Desconfiança com créditos de carbono faz mercado preferir projetos de restauro florestal

 

Plantio de árvores em projeto de reflorestamento da empresa Mombak - Raimundo Pacco/Mombak/Divulgação 

 

Brazil

Amazonia

 

by Pedro Lovisi

• Multinacionais diminuem compensação por desmatamento evitado, modelo alvo de denúncias nos últimos anos
• Restauração exige investimentos maiores e tem atraído big techs

Algumas big techs, como Apple, Microsoft e Google, mudaram suas estratégias de compensação de carbono e agora privilegiam a compra de créditos de restauração de áreas desmatadas em detrimento de conservação de florestas.

Como essas empresas são algumas das maiores compradoras de crédito de carbono do mundo, o mercado de projetos florestais precisou se adaptar e o interesse por projetos de conservação diminuiu –inclusive no Brasil, onde há índices altos de desmatamento.

 

Um crédito de carbono equivale a uma tonelada de carbono que foi absorvida da atmosfera. E uma das formas de gerar esses créditos é plantar vegetação nativa em áreas desmatadas, já que árvores são capazes de absorver gás carbônico, responsável pelo aquecimento global.

Outra forma de gerar esses créditos é por meio de projetos que evitam o desmatamento em áreas ameaçadas por grileiros, madeireiros, produtores rurais e criadores de gado. Nesse caso, organizações calculam quanto sua presença na região conseguiu evitar de destruição da floresta.

Esse último modelo, conhecido pela sigla Redd+, foi por alguns anos o principal fornecedor de créditos de carbono florestais. Mas denúncias de cálculos supervalorizados e abusos sobre comunidades locais fizeram com que empresas compradoras de créditos diminuíssem seu apetite em compensar emissões com esses ativos. Investigações recentes envolveram, inclusive, gigantes de tecnologia, gestoras de ativos e petroleiras.

"Todo esse pessoal está sendo acusado de ter comprado crédito podre, então, se você é um comprador institucional de um banco ou de um fundo de pensão, vai pensar três vezes antes de entrar num negócio desse. O risco reputacional é muito grande", afirma Shigueo Watanabe Jr, pesquisador no Instituto ClimaInfo.

A busca por projetos de restauro, conhecidos pela sigla ARR, passa justamente por isso. Nos últimos meses, gigantes da tecnologia, como a Google, anunciaram investimentos bilionários em iniciativas na área.

"Antes as empresas faziam seu inventário e depois pensavam em como compensar, elas não se preocupavam muito sobre de onde vinha o crédito. Mas hoje há uma série de direcionamentos internacionais sobre como a empresa deve fazer seu inventário e quais os tipos de projetos são os mais íntegros para a compensação", afirma Ana Moeri, presidente do Ekos Brasil, instituto que conecta projetos a empresas.

 

Agora, está cada vez mais difícil encontrar novos projetos de Redd+ no mundo. A Verra, maior certificadora de créditos de carbono, tinha 27 projetos de ARR e 22 de Redd+ em desenvolvimento ou validação em 2022. Em 2023, foram 28 e 7; em 2024, 22 e 2 e, até abril de 2025, 7 e 2. Os dados foram coletados pela pesquisadora Fernanda Valente, da FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas).

E o Brasil segue esse movimento. Em julho, o Governo do Pará assinou a primeira concessão de restauração florestal para a iniciativa privada, criando uma demanda pública no mercado. O projeto, inicialmente, seria financiado pelo BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social), mas três meses depois ainda nenhum empréstimo saiu do papel.

O banco também anunciou uma parceria com a Petrobras para restaurar 50 mil hectares de áreas degradadas na amazônia e outra com a empresa Re.green para restaurar 15 mil hectares de florestas na amazônia e na mata atlântica.

O BNDES ainda organiza uma série de editais para restauração florestal em áreas públicas em parceria com o governo federal, o que vai movimentar bilhões de reais nos próximos anos —desde 2023, foram destinados R$ 900 milhões em recursos não reembolsáveis para projetos do tipo.

 

Além disso, uma startup formada por cinco multinacionais (entre elas, Suzano, Itaú e Vale) anunciou, em abril, investimentos de R$ 55 milhões para restaurar uma área no sul da Bahia.

Essa mudança de mercado tem obrigado algumas empresas a recalibrarem seus focos, ainda que ainda vejam importância nos projetos de conservação.

A Carbonext, por exemplo, uma das maiores desenvolvedoras do Brasil, tem nove projetos de Redd+ em seu portfólio, mas estuda inaugurar projetos de restauro. "A Carbonext não trata o ARR como um concorrente do Redd+ e, como tem financiamento no mercado, a gente também quer entrar nessa agenda", diz Jeronimo Roveda, diretor de relações institucionais da Carbonext.

Ele, porém, pontua que o Brasil desmatou 1,4 milhão de hectares em 2024 e, se seguir esse número, não conseguirá restaurar 12 milhões de hectares até 2030, como almejado pelo governo Lula.

