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The report argues that South Africa must elevate the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in its strategic planning, as the region is critical for global climate regulation, food security, and maritime safety. While South Africa is the only African state party to the Antarctic Treaty, its diplomatic engagement has been inconsistent. The document highlights rising risks from climate change, such as sea-level rise threatening African coasts, and geopolitical tensions, including Russia's seismic surveying and the blocking of Marine Protected Areas by China and Russia. It suggests South Africa leverage its non-claimant status and role as a logistical gateway to enhance its influence, while warning that its under-resourced navy may struggle with increasing search and rescue demands from growing Antarctic tourism and rerouted shipping traffic around the Cape of Good Hope.

The report outlines six key takeaways from participatory climate vulnerability assessments conducted in nearly 100 communities across Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe between 2024 and 2025. It emphasizes the need to integrate community knowledge with scientific data, involve local governments to institutionalize adaptation, and manage expectations during overlapping crises. The document argues that these assessments are foundational for locally led adaptation by linking local insights with climate projections to understand risks across diverse social groups and ecosystems.

The document evaluates South Africa's energy transition, arguing that while legal frameworks for renewable investment are expanding, they fail to guarantee structural socio-economic transformation. It identifies critical gaps in industrial policy, where localisation remains fragile due to inconsistent enforcement and import reliance, and in labour policy, where renewable energy jobs are often short-term and lack stability. The report concludes that a just transition requires integrating energy reform with industrial strategy, municipal governance, and labour market policies to avoid 'low-carbon poverty'.

The paper identifies a disconnect between Nairobi's sanitation policy rhetoric and its implementation, noting that a focus on sewerage development marginalizes other sanitation regimes and fails to address equity. Projections suggest that climate change will exacerbate these inequalities, leaving a significant portion of the population with poor sanitation services by 2030.

The report documents a surge in anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes, book bans, and restrictive legislation in Western countries, noting a convergence of extremist ideologies. It highlights how tech platforms exacerbate these harms through the rollback of protections, the overmoderation of LGBTQ+ content via AI and safety legislation, and the rise of coordinated harassment campaigns like 'transvestigation'.

Colombia's 2025 NDC shifts to an absolute emissions limit for 2035, targeting between 155 and 161 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. The plan emphasizes 'Peace with Nature' to reduce deforestation, a just transition away from fossil fuels including a roadmap by 2029, and urban decarbonization through electric mobility and black carbon reduction. However, the transition faces challenges from economic dependence on oil and coal exports and upcoming 2026 elections.

The document analyzes how the 2025 ICJ Advisory Opinion (AO) establishes a 'stringent due diligence' standard for States to prevent significant harm to the climate system. It argues that regulatory rollbacks, such as easing emission standards or removing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) requirements, may constitute internationally wrongful acts. The note provides specific legal excerpts from the AO and applies them to various categories of litigation, including challenges to diluted mitigation standards, weakened land-use protections, and procedural rollbacks. A detailed annex examines recent regulatory shifts in India—including thermal power emission norms, forest governance changes under the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act 2023, and EIA exemptions—as examples of conduct that may breach the ICJ's established standards.

The report inventories 130 support measures across six energy types in Indonesia: oil and gas, coal, electricity, renewable energy, biofuels, and electric vehicles (EVs). It details various mechanisms including direct financial transfers, tax exemptions, and price regulations. For the period FY 2021 to FY 2024, 27% of these measures were quantified using official government data, while 64% remained unquantified due to data limitations. The annex provides specific legislative references and nominal values in IDR and USD for each measure.

The report finds that while over 75% of NATO countries include climate change and nearly 70% include food security in their security strategies, these issues remain siloed. Most concrete actions focus on military emissions mitigation and direct adaptation rather than the indirect security implications of food and water insecurity. The author argues that climate-driven disasters create vulnerabilities that adversaries like Russia and China exploit through disinformation, weaponized migration, and food weaponization. The report recommends updating NATO's baseline resilience requirements and targeting investments toward "stability multipliers" that address the nexus of climate, food, and security both domestically and in the developing world.

The report finds that agricultural methane is a 'systemic blind spot' for major global investors. Despite significant financial exposure to high-emitting agrifood companies, most of the 25 investors analysed have no standalone methane policies or targets, often folding methane into broader CO2-equivalent frameworks. The analysis highlights that a small number of investors, including Vanguard, BlackRock, and Fidelity Investments, account for a disproportionate share of financed methane emissions. While some companies like Danone and Marfrig have set methane targets, others, such as Nestlé, have withdrawn from collaborative initiatives like the Dairy Methane Action Alliance. The report warns of increasing regulatory, transition, and reputational risks, particularly in the EU, and calls for investors to align with the Global Methane Pledge to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030.

