Bonn, Germany – The Bonn Climate Change Conference has ended with important work still to be done to progress efforts to phase-out fossil fuels, protect forests and deliver progress on climate and adaptation finance.

Jasper Inventor, Deputy Programme Director, Greenpeace International said: “Stalled talks around climate finance for developing countries and a repeated deadlock on mitigation played out in Bonn again. It’s this repeated playbook that took some of the shine off the emergence of a coalition of countries supporting a transition away from fossil fuels at a time where the climate and energy crisis is set to be supercharged by the El Niño.

“Still, Bonn laid some foundations for COP31: climate finance work is on the COP31 agenda, creating a political pathway for negotiations. The negotiating text on just transition will also form a basis for further negotiations, but no conclusions were reached on mitigation, showing that while this process is still moving, it is far away from political breakthroughs.

“To bridge the 1.5°C ambition gap, governments must now sustain and strengthen international cooperation in and outside the UNFCCC. Instead of systematically trying to renegotiate 1.5°C and eliminate science from key negotiating tracks, what’s required is a fair, fast and funded just transition and an end to forest destruction by 2030.”

Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific, Greenpeace Australia Pacific said: “An unrelenting war on climate science took place in Bonn as fossil fuel producing nations attempted to erode the 1.5°C mandate, cutting into the negotiation tracks meant to guarantee the dignified survival of the most vulnerable to climate change. But we refuse to let these rooms become detached from the Pacific’s reality, where a breached 1.5°C will drown our history and displace our heritage, as saltwater bleeds into the Vanua (land) that has sustained us for generations.”

“This crisis requires more than diplomacy; it requires Pacific courage. The COP31 Presidency must take the helm, grounded in our deeply held values of guardianship and collective survival. True leadership demands the domestic, regional and global bravery to chart a course away from fossil fuels and with moral clarity, stop every new coal, oil, and gas project in its tracks.”

Emel Türker Alpay, Climate and Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace Türkiye said: “The COP31 presidency put electrification on the global agenda, showing it understands the scale of the challenge. But an electrification vision without a fossil fuel phase-out is incomplete and global leadership must be matched by action at home. COP31 can be historic if the electrification ambition is matched by clear commitments to make it real. For Türkiye that means a commitment to no new coal power plants, a coal exit date and a just transition away from fossil fuels that leaves no worker or community behind. Türkiye has the opportunity and the responsibility to make it happen.”

An Lambrechts, Biodiversity Policy Expert, Greenpeace International said: “We lose one football field of forests every 2 seconds and we heard many parties recognise the need to act fast and support Brazil’s forest roadmap initiative. It’s now time to shift from endorsement to ownership to effectively halt forest destruction by 2030. At COP31, a group of 2030 forest target champions must make sure the roadmap doesn’t get lost as yet another document that doesn’t connect ambition with action and an international system that works for forests and people.”

ENDS

Photo and Video from the conference available to download via the Greenpeace Media Library

Contacts:
Beyza Kural, Senior Communication Expert, Greenpeace Türkiye, +90 5336 417 123, beyza.kural@greenpeace.org

Kate O’Callaghan, Communications Manager, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, +61 4062 31892 kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace International Press Desk, +31 (0)20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org

This story was originally posted by Greenpeace Africa for World Environment Day.

For millions of rural women living alongside logging concessions, industrial agriculture and mining sites across Africa, urgency is a daily reality. The extra two hours walked to reach a water source that dried up last dry season. The harvest that failed again because the rains came three weeks late, or came all at once and drowned the fields. The forest that fed and healed a family for generations, gone within a single industrial concession cycle, and with it, the seeds, medicine, income, and knowledge of how to use them. The weight of absorbing every climate shock first, hardest, and alone is left to communities while they remain legally invisible on the land they have managed for centuries.

Women’s vulnerability is not an accident but by design 

Rural women are dealing with the consequences of decisions made by others, elsewhere. Vulnerability is manufactured through competition for natural resources in a system that extracts wealth from their forests and lands while leaving rural women with none of the benefits but all of the consequences.