"O ARR está sendo extremamente valorizado e trazendo para o mercado um grande ganho para o cenário ambiental, mas a gente precisa trazer de volta a discussão sobre conservação. Não adianta a gente querer plantar e continuar desmatando", diz Roveda .

Outra companhia que segue esse raciocínio é a Systemica, ligada ao BTG Pactual. A empresa é uma das principais desenvolvedoras de projetos Redd+ do país, mas começou no ano passado a procurar projetos de restauro na amazônia –ela, aliás, venceu a licitação do Pará organizada em março.

"Hoje há um grande interesse por projetos de restauração, mas eu acho que vai haver uma retomada de projetos de Redd+. E isso vai acontecer simplesmente por uma racionalidade econômica, já que é a solução de compensação mais barata", diz Munir Soares, CEO da Systemica.

 

A diferença de investimentos entre os dois modelos é enorme. Hoje, segundo quem acompanha o mercado, um projeto de conservação exige investimentos entre US$ 2 e US$ 10 por hectare, enquanto os de restauro variam entre US$ 7.000 e US$ 10 mil por hectare.

A diferença nos preços dos créditos, por outro lado, não seguem a mesma proporção: os ativos de conservação tendem a valer no máximo US$ 12, enquanto um de restauro varia entre US$ 30 e US$ 70, a depender do volume negociado.

"Os projetos de ARR têm mais semelhança com projetos de infraestrutura, porque não necessariamente nessas terras há comunidades morando, o que gera um capex [investimentos em obras] intensivo. Já os projetos de conservação mais valorizados estão ligados a comunidades tradicionais e a pequenos produtores, onde 70% do ganho fica com a comunidade", diz Andrea Resende, gerente de investimentos do Impact Earth, organização à frente do Fundo de Biodiversidade da Amazônia, com carteira de R$ 250 milhões.

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ENTENDA A SÉRIE

A série de reportagens Mercado de Carbono, publicada às vésperas da COP30 (conferência do clima das Nações Unidas, em Belém), retrata o funcionamento das compensações por emissões de gases de efeito estufa. O tema tem sido debatido entre países, empresas e organismos internacionais, em busca de regras em comum para os chamados mercados voluntário e regulado.

 

 

Prince William to attend Cop30 UN climate summit in Brazil. Prince of Wales’s decision welcomed as a means of drawing attention to the event and galvanising talks

 

Prince William will also present the Earthshot prize, a global environmental award, while he is in Brazil. Photograph: Chris Jackson/AFP/Getty Images

by Fiona Harvey Environment editor

 

 The Prince of Wales will attend the crunch Cop30 UN climate summit in Brazil next month, the Guardian has learned, but whether the prime minister will go is still to be decided.

Prince William will present the Earthshot prize, a global environmental award and attend the meeting of representatives of more than 190 governments in Belém.

Environmental experts welcomed the prince’s attendance. Solitaire Townsend, the co-founder of the Futerra consultancy, said it would lift what is likely to be a difficult summit, at which the world must agree fresh targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Is Prince William attending Cop a stunt? Yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea,” she said. “Cop has long been as much about so-called ‘optics’ as it is negotiations. Prince William’s announcement will likely encourage other leaders to commit, and will have the global media sitting up to attention.

“I suspect HRH knows very well that by showing up, he’ll drag millions of eyes to the event. In an era when climate impacts are growing, but media coverage dropping, anything that draws attention should be celebrated.”

King Charles has attended previous Cops, but will not be going to this one.

 

Gareth Redmond-King of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, an environmental thinktank, said: “All hands on deck – and any prominent, high-profile individual like the Prince of Wales, there helping make the case for the difficult job that needs doing, is almost certainly a good thing.

“[King Charles] was the Prince of Wales when he went to Cop26 [in Glasgow in 2021] and pitched in to help galvanise talks. I don’t think it necessarily needs both of them to go.”

The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has not yet said whether he will attend the summit, to which all world leaders are invited, with scores already confirmed. He was heavily criticised by leading environmental voices, including the former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and the former Irish president Mary Robinson, for appearing to waver on the decision late last month.

Ban said: “World leaders must be in Belém for Cop30. Attendance is not a courtesy, it is a test of leadership. This is the moment to lock in stronger national commitments and the finance to deliver them, especially for adaptation” to the effects of the climate crisis.

“The world is watching, and history will remember who showed up.”

 

Brazil

COP 30 - Belem do Para

Brazil - Amazonia

The before and after images showing glaciers vanishing before our eyes

 

by 

Mark PoyntingClimate and science reporter, BBC News

 

 

When Matthias Huss first visited Rhône Glacier in Switzerland 35 years ago, the ice was just a short walk from where his parents would park the car.

"When I first stepped onto the ice... there [was] a special feeling of eternity," says Matthias.

Today, the ice is half an hour from the same parking spot and the scene is very different.

"Every time I go back, I remember how it used to be," recalls Matthias, now director of Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS), "how the glacier looked when I was a child."

There are similar stories for many glaciers all over the planet, because these frozen rivers of ice are retreating - fast.

