntary markets, and anti-greenwashing groups are fighting back. 

Last month, EnergyAustralia settled a lawsuit brought by advocacy group Parents for Climate that claimed the company’s “Go Neutral” carbon offsetting product was misleading or deceptive. EnergyAustralia is the country’s third-largest domestic emitter and the largest participant in the government’s Climate Active carbon neutral certification scheme. As part of the settlement, it acknowledged Parents for Climate’s key factual argument – that “offsets do not prevent or undo the harms caused by burning fossil fuels.”

Despite the risks, renowned climate scientist and communicator Katherine Hayhoe says transparently and independently verified carbon credits can do “far more” than protect carbon. “Many represent a key way to transfer funds to low-income communities that are often most at risk from climate impacts and lack the resources to protect the nature that sustains them,” she wrote on LinkedIn.

“If energy and cost-effective direct air capture can be developed at the same time that emission mitigation options are being implemented to their fullest degree, it can account for a fraction of emissions we can’t currently mitigate – and we know that ‘every bit of warming counts’.”

The post New Global Carbon Credit Standards Promise More Credibility. Will They Work? appeared first on Earth.Org.

At November’s COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil, gender will be a major focus topic. But why should action on climate change, which affects every person on the planet, require a specific action plan related to gender?

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“Of all of the big problems, the biggest is the assumption that climate change is not a gender issue,” Mwanahamisi Singano, Director of Policy, Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WeDo), told Earth.Org. “Women have direct dependency on nature, so the changing environment impacts them.” 

According to Singano, women often lack access to climate change information, finance, adaptive abilities and capacities, as well as alternative means of livelihood. “When they are impacted, women are not as mobile as men. When the rain doesn’t fall, the father can migrate to the city and find a day wage job, but women with a family can’t easily do that. They are the first ones to suffer a shortage of food from a changing environment and changing patterns,” she said. 

A review of the UN Sustainable Development Goals found that by 2050, climate change may push up to 158 million more women and girls into extreme poverty (US$2.15 per day), 16 million more than men and boys. At the same time, WeDo found that women are often only thought of as victims, even though they have a great deal to offer as solution providers. 

As the Women and Gender Constituency Co-focal Point, Singano is on the frontlines of the interaction between climate change and gender. At COP30, to be held this November in Belém, Brazil, gender will be one of the major topics on the agenda. In particular, a decision is expected at this year’s conference on a new Gender Action Plan.

Since 2011, and shortly before COP17, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has recognized the Women and Gender Group as an official interest group in the COP process. The roots of the Gender Action Plan stretch back to COP20, which took place in 2014 in Lima, Peru. There, the first Lima work program on gender, later known as the LWPG, was established, aiming “to advance gender balance and integrate gender considerations … so as to achieve gender responsive climate policy and action.” The LWPG was long-term and open-ended, rather than a concrete list of specific actions. 

At subsequent meetings, the plan was extended and enhanced with thematic days, but no agreement was achieved. Finally, at last year’s COP29, the parties decided to develop an entirely new Gender Action Plan, aiming to be adopted at COP30. “There will be a big decision coming out at COP in Belém on the Gender Action Plan,” explained Singano. “It has to translate the work program, create concrete milestones, say who has to do what, and what the party or secretariat has to do to advance gender.”

Priority areas for the new Gender Action Plan include capacity building, knowledge management and communication, gender balance, participation and women’s leadership, coherence, gender-responsive implementation and means of implementation, and monitoring and reporting. In particular, the plan is expected to address advancing access to finance and gender – including funding for the plan itself – and closing the gap in gender-specific climate data. 

However, a number of important milestones need to be reached before a decision can be made on the plan in Belém. 

The window for all of the parties – the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement – to make submissions related to the new gender action plan ended on March 31, 2025, and a summary of these submissions is expected to be published in mid May. Following this, the development of the new plan will begin in earnest at one of the intermediate negotiation sessions that happen in between COP events, known as the Subsidiary Body sessions. An important round of negotiations on the plan will take place at the Subsidiary Body session in June 2025 in Bonn, Germany, reviewing the design, structure and content of the plan. 

Gender is also an important aspect of another focus area for COP30 – the so-called “Just Transition”, the commitment introduced in 2023 to ensuring that no one is left behind or pushed behind in the transition to low-carbon and environmentally sustainable economies and societies. 

In line with the Just Transition approach, individual countries have included gender topics in their long-term low-emission development strategies; a recent analysis by the World Resources Institute showed that 25% of these strategies had a gender equity chapter described in detail. In a statement, Brazil’s Minister of Women Cida Goncalves said, “More than a result for COP30, Brasil’s real legacy at this summit will be the inclusion of a gender perspective and women’s rights as a foundation for addressing the climate crisis and promoting a just transition.” 

