Leaders of world’s biggest polluters are no-shows as heads of state gather for UN climate summit
Today 10:30am
World leaders descending on the United Nations annual climate summit in Brazil on Thursday will not need to see much more than the view from their airplane window to sense the unfathomable stakes.
print this story
UN chief scolds nations for failing climate goals ahead of COP30 summit
Fri 7 Nov 2025
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tore into nations for their failure to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as Brazil hosted world leaders for a summit ahead of the COP30 climate conference in the rainforest city of Belem.
UNEP: New country climate plans ‘barely move needle’ on expected warming
Wed 5 Nov 2025
Executive director Inger Anderson made the comments as UNEP published its 16th annual assessment of the global “emissions gap”.
Brazil opens three weeks of COP30-linked climate events
Tue 4 Nov 2025
Brazil on Monday opens three weeks of events linked to the COP30 climate summit, hoping to showcase a world still determined to tackle global warming
Most countries fail to submit new climate pledges ahead of summit
29 Oct 2025
Only 64 countries have submitted new plans to cut carbon, the UN says, despite all being required to do so ahead of next month's COP30 summit.
UN report: Five charts showing how global deforestation is declining
28 Oct 2025
The amount of forest lost around the world has reduced by millions of hectares each year in recent decades, but countries are still off track to meet “important” deforestation targets.
Super-warming methane gas is being tackled too slowly, UN says ahead of COP30
24 Oct 2025
Almost 90% of satellite-detected methane leaks flagged to governments and oil and gas companies are not being acknowledged, the UN said Wednesday ahead of the COP30 climate talks next month.
Just 28% of countries have released nature pledges a year after UN deadline
23 Oct 2025
Only 28% of countries have met a UN call to submit new plans on addressing nature loss – a year after the original deadline.
UN pushes for worldwide disaster alerts as extreme weather ‘spirals’
22 Oct 2025
Climate-related hazards have killed more than 2 million people in 50 years, said the UN’s meteorological agency, 90 percent of them in developing countries.
New UN carbon market rules could reshape how investors value nature
20 Oct 2025
A debate over carbon permanence – how long CO2 must stay stored to count towards offsetting emissions – is reshaping global carbon markets and could determine whether nature remains investable.
