The big three tropical rainforest nations – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – are in talks to form a strategic alliance to coordinate on their conservation, nicknamed an “Opec for rainforests”, the Guardian understands.The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, has been followed by a flurry of activity to avoid the destruction of the Amazon, which scientists have warned is dangerously close to tipping point after years of deforestation under its far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.During his first speech as president-elect, Lula pledged to fight for zero deforestation in the Amazon, while Colombia has proposed creating an Amazon bloc at Cop27, and Norway’s environment minister is moving to reinstate a billion-dollar fund to protect the rainforest after it was halted under Bolsonaro.

The alliance could see the rainforest countries make joint proposals on carbon markets and finance, a longtime sticking point at UN climate and biodiversity talks, as part of an effort to encourage developed countries to fund their conservation

Oscar Soria, campaign director of the activism site Avaaz, said the alliance could be an “Opec for rainforests”, akin to the oil producers’ cartel, which coordinates on the fossil fuel’s production levels and price. Before being elected, Lula said any alliance could be expanded to other rainforest countries, such as Peru and Cambodia.“This deal could be a promising step forward, as long as Indigenous peoples and local communities are fully consulted in the process and their rights and leadership respected,” Soria said.“These three ecosystems are critical for the ecological stability of the world, and the answer for these forests to thrive lies with the people that live in them.”

The world will only take meaningful action on the climate crisis once people in rich countries start dying in greater numbers from its effects, Gabon’s environment minister has said, while warning that broken promises on billions of dollars of adaptation finance have left a “sense of betrayal” before Cop27.

The UN has framed Cop27, which begins next week in Sharm el-Sheikh, as “the Africa climate conference”, and loss and damage finance for countries experiencing the worst consequences of global heating will be a key issue.

“It’s a horrible thing to say but until more people in developed nations are dying because of the climate crisis, it’s not going to change,”

Putin railed at the west for a litany of sins, ranging from destabilising Russia in the 17th century to allowing gender reassignment surgery.

Then, Putin carried much of Russia’s elite and society with him, on a wave of patriotic fervour boosted by state television propaganda. Outside Russia, while many were shocked at the naked land grab, others felt Putin had a point: after Iraq and Libya, how could the west lecture others on violating sovereignty? Many European politicians wanted to get back to business as usual with Russia as quickly as possible.

Since February, the Russian leader has become an international outcast, with even non-western leaders rebuking his blatant aggression in Ukraine, undermining his claims on Friday to speak for the whole non-western world.

Globally, sea levels are rising about 3.7 millimetres a year on average, much of which is from melting ice driven by climate change. In many places, land is also sinking due to groundwater pumping, oil and gas extraction and sediment compacted by heavy buildings – a process called land subsidence.

used radar from satellites to measure rates of subsidence within the world’s 48 most populous coastal cities between 2014 and 2020.Advertisement In 44 cities, the most rapidly subsiding areas were sinking faster than sea levels are rising. Cities in south and South-East Asia were some of the most rapidly subsiding cities, including Tianjin in China and Ahmedabad in India, which both had areas sinking faster than 20 millimetres a year.

In a case study of Ho Chi Minh City, researchers found that an additional 20 square kilometres would be below sea level and could be inundated if current rates of subsidence continued to 2030. About 880 square kilometres would be below sea level without subsidence. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, could see an additional 2 square kilometres inundated, representing a 16 per cent increase to inundation without subsidence.

We may well look back upon 2022 as that moment when the global simultaneity of climate calamity finally crossed an epistemic threshold, registering in the mind’s eye the most compelling image of the whole Earth, now in peril, since the marvelous “Blue Marble” photograph taken from space by the Apollo astronauts in 1972.

sense of an axial shift

Prompted by a citizens’ assembly on climate in the wake of the 2018 Yellow Jacket uprising, France is implementing a slew of ambitious measures from banning single-use plastic packaging for perishable products to banning short-haul flights where a train or bus trip of two and a half hours or less in an alternative

“The Earth may have left a ‘safe’ climate state beyond 1C global warming,” the researchers concluded, with the whole of human civilisation having developed in temperatures below this level. Passing one tipping point is often likely to help trigger others, producing cascades. But this is still being studied and was not included, meaning the analysis may present the minimum danger.

“We’re not saying that, because we’re probably going to hit some tipping points, everything is lost and it’s game over. Every fraction of a degree that we stop beyond 1.5C reduces the likelihood of hitting more tipping points.”

In this context of accelerating ecological breakdown and economic crises, the degrowth movement has steadily been gaining ground. Based on a robust body of scientific literature, degrowth proponents suggest that capitalism’s demand for unlimited growth is destroying the planet. Only degrowth policies can repair this by rapidly scaling back our material and energy use, slowing down production and transitioning to an economy focused around needs, care and the sharing of wealth.

In the 1990s, it was reintroduced as a “missile word” against the then-dominant ideology of sustainable development and green growth: an ideology that was being used by governments and international organisations to greenwash ineffective climate politics, attacks on public services and predatory lending.

Capitalism in the Anthropocene by Kohei Saito, a Japanese Marxist scholar, sold more than half a million copies and became a bestseller in Japan.

“We’re not kidding ourselves that the registry will overnight result in sort of a massive governance regime on fossil fuels,” she said. “But it sheds a light on where fossil fuel production is happening to investors and other actors to hold their governments to account.”

the worst flare-up between the two Central Asian countries in years.

Both former Soviet Union countries are now part of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) but they regularly have escalating tensions.

Around half their 970-kilometre (600-mile) border is still to be demarcated.

Vulnerable countries, despite their limited contribution to climate change and ambitious climate commitments, are and will continue to shoulder the bulk of this burden

Developed by organizations from the Global South, ACT2025’s new Call for Enhanced Implementation lays out where concrete action is needed in the lead-up to and at the conference.

When looking at countries’ commitments to reach net-zero emissions by around mid-century, temperature rise could be kept to around 1.9 degrees C. However, some major emitters’ 2030 targets are so weak that they don’t offer credible pathways to achieve their net-zero targets, indicating a major “credibility gap.”