Solutions in these plans should include a gender lens in order to be effective, according to Singano. “A classical example is that most of the land is owned by men, and women can’t invest in land that is not theirs. So if we are going to subsidize irrigation equipment, it’s unlikely that women will take the opportunity. Or when we are doing training in the evening, you find that during these times women don’t come because they are busy doing household work.”

The role of women in creating solutions is highlighted in the climate solution awards, held annually by Women Engage for a Common Future and presented during the COP sessions. For example, in one case from Senegal, women had been generating income by smoking fish with mangrove charcoal. When the government banned mangrove harvesting, the women created a mangrove conservation that would keep the mangroves healthy while retaining their income generation activities. 

The role of culture and gender in climate change is also under consideration for the upcoming Gender Action Plan. In a seminar in April, Rosilena Lindo, Advisor and Former Secretary of Energy of the Government of Panama, referenced a local capacity building process with Indigenous women aiming to ensure they had access to renewable electricity as well as resources to start their own companies. However, “As they were used to not being the head of the family, this started disputes among families and communities.”

Lindo explained: “When you start to intervene in a community, you can’t do it by isolating one person in the family. You have to provide psychosocial support and new opportunities, depending on their traditions. The top down approaches always contribute to that loss of culture and traditional practices.”

Featured image: Karen Toro/Climate Visuals Countdown.

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Hot, wet, acidic, and dangerous – tropical peatlands are excruciating to study, but understanding them may hold the key to maximizing their potential as a global carbon sink.

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Peatlands cover 3.7 million square kilometres and are the most efficient carbon sink on the planet. What remains of near-natural peatland – about 3 million square kilometers – sequesters 0.37 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Meanwhile, damaged peatlands are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for almost 5% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. 

Despite their importance, tropical peatlands are often overlooked.

“Tropical peat is different from temperate peat,” Lullie Melling, Director of the Sarawak Tropical Peat Research Institute, explained to Earth.Org. She explained that peatlands have unique flora and fauna, with different tree species and forest types depending on the area. Tropical peat soil is also 100 times more acidic than temperate peat, she added.

Carbon per volume is relatively lower in tropical peat, but the carbon content per square kilometer can be higher because tropical peat reaches depths of 10 or even 20 meters (33-66 feet), compared to just 1-5 meters in temperate or boreal peat. As a result, tropical peatlands, accounting for a fraction of global peatland area, store total carbon somewhere between 50 and 88 gigatons – equivalent to a decade of the entire output of the United States. 

Peatlands also provide livelihoods for local communities and support biodiversity, with rare species such as the carnivorous pitcher plant thriving in these areas.

Tropical peat is now threatened by moves to drain it for perennial crops, as well as for oil palm plantations or pulp and paper trees. As Melling explained, “while people have been draining peat in Europe for 200-300 years, people have been draining peat [in Southeast Asia] for only 50-60 years.”

While some rehabilitation of tropical peatlands is possible, full restoration is impossible in the short or medium term. “You can never make a [damaged peatland] into a virgin again,” Melling said. 

Around two million hectares of peatland are unmanaged in Indonesia, Melling said. “People open up the land for logging, or for agriculture, or sago. They do land clearing without understanding that it’s peat soil,” she explained.

Because peat has a high organic matter content, peat soil, once drained and dried, is highly combustible compared to ordinary soil. When drained peat burns, it generates significant greenhouse gas emissions as well as a choking haze. 

For example, fires in Indonesian peat swamp forests in 2015 emitted nearly 16 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) in a single day, the equivalent of more than a thousand coal-fired power plants. In 1997, an ill-conceived one million hectare mega rice project resulted in the Kalimantan ecological disaster, one of the world’s biggest peat fires. This catastrophe created smog throughout Southeast Asia and generated emissions equivalent to somewhere between 13-40% of global annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.

However, the practical difficulties of navigating tropical peat forests means that they are not understood as well as their temperate counterparts. 

“Tropical peat is not as well researched. It’s very tough to do it,” said Melling. Teams from the Sarawak Tropical Peat Research Institute must walk on wet, porous, uneven peat surfaces, dodging tree roots and buttresses and wade through the flooded part of the forest to get to the study site. 

Heat exhaustion is common in temperatures above 40C in open-canopy peatland, as well as skin sores from the highly acidic peat. In addition, tropical peat is less dense, making it more dangerous to traverse. “In Europe you can see a cow walk on top of peat, but here it can’t even hold a human foot because the porosity is very high,” explained Melling. 

Tropical peatland is said to suffer from the “Cinderella syndrome” – unknown, and therefore unloved. While peat is one of the many topics of discussion at the global level, including COP climate conferences, little funding is available for research and rehabilitation of tropical peatlands. As a result, although tropical peat swamp forests have been intensively exploited due to the valuable timber species that grow there, there is still insufficient information on areas such as the long-term effects of logging on the regeneration phase of flora in peat swamp forests. 