In 2024, glaciers outside the giant ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica lost 450 billion tonnes of ice, according to a recent World Meteorological Organization report.

That's equivalent to a block of ice 7km (4.3 miles) tall, 7km wide and 7km deep - enough water to fill 180 million Olympic swimming pools.

"Glaciers are melting everywhere in the world," says Prof Ben Marzeion of the Institute of Geography at the University of Bremen. "They are sitting in a climate that is very hostile to them now because of global warming."

Switzerland's glaciers have been particularly badly hit, losing a quarter of their ice in the last 10 years, measurements from GLAMOS revealed this week.

"It's really difficult to grasp the extent of this melt," explains Dr Huss.

But photos - from space and the ground - tell their own story.

Satellite images show how the Rhône Glacier has changed since 1990, when Dr Huss first visited. At the front of the glacier is a lake where there used to be ice.

Until recently, glaciologists in the Alps used to consider 2% of ice lost in a single year to be "extreme".

Then 2022 blew that idea out of the water, with nearly 6% of Switzerland's remaining ice lost in a single year.

That has been followed by significant losses in 2023, 2024 and now 2025 too.

Regine Hock, professor of glaciology at the University of Oslo, has been visiting the Alps since the 1970s.

The changes over her lifetime are "really stunning", she says, but "what we see now is really massive changes within a few years".

The Clariden Glacier, in north-eastern Switzerland, was roughly in balance until the late 20th Century - gaining about as much ice through snowfall as it lost to melting.

But this century, it's melted rapidly.

For many smaller glaciers, like the Pizol Glacier in the north-east Swiss Alps, it's been too much.

"This is one of the glaciers that I observed, and now it's completely gone," says Dr Huss. "It definitely makes me sad."

 

Photographs allow us to look even further back in time.

The Gries Glacier, in southern Switzerland near the Italian border, has retreated by about 2.2km (1.4 miles) in the past century. Where the end of the glacier once stood is now a large glacial lake.

In south-east Switzerland, the Pers Glacier once fed the larger Morteratsch Glacier, which flows down towards the valley. Now the two no longer meet.

 And the largest glacier in the Alps, the Great Aletsch, has receded by about 2.3km (1.4 miles) over the past 75 years. Where there was ice, there are now trees.

 

Glaciers have grown and shrunk naturally for millions of years, of course.

In the cold snaps of the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries - part of the Little Ice Age - glaciers regularly advanced.

During this time, many were considered cursed by the devil in Alpine folklore, their advances linked to spiritual forces as they threatened hamlets and farmland.

There are even tales of villagers calling on priests to talk to the spirits of glaciers and get them to move up the mountain.

Glaciers began their widespread retreat across the Alps in about 1850, though the timing varied from place to place.

That coincided with rising industrialisation, when burning of fossil fuels, particularly coal, began to heat up our atmosphere, but it's hard to disentangle natural and human causes that far back in time.

Where there is no real doubt is that the particularly rapid losses of the past 40 years or so are not natural.

 

Without humans warming the planet - by burning fossil fuels and releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) – glaciers would be expected to be roughly stable.

"We can only explain it if we take into account CO2 emissions," confirms Prof Marzeion.

What is even more sobering is that these large, flowing bodies of ice can take decades to fully adjust to the rapidly warming climate. That means that, even if global temperatures stabilised tomorrow, glaciers would continue to retreat.

"A large part of the future melt of the glaciers is already locked in," explains Prof Marzeion. "They are lagging climate change."

 

But all is not lost.

Half of the ice remaining across the world's mountain glaciers could be preserved if global warming is limited to 1.5C above "pre-industrial" levels of the late 1800s, according to research published this year in the journal Science.

Our current trajectory is leading us towards warming of about 2.7C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century – which would see three-quarters of ice lost eventually.

That extra water going into rivers and eventually the oceans means higher sea levels for coastal populations around the world.

But the loss of ice will be particularly acutely felt by mountain communities dependent on glaciers for fresh water.

Glaciers are a bit like giant reservoirs. They collect water as snowfall - which turns into ice - during cold, wet periods, and release it as meltwater during warm periods.

This meltwater helps to stabilise river flows during hot, dry summers - until the glacier disappears.

The loss of that water resource has knock-on effects for all those who rely on glaciers - for irrigation, drinking, hydropower and even shipping traffic.

Switzerland is not immune from those challenges, but the implications are much more profound for the high mountains of Asia, referred to by some as the Third Pole due to the volume of ice.

About 800 million people rely at least partly on meltwater from glaciers there, particularly for agriculture. That includes the upper Indus river basin, which serves parts of China, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

In regions with drier summers, meltwater from ice and snow can be the only significant source of water for months.

"That's where we see the biggest vulnerability," says Prof Hock.

So how do scientists feel when confronted by the future prospects of glaciers in a warming world?

"It's sad," says Prof Hock. "But at the same time, it's also empowering. If you decarbonise and reduce the [carbon] footprint, you can preserve glaciers.

"We have it in our hands."

