At the UN Climate Conference venue in Belém, young activist João Victor da Costa da Silva is trying to make his case heard by negotiators. The 16-year-old Da Silva has a specific request for the parties: the needs of young people with disabilities should be addressed through the lens of climate justice.
Binaifer Nowrojee, a human rights lawyer and the president of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), has lauded the Brazilian government “for significant steps taken to breathe life into the climate commitments.”
Least Developed Countries have hailed the debut call for proposals for the Loss and Damage Fund, which was launched on 11 November at the United Nations climate summit known as COP30 in Belem, Brazil.
Concerned scientists at the UN climate conference in Belém are appealing for collective action to combat climate change-related misinformation and disinformation.
COP30 Brazil, though shadowed by the absence of many world leaders, remains a pivotal milestone in the global fight against climate change, tasked with building on the Paris Agreement’s momentum. Yet the glaring lack of commitment, coupled with withdrawals from the accord, casts a grim shadow over the future. The planet continues to warm, and scientists warn that current targets may not prevent a catastrophic temperature spike. While the summit’s focus on implementation not just new promises—is a welcome shift, it’s clear: words alone won’t cool the Earth.
Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon region are calling on climate negotiators to base climate initiatives on the recognition of the land rights of affected Indigenous communities. From the COP30 venue in Belém, these leaders are demanding full participation in the design and implementation of proposed projects.
As the world prepares
for the next COP30 summit, a quieter battle is raging in courtrooms.
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are the fossil-fuel industry’s new favourite weapon, turning justice systems into instruments of intimidation.
A report by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) and Earth Insight paints a stark picture of how extractive industries, deforestation, and climate change are converging to endanger the world’s last intact tropical forests and the Indigenous Peoples who protect them.
Political courage is the biggest obstacle to limiting the rise in global average temperature to no more than 1.5°C, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
A decade has passed since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, and a United Nations synthesis report released ahead of COP30 in Belém shows that "Parties are bending their combined emission curve further downwards, but still not quickly enough."
From the 10th to the 21st of November 2025, the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP30) will be hosted in Belém, Brazil.
Closing the chapter on child marriages is still a distant ambition in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, and despite great strides at developing and passing legislation to eradicate it, existing and emerging drivers are still at play, making youngsters vulnerable to the practice.
From the streets of Bangkok to power corridors in Washington, the civil society space for dissent is fast shrinking. Authoritarian regimes are silencing opposition but indirectly fueling corruption and widening inequality, according to a leading global civil society alliance.
In 2017, 45-year-old Jabiru Muhammed could hardly contain his excitement when the village head of Batu in Jigawa State, northwestern Nigeria, announced that their community would work with officials from the National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW) to plant trees across a large stretch of land in the village.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica yesterday—the strongest hurricane to impact the island on record since 1851—with expectations of tens of thousands of people being displaced and devastating damage to infrastructure. The tropical storm, slightly downgraded but nevertheless devastating, made landfall in Cuba today as UNEP’s newly released
Adaptation Gap Report 2025: Running on Empty shows that the finance needed for developing countries to adapt to the climate crisis is falling far behind their needs.
I had hoped to attend this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP) in person, to stand alongside fellow Indigenous leaders and advocate for the rights of our communities.
We are in a climate emergency.
The Earth is already over 1.3 °C warmer than pre-industrial times.
2024 was the hottest year ever recorded.
The Gambia's lead negotiator on mitigation believes that COP30 presents a unique opportunity to rebalance global climate leadership.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN's body on climate science, has over the years, repeatedly and steadily reported on the science of global warming leading to the changing climate with visible impacts.
In recent years, international climate financing has declined sharply, leaving billions of people in developing nations increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters and unable to adapt effectively. With major cuts in foreign aid, these communities are expected to face the brunt of the climate crisis, while wealthier nations continue to reap economic benefits.
New research by Oxfam and the CARE Climate Justice Centre finds developing countries are now paying more back to wealthy nations for climate finance loans than they receive—for every USD 5 they receive, they are paying USD 7 back, and 65 percent of funding is delivered in the form of loans.