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The proliferation of Antarctic research stations – 77 in all – is increasing knowledge of the continent but also the human impacts. A new study has identified the best ways to limit these impacts. Shaun Brooks, Fieldwork Coordinator/Research Technician, CSIRO Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Here's Carbon Pulse's summary of stories from the last Saturday at COP28 in Dubai. Our tireless team of journalists have now published around 170 articles from this year's UN climate summit, providing our readers with unrivalled coverage. We reckon few, if any, other media outlets can boast more comprehensive reporting. Subscribe to CP Daily here or email admin@carbon-pulse to inquire about a subscription.

A standard for verifying biodiversity certificates, said to be the first of its kind, has been launched by certifier Plan Vivo with the addition of a new habitat metric.

Australia’s climate minister says summit must aim to keep 1.5C goal alive so Pacific countries are not ‘swallowed by the seas’

The Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has told nearly 200 countries at the Cop28 summit that the use of fossil fuels in energy production must end.

This came as the president of the Cop, Sultan Al Jaber, convened a majlis – a meeting in the traditional form of an elders’ conference in the United Arab Emirates – between all countries late on Sunday in an attempt to reach consensus on points of deadlock, including whether fossil fuels should be phased out or phased down.

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Sir Keir Starmer has popular plans to green the economy but electoral support is the crucial precondition for to make them a reality

Politicians know they can’t win an argument without making it. Yet unfortunately that is what Sir Keir Starmer seems to believe. In 2021, the party earmarked £28bn a year for a green industrial strategy to rid the economy of its carbon addiction and create a wave of “clean jobs”. This summer, however, the spending was postponed to the second half of the next parliament. Then it was reported that it would take a full term to ultimately redeem the pledge. Last week, because of self-imposed fiscal rules, Sir Keir suggested it might not happen. This was unsettling, especially as Labour is miles ahead in the polls. Yet more disappointment is in store. On Tuesday, according to reports, the Labour leader will extol the virtues of small technocratic policies rather than big transformative ones.

Sir Keir is mistaken if he thinks he can avoid a fight by not turning up. British governments are unusually free to overhaul the country’s economy, but electoral support is the crucial precondition for such changes. Green policies won’t happen by themselves. This week, Cop28 will reach a climax, spotlighting the climate emergency. Inaction is not an option: relying on volatile gas prices would cost Britain double that of achieving 2050 net zero targets. Sir Keir knows that Labour spending will be caricatured as a “tax bombshell” by the Tories. Ministers hope to overwhelm facts with emotional force. But Labour should take heart that Rishi Sunak’s U-turn on climate targets in September, coupled with a conspiracy-laden assault on the opposition, fell flat with voters.

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An Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) carbon market alliance was launched at a side event of COP28 in Dubai Sunday with the goal of scaling voluntary and compliance schemes in the region.

The Canadian environment ministry on Sunday released a draft protocol to generate offsets through reducing methane emissions from the digestive processes of beef cattle.

The world’s major multilateral development banks on Saturday launched a first common set of principles to track nature-finance positive as part of a move to scale up and mainstream activities that protect and restore nature and biodiversity.

Bulgaria’s environment minister expects one of the biggest coal power plants in the EU ETS to operate until 2030, despite the EU ruling that the plant exceeds pollution limits and therefore should be shuttered, he told Carbon Pulse on the sidelines of COP28.

Egypt’s "pan-African" voluntary carbon marketplace was formally launched at COP28, though the venture has raised 'conflict of interest' concerns as one wealthy family has apparent links to virtually every organisation involved in the country's nascent market.

Sultan Al Jaber urges nations to be flexible as talks reach impasse over whether to phase out or phase down fossil fuels

Ministers and negotiators must come to the vital final meetings of Cop28 without prepared statements, without rigid red lines, and be prepared to compromise, the president of the UN climate summit has said.

Sultan Al Jaber, whose position is now pivotal to the talks as they enter their final days, on Sunday convened a majlis of all countries, a meeting in the traditional form of an elders’ conference in the United Arab Emirates.

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Fossil fuel companies are spending millions of dollars on social media campaigns promoting carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a 'silver bullet' solution to climate change, despite the technology’s limitations and its potential to prolong fossil fuel use, according to a report.

The Malawi government has inked a deal to offer almost 3% of the African nation's land for the development of forest restoration carbon offset projects.

Owners of timberland, from public companies to family businesses, are looking to sell credits on the voluntary carbon market as a complementary activity to their existing timberland practices.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched on Sunday a new roadmap for feeding a growing population in a way that is aligned with meeting Paris Agreement temperature goals.

From next year Japan will become the first country to include full seabed carbon sequestration data in its UNFCCC greenhouse gas inventory, raising concerns among some observers this will open the door to offset more fossil fuel use.

The difference between potential revenues from selling off rainforest areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo to fossil fuel exploration or generating revenues from carbon sales is in the billions, according to a research paper seen by Carbon Pulse during COP28, underscoring the financial pressures forest-rich countries face when looking to protect natural assets. 

Carbon assets are emerging as a potential lever for international aid and development finance at COP28, suggest recent announcements and remarks by civil society actors at COP28.

A document establishing a framework for Pakistan’s involvement in the international carbon markets and laying the foundation for domestic activities is being held up in Cabinet due to a low level of awareness of the issues at the federal level, a representative from Pakistan has told Carbon Pulse.

Summit focuses on agriculture as critics say sustainable roadmap on food criticised does not go far enough

• China ‘would like to see agreement to substitute renewables for fossil fuels’

Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s climate envoy, made this call on Sunday morning:

“There is a real urgency of action to keep the planetary pain threshold of 1.5° in reach. Today is the day the presidency takes over primary responsibility for figuring out what the most ambitious version of an outcome package can be at this COP. The COP presidency has reiterated many times that they are here to facilitate an ambitious decision. This means there needs to be strong language on the phase out of fossil fuels in line with 1.5°C. At the same time, it is clear that least developed countries will not be able to go at the same speed as G20 economic powerhouses. They have to meet development needs but also have the opportunity now to leapfrog unsustainable decisions. This is why we need a package that combines energy transition and energy access. As the presidency takes us into “Majlis” (elder council formats), the question is: can we rise to the occasion and bring up the balance of the package to enable acceleration across the board. Or will we allow a small group of actors to tear down the chance of a historic decision that would give our businesses and our markets clarity about the long-term direction of travel.”

It’s great we finally have the global goal on adaptation text with adaptation targets included. But overall, the text is weak and doesn’t sufficiently address the aspiration for setting the required adaptation measures and indicators and mobilising adaptation financing. On the important question of setting these indicators to measure adaptation progress towards achieving the targets, it kicks the can down the road for another two years. Two years is too long and misses the opportunity to set the long-term finance goal (known as the New Collective Quantified Goal).

The adaptation goal is a playbook for how the world is going to adapt to the climate change that is already happening and will continue to happen, even if we stopped using fossil fuels today. Ending fossil fuels is about how to stop climate change – the adaptation goal is how we help people who are suffering from its impacts. We also remain far too low on funding. The goal for 2023 was to raise $300m for the adaptation fund, but at COP28 we’ve only seen $169m in pledges, a mere 56% of the intended amount. This is particularly galling considering that only last month, the UN’s environment programme published its adaptation gap report which calculates the difference between the world’s adaptation need and the amount of finance that has been committed. It found that this gap stands at around $387 billion. This is 10-18 times the actual finance flows to the countries and 50 per cent more than the previous estimate.”

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