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Report co-written by Nicholas Stern says figure required to switch away from fossil fuels and cope with extreme weather impacts

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About $2tn (£1.75bn) will be needed each year by 2030 to help developing countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the effects of climate breakdown, new data suggests.

The cash will be needed so that poor countries can switch away from fossil fuels, invest in renewable energy and other low-carbon technology, and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, according to a report that was commissioned jointly by the UK and Egyptian governments, and presented at the Cop27 UN climate summit.

Prime minister tells summit Britain will honour commitments but makes no mention of reparations

Rishi Sunak has said it is “morally right” that Britain honours its climate change commitments in his speech at Cop27, but he made no mention of paying reparations after Boris Johnson said the country cannot afford to do so.

The prime minister made a very short appearance on the world stage on Monday, after making a very public U-turn on his attendance in Egypt – the same reversal that may have left him living in Johnson’s shadow, as he was forced to speak hours after his rival.

Britain had said its aim was to ‘keep 1.5C alive’. The prime minister seems to want it dead

Rishi Sunak is not interested in the climate emergency – and everyone knows it. Forced to make a flying visit to Cop27, Mr Sunak’s intransigence made him an outcast at the UN summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. He did sit down with France’s Emmanuel Macron, and the Italian far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, to discuss a subject – “illegal migration” – that Mr Sunak obviously cares about. But most world leaders were not going to make time for a prime minister who had blocked Britain’s new monarch from attending the summit and only came because he feared being upstaged by Boris Johnson. When Mr Sunak did turn up, it was with his predecessor’s plan and slogans. Embarrassingly, Mr Johnson did take centre stage at Cop27 – from the sidelines.

The prime minister’s track record reveals a politician who governs in the Tories’ narrow political interest rather than the national one. Slashing fuel and air duties as chancellor just days before the last Cop summit – hosted by the UK – showed his true colours. Pledges to curtail onshore wind and solar development during the Conservative leadership campaign signalled that personal ambition was more important than climate goals. In Cop26, countries signed up to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. Britain had wanted to “keep 1.5C alive”. Mr Sunak seems to want it dead.

Images from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt where world leaders are gathering to discuss the climate crisis

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The dramatic vanishing of polar ice sheets will cause catastrophic sea level rise that will threaten cities, according to a major new study

The climate crisis has pushed the planet’s stores of ice to a widespread collapse that was “unthinkable just a decade ago”, with Arctic sea ice certain to vanish in summers and ruinous sea level rise from melting glaciers now already in motion, a major new report has warned.

Even if planet-heating emissions are radically cut, the world’s vast ice sheets at the poles will continue to melt away for hundreds of years, causing up to three metres of sea level rise that will imperil coastal cities, the report states. The “terminal” loss of sea ice from the Arctic during summers could arrive within a decade and now cannot be avoided, it adds.

Secretions of Sonoran desert toad have long had hallucinogenic reputation but authorities want you to keep your tongue away

The US National Park Service is warning people to stop licking one of the largest toads in America, due to a toxin it secretes from its glands that can create a hallucinogenic experience.

The Sonoran desert toad, which emits a quick, “weak low-pitched toot”, can make someone sick if they touch it or lick it, NPS said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, told world leaders gathered at the climate conference in Egypt: 'We know what it is to remove slavery from our civilisation, to find a vaccine within two years for a pandemic, to put a man on the moon', but that when it came to the climate crisis, we needed to understand why we were not moving any further. Speaking at Cop27, she said  'the simple political' needed 'to make a definable difference ... seems still not to be capable of being produced'

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‘It seemed like the community was just left to do your best with what you have’, says one local

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Residents of Lithgow are using kettles to prepare water for bathing and restaurants with bottled gas are cooking warm meals for locals, as the regional New South Wales town waits up to a month for a broken gas pipeline to be repaired.

Locals in towns including Lithgow, Bathurst, Wallerawang and Oberon woke up on Thursday to find their homes had been cut off from natural gas – the result of a leak in the pipeline between Young and Lithgow. More than 20,000 people are affected.

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Al Gore made an impassioned call on Monday for leaders to 'choose life over death' by ending the use of fossil fuels that are stoking the climate crisis. The former US vice-president, a long-time environmental campaigner who was among the first to raise the alarm about climate change, told leaders at this year's United Nations climate summit in Egypt that they should turn away from destructive behaviour, insisting that 'we have other choices' in the form of renewable energy

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Blending lentils or vegetables into meat products could have huge benefits for the environment, animal welfare and human health

Our current level of meat consumption is unsustainable. Animal farming is a major driver of global heating and tropical deforestation. The meat industry keeps most animals in intensive, inhumane conditions. And red meat is linked to multiple health problems including heart disease and colorectal cancer.