 

Top image: Tschierva Glacier, Swiss Alps, in 1935 and 2022. Credit: swisstopo and VAW Glaciology, ETH Zurich.

Additional reporting by Dominic Bailey and Erwan Rivault.

 

Near a Garden Where Popes Go to Pray, Leo Plans to Speak on Climate. The address comes 10 years after his predecessor’s groundbreaking statement on global warming. His words will be watched for signals on the direction of the new papacy.

Pope Leo XIV feeding fish at Castel Gandolfo a few weeks ago.Credit...Pool photo by Filippo Monteforte

 

by  Max Bearak and Elisabetta Povoledo

 

 

There is a particular secluded garden at the Vatican’s summer residence, the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo, where past popes have gone to mull weighty issues and pray for God’s guidance amid crumbling Roman ruins, pruned hedges, a pond full of goldfish and a solitary statue of the Virgin Mary.

The garden and its nearby grounds have become a favored place for the newest pope, Leo XIV, to reflect on nature. And on Wednesday he will be at Castel Gandolfo to give his first address on climate change.

He has already spoken briefly, if forcefully, on the subject. “Grave inequalities and the greed that fuels them are spawning deforestation, pollution and the loss of biodiversity,” Leo said a few weeks ago. “Extreme natural phenomena caused by climate changes provoked by human activity are growing in intensity and frequency.”

But his remarks at a climate conference on Wednesday are expected to be his fullest yet on the subject. They will be closely watched, as they are intended to mark the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si, a groundbreaking papal document written by his predecessor, Francis, that essentially updated the Catholic Church’s teachings to specifically address climate change.

 

That document, known as an encyclical, urged Catholics to undergo a “profound interior conversion” to reconsider the effects of consumer culture on the health of the planet. It was released just months before the landmark Paris Agreement was reached, in which the world’s nations pledged to work toward limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages.

The 2015 encyclical was widely seen as a nudge toward negotiators in Paris. At the time, at least 10 world leaders cited Laudato Si in speeches at the United Nations climate gathering. Leo’s speech on Wednesday may signal whether he is simply inheriting Francis’ language on climate change, or putting his own spin on it.

Even if the Vatican doesn’t have much practical influence over global climate policies, nearly a fifth of the world’s population is Catholic and the combined area of the land it owns is larger than Texas.

Francis tried to wield that influence over people outside the church’s purview, and didn’t always succeed. In 2017, he urged President Trump not to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. (Mr. Trump did so anyway.) And in 2023, as global collaboration reached a post-pandemic nadir, Francis updated Laudato Si with a 13-page document that more or less lamented how his encyclical had gone unheeded.

Leo’s speech this week may show whether he is inheriting his predecessor’s language on climate, or taking a different path.Credit...Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

 Vatican-watchers have said Leo’s views on other matters of significance have been hard to pin down. But on climate change, they say, it is clear that he is moved by the topic, and particularly its disproportionate harm to poor and vulnerable people.

 

 

This summer, he greenlighted a plan to use solar power for all the Vatican’s energy needs. In September, he inaugurated a new 55-acre educational center in the gardens of Castel Gandolfo focused on sustainable farming, ecological stewardship and other teachings of Laudato Si.

In a homily in a garden there, he told an audience of the education center’s staff and a smattering of Vatican officials that “we must pray for the conversion of many people inside and outside the Church who still do not recognize the urgency of caring for our common home.” He said the world was seeing increasingly damaging natural disasters and climatic uncertainty “largely or partly caused by human excesses in our lifestyle, everything we do.”

 On a smaller scale, Leo’s usage of the secluded garden recognizes it as what he has described as a “natural cathedral” that other popes have used as a meditative refuge. In 2003 after spending a meditative day in the garden, John Paul II sent an emissary to President George W. Bush urging him not to invade Iraq. Ten years later, Benedict XVI pondered whether his declining health was reason enough to retire, according to the Rev. Manuel Dorantes, the management director of the Laudato Si Higher Education Center.

 

At this week’s conference near the palace, Leo will be joined by a who’s who of ardent supporters of sweeping policies aimed at addressing the primary driver of climate change, the ever-increasing burning of fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases that trap heat in the planet’s atmosphere.

Other speakers include Laurence Tubiana, who is often referred to as the architect of the Paris Agreement, Bill McKibben, an author and prominent climate activist, Katharine Hayhoe, a renowned climate scientist, and Marina Silva, Brazil’s firebrand minister of environment and climate change. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor and former California governor who has been outspoken on climate issues, is expected to attend as well.

Because Laudato Si is a set of teachings, and not a directive toward any specific action, its effects over the past decade are difficult to measure. But Ms. Hayhoe said that church can be where some of the most deep-seated changes in perspective happen, including her own.

A mural in Albano, Italy, depicted Leo’s predecessor cleaning the sky of pollution in 2019.Credit...Andrew Medichini/Associated Press

 

 “The motivation to act comes from the heart. I’m a scientist, and that’s true for me too,” she said. “The reason I became a climate scientist was from the heart — I was planning to become an astrophysicist. Being a Christian, I believe that if we take the Bible seriously we’d be at the front of the line, demanding action.”

