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Early participants in the voluntary biodiversity credit market have welcomed the move by France and the UK to develop a global market framework, but stress the need for the government process to work with existing initiatives.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Tuesday announced it will host its second voluntary carbon markets (VCM) convening in July that may inform future guidance or interpretations related to the agency’s authority over the sector.

An agtech startup specialising in digital tools and technology-based strategies for sustainable farming in Eastern Europe has raised $5.5 million in a new funding round, the company announced on Tuesday.

A digital marketplace has launched a new service to seamlessly integrate carbon credits into a company’s products and services.

A US-based agtech firm has teamed up with an oil major to offer a “high-trust, low-cost” carbon measurement and verification system to help the farming sector improve its sustainability practices.

Indonesia’s deforestation rate fell 8.4% in 2021-22 and is now at its lowest levels in two decades, according to government data.

The UK’s construction industry should implement an internal carbon price and seek other emissions reduction measures instead of over-relying on offsetting to reach its climate action targets.

European carbon prices made laborious gains on Tuesday morning before falling back to stand only marginally higher at midday, as energy prices edged up as renewable generation was forecast to fall.

French energy major TotalEnergies and Japanese conglomerate Mitsui have teamed up with Malaysia's Petronas to develop a CCS supply chain in the Southeast Asian country, they announced Tuesday.

The governing body of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has approved the spending of a record $1.4 billion on accelerating efforts to combat biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution, while its ongoing meeting in Brasilia has also begun discussions on designing the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund.

The European Parliament’s environment committee (ENVI) rejected their amended text of the disputed nature restoration bill on Tuesday by the narrowest possible margin, passing the divisive legislation onto an uncertain development in the full assembly.

Small island countries press for guarantees as rising sea levels risk leaving their citizens stateless

• ‘It’s absolutely guaranteed’: the best and worst case scenarios for sea level rise

Small island nations would rather fight than flee, but rising sea levels have prompted apocalyptic legal discussions about whether a state is still a state if its land disappears below the waves.

The Pacific Islands Forum, which represents many of the most vulnerable countries, has invited international legal experts to consider this question and begun a diplomatic campaign to ensure that political statehood continues even after a nation’s physical fabric is submerged.

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Singaporean financial entities have signed MoUs to supply foundational data to the recently established Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU), they announced Tuesday.

Latest ‘heat dome’ event over Texas and Louisiana, plus much of Mexico, driven by human-cause climate change, scientists find

The record heatwave roiling parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mexico was made at least five times more likely due to human-caused climate change, scientists have found, marking the latest in a series of recent extreme “heat dome” events that have scorched various parts of the world.

A stubborn ridge of high pressure has settled over Mexico and a broad swath of the southern US over the past three weeks, pushing the heat index, a combination of temperature and humidity, to above 48C (120F) in some places.

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China, the world’s largest hydrogen producer and consumer, should map out more strategies to support the development of green hydrogen given that its current hydrogen production is largely grey, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The Australian government has opened up the next round of consultations on its proposed climate-related financial disclosure rules, which lays out the timeline of when the standards would be introduced and which entities it would apply to.

Recent negative media coverage has mainly affected sentiment and prices in the voluntary carbon market rather than the amount of credits retired, and does not seem to have led to an tangible increase in anonymous activity whereby corporates attempt to keep quiet about their market involvement.

Project developer and carbon credit intermediary South Pole has launched a new climate claim with an accompanying label, aiming to help companies cover their residual emissions with carbon credits beyond their own value chains to avoid allegations of greenwashing.

Data shows that cutting down tropical forests increased by 10% in 2022, despite promises made at COP26.

An area of primary rainforest the size of Switzerland was felled last year suggesting world leaders’ commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 is failing

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show.

From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries.

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