The Sarawak Tropical Peat Research Institute aims to address this, with studies on topics like greenhouse gas flux measurement, peat decomposition, and the effect of nitrogen on greenhouse gas and microbial diversity.

Rehabilitation efforts now focus on maintaining the ongoing carbon sequestration of peat, protecting biodiversity and other peatland services and preventing peatland fire. One promising area for development is sago palm, which can provide an economic return as a starch crop without damaging tropical peat. Unlike crops like rice, which requires intensive drainage and soil modification, sago palms flourish in acidic, frequently-flooded, nutrient-poor habitats with only minimal intervention. 

Melling’s dream for peat is simple: “Protect it. Don’t open up any more peatland. Increase the productivity of the existing land. People should be aware of its importance, and try to have a commitment to protect this area.”

Featured image: Sigit Deni Sasmito/CIFOR.

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Climate advocates around the world lauded Pope Francis’ legacy in addressing climate change, protecting nature, and combating poverty, following his passing on Easter Monday.

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Tributes have been pouring in from around the world after the Vatican announced the passing of Pope Francis early on Monday.

The 266th pope, who died aged 88, was celebrated as “an unflinching global champion of climate action” and praised for his dedication in highlighting the threats to the planet and its most impoverished residents.

In a statement, the COP30 Presidency said that Pope Francis “led not only as an example of human dignity, respect, and acceptance, but as a climate activist, a defender of nature, forests, indigenous peoples, and traditional communities.” The statement also traced a direct line from the Pope’s second encyclical, Laudato si’ (“Praise Be to You”) to the adoption of the historic Paris Agreement in 2015. 

Published in 2015, the encyclical explains, “We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.” According to the late Pontiff, the correct international response to climate change was “an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.”

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will host the COP30 summit in November, said Francis had spoken about climate change with “simplicity”, “courage” and “empathy.”

In 2015, the Pope addressed the UN General Assembly, urging global action to protect the environment and end the suffering of forgotten populations. “The present time invites us to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society, so as to bear fruit in significant and positive historical events. We cannot permit ourselves to postpone ‘certain agendas’ for the future,” he told world leaders.

“I sat in the IUCN seat at the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 when Pope Francis impressed the absolute imperative of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and more ambitious environmental action upon world leaders,” UN Environment Programme’s Executive Director Inger Andersen recalled in a post on LinkedIn. She described it as “one of the most moving and powerful moments that I have experienced in the General Assembly Hall.” 

“Pope Francis … understood that protecting our common home is, at heart, a deeply moral mission and responsibility that belongs to every person,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, selected his papal designation in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, a patron saint of animals and ecology. The choice reflected his own reverence for nature. “Saint Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically,” the Pope said in Laudato Si’. “I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.”

In a statement on his website, former US Vice President Al Gore, whose film An Inconvenient Truth brought climate activism to millions, celebrated the Pope’s environmental efforts. “His humble leadership on the climate crisis sparked a moral movement that will continue to light the way forward for humanity. His advocacy of social and economic justice inspired billions around the world.”

Environmental organizations also spoke about Francis’s environmental record. A local branch of The Nature Conservancy quoted Pope Francis on its Facebook page, calling him “The Green Pope”, while Greenpeace New Zealand re-published an article highlighting the role of all types of religious organizations in protecting the environment. 

Jesuit universities, including Fordham University – the alma mater of US President and climate change denier Donald Trump – also referenced the late Pope’s influence on their own sustainability journeys. John Cecero, Vice President for Mission Integration and Ministry at Fordham, said on the university’s website that Pope Francis “prompted the creation of Fordham’s council to carry out the seven-year effort toward greater sustainability that Francis called on all Catholic universities to pursue.”

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.

You might also like: Faith in Action: How Religious Communities Can Lead the Fight Against Climate Change

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Following news reports of a potential conflict of interest for global communications firm Edelman, the role of communications at COP30 is creating controversy – putting the rising importance of strategic climate storytelling at odds with conventional approaches. 

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Global communications firm Edelman faced criticism last month for its work representing the Brazilian soy industry, as it is under consideration for the lead communications agency role at the upcoming COP30 climate summit. 

Edelman states on its website that it supports clients in advancing a just and equitable energy transition, operating under the guidance of its six Climate Principles. However, like most PR firms, it does not list all clients there. 

Public relations firms vary in their level of disclosure about what clients they serve. 170 agencies produce client disclosure reports following standards such as the Client Disclosure Reporting guideline. 

Michael Gold, founder of climate communications consultancy Word Clouds Consulting, said strategic communication is “an underrated tool for climate action.”

“COP30 represents a critical inflection point for climate communication. Rather than treating it as just another climate summit, communicators should position it as a measurable accountability moment for the Paris Agreement,” he said. 

