Annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has dropped by 11%, according to government figures released “just days before the country hosts UN climate talks”, according to Agence France-Presse. The National Institute for Space Research (INPE), said that – based on satellite data – an area of rainforest “almost four times the size of Greater London” was destroyed between August 2024 and July 2025, the article notes. Nevertheless, this marks the lowest deforestation rate since 2014 and therefore “a boost for the country” before COP30, it adds. The Associated Press quotes the Brazilian environment ministry, which states that the drop in deforestation is due to “stronger environmental enforcement, expanded satellite monitoring and renewed coordination among federal agencies”. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to end all deforestation in the country by 2030, according to Reuters. The newswire notes that, since the beginning of his presidential term in 2023, destruction of the Amazon has already been “cut by half”. 

Despite this success, Mongabay says “another threat looms” in the Brazilian Amazon. “The nature of forest loss is changing, and fire now plays a far larger role”, the news outlet explains, pointing to selective logging, cumulative clearing and road expansion, combined with hotter, drier conditions, which are all “turning wide stretches of the Amazon into tinder”.

MORE ON COP30

• With the Trump administration “expected to stay away” from the UN climate summit, more than 100 American state and local leaders will attend the summit, according to Agence France-Presse.
• Yale Environment 360 examines the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), a new fund set to be announced by the Brazilian president Lula as “a centrepiece” of the COP30 conference.
• Semafor stresses the importance of climate-adaptation talks at COP30, noting that amid “less realistic” plans to move away from fossil fuels, “better prospects for a more productive dialogue will be around how to deal with the consequences”.

The UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved a record $3.3bn in funds for climate projects this year, Bloomberg reports. The multilateral fund’s board signed off on 22 new projects in developing countries, bringing its total portfolio up to 338 projects, worth $19.3bn in GCF funds, the article adds. Among the major recipients was the fund’s largest financial commitment to date, for a water desalination project in Jordan, according to Reuters. At a meeting in Songdo, South Korea, the fund’s board agreed on a combined grant and loan for the project totalling $295m, with the goal of attracting more money to the project from other sources, the newswire explains. Speaking to Agence France-Presse, GCF executive director Mafalda Duarte says the fund is now working faster thanks to bureaucratic reforms she has introduced. She also defends the practice of issuing loans as climate finance, something that developing countries often criticise, the newswire notes.

MORE ON FINANCE

• State Street Investment Management, “one of the world’s largest money managers”, has withdrawn from the flagship Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, in a move “symbolic of the retreat by money managers” from climate goals, the Financial Times reports.

The socially liberal and centrist party Democrats 66 (D66) has won a “narrow but decisive win” in a snap Netherlands general election, beating Geert Wilders’ hard-right Party for Freedom (PVV), the Brussels Signal reports. The news outlet notes that the likely outcome under the Dutch system is a left-leaning coalition government led by D66 leader Rob Jetten. Frans Timmermans, the former European “climate tsar” and leader of the Dutch alliance of Socialists and Greens, announced his resignation after his group lost five parliamentary seats, the article adds. Jetten is a former climate minister, who won after moving beyond such “traditional social liberal themes” and focusing on migration and housing instead, Reuters reports. An editorial in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf notes that issues on which D66 is normally “left-leaning”, including climate change, were “barely addressed during the campaign”. Bloomberg notes that during his time as climate minister, Jetten “spearheaded the largest climate investment package in Dutch history and devised a plan to end all imports of liquefied natural gas from Russia”. This contrasts with Wilders, whose departure from the ruling coalition triggered the snap election and who has consistently rejected climate action, the news outlet notes. 

Meanwhile, a Politico article considers how Timmermans’ time leading the EU’s effort to tackle climate change “sabotaged his attempt to defeat the far right” in the Netherlands. The news outlet says leaders on the right branded him a “green fanatic who would misspend taxpayer cash”.

Coverage of Hurricane Melissa continues as it leaves what the Washington Post calls a “trail of destruction in the Caribbean” and moves toward Bermuda. The newspaper says the storm, which is now a strong category 2 hurricane, was one of the longest-lasting category 5 storms on record. The Independent reports that the “confirmed death toll” so far has reached 49 in Jamaica and Haiti. At least 40% of the buildings and roads in the worst-hit areas of western Jamaica were severely damaged, according to Bloomberg analysis of satellite data. Several outlets, including Sky News and the Daily Mail, lead their coverage with the analysis by Imperial College London from earlier in the week, which found that Melissa was made four times more likely by climate change. E&E News reports that Jamaica has been assembling “an arsenal of financial tools to help after natural disasters”, but will still need international aid. UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper has told her fellow ministers that the hurricane has “underlined the importance” of the upcoming COP30 summit in Brazil, according to the Independent.

MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER

• Scientific bodies in China and Japan plan to collaborate on typhoon research “as warming temperatures threaten to make the powerful storms more destructive”, Bloomberg reports.
• Le Monde explores the climate disasters facing Sicily, in an article headlined with the quote: “Welcome to Europe’s next desert.”
• The National Drought Group has warned large parts of England are still experiencing a drought, which could continue into next year after one of the nation’s driest springs and warmest summer on record, according to BusinessGreen.
• The Economist has a data-driven article with the headline: “How many people are already being killed by climate change?”
• The Australian states of Queensland and the Northern Territory are on track for their warmest October on record, according to official forecasts reported by the Guardian.