The food industry has committed to change – chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King have signed up to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, to zero deforestation by 2030, and to multiple health targets too. But how can these giant companies, and indeed the whole food sector, possibly follow through when we consume 340bn kilos of meat a year globally, and demand is still rising? Do we just hope that consumers will go vegan or vegetarian of their own accord?

Joseph Poore researches agriculture and the environment at the University of Oxford. Hannah Ritchie also contributed to this piece

Government embarks on campaign to raise awareness over weather threat as England remains in drought

Severe flooding caused by La Niña is predicted for February despite England remaining in drought, the Met Office has said.

Two-thirds of people at risk of flooding were unaware of the situation, the government said on Monday, as it embarked on an awareness campaign. This average cost to a flooded household is £30,000, figures show.

António Guterres told delegates gathered at the start of the conference in Egypt that humanity was 'on a highway to climate hell with our foot – still – on the accelerator'. The UN secretary general's speech set an urgent tone as government representatives assembled for two weeks of talks on how to avert the worst of climate breakdown

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New president of Brazil expected to join initiative at Cop27 covering a third of world’s forests

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Rishi Sunak has pledged the UK’s continued support for conserving threatened forests around the world, through a funding programme covering a third of the world’s forests, at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt.

Brazil is expected to join the initiative, under the incoming president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and new funding from the public and private sector will take the spending for forest conservation above $20bn over the next five years. The moves form part of efforts to tackle emissions from land use, the second biggest driver of global heating, of which tropical deforestation is a significant component.

António Guterres tells leaders ‘global climate fight will be won or lost in this crucial decade – on our watch’

• Cop27 live – latest news updates

Humanity is on a “highway to climate hell”, the UN secretary general has warned, saying the fight for a liveable planet will be won or lost in this decade.

António Guterres told world leaders at the opening of the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt on Monday: “We are in the fight of our lives and we are losing … And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.

The former UK prime minister attended a New York Times event at the UN climate conference in Egypt on Monday, saying 'now is not the moment to go weak on net zero' after suggesting that the discussion over the war in Ukraine had distracted from the climate crisis and was having 'all sorts of bad effects'. 

Johnson said global leaders should not back away from promises made at the previous climate summit in Glasgow. He said he was attending the summit in a 'purely supportive role' before Rishi Sunak's appearance on Monday afternoon. Sunak had originally said he was unable to attend the event because of commitments to tackle the cost of living crisis

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Attendees say they are unable to visit Human Rights Watch and other sites needed during climate talks

• Cop27 live – latest news updates

Attendees at the Cop27 climate meeting have found that the conference internet connection blocks access to the global rights organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) as well as other key news websites needed for information during the talks.

HRW is due to lead a panel discussion at Cop27 along with Amnesty International, whose website is accessible on the conference wifi. The list of blocked sites also includes the blogging platform Medium, Egypt’s lone independent news outlet, Mada Masr, and the Qatari news outlet Al Jazeera.

Developing countries hope to make progress on this problem because we are already suffering the effects

Cop27 had not even officially opened, and already we delegates found ourselves staying up all night wrangling over important issues. In this case, it was loss and damage – and there may be many more late nights to come on that issue.

At the official start of the conference of the parties to the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), the conference must first of all achieve consensus on the agenda.

The Secret Negotiators are representatives of developing countries involved in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations, and who will be attending the Cop27 climate conference.

The 27th Cop on climate change is taking place over the next two weeks in the resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt

The US and China are showing the ‘can-do promethean’ spirit that can get us to net zero. We need to “put the electric throttle to the floor”.

Glasgow was a high point, a moment at which the ‘clouds of despair’ momentarily parted. But then Putin invaded Ukraine and the fight against climate change was one of the most important collateral damages.

Rich countries ‘not living up to obligations’, says Andrew Steer, in charge of $10bn environmental fund

Billionaires can not be expected to make up for climate finance gaps left by rich countries that fail to deliver on promises to the developing world, the head of the Bezos Earth Fund has said.

The Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, created a $10bn (£8.8m) grant to protect the Earth’s environment in 2020. Andrew Steer, the president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, oversees this alongside the billionaire, his partner Lauren Sanchez and the fund’s board.

Many farmers in south-western Bangladesh use floating rafts made from invasive water hyacinths to grow vegetables during the monsoon season – when dry land is scarce – to ensure food security in the low-lying country, which has recently been experiencing prolonged floods and waterlogging as a result of the changing climate