However, industry specialists dispute how realistic it is to expect a global firm to avoid such clients, while highlighting the importance of professional expertise in the discipline. 

“The climate summit faces a dilemma: to deliver the global communications support necessary for an event of this magnitude, it becomes nearly impossible to completely exclude major PR firms with client portfolios that include fossil fuel interests,” Arun Sudhaman, a global PR industry analyst, told Earth.Org, adding that many of those firm may be “far less transparent” than Edelman about that kind of work. 

But beyond the task of delivering information on the COP30 event itself, communications experts agree that the more important issue is to leverage storytelling to create better public empowerment on climate action.

“What I wish is that even a percentage of the money that was being spent on PR for COP30 was being spent on public empowerment,” said Solitaire Townsend, a member of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Entertainment and Culture for Climate Action Committee. She argues that storytelling “is the secret key to unlock massive action everywhere.” 

“We know what we need to do on finance, policy, and technology – IPCC themselves have set out exactly what we need to do. What we’re missing is the story. We have the logic, but we need the magic,” Townsend told Earth.Org.

Article 12 of the UNFCCC enjoins the parties to cooperate in taking measures to enhance climate change public awareness, public participation and public access to information. Carbon pricing and carbon markets, anticipated to be central issues at COP30, face many challenges such as fundamental understanding, acceptance of the concept, and perceived fairness. 

According to Paul Mottram, an independent consultant focused on climate and author of Carbon Costs, these are all complex communications issues rather than technical problems; and, as such, professional communication is crucial to addressing them. 

“Multiple surveys have shown that climate change is now seen as a real threat, one people think will affect them,” he said. “But the best slogans, like ‘Just Stop Oil,’ don’t correspond to real solutions. That’s the critical problem that climate communications needs to solve.”

One opportunity could be to leverage rising consumption of independent media. 

Gold, who also hosts the Climate Swings podcast, explained that podcasters and other independent media creators have a “unique opportunity” to highlight human stories while also making high-level negotiations accessible to the public. 

The need for strategic communication on climate is likely to rise in the near future. According to the World PR Report 2024-2025 by industry body ICCO, sustainability and climate change were the most important social issues that clients were most likely to prioritize.

Featured image: Vugar Ibadov via Flickr.

You might also like: Framing a Crisis: The Evolution of Climate Communication and Storytelling

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There is an urgent need ahead of COP30 to bridge East and West, and women in climate are well-positioned to serve that role, according to the Pacific Women Climate Leaders Program, a new coalition launched in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

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A new initiative meant to advance women leadership in climate change in the Pacific Rim launched in Hong Kong on Tuesday. 

A collaboration between the California-China Climate Institute and the US government’s Women Green the Way (WGTW) initiative, the Pacific Women Climate Leaders Program empowers professionals from public and private sectors to take on greater roles in climate action, and also seeks to inspire young women to pursue careers in climate-related fields.

At the opening event, Asian women leaders in the climate and environmental space urged their counterparts to take action. “We women second guess ourselves. But climate action is urgent, and you should just charge in there,” said Debra Tan, Director and Head of Hong Kong-based think-tank China Water Risk.

One key focus of the new initiative will be to leverage climate progress already made in China and apply it overseas.

“Women play a big part in climate change because we tend to keep going. And China has the biggest projects in the world,” said Christine Loh, Chief Development Strategist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), adding that Hong Kong is the place to “bridge the knowledge and intellectual concepts to the rest of the world.”

Tan added, “China added 500 terawatt hours of clean power in one year. If we do that with the rest of ASEAN, we could get to net zero within a few years. There are things that work and we just need to make that an international solution for the rest of the developing world.”

A series of events will follow the launch, including climate dialogues in China and the US later this year, participation in New York Climate Week in September, and a dedicated side event at COP30, scheduled to take place this November in Belém, Brazil. 

Fan Dai, Founding Director of the California-China Climate Institute, pointed out that while national climate policy in the US has changed under the new Trump administration, there is still ample opportunity for climate action across the Pacific. “It’s not true that the US is not doing what it should be. It’s now happening at the subnational level and corporate level,” Dai said.

According to the organizer, Jazreel Cheng, the program’s activities will emphasize cross-border partnerships and inclusive strategies to advance equitable climate solutions. Women bear the brunt of climate change impact worldwide, and the Asia Pacific region has the largest population vulnerable to climate risks such as sea level rise. 

Women Green the Way was created by the US Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau in 2023. The inaugural forum was held in Hong Kong in 2023, convening more than 80 climate leaders who have continued their advocacy after the forum.

Based in Hong Kong, WGTW is a female-focused financial professionals network spanning the Indo-Pacific region whose goal is to explore strategies to tackle challenges in sustainable financial markets.

Featured image: Pacific Climate Dialogue (supplied).

You might also like: Gender and Climate Justice: Why We Need More Women in Leadership in Hong Kong

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