 

 Lorna Gold, who leads the Laudato Si Movement, a Vatican-affiliated nonprofit that is organizing the conference, said that before Francis’ document, climate change was at best a “niche topic” in Catholic circles. But following Laudato Si, she said, concrete steps were taken by, for example, Ireland’s bishops, who pledged to divest their churches from fossil fuel interests and to convert 30 percent of all parish-owned land back to wilderness.

 

 

“That has really caught the imagination of people,” said Ms. Gold.

The Catholic Church’s rank and file of cardinals and bishops, particularly those in Asia, Latin America and Africa where the church is growing the fastest, have been as explicit as Francis and Leo on their desire for action on climate change.

In July, regional bishops’ conferences from those three continents issued a joint document titled “A call for climate justice and the common home: ecological conversion, transformation and resistance to false solutions.” Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão, Archbishop of Goa and Daman in India, wrote that the message of the statement was “a call to conscience in the face of a system that threatens to devour creation, as if the planet were just another commodity.”

Native forest logging must end in order to reach Labor’s emissions reduction target, expert says. End old growth logging

 

Part of Tasmania’s old growth forests. The Climate Change Authority’s report has found that ceasing old-growth logging is a necessary step to meet the lower end of Australia’s emissions targets. Photograph: Rob Blakers/The Guardian

Amazon Brazil

Amazon Brazil

by Lisa Cox Environment and climate correspondent

 

 Murray Watt says ‘it’s not the government’s intention to stop old growth logging’ as Greens and academics press for total halt

 

The Albanese government is being urged to end old growth logging “at a minimum” in order to meet a 2035 emissions reduction target recommended by the Climate Change Authority.

One of Australia’s most respected forest scientists, Prof David Lindenmayer, of the Australian National University, has also written to the authority questioning why it did not go further in its advice and recommend an end to all native forest logging.

The authority’s report, released last week, said ceasing old growth logging and halving re-clearing rates would be one of the steps required to meet even the lower end of a goal to cut emissions by 62% to 70% by 2035.

The report found that ending old growth logging, reducing other types of native forest harvesting and planting new forests “where it makes sense” could deliver about 6% of the necessary emissions reductions.

 

Last Friday, a day after the government announced it had accepted that target range, the environment minister, Murray Watt, told ABC radio in Tasmania – where logging of old growth forest continues – “it’s not the government’s intention to stop old growth logging altogether”.

The Greens forests spokesperson, the Tasmanian senator Nick McKim, said the authority’s advice was clear that “even Labor’s bottom-of-the-range target of 62%” could not be met unless old growth logging, at a minimum, ceased.

 

“Labor needs to announce a date to end old growth logging, and if they’re not going to do that they need to explain where they are going to find the emissions reduction to make up the shortfall,” McKim said.

Some states, such as NSW, already have restrictions on logging identified and mapped old growth forest, which is forest that has either not been logged or cleared previously or where evidence of past disturbance is negligible. But logging of other high conservation value native forest continues.

The Greens position is that all native forest logging should end and it has called on the government to use forthcoming reforms to Australia’s environment laws to ban the practice.

McKim said ending native logging and reining in land-clearing would be one of the cheapest, fastest and most effective ways the government could cut emissions and protect biodiversity.

“You could end native forest logging literally in months and it would have a massive emissions benefit,” he said.

“It would actually save taxpayers money because it’s a heavily subsidised industry and what you’ve got to do is just transition communities.”

McKim pointed to some states where this was already happening, such as NSW, where the Minns government has announced a major economic transition package for workers and communities affected by a moratorium on logging within its planned great koala national park.

In a letter to the CCA’s chair, Matt Kean, this week, Lindenmayer wrote “the key issue here is the end [of] all native forest logging”. He wrote that scientific analysis showed “properly protecting native forests in Australia would make a highly significant contribution to the nation meeting its GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions reduction targets”.

In Tasmania alone, Lindenmayer wrote that native forest logging caused the equivalent of 1.1m cars worth of emissions every year.

“It’s blindingly obvious that we have to stop native forest logging altogether and it’s one of the most powerful short-term emissions reduction steps we can take,” he told Guardian Australia.

 

“There is also a massive economic benefit that would come from stopping native forest logging because the public wouldn’t have to support the massive subsidies that prop up the industry.”

A government spokesperson said McKim was “misinterpreting the CCA’s role”, which they said was to recommend a target to government, “not on plans to get there”.

They pointed back to remarks by the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, to the ABC’s Insiders last Sunday, stating “there was one piece of advice the Climate Change Authority gave us”: the target of 62% to 70%.

“That’s the only recommendation before us, and we obviously decided to accept it,” Bowen said.

“So everything else the Climate Change Authority said doesn’t necessarily mean it’s your plan?” the host, David Speers, asked.

“Everything else – no. What they then did is in their report to me, quite rightly, is ran through some of the possibilities as to what achieving that might look like,” Bowen said.