When rain cycles delay, rivers run dry and harvests collapse, women and girls in rural areas who are highly dependent on local natural resources for their livelihood absorb the shock first and hardest. When logging concessions, oil and gas or mining operations move in without their consent, the forest and land they depend on disappear, taking their food, their medicine, their shelter and centuries of knowledge with them.

Women, youth and Indigenous People are the key to climate action

Let us be clear: climate change is not neutral. It’s also driven by industrial emitters of fossil fuels, agribusiness and commercial deforestation. Often, these are the same actors encroaching on community territories. Those who cause the damage must stop causing it, and they must repair what they have broken. As Central African countries seek to meet global demand for fossil fuels, timber, palm oil and other raw materials through industrial logging, large-scale agriculture and oil blocks concessions, the threats to the forests, and most vulnerable people (women, youth and Indigenous People) will only increase.

Rural women practise agroecology developed over generations,  protecting soils, selecting and preserving seeds with a rigour no industrial catalogue can match. They manage forests collectively, transmit ecological knowledge across generations, and adapt their farming systems to shifting conditions with remarkable creativity. They are the primary custodians of agrobiodiversity of the seed diversity, the medicinal plant knowledge, and the food systems that rural communities depend on. This is not folklore. It is a functioning climate adaptation infrastructure, built over centuries, that operates without subsidy, recognition, and more so without legal protection.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognises that agricultural practices incorporating indigenous and local knowledge can address the combined challenges of climate change, food security, and biodiversity conservation simultaneously. Despite being its most effective stewards, in Africa communities hold formal legal rights over less than 2% of forest land. When a concession moves in without consent, that system does not pause, it is destroyed. The women who maintain forest lands leave with nothing: no compensation, nor recognition, and a climate bill they did not create.

One of the most effective climate adaptation strategies available is securing women’s access to land and recognising their rights over seeds and forest resources. Every hectare that remains outside legal community control is a hectare exposed to concession, to enclosure, to the erasure of everything communities have built, maintained and protected.

The IPCC agrees that insecure land tenure reduces adaptive capacity, while land policies that recognise customary tenure directly strengthen community resilience to climate change.

Climate finance, forecasting and adaptation tools must be delivered to the last mile

Climate finance exists, but if climate funds are flowing through banks and institutions that communities cannot access without formal land titles, then it is just a slogan. Weather forecasting tools, digital agriculture applications, green funds, real resources have been mobilised. But do they reach the women of Niabibeté, Nkoelon, or Zoulabot, Cameroon? In most cases, no.

Alerts arrive on phones they do not own, in languages they do not read, in zones without reliable internet.

Designing adaptation tools without designing their delivery to the last mile is not adaptation. It is a theatre. And rural women cannot afford theatre.

Driving change from climate awareness to climate action means four concrete things:

• Polluters should stop polluting and start paying for loss and damage. Our governments should cease granting land, forestry and mining concessions in areas of high conservation value and where communities, women and Indigenous Peoples are claiming and exercising their ancestral land rights.
• Decision makers must support the initiatives led by Indigenous People and local communities to ensure sustainable development, at least at the local level, by ensuring that the funding and technologies developed and made available are directly accessible to them. Today, these funds flow almost exclusively through states and large institutions. The communities who need them most are the furthest from them.
• National laws must protect the land and forest rights of local communities and Indigenous Peoples, especially in areas targeted by large-scale investment. In Cameroon, ongoing land reform processes offer a real window. Civil society and the nation’s elected representatives must push hard to ensure these instruments protect communities.
• Policy makers must build solutions with rural women, youth, people with disabilities and Indigenous People, not for them. This will support women’s roles as guardians of food security and biodiversity, and deliver adaptation policies designed with their knowledge at the centre, not as a footnote.

It will take more than a generation to grow back the forests retreating today. The knowledge disappearing with them needs nurturing and renewing too. Climate action cannot wait for those who have already been waiting too long.

Action must include countering threats from predatory corporations, like the world’s largest meat company JBS, that are driving deforestation and climate destruction and setting their sights on massive expansion in Africa.

