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Rich and poor countries concluded a trillion-dollar deal on the climate crisis in the early hours of Sunday morning, after marathon talks and days of bitter recriminations ended in what campaigners said was a 'betrayal'.

• Cop29 agrees $1.3tn climate finance deal but campaigners brand it a ‘betrayal’

• Yes, there is a lot of greenwashing, but Cop summits are our best chance of averting climate breakdown

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Away from the brutal main negotiations, there were important strides forward. The science can – and must – rise above politics

The resolutions reached at Cop29 on tackling the climate crisis, in the early hours of Sunday morning, are gravely disappointing but much better than nothing. And “nothing” was almost the result of this climate conference in Baku.

The deal falls a long way short of hopes at the start of the climate summit, and even further behind what the world urgently needs. But coming after negotiations that frequently teetered on the very edge of collapse, the result does keep climate talks alive despite Donald Trump’s second coming, and has laid the first ever international foundation, however weak, on which the world could finally construct a system of financing poor countries’ transition away from fossil fuels.

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Countries agree on how to create, trade and register credits to meet climate commitments

It was once among the most promising ways to funnel climate finance to vulnerable communities and nature conservation. The trading of carbon credits, each equal to a tonne of CO2 that has been reduced or removed from the atmosphere, was meant to target quick, cost-effective wins on climate and biodiversity. In 2022, demand soared as companies made environmental commitments using offsets, with the market surpassing $2bn (£1.6bn) while experiencing exponential growth. But the excitement did not last.

Two years later, many carbon markets organisations are clinging on for survival, with several firms losing millions of dollars a year and cutting jobs. Scandals about environmentally worthless credits, an FBI charge against a leading project developer for a $100m fraud, and a lack of clarity about where money from offsets went has caused their market value to plunge by more than half. Predictions that standing rainforests and other carbon-rich ecosystems would become multibillion-dollar assets have not yet come to pass.

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The broadcaster thinks if he fires up his farming fanbase they can shield him from his obligation to contribute his fair share to society

I read Andrew Michael Hurley’s new novel, Barrowbeck, in preparation for co-hosting Tales of the Weird, a timely event on the folk horror genre at the British Library earlier this month. I’m not the most informed commentator on this literary subset by any means, but I am, after Mark Gatiss, one of the most famous, and so I am often asked to pontificate about it. That’s the way the world works, I’m afraid. That’s why Hugh Dennis and David Baddiel are presenting a new show for Channel 4 about cycling across France, instead of the cyclist who cycled across France earlier this year and won the Tour de France cycling race, whoever he was.

Barrowbeck follows the fortunes of a Yorkshire hamlet, from an itinerant tribe making a pact with their gods 2,000 years ago, in which they promise to honour the land, to the near future of 2041. There, climate change has seen that same land flooded, some inhabitants holding on in hope as a cycle of life that stretched back millennia indisputably ends, as it will for all of us, sooner, it seems, rather than later. And these are the doomed lands our wealthiest farmers are taking to the streets to inherit (at half the inheritance tax anyone else would pay).

Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf next year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July. He is also a guest of all-female Fall karaoke act the Fallen Women, at the Lexington, London on 28 December

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Countries must curb production now and tackle plastic’s full life cycle, says Norwegian minister Anne Beathe Tvinnereim ahead of key UN talks this week

The world will be “unable to cope” with the sheer volume of plastic waste a decade from now unless countries agree to curbs on production, the co-chair of a coalition of key countries has warned ahead of crunch talks on curbing global plastic pollution.

Speaking before the final, critical round of UN talks on the first global treaty to end plastic waste, in Busan, South Korea, this week, Norway’s minister for international development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, acknowledged the split that had developed between plastic-producing countries and others. She represents more than 60 “high ambition” nations, led by Rwanda and Norway, who want plastic pollution tackled over its full life cycle. Crucially, this means clamping down heavily on production.

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A deal is salvaged at the UN summit as poorer nations are promised record funding for climate action.

Despite its imperfections the process of tackling the climate crisis will not be derailed, even in the face of US backtracking

It was never an indication of great things to come when the chief executive of Cop29, Elnur Soltanov, was filmed attempting to broker gas and oil deals for Azerbaijan in the slipstream of the past fortnight’s UN climate summit in Baku.

More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists have been operating in and around Cop29, outnumbering delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined. Many, including Greta Thunberg, now argue that the UN climate process has been entirely hijacked by corporate interests, reduced to a global stage for greenwash.

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Expectations were low for the latest UN climate summit. But climate law expert Jacqueline Peel – who was at the talks – explains what progress was made. Jacqueline Peel, Director, Melbourne Climate Futures, The University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Deep divisions remain after high-stakes talks end with agreement to help developing world shift to low-carbon economy

Rich and poor countries concluded a trillion-dollar deal on the climate crisis in the early hours of Sunday morning, after marathon talks and days of bitter recriminations ended in what campaigners said was a “betrayal”.