In response to Lindenmayer’s concerns, the government spokesperson said the agriculture and land sector plan, one of six sector plans on Australia’s transition to net zero by 2050, “outlines support for a diverse landscape – balancing competing demands between carbon storage, nature repair and agriculture”.

A spokesperson for the Climate Change Authority said its analysis found “one way to achieve the 62% to 70% target involves ceasing clearing of old growth forests, halving re-clearing rates, and reducing native forest harvesting”.

“This is part of the Authority’s illustrative pathway for achieving the 62-70% target. There are other ways to achieve the same target, provided the equivalent level of abatement is made up across the economy,” it said.

How Singapore became obsessed by shade

The sweltering island nation has long prioritised adding greenery and shade at every corner. Could other cities do the same?

by  Sam Bloch

Heat is humanity's most lethal climate threat, taking more lives every year than floods, hurricanes and wildfires combined. And the risk is greatest in cities, which are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet because of the urban heat island effect.

As dangerous temperatures become more common, the leaders of cities around the globe, from Paris to Phoenix, are strategically planning to throw more shade.

But it's the sweltering island nation of Singapore which may well already have the best shade infrastructure of any city on Earth. People here have long had their own tricks to deal with the torrential rain and sticky heat.

Chief among them might be the covered sidewalks. The origin of this public shade is unclear. Although these "five-foot ways" which tunnel through the ground floors of arcaded shops and houses, resemble the porticoes of Bologna, they may be native to Southeast Asia. Stamford Raffles, the British colonial official considered to have founded Singapore in the early 19th Century, wrote them into the first town plan in 1822.

 

Raffles mandated clear, continuous and covered passages on both sides of every street to ensure efficient transit in inclement weather. Over time, his "verandah-ways" fell out of favour. They were revived in modern form by Lee Kuan Yew, the powerful prime minister who guided Singapore to independence in the 1960s.

Almost half of Singapore is covered in grasses, shrubs and broad-canopied trees, throwing cold water on the idea that cities can't spare room for nature as they grow

 

Singapore's famous Gardens by the Bay combines tropical flora with the iconic 'supertrees': artificial structures providing a vertical garden and shading (Credit: Getty Images)

Lee was something of a micromanager and had a particular interest in climate and comfort. He believed that humidity was stifling the country's economic productivity. Indoors, he transformed Singapore into what journalist Cherian George called the "air-conditioned nation". Outdoors, he was fanatic about shade. Lee was known to lecture subordinates about the poor design of footpaths and promenades, sometimes kneeling on the burning hot ground to prove a point.

In the 1960s and 1970s, as Lee's authoritarian government erected towering public housing estates, architects kept the ground floors of every building open to the air, preserving the areas as communal "void decks" where residents could gather to catch a breeze. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Singapore's housing and transportation agencies directed the construction of freestanding metal canopies over the sidewalks to ensure dry paths to the nearest bus or train.

 

Today, the authorities claim to have erected around 200km (124 miles) of covered walkways. Try to imagine if New York's ubiquitous construction scaffolds were permanent sidewalk architecture and you might have some idea of what the immensely unattractive though functional achievement looks like.

In the US, real estate developers are required to set their buildings back from the street to let in more light, but in Singapore, they must contribute to the shade network by carving 8-12ft (2.4-3.7m) of pedestrian overhangs out of the ground floors of their buildings. Research suggests the canopies have an effect similar to that of a clean and well-designed bus shelter. Just as a shelter can make a wait for the bus go by faster, so too do Singaporeans report that a stroll under the walkways feels 14% shorter than a stroll under the sun.

"You're in a tropical region where it's always super hot, and always very humid," says Yun Hye Hwang, a landscape architect and professor at the National University of Singapore. With daily high temperatures hovering around 31-33C (88-91F) year round, "we always need shade," she adds. 

When it comes to shade, almost everyone would prefer the leaves of a luscious canopy to a clunky aluminium roof, but trees can't always be the answer, says Lea Ruefenacht, a former researcher with Cooling Singapore, a government-affiliated urban heat initiative. But she notes that trees create cooling through shade and by releasing water into the air: in humid Singapore, more moisture can add to the misery. 

For comfort, Ruefenacht recommends a balance of both green and grey shade. In Singapore, the densest grey shade is found in the concrete understory of the skyscraper forest downtown. Real estate developers are required to furnish what the authorities consider "sufficient" shade on outdoor plazas, cooling at least 50% of seating areas between 9:00 and 16:00. The shade can come from any number of sources – trees, umbrellas, awnings – but in their design circulars, the authorities demonstrate that it can also be afforded by a nearby tower's knifing shadow.

A shopping area in a five-foot way in Little India, Singapore. These arcaded tunnel through the ground floors of the city's shops and houses (Credit: Alamy)

 This approach can be contrasted to that of New York City, where building shadows on outdoor spaces are discouraged, and the mere threat of their existence can scuttle a new development. In this cooler climate, developers are instructed to site their plazas on sun-facing south sides, to create winter warmth. (In fact, the plazas are not allowed to face north.)