Demand the world’s largest meat empire JBS to reveal the true cost of their expansion.

Tell JBS: Release the files now

Send Email

Stella Tchoukep is Forest Campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, based in Cameroon.

Amsterdam, Netherlands – Plans by Swiss-Dutch offshore giant Allseas to operate machinery for deep sea mining firm The Metals Company under unilateral U.S. authorisation directly violate the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), according to a groundbreaking legal opinion released today.[1] Commissioned by Greenpeace Netherlands, the analysis establishes that UNCLOS provisions bind Allseas directly, making its actions an immediate breach of international law. The opinion also concludes that the Dutch government is legally bound to intervene against a corporate violation that is no longer a future threat, but an active reality.

A landmark legal opinion by Professor André Nollkaemper of the University of Amsterdam, commissioned by Greenpeace Netherlands, notes that the binding May 2026 Contract for Development Work and Commercial Production between Allseas and The Metals Company (TMC) includes activities prohibited under international law.[2] According to Nollkaemper the threat is “no longer a hypothetical prospect but a present and advancing fact.” Consequently, the obligation on the Dutch government to intervene “is already engaged,” as the agreement binds Allseas to an operation relying entirely on a “unilateral United States route”.

Sascha Landshoff, Campaigner, Greenpeace Netherlands said: “Allseas appears entirely prepared to join forces with the Trump administration to carve up our oceans for private profit. This means illegal corporate mining operating entirely outside of international oversight. The Netherlands is bound by strict international obligations and must act accordingly. The deep sea does not belong to Trump and Allseas. It belongs to us all.”

Under UNCLOS, the international seabed is protected from unilateral exploitation, granting sole regulatory jurisdiction to the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Professor Nollkaemper’s legal evaluation outlines explicit obligations to be followed by the Dutch state. For several years, Allseas—traditionally an offshore oil and gas operator — has been quietly positioning itself as the primary technological enabler of deep sea mining. In addition to being the largest strategic shareholder and investor in TMC, the offshore giant owns and operates the world’s only functional deep sea mining vessel, retrofitted specifically to extract mineral-rich polymetallic nodules from the abyssal ocean floor.

In response to the legal assessment, Greenpeace Netherlands, alongside five major environmental organisations, has dispatched an urgent letter to the Dutch government demanding immediate regulatory intervention to prevent corporate complicity in unregulated deep sea extraction. The coalition is also demanding that the Netherlands send an unmistakable signal that our global commons cannot be plundered by officially joining the growing alliance of more than 40 nations calling for an international moratorium or precautionary pause on deep sea mining at the ISA.

A recent European Parliament’s resolution, explicitly commands EU member states to respond with appropriate measures to any attempts to bypass the ISA and take direct action against non-compliant domestic companies.[3]

The deep sea remains one of Earth’s final untouched wildernesses. Marine scientists warn that up to 90% of the species living in these extreme depths have yet to be discovered. The push for extraction comes amid stunning scientific breakthroughs, including the recent discovery that the very polymetallic nodules targeted by TMC and Allseas actually generate “dark oxygen” on the seafloor, and could be crucial to supporting unique deep sea life networks.

ENDS 

Notes:

[1] Legal opinion on the application of Article 137 UNCLOS in the Dutch legal order and the obligations of the Netherlands under Articles 137 and 139(1) UNCLOS in respect of participation of juridical persons in deep-seabed mining outside an ISA mandate

Legal analysis listed explicit obligations to be followed by the Dutch state: 

The Netherlands has a strict international obligation to take “reasonably appropriate measures” to ensure that Dutch companies, or entities under Dutch corporate control, do not participate in deep sea mining outside of established international frameworks.

The Dutch government is legally barred from recognizing, validating, or allowing the trade of any seabed minerals extracted via unilateral, non-ISA mining operations.

The State is under an obligation to implement national laws prohibiting  domestic companies operating without an ISA mandate. Crucially, Nollkaemper notes that until new legislation is ratified, the State is legally obligated to hold Allseas accountable for its conduct through existing legal means, potentially including civil courts.