In ongoing coverage of US and Chinese presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s meeting in South Korea on Thursday, the outcomes are “likely to only stabilise relations” in the short term, Bloomberg says. It notes that China’s “sweeping rare earth curbs” provided the country with a proven tool that it could use in response to US export controls, “something China has sought for years”. The New York Times notes that China has not said it will “retreat from earlier limits” on rare-earth controls and that it was not “immediately clear” what the announcement means for Europe. It adds: “European and American business[es]…say that only half their requests for export licenses for rare earth magnets are being approved.” 

Topics such as “overcapacity and [China’s] export-led growth model” were “absent” from the talks, Reuters says. State news agency Xinhua reports both sides agreed to “strengthen cooperation in…energy”. Trump said that China has agreed to “begin the process” of purchasing oil and gas from the US, Reuters reports. He also says that he would visit China in April and that Xi would “make a reciprocal visit to the US”, according to the Financial Times.

MORE ON CHINA

• Some 99% of pure electric vehicle (EV) users in China would be “willing” to buy another one in future, compared to 88% globally, according to a survey covered by Yicai.
• China should “enact legislation on carbon market revenues and carbon and energy taxes” to support its green transition, Pan Tao, China programme director at the Institute for Sustainable Communities, writes in a China Daily commentary.
• Securities Daily explores how recycling batteries, solar panels and wind turbines in China could support “resource security and green economic growth”.
• In the first nine months of 2025, low-carbon electricity trading volumes reached 234,800 gigawatt-hours, up 401% year-on-year, BJX News says. International Energy Net says 229m “green electricity certificates” were issued in September.
• CGTN: “China issues world’s first green ammonia fuel certificate.”

The EU plans to price CO2 from 2027 via a new emissions trading system for buildings and transport (“ETS 2”), which could become “a failure for climate protection in Germany”, experts warn, Der Spiegel reports. The risk comes from the European Commission’s weakened rules, including a CO2 price cap, the newspaper notes. Once a level between €60 and €65 per tonne is reached, extra allowances would be released, it explains. This becomes “essentially a politically acceptable maximum price,” says Michael Pahle from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “A CO2 price that’s too low sends the wrong signal,” comments Stefan Bolln, chairman of the energy consulting association GIH. Stuttgarter Zeitung reports that the increased CO2 price will add approximately €0.03 per litre to fuel prices. Meanwhile, Tagesspiegel reports that inflation in Germany fell to 2.3% in October, with fuel, electricity, and gas on average 0.9% cheaper than a year earlier. 

MORE ON GERMANY

• German tabloid Bild reports “electricity shortages” in Germany, noting that the country has to tap into its electricity reserves “more often” and that, since Germany phased out nuclear power, it has been importing more electricity from abroad when solar and wind power aren’t sufficient.
• Montel reports that the 1.4 gigawatts (GW) NeuConnect, the first UK-Germany interconnector, is set to launch in 2028. The project’s CEO called it “necessary for energy security”.

An article by International Energy Agency (IEA) executive director Fatih Birol in the Financial Times stresses the importance of batteries, but also the “worrying dependency” that the world has on China for this technology. He explains that demand for batteries is being driven by falling costs and demand for their use in electric vehicles and power-system storage. Nevertheless, Birol says “history has shown that dependence on a single supplier for a major fuel or technology brings huge risks, as Europe found with Russia and gas to its great cost in 2022”. He writes that there is a “mismatch” between countries’ need for batteries and their “readiness to ensure diversified supply chains”. Given the current concentration of the battery sector in China, Birol states that countries “need to co-operate to diversify all steps of the supply chain and boost innovation”, in order to establish the industry in more regions and build up local skills. “This challenge is broader than one industry – it is a matter of economic and national security,” he concludes.

MORE ENERGY COMMENT

• In an interview with the Financial Times, Sumant Sinha, founder of renewable energy company ReNew Energy, stresses the importance of India in global climate politics, noting that “decisions India makes over the next several years are going to be fundamental”.

Emily Wilkinson, director of the Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI) at ODI Global, and Avinash Persaud, special advisor to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank on climate change, co-author an article in Climate Home News about the need for “innovative policies on debt relief and investment” to help small-island nations that are exposed to climate disasters. While they note that the full extent of the damage brought by Hurricane Melissa remains unknown, it is expected to run into tens of billions of dollars. “Many call on rich nations to provide more grant support for the climate vulnerable. But grants are shrinking, so we must consider other ways to unlock more investment,” they write. Wilkinson and Persaud call for action from “major players who influence debt sustainability” and note that multilateral development banks (MDBs) are well placed to provide “low-cost, long-term and flexible” borrowing instruments, due to their strong credit ratings.

MORE COMMENT

• A Wall Street Journal editorial assesses the latest intervention from Bill Gates, who said this week that the “doomsday view” of climate change is wrong. The newspaper says that the billionaire is “sounding like our long-time contributor”, the climate-sceptic commentator Bjorn Lomborg.
• Gillian Tett, a Financial Times columnist and editorial board member, writes that “green activists” have not given enough attention to climate adaptation, focusing instead of mitigation – or cutting emissions.
• Guardian Australia climate correspondent Graham Readfearn pushes back against a presentation given to right-leaning Australian MPs by the “free market” thinktank Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), claiming that “heat deaths aren’t a thing”.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Josh Gabbatiss, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Daisy Dunne.

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