Singapore has a different priority. Ideally, developers locate plazas on the east side of their buildings, so they can be cooled by afternoon shade. It is the rare place where urban shadows are encouraged as a public benefit.

"In the tropical regions of the world, part of the problem has always been that settlements inherit building codes from the temperate regions, and they don't necessarily have the means to review it and ask, 'does this work for us?'" says Kelvin Ang, the conservation director at Singapore's Urban Redevelopment Authority. "In Singapore, somehow there was a lot of awareness that building codes and planning codes had to encourage shade, because of the intensity of the sun."

 

Planners believe that if a public space is unshaded, no one will use it. Despite the potential effects on humidity, Prime Minister Lee demanded trees everywhere, believing that a "clean and green" Singapore would be attractive to foreign investors. Under his command, a newly formed parks and trees unit spruced up the major boulevards, embowering them under the broad canopies of Angsanas, rain trees, mahoganies and acacias. "Flowers are okay," Lee reportedly told the department head, "but give me shade first". 

In the 1970s, as he implemented congestion pricing and other schemes to push Singaporeans out of their cars and onto public transit, Lee turned his attention to the sidewalks, crosswalks and bus stops where a pounding Sun could have repelled potential new riders.

In Los Angeles, trees are the last piece of the street-design puzzle, blasted into concrete pits and stuffed haphazardly into sidewalks after every vault and metre has been trenched, every curb has been built, every gutter cut, and every driveway poured.

Many of Singapore's plazas and buildings have been designed to cast shadows to help keep pedestrians cooler (Credit: Alamy)

In Singapore, however, Lee ordered his land-use planners to consider them from the beginning. The overhead power lines that disfigure LA's sidewalks and make trees small and shrubby are rare. Most utilities are laid underground in vaults that run alongside the street trees and their roots. The green infrastructure is plotted by urban planners, engineered by public works agencies, and managed by a parks board whose budget increased tenfold under Lee's leadership.

The funding and coordination have proven to be the difference between a thriving urban forest and a bunch of sad city trees. Besides the roads, Lee's urban planners mandated greenery in private developments, regenerating a new garden city to compensate for the natural rainforest that was all but gone.

The Singaporean government had a lot of leverage. Through strong eminent-domain rules, it owned about 90% of the land, and building inspectors wouldn't clear a building for occupancy until they saw trees on the ground. Singapore's extensive public housing estates also came with grassy lawns, leafy courtyards and tree-lined paths that connected to parks and nature reserves. As a result, trees are just about everywhere in Singapore, in rich and poor neighbourhoods alike. 

"We did not differentiate between middle-class and working-class areas," Lee wrote in his memoirs, claiming it would have been "politically disastrous" for the People's Action Party. It makes Singapore distinct from American cities, where shade is a reliable indicator of economic inequality.

Thanks to Lee's smart planning policies, including developing thousands of acres of local parks and hugely ambitious land reclamation efforts, Singapore managed to do something remarkable: it became simultaneously denser and greener. The authorities claim the urban forest grew from 158,600 trees in 1974 to 1.4 million in 2014, even as the city added three million more people. Today, almost half the island is covered in grasses, shrubs and broad-canopied trees, throwing cold water on the idea that cities can't spare room for nature as they grow. 

"It's the biophysical environment that's a differentiating factor," says Daniel Burcham, a former researcher at the parks board, when I ask him to explain Singapore's success. "It's just easy to grow trees when it's summer every single day and you have over 2m [7ft] of rain every year."

 

But without political consensus, he adds, there would not have been room spared for those trees to grow. "This was a goal that they [Lee's government] were going to pursue, and it was a vision that they were all united around achieving."

Burcham now teaches arboriculture – the cultivation of trees and forests – at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, a semi-arid city where political leaders have a few years in office, not decades. "Some would characterise Lee Kuan Yew as a strongman, or semi-authoritarian figure, and to some extent, that's very true," says Burcham. "But this is one good thing that came from that system. He set out this goal and provided material resources and provided political support for people to achieve it."

But while it would require coherence across administrations, there's no reason in principle why democratically elected governments in tropical cities like Miami or Honolulu could not also sustain such a project.

So does all this shade protect Singaporeans? In the afternoon, the streets of Singapore's business district, plunged in the shadows of skyscrapers, are the coolest in the city. The effect ends when the sun goes down, and the buildings release the solar radiation they absorbed. At night, the green grounds of a public housing estate may offer the most relief, as the air is 1-2C (2-4F) cooler than the drafts whistling through a bustling commercial strip.

The well-established epidemiological link between air temperature and heat illness would indicate that these shadiest neighbourhoods are indeed Singapore's safest from heat. Shade infrastructure like trees and buildings won't be enough to overcome all the warming effects of climate change, but it will make a difference.

It's unlikely that local American governments can be as effective as Singapore's, an autocratic nation-state long ruled by a strongman with a personal interest in shade. Nor are most US cities fortunate enough to have Singapore's ideal climate for growing trees.

Nevertheless, Singapore shows what can be done with intentional government planning of shade. A cooler city for everyone is within reach. Let's not pretend it's impossible.

