Search Climate Insights Directory

This briefing paper argues that the proposed United Nations Legally Binding Instrument (LBI) to regulate transnational corporations is a critical structural lever for achieving environmental justice. It contends that existing voluntary frameworks are inadequate to stop corporate-driven ecological destruction and that the LBI can transform the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (RtHE) into enforceable obligations, ensuring corporate liability and access to remedy across transnational value chains.

This briefing paper argues for the necessity of a legally binding United Nations instrument to regulate transnational corporations and other businesses as a structural lever for environmental justice. It contends that current voluntary frameworks are insufficient to ensure corporate accountability for ecological destruction and human rights violations, particularly in the Global South.

This report by Ember, developed for the Global Offshore Wind Alliance (GOWA), provides a comprehensive analysis of global offshore wind targets across national, subnational, and regional levels. It examines current ambitions, deployment projections for 2030, and the potential for expansion in countries without existing targets, while highlighting the gap between political ambitions and projected delivery.

This report by the Climate Policy Initiative analyzes the scale and diversity of the forest-climate nexus across 91 tropical countries. It quantifies forest extent, carbon stocks, and deforestation rates to argue for differentiated, fit-for-purpose policy strategies rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. The analysis concludes that there is no inherent trade-off between forest conservation and economic development.

This briefing paper argues for the adoption of a United Nations legally binding instrument (LBI) to regulate transnational corporations as a structural lever for environmental justice. It highlights the failure of voluntary frameworks to ensure corporate accountability for ecological destruction and human rights abuses, proposing that a binding treaty would operationalize the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment through mandatory due diligence, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and effective remediation.

This IISD guide advocates for the use of model contracts to ensure that agricultural investments in developing countries are responsible, transparent, and aligned with sustainable development goals. It explains how model contracts can mitigate risks, such as the use of restrictive stabilization clauses, and provides a framework for governments to develop their own nationally tailored templates.

This guide, published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and Porticus, provides a strategic framework for philanthropic organizations to advance the reform of environmentally harmful subsidies (EHS). It argues that redirecting a portion of the USD 2 trillion annually spent on EHS could significantly fund biodiversity and climate goals. The document outlines a theory of change based on defining problems, identifying solutions, and creating political support to open 'policy windows' for reform.

The report "Resilience Science Must-Knows" provides a science-based framework for decision-makers to build systemic resilience. It distills decades of research into nine core principles, emphasizing that resilience is not merely "bouncing back" but the capacity to cope, adapt, and transform. The document highlights the urgency of this approach as the Earth enters the Anthropocene, where human activity pushes planetary boundaries and creates cascading risks across interconnected global systems.

The report "Resilience Science Must-Knows" synthesizes decades of research into nine fundamental principles designed to guide decision-makers in building systemic resilience. It defines resilience as the capacity to live and develop amidst change and uncertainty, emphasizing a balance between coping, adapting, and transforming systems to ensure human prosperity within planetary boundaries.

This briefing by Zero Carbon Analytics examines whether deep sea mining is necessary for the clean energy transition. It concludes that deep sea mining is unlikely to alleviate short-term mineral supply crunches because the technology for commercial extraction and processing is not yet available, and the steepest growth in mineral demand is expected before 2035. The document highlights that there is no physical scarcity of critical minerals in the earth's crust, but rather supply risks driven by lack of investment, recycling, and geopolitical concentration of processing in China. It suggests that sustainable land mining, supply diversification, recycling, and material substitution are more viable alternatives to deep sea mining, which carries significant unknown environmental risks.

This briefing by Zero Carbon Analytics examines the status and challenges of Article 6 (A6) of the Paris Agreement leading into and during COP29. It details the three mechanisms for international climate cooperation: Article 6.2 (bilateral trading), Article 6.4 (a UN-governed global market), and Article 6.8 (non-market approaches). The document highlights critical integrity concerns, including the risk of double counting, the lack of transparency in bilateral deals, and the controversy surrounding the use of REDD+ activities and emissions avoidance credits. It specifically notes that operational standards for A6.4 were adopted on the first day of COP29, a move criticized by some observers for lacking transparency.

This report assesses power sector data transparency across 39 Asian economies, evaluating them against six criteria: time granularity, publishing lag, geographic granularity, fuel breakdown, ease of access, and additional data. The analysis finds that overall transparency is insufficient to support a coal-to-clean electricity transition in the region, with more than half of the economies scoring poorly.

This document provides the technical annexes for the 2023 Forest Declaration Assessment, detailing the definitions, regional aggregations, and methodologies used to track forest loss, degradation, restoration, and biodiversity. It includes a specific data table comparing 2022 deforestation levels against a 2018-2020 baseline for 30 high-impact countries.

The 2022 Forest Declaration Assessment Theme 4 report evaluates global forest governance systems and their capacity to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. It finds that while some countries have implemented effective legal tools like moratoria and inclusive policies, overall progress is insufficient, with persistent issues including widespread corruption, tenure insecurity for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and the rollback of environmental protections in several major tropical forest nations.

This report chapter analyzes the growth of the lower-middle-income population in high-impact countries in 2022, highlighting the risks associated with their potential purchase of inefficient cooling devices and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on income levels.

This report section analyzes the increasing vulnerability of the urban poor to extreme heat across 54 high-impact countries in 2022, highlighting a rise in the population at high risk due to lack of access to cooling.

This report examines the critical role of sustainable cooling and cold chains in reducing global food loss, improving nutrition, and supporting agricultural economies, particularly in low-income and high-impact countries.

This fact sheet provides a summary of the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge as of May 24, 2022, listing the financial commitments and geographic focus of 43 participating companies.

This document is a Twitter toolkit produced by the Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA) to support a social media campaign surrounding the release of the 'HealthyNDCs Scorecard' on July 8, 2021. The toolkit provides instructions and sample posts to encourage users to challenge governments to integrate health into their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ahead of COP 26.

This annex to the 2021 NYDF Goal 7 Progress Report provides technical and economic mitigation potential estimates for forest-related activities, analyzes the ambition of forest targets in National Determined Contributions (NDCs), and estimates the global finance needs and public finance flows for forest mitigation.