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The document examines the uncertainty surrounding the second Trump administration's approach to foreign aid and global security. It highlights a 90-day freeze on all U.S. foreign assistance and the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization. The text notes a divide in perception, where populations in BRICS nations are more positive about Trump's presidency for global peace compared to those in the EU and UK, despite an overall increase in global conflicts and expansionist rhetoric regarding territories like Greenland and Panama.

The document highlights the 2025 International Year of Glaciers' Preservation, detailing how human-caused climate change is accelerating glacial melt. It emphasizes the role of glaciers as 'water towers' providing freshwater for billions and warns of increasing risks from glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), particularly in Asia and the Americas. The text notes that glaciers in 50 UNESCO World Heritage sites are losing an average of 58 billion tonnes of ice annually, with a third projected to vanish within 25 years.

The document proposes a shift from traditional technology-replacement efficiency to a 'whole-systems' approach. It argues that combining electrification with energy end-use efficiency (reducing the demand for energy services) can reduce overall energy demand by 50-75%. The author provides sector-specific examples: in buildings, through passive design and compact urban development; in mobility, via land-use reforms and smaller, lighter electric vehicles; in freight, through modal shifts to rail and material demand reduction; and in steel, via circularity and material substitution. The brief concludes that achieving the COP28 goal of doubling energy efficiency improvement rates requires engaging a diverse range of stakeholders to trigger social tipping points.

The report maps nearly one hundred agreements on critical minerals between African states and global actors, highlighting the strategic competition for resources. It identifies a lack of transparency in these deals and notes that while China and Russia are prominent, other actors like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are expanding their footprints. The analysis emphasizes that these partnerships often reflect broader geopolitical and historical ties rather than just economic needs.

The provided text consists solely of a list of contributing authors and their institutional affiliations from various global research organizations; it contains no substantive analysis, findings, or purpose statement.

The energy transition accelerated in 2024, driven by record uptake in solar, wind, and electric vehicles as costs for solar modules and batteries fell significantly. While renewables are poised to overtake coal as the leading power source in 2025 and many nations have set net-zero goals, progress in energy efficiency and methane reduction remains off track. The document argues that achieving 2030 targets requires shifting fossil fuel subsidies toward clean energy investments, particularly in emerging economies.

The document argues that while green guarantees can mobilize up to five times more capital than loans, they are underutilized due to complexity, lack of technical assistance, high costs, and time horizon misalignments. It showcases case studies from the World Bank Group, Green Guarantee Company, TCX, GuarantCo, and a Sida-IFU partnership to demonstrate how streamlining processes, providing targeted technical support, subsidizing currency hedges, extending guarantee tenors to 20 years, and fostering bilateral cooperation can unlock private capital for the green transition in EMDEs.

The report finds that sustainable agriculture finance in India averaged INR 22,393 billion annually between FY 2020-21 and FY 2021-22, with a heavy reliance on domestic private finance (67%) and commercial financial institutions. While public funding remains significant, international flows are negligible at 0.5%. The study highlights a concentration of funds in farming practices and storage/markets, while critical areas like research, natural capital, and alternative supply chains are severely underfunded. It recommends the creation of a sustainable agriculture taxonomy, improved granular data reporting, the diversification of financial instruments beyond debt, and expanded capacity building to foster a more resilient agricultural ecosystem.

The report establishes a comprehensive framework for tracking sustainable agriculture finance in India, adopting a value-chain approach that covers upstream, farming, and downstream activities. It defines the criteria for 'sustainable agriculture' based on food security, emission reduction, and climate resilience, and details the data sources used—including government budgets, OECD databases, and private equity trackers—to identify public and private disbursements.

The report analyzes 215 cases of GenAI use in 2024 elections across 50 countries, finding that 80% of these countries experienced GenAI-related incidents. The majority of these cases (90%) involved content creation, such as deepfake audio and video, and 69% were classified as harmful to the electoral process. A significant portion of the content (46%) had untraceable origins, while 20% was attributed to foreign actors, all of whom were found to be acting with harmful intent. The document advocates for increased transparency, disclosure mandates for AI-generated political content, and improved detection mechanisms to protect democratic integrity.

The report finds that 80% of countries with competitive national elections in 2024 experienced GenAI-related events, with 69% of these events having a harmful impact. The majority of GenAI use focused on content production, and nearly half of the events had unknown sources.