The report assesses the state of asset management and pension systems across Africa, highlighting a general trend of conservative investment strategies, low retail participation, and uneven regulatory oversight. It identifies a strong prevalence of defined benefit and pay-as-you-go pension schemes, particularly in francophone and lusophone countries, while anglophone nations lean toward funded defined contribution models. Key challenges include low coverage for informal workers and women, limited ESG integration, and a heavy reliance on government securities. The document recommends shifting toward risk-based supervision, expanding micro-pension schemes, and developing national ESG taxonomies to deepen capital markets.

The report finds that investor climate targets are often opaque, lack ambition, and are poorly linked to real-world emission reductions. Analysis of 83 global investors reveals that many targets rely on volatile financial metrics, exclude scope 3 emissions, and are frequently reported as achieved long before their deadlines. The document recommends that investors adopt science-based sectoral targets, increase transparency in reporting, and align climate solutions investments with established taxonomies.

The report identifies an investible renewable energy market in South Africa of R161.2 billion across 12.9 GW of capacity by 2030. It highlights two primary investment areas: large-scale solar PV, wind, and battery energy storage systems (BESS) targeting the private wheeling market, and behind-the-meter (BTM) solar PV and BESS for commercial and industrial users. Key drivers include electricity price instability, decarbonisation pressures from international regulations like the EU's CSRD, and energy security needs. However, the market faces significant barriers, most notably severe grid connection constraints in high-resource zones and a lack of standardised municipal wheeling frameworks. The report also notes the transition toward a competitive South African Wholesale Electricity Market (SAWEM) and the introduction of the Independent Transmission Infrastructure Procurement Programme (ITIPP) to attract private capital for grid expansion.

The Western Cape water sector is transitioning toward innovative procurement and financing models due to tightening public budgets and increasing climate pressures. Significant capital expenditure is planned for 2025/26 to 2027/28, with approximately R16.5 billion from the City of Cape Town and R7.5 billion from other local municipalities. Key opportunities include public-private partnerships (PPPs) for large-scale infrastructure like desalination and water reuse, as well as a growing market for decentralized water-efficient sanitation solutions (WESS) in both public informal settlements and private property developments.

Palau is developing its first stand-alone national adaptation plan (NAP), expected in 2026, to address critical vulnerabilities including sea level rise, coastal erosion, and saltwater intrusion. The process, led by the Office of Climate Change (OCC) and supported by the Green Climate Fund, employs a "whole-of-society approach" across 10 priority sectors. Adaptation strategies combine high-tech monitoring—such as LiDAR and drones—with traditional ecological knowledge and community-led initiatives. Key actions include nature-based coastal protection via mangrove conservation and reforestation, the use of climate-resilient taro varieties in agriculture, and community-organized sea wall repairs in Melekeok State. The framework emphasizes that durable resilience must be rooted in local stewardship and the intergenerational transmission of environmental knowledge.

The report identifies key pillars for integrating non-conventional renewable energy (NCRE) in Latin America and the Caribbean, emphasizing the need for long-term state policies, proactive system planning, and updated regulatory frameworks. It highlights successful models in Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil, while contrasting these with challenges in Colombia, particularly regarding the lack of multi-party political consensus and coordination between generation and transmission planning.

The report documents a prolific trade in live primates on US social media, identifying over 1,600 animals for sale across 12 taxa. It highlights the use of euphemisms like 'adoption' to bypass platform filters, the risks of zoonotic disease transmission, and the ecological threat of invasive species in states like Florida. The authors argue that a patchwork of inconsistent state laws and a lack of federal oversight enable this trade, and they recommend the passage of the Captive Primate Safety Act and the Wildlife Confiscations Network Act to improve regulation and animal placement.

The report argues that federal agencies are bypassing legal responsibilities for reasoned decisionmaking to advance a deregulatory agenda. It details ten specific analytical requirements for proper regulatory repeals, including the necessity of considering both costs and benefits, accounting for indirect and non-monetized effects, and avoiding the use of outdated data or discredited models.

The document argues that reducing methane leakage in oil and gas operations is a primary opportunity for emissions reduction this decade, particularly in the US where methane intensity variance is high. While existing solutions could eliminate 30% of emissions with a 25% return on investment, demand for low-leakage gas in the US remains below one-third of total consumption. The guide identifies gas buyers—including utilities, chemical producers, and data centers—as essential drivers for demand through direct procurement, environmental attribute certificate (EAC) transactions, and advocacy for transparent Scope 3 reporting.

The document analyzes the strategic role of BRICS+ countries in the global critical minerals market, focusing on the potential for African members to move up the value chain and the complex dynamics of their cooperation with the European Union.