* This article is based on an extract from Sam Bloch's book, Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource, published in July 2025. 

 

 

Syria's worst drought in decades pushes millions to the brink

 

Sheep walk among the dried-out bed of the Orontes River in Jisr al-Shughour, northern Syria

by

Samantha Granville, Beirut

 

 

The wheat fields outside Seqalbia, near the Syrian city of Hama, should be golden and heavy with grain.

Instead, Maher Haddad's 40 dunums (10 acres) are dry and empty, barely yielding a third of their usual harvest.

"This year was disastrous due to drought," said the 46-year-old farmer, reflecting on the land that cost him more to sow than it gave back.

His fields delivered only 190kg (418 lbs) of wheat per dunum - far below the 400-500kg he relies on in a normal year.

"We haven't recovered what we spent on agriculture; we've lost money. I can't finance next year and I can't cover the cost of food and drink," Mr Haddad told the BBC.

With two teenage daughters to feed, he is now borrowing money from relatives to survive.

Mr Haddad's struggle is echoed across Syria, where the worst drought in 36 years has slashed wheat harvests by 40% and is pushing a country - where nearly 90% of the population already lives in poverty - to the brink of a wider food crisis.

A report from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates Syria will face a wheat shortfall of 2.73m tonnes this year, the equivalent of annual dietary needs for 16.25 million people.

Farmer Maher Haddad said the drought had been disastrous for his crops

Without more food aid or the ability to import wheat, Syria's hunger crisis is set to worsen dramatically, warned Piro Tomaso Perri, FAO's senior programme officer for Syria.

"Food insecurity could reach unprecedented levels by late 2025 into mid-2026," he said, noting that more than 14 million Syrians - six in 10 people - are already struggling to eat enough. Of those, 9.1 million face acute hunger, including 1.3 million in severe conditions, while 5.5 million risk sliding into crisis without urgent intervention.

The same report showed rainfall has dropped by nearly 70%, crippling 75% of Syria's rain-fed farmland.

"This is the difference between families being able to stay in their communities or being forced to migrate," Mr Perri said. "For urban households, it means rising bread prices. For rural families, it means the collapse of their livelihoods."

Farming families are already selling livestock to supplement lost incomes from wheat, reducing their number of daily meals, and there has been a rise in malnutrition rates among children and pregnant women.

Yet, the implications of the drought stretch far beyond the thousands of kilometres of barren farmlands.

Wheat is a staple crop in Syria. It is the main ingredient for bread and pasta - two food staples that should be low cost foods to families. So with the lack of wheat supply, the cost goes up.

For 39-year-old widow Sanaa Mahamid, affording bread has become a massive struggle.

With six children between the ages of nine and 20, she relies on the wages of two sons, but their salaries are not enough to cover the family's basic expenses.

"Sometimes we borrow money just to buy bread," she said.

Syria is relying more heavily on wheat imports, including shipments from Russia

Last year, a bag of bread cost Sanna 500 Syrian pounds ($4.1; £3; €3.5), but now it is 4,500 Syrian pounds. To feed her family, Sanaa needs two bags a day - an expense of 9,000 pounds, before accounting for any other food.

"This is too much. This is just bread, and we still need other things," she said. "If the price of bread rises again, this will be a big problem. The most important thing is bread."

The crisis is a challenge for interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, as his administration works to rebuild Syria in the aftermath of the 14-year conflict and the removal of former leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

International agencies, like the UN World Food Programme (WFP), are rushing to step in alongside the government to provide bread subsidies for those at risk of facing severe food insecurity.

But aid officials warn that subsidies are only a temporary fix, and that the long-term stability of Syria depends on whether farmers can stay on their land and sustain production.

"We're trying to keep people in the farming game," Marianne Ward, the WFP's country director for Syria, said. She has worked to give $8m (£6m; €6.9m) in direct payments to small farmers - about 150,000 people - who lost all of their crops.

"If you're not going to make money, you're going to leave the land. And then you're not going to have people who are going to be working in the agriculture sector which is essential for the economy," she said

But after more than a decade of war, Syria's agricultural sector was already battered by economic collapse, destroyed irrigation systems, and mined fields.

Dr Ali Aloush, the agriculture director for the Deir al-Zour region, Syria's breadbasket, said wheat fields needed to be irrigated four to six times per season, but that due to lack of rain, most farmers could not keep up.

"The farmer's primary concern is first securing water and water requires fuel. The fuel price skyrocketed. It reached to 11,000 to 12,000 Syrian pounds per litre," Dr Aloush said.

The high price of fuel and power cuts meant water pumps were out of reach, and many growers were already burdened with debt.

Dr Aloush says a priority for his department and the transitional government in Damascus is putting money into irrigation projects - like solar powered drips - that will make water more accessible to farmers.

But projects like that take time and money - luxuries wheat farmers do not currently have.

So for millions of Syrians across the country, there is only one thing to do in the coming months: pray for rain.

Additional reporting by Lana Antaki in Damascus