The document analyzes the evolution of BRICS, specifically the 2023 addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE, and the 2024 introduction of a 'partner countries' category. Using Susan Strange's framework of structural power, it argues that BRICS is not seeking to create a rival system but to reshape global governance to be more representative of the global South. The analysis highlights the bloc's economic growth—surpassing the G7 in PPP terms around 2015—and its efforts to create alternative financial mechanisms like the New Development Bank (NDB) and local currency trade to reduce reliance on Western systems. It concludes that while internal diversity and regional rivalries challenge cohesion, the 'agree to disagree' principle allows BRICS to function as a catalyst for South-South cooperation.

The Transparent 2024 report by WWF International reviews five years of progress among ReSource: Plastic members. Key findings show a collective reduction of 221,000 metric tons of virgin fossil-based plastic relative to baseline years and an increase in recycled content to 14.5% of the aggregate portfolio by 2023. However, the report notes that progress is incremental, with reusable packaging accounting for only 0.8% of the portfolio. Waste management modeling estimates that 16% of the members' plastic footprint is mismanaged globally, with China and India identified as the countries with the highest total tonnage of mismanaged waste. The report concludes that voluntary corporate action is insufficient and advocates for a legally binding global treaty on plastic pollution to mandate standards and drive systemic change.

The document argues that Africa's rapid urban growth necessitates immediate investment in food environments to prevent unhealthy path dependencies. It identifies a funding gap of US$100 million over the next five years across four key initiatives: AfriFOODlinks, the Africa Food Environment Research Network (FERN), the Living Off-Grid Food & Infrastructure Collaboration (LOGIC), and the Resilient Municipal Market Fund (ReMark). The brief emphasizes that urban food environments are shaped by physical, economic, social, and infrastructural factors, and suggests aligning these with agroecological principles to improve resilience, equity, and resource efficiency.

The report finds that global warming of 0.3°C since 2015 has already increased the annual average of hot days by 11 per country. While current emissions pledges have reduced projected warming from 4°C to 2.6°C, the latter would still result in an average of 57 additional hot days per year compared to today. Case studies of six major heat events show that some would have been nearly impossible without climate change, and all have increased in intensity and likelihood. The document argues that while heat early warning systems have expanded, adaptation finance and systemic urban and labor reforms are insufficient to meet the escalating risks.

Global climate finance reached a record USD 1.9 trillion in 2023, with private contributions exceeding USD 1 trillion for the first time. While mitigation finance more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, driven by energy and transport, adaptation finance remains significantly underfunded at USD 65 billion. Investment is heavily concentrated in East Asia and the Pacific, Western Europe, and North America, with 80% of finance sourced domestically. Despite growth, a substantial gap remains to meet the estimated annual need of USD 6.3 trillion by 2030.

Global energy transition investments reached a record USD 2.4 trillion in 2024, yet remain insufficient to meet the 1.5°C pathway. While solar PV and battery storage show strong growth, other technologies like wind and green hydrogen face significant headwinds. Investment is heavily concentrated in China and advanced economies, leaving least developed countries (LDCs) and Sub-Saharan Africa severely underfunded and dependent on international public finance.

The report identifies near-term, economically viable green investment opportunities in India across six emerging sectors—battery energy storage, green hydrogen, climate-smart agriculture, lithium-ion battery recycling, water, and sustainable cooling—to guide the channeling of private and institutional capital over a three to five-year horizon.

Climate finance in Brazil more than doubled between 2019 and 2023, reaching US$ 67.8 billion. The growth was primarily driven by solar energy and AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use), with domestic sources accounting for 90% of total finance. While mitigation dominates the objective mix, finance for loss and damage saw an exponential increase in 2024, largely due to disaster relief following flooding in Rio Grande do Sul.

The South African Climate Finance Landscape 2025 reports an annual average of ZAR 188.3 billion in climate finance for 2022–2023, though this remains well below the estimated annual need of up to ZAR 499 billion. Investment is heavily skewed toward the energy sector, which receives 74.1% of total flows, primarily for renewable electricity generation. In contrast, adaptation finance is lagging, accounting for only 11.3% of tracked flows. While domestic sources provide nearly 60% of funding, international flows are dominated by public development finance institutions, particularly from Western Europe. The report highlights significant barriers, including grid bottlenecks, policy uncertainty, and a lack of concessional capital for high-risk or non-revenue-generating adaptation and just transition projects.