It is one of the world’s most vital carbon sinks, but this tropical rainforest is losing out when it comes to climate policy and funding
In October 2023, leaders, scientists and policymakers from three of the world’s great rainforest regions – the Amazon, the Congo, and the Borneo-Mekong basins – assembled in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. They were there to discuss one urgent question: how to save the planet’s last great tropical forests from accelerating destruction.
For those present, the question was existential. But to their dismay, almost no one noticed. “There was very little acknowledgment that this was happening, outside of the Congo basin region,” says Prof Simon Lewis, a lecturer at the University of Leeds and University College London, and co-chair of the Congo Basin Science Initiative (CBSI).
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/18/2025 - 06:00
11/18/2025 - 03:00
Lobbyists representing industry responsible for a quarter to a third of global emissions participated in key talks at the UN climate summit
More than 300 industrial agriculture lobbyists have participated at this year’s UN climate talks taking place in the Brazilian Amazon, where the industry is the leading cause of deforestation, a new investigation has found.
The number of lobbyists representing the interests of industrial cattle farming, commodity grains and pesticides is up 14% on last year’s summit in Baku – and larger than the delegation of the world’s 10th largest economy, Canada, which brought 220 delegates to Cop30 in Belém, according to the joint investigation by DeSmog and the Guardian.
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11/18/2025 - 01:37
The Nationals have a new leader in Gurmesh Singh, and Kellie Sloane could soon replace Liberal leader Mark Speakman. But the Coalition is fractured on net zero
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The NSW Nationals have a new leader, Gurmesh Singh, and the Liberals will almost certainly follow suit by early next week.
It’s desperation politics. Changing leaders will probably do nothing to stop the apparent death spiral the conservative side of politics has inflicted upon itself – in Canberra and now the states.
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11/18/2025 - 00:25
My advice to you if you want to avoid repeating 2025 is to pay far greater attention to the quality of your research sources
Sussan Ley, as your teacher I’m duty bound to give you an honest appraisal of your work.
I’ve just read your team research assignment on Australian energy and climate policy and I’m afraid to say that unless you and your other team members pull up your socks, you will be forced to repeat 2025.
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11/18/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 18 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00162-1
Critical energy minerals face persistent shortages. Deep-sea mining offers a potential supplement but raises environmental, technical, and governance concerns. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature and policy review, this comment analyzes the resource potential and commercialization challenges of deep-sea mining. We propose five priorities: building sustainable consensus, advancing green technologies, establishing commercialization safeguards, strengthening global monitoring, and enhancing the International Seabed Authority’s capacity to foster cooperative global governance.
11/17/2025 - 15:00
Scientists find tiny amounts can be a ‘fatal dose’ for marine life in the most comprehensive study of its kind
Ingesting less than three sugar cubes worth of plastic is enough to kill a puffin, a new study has found.
Scientists measured how much different kinds of plastic seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals have to ingest to have a 90% risk of it killing them, in the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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11/17/2025 - 09:00
Decision announced at Cop30 climate conference signposts risks for Australia’s reliance on fossil fuel exports, analysts say
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The Australian government has been urged to prepare for a shift away from thermal coal exports and accelerate green industries after one of its main international customers signed up to close all coal-fired power plants by 2040.
South Korea, Australia’s third-biggest market for coal burned to generate electricity, announced at the Cop30 climate conference in Brazil that it was joining the “Powering Past Coal Alliance”, a group of about 60 nations and 120 sub-national governments, businesses and organisations committed to phasing out the fossil fuel.
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11/17/2025 - 09:00
CEO of Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry calls Sussan Ley’s new policy ‘a bit of a plan not to have a plan’, echoing business scepticism
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Business and energy industry leaders have warned the Coalition that abandoning a net zero emissions target will not cut power bills, undermining the core promise of Sussan Ley’s signature new policy.
The chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), Andrew McKellar, dismissed the policy as a “bit of a plan not to have a plan”, as the Coalition’s traditional business allies distanced themselves from it.
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11/17/2025 - 08:38
More than half a million people gathered in Rizal Park in Manila on Sunday wearing white shirts and carrying signs reading 'transparency for a better democracy'. Concerns rose after the country's president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, published an internal audit into flood control projects in August that revealed significant irregularities. It showed that of almost $10bn in spending, thousands of projects were substandard, poorly documented or non-existent
‘There is so much corruption’: hundreds of thousands protest in Manila over missing flood funds
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11/17/2025 - 07:49
As the summit entered its second week, complex issues remain with anxiety growing over conference outcomes
Colombia will host a first international conference on the phase out of fossil fuels in April next year, according to advocates of more ambitious action to eliminate the main source of the gases that are heating the planet.
The South American country, which has demonstrated strong climate leadership in recent years, is among a group of 17 nations that have joined the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative which held a press conference on its plans at Cop30 on Monday.
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