[2] TMC and Allseas Sign Commercial Agreement for the First Offshore Nodule Recovery Operation

[3] Report on the role of ocean diplomacy for the competitiveness of EU fisheries and aquaculture

Contacts:

Sol Gosetti, Media Coordinator for the Stop Deep Sea Mining campaign, Greenpeace International, +34 633 029 407, sol.gosetti@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace International Press Desk, +31 (0) 20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org

It’s official: an El Niño has been confirmed and with it, expectations of another record hot-year – most likely in 2027 – and bringing with it the anticipation of extreme weather impacts and disruptions to global food production.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has said there is a chance a “very strong” El Niño could form – the first since 2016, adding to growing concerns for the impacts the natural weather phenomenon might cause on an already warmer planet.

After the past 11 years have been the world’s warmest on record due to climate change, this year’s El Niño could become one of the strongest ever recorded and temporarily push the average global temperature above the 1.5°C limit adopted in the Paris Agreement.

The confirmation of an El Niño came as scientists declared in the annual Indicators of Global Climate Change that our climate is heating at an all-time high of around 0.27°C per decade, driven primarily by record-high greenhouse gas levels, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels.

They added, in a report presented at the 2026 Bonn Climate Change Conference, that there are around three years remaining of the 1.5°C carbon budget and the 1.5°C temperature threshold could be exceeded on a longer-term basis by 2030 as the Earth is getting hotter, faster.

This means that in the short-term an El Niño will likely lead to another spike in global temperatures and on a longer-term basis, human-induced global warming is worsening and progressively destabilising our Earth systems. That’s the bad news.

Climate policies and renewable energy could reduce global heating

But there is good news – and bear with me because it is technical: while describing a new set of global emission scenarios, academics recently decided their worst-case scenario of global heating is now considered ‘implausible’.

In fact, emissions in the new high scenario are lower than the previous high scenarios, effectively retiring the scenario in which global temperatures could rise by about 4.5°C by the end of the century. This change is thanks to pro-climate policy choices from governments and the massive expansion in renewable energy since the Paris Agreement was reached in 2015. 

Instead of welcoming this news, however, the world’s chief climate denialist, US President Donald Trump, argued the scientists had been WRONG! WRONG! WRONG. This is not the first time Trump has misrepresented climate science, but it was nevertheless picked up by conservative media outlets and used to undermine climate science.

Other media, however, conducted a fact-check and exposed Trump’s mischaracterisation of the data because it’s important to understand this worst-case scenario was never the only projected pathway. 

Scientists have actually been using a range of scenarios in models to understand what might happen to our climate in the future – based mainly on how much greenhouse gases are emitted from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

So ‘retiring’ the worst-case scenario was good news and confirmed that the clean energy transition is leading to lower projected global greenhouse gas emissions and a reduction in the projected temperature increase. But it also came with a warning: the most optimistic scenario for the 21st Century was also ‘retired’ and we cannot rule out extreme warming.

Positive political signals starting to emerge

The UNEP warned last year we are still headed for average warming of 2.3 to 2.5°C by 2100 and the latest round of government climate action plans (NDCs) submitted for the COP30 UN climate talks in Brazil last year failed to bridge the 1.5°C ambition gap. 

These NDCs combined would only lead to a 12% cut in global GHG emissions by 2035, woefully short of the 60% global reduction needed, compared to 2019 levels. 

After COP30 failed to agree on a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels despite wide support, 57 countries met in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April 2026 to explicitly discuss how to end fossil fuel usage, signalling a clear political shift and hopes of further change. 

It’s a shift that’s been given a strong impetus by the global energy supply shock sparked by the war on Iran, which is inadvertently “supercharging” the world’s renewables boom.

Swifter action is needed, however, as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said global temperatures are set to stay at or near record levels in the next five years, while May 2026  became the second warmest on record according to Copernicus Climate Change Service. 

The impacts of an El Niño: extreme weather and agricultural risks

While climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe, the development of the El Niño can further destabilise an already volatile atmospheric system.