The developing world will receive at least $1.3tn (£1tn) a year in funds to help them shift to a low-carbon economy and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, by 2035.

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Wealthy countries will aim to shore up $300 billion per year of climate finance by 2035, as the core part of a global, economy-wide target for $1.3 trillion per year, under a contentious agreement struck early Sunday morning at the close of COP29.

Careful management including weed control and a burn laid the groundwork for floral abundance in Boorhaman reserve

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Thousands of native daisies, aromatic lilies, milkmaids, billy buttons and rare orchids have blossomed in a pocket of north-east Victorian grassland in one of the best wildflower displays in years.

Glen Johnson, an ecologist at Wild Research, said Boorhaman reserve, located north of Wangaratta, was “an amazingly diverse environment from the knees down”.

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Rich countries resist increasing their contributions to poor countries that are bearing the brunt of global heating

Talks on a new trillion-dollar global deal to tackle the climate crisis dragged on late into Saturday night, as rich and poor countries fought over how much cash was needed, and who should pay.

Rich countries want to offer only about $300bn out of the $1.3tn a year needed from their own coffers, with the rest to come from other sources including potential new taxes and private investors.

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‘Forever chemicals’ pose health threat to developing children and linked with preterm birth, shorter lactation

Higher usage of personal care products among pregnant or nursing women leads to higher levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in their blood and breast milk, new research shows, presenting a serious health threat to developing children.

The new study helps connect the dots among previous papers that have found concerning levels of PFAS in personal care products, umbilical cord blood, breast milk and shown health risks for developing children.

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Exclusive: News of changes to usually non-editable document ‘risks placing climate summit in jeopardy'

A Saudi Arabian delegate has been accused of directly making changes to an official Cop29 negotiating text, it can be revealed.

Cop presidencies usually circulate negotiating texts as non-editable PDF documents to all countries simultaneously, and they are then discussed. Giving one party editing access “risks placing this entire Cop in jeopardy”, one expert said.

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Article 6 negotiators from nearly 200 countries have reached a historic agreement on international carbon markets at COP29, in a decision that finally concludes the rules governing the trading and crediting of mitigation outcomes under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Targeted research must be launched urgently to save sea creatures and plant life, oceanography centre warns

Britain is facing a future of increasingly catastrophic marine heatwaves that could destroy shellfish colonies and fisheries and have devastating impacts on communities around the coast of the UK.

That is the stark conclusion of a new report by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), based in Southampton, which is pressing for the launch of a targeted research programme as a matter of urgency to investigate how sudden temperature rises in coastal seawater could affect marine habitats and seafood production in the UK.

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Among sweeping rightwing electoral victories across the globe, the ‘big loser of the elections has been climate’

An unprecedented year of elections around the world has underscored a sobering trend – in many countries the commitment to act on the climate crisis has either stalled or is eroding, even as disasters and record temperatures continue to mount.

So far 2024, called the “biggest election year in human history” by the United Nations with around half the world’s population heading to the polls, there have been major wins for Donald Trump, the US president-elect who calls the climate crisis “a big hoax”; the climate-skeptic right in European Union elections; and Vladimir Putin, who won another term and has endured sanctions to maintain Russia’s robust oil and gas exports.

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Fourth consecutive year that seals have bred at Orford Ness, where more than 130 pups were born last season

The first grey seal pup of the season has been born at a remote shingle spit that was once a cold war weapons-testing site.

The birth at Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast marks the fourth consecutive year of seals breeding there, which began in 2021 after a reduction in visitor access because of the Covid pandemic.

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The talks in Azerbaijan have seen nations at odds over how much money developed countries should provide to poorer ones

Negotiators have told our reporters on-the-ground that rich countries have agreed to up their offer on the crucial issue of climate finance. Read the full story from Adam Morton, Fiona Harvey and the rest of the team here.

Major rich countries at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan have agreed to lift a global financial offer to help developing nations tackle the climate crisis to $300bn a year, as ministers met through the night in a bid to salvage a deal.

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EU and nations including the UK, US and Australia indicate they will make the increase in exchange for changes to a draft text, sources say

Major rich countries at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan have agreed to lift a global financial offer to help developing nations tackle the climate crisis to $300bn a year, as ministers met through the night in a bid to salvage a deal.

The Guardian understands the Azeri hosts brokered a lengthy closed-door meeting with a small group of ministers and delegation heads, including China, the EU, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, the UK, US and Australia, on key areas of dispute on climate finance and the transition away from fossil fuels.

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