An El Niño often leads to increased rainfall in parts of southern South America, the southern US, parts of the Horn of Africa and central Asia, but drier conditions over Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Indonesia and parts of southern Asia.

Although an El Niño is notoriously complex, in the words of UN Secretary-General Guterres, it can pour fuel on the fire of a warming world and lead to severe and unpredictable weather.

The onset of drought during the El Niño is another risk, impacting agriculture and raising concerns of failed rains, dying crops and rising food prices. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns of risks in the Sahel, Southern Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, in addition to agricultural drought risk across South and Southeast Asia. 

Ocean warming and an Earth energy imbalance

NOAA’s declaration of an El Niño came after the UN’s third World Ocean Assessment (WOA) –  found that our ocean is also under mounting stress from overexploitation, pollution and the accelerating impacts of climate change.

The WOA reports that the ocean has already absorbed over 90% of the excess heat and 30% of the carbon dioxide released by the burning of fossil fuels. Alarmingly, however, about 16% of the total increase in ocean heat content since 1955 has occurred since 2018 as surplus heat continues to get stored in the ocean.

Ultimately, the WOA report suggests global heating is worsening as that and other data start to raise concerns about whether climate change is potentially accelerating – an issue discussed at the UN talks in Bonn at the presentation of the Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC). 

The data presented about the Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) – which measures how fast heat is accumulating in the climate system – shows this imbalance has more than doubled in recent decades and is a key factor behind the unprecedented high rate of global warming.

If emission levels continue increasing, this imbalance is expected to become even more lopsided and average temperatures will continue rising.

IPCC next assessment cycle and need for science-informed action plans

The IGCC data gives us a timely insight into climatic changes as we wait for the next reporting cycle from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which will meet in October 2026 to decide when its 7th Assessment Report (AR7) will be finalised.

At the past five IPCC meetings, countries have been deadlocked over a timeline for this critical three-part assessment report. It’s a deceptively important decision that will determine whether the AR7 will be finished by mid-2028 to inform the second Global Stocktake (GST2) of climate action.

It’s absolutely vital that the next round of government climate targets are informed by the latest IPCC reports. Any delay to the AR7 timeline would be like postponing a critical diagnosis. As our climate’s stability rapidly deteriorates, the treatment becomes harder and more expensive.

At the first global stocktake, at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, the world agreed to transition away from fossil fuels and to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. These momentous decisions are now the central element in our efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

But government action is still dangerously misaligned with the urgency required, threatening the existence of climate vulnerable states such as those in the Pacific and exposing millions around the world to the harms of escalating climate impacts. 

In Bonn and elsewhere, we’ve also witnessed attempts to undermine the scientific basis of action. This is despite the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion and a subsequent UN resolution calling on governments to align their policies with their legal obligations to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Speaking after Greenpeace Australia Pacific published a report outlining a Pacific-led vision for the just transition away from fossil fuels, Tina Stege, Climate Envoy for the Republic of the Marshall Islands, said at a press conference in Bonn: “Despite legal and scientific proof, 1.5°C is being questioned and science is under attack.” She added that “suggestions that we can adapt to 3°C are tantamount to declaring the Pacific a sacrifice zone.”

It’s a reality check we need to hear, especially as we witness escalating temperatures and now a looming El Niño as our climate edges closer to a 1.5°C exceedance. What matters now is what we do today and tomorrow because no level of warming is safe.

It’s mission critical that we defend the emerging political momentum for a just transition and forest protection to give us the best chance of limiting global heating. That involves the development of national fossil fuel phase out roadmaps as part of fair, fast and funded transition plans that protect people and build long-term climate and energy stability. 

While we cannot reverse decades of GHG emissions, prevent the formation of an El Niño or future warming, we can help ensure our children have a more stable climate in future. As we enter this supercharged moment and face its unpredictable impacts, we must act with the urgency required for both people and planet – our climate depends on it.

Aaron Gray-Block is a Climate Politics Communications Manager with Greenpeace International.