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Friends of the Earth International and its signatories critique the Lima Conference for producing weak pre-2020 mitigation pledges and failing to secure binding commitments on finance, adaptation, and loss and damage. The statement asserts that the outcome shifts responsibility to the Global South, protects polluting corporations, and risks expanding carbon markets at the expense of land rights. It calls for a systemic transformation away from fossil fuels toward community-controlled renewable energy and agro-ecological solutions.

The document examines Namibia's transition from a period of rampant overfishing by foreign fleets to a state-led governance model. It highlights the success in reducing illegal fishing and the implementation of 'Namibianisation' policies to promote local ownership and processing. However, it notes significant challenges, including the failure of sardine stocks to recover due to an ecosystem regime shift, the 'boom and bust' nature of deep-sea fisheries like orange roughy, and the prevalence of 'fronting' where foreign companies maintain control through proxy ownership. The paper argues that strong political leadership and effective rent capture mechanisms are essential for sustainable fisheries management in Africa.

The author contends that the climate crisis and poverty are linked, requiring a radical shift toward social justice and sustainability. Using Portugal as an example, the text highlights how renewable energy can drive GDP growth and job creation, while criticizing austerity measures and the lack of public awareness in Portugal, where only 6% of the population views climate change as a serious problem.

The author contends that the global ecological crisis and social poverty are linked, requiring a radical political shift toward sustainability and social justice. Using Portugal as an example, the text highlights the severe climate risks facing the Iberian Peninsula—including water scarcity, soil degradation, and rising sea levels—while noting that Portuguese public and political discourse remains dominated by short-term economic concerns and austerity. Despite this, the document points to the success of Portugal's renewable energy sector, which provided 27% of the country's energy and created 40,000 jobs in 2013, as evidence that climate policy can drive economic growth and employment.

The authors developed a method to analyze unevenly spaced paleoclimate data using the Morlet Weighted Wavelet Z-Transform (MWWZ) to avoid the spectral distortions caused by time-domain interpolation. Applying this to the GISP2 ice core oxygen isotope record from Greenland, the implementation successfully identified a known 1,470-year spectral peak between 35,000 and 31,000 years B.P. However, the results differed from previous studies in the Holocene period (last 10,000 years), where no statistically significant spectral structures were found. The authors conclude that further improvements, such as window smoothing and bias correction, are necessary before releasing the tool as an R package.

The report identifies a portfolio of low-carbon opportunities for the European steel sector, ranging from energy efficiency and fuel shifting to breakthrough technologies like Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) and increased recycling. It argues that current EU ETS mechanisms, particularly free allocation based on historic volumes, fail to provide sufficient incentives for deep decarbonisation and high-value product innovation. The authors recommend a structural reform of leakage protection, specifically proposing a combination of output-based allocation and the inclusion of consumption in the EU ETS to create a credible business case for breakthrough technologies and material efficiency. The report also emphasizes the need for sustained public funding for process innovation to overcome the 'valley of death' in technology scaling and suggests strengthening links between steel producers and downstream consumers, particularly in the automotive and construction sectors, to drive demand for lightweight, high-strength steels.

The document argues that the world must move beyond incremental change to a systemic low-carbon transformation. It identifies commercially available technologies in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and land-use practices that can be scaled immediately. It emphasizes the need for carbon pricing, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and a rapid phase-out of unabated coal to avoid catastrophic climate feedbacks and high future mitigation costs.

The author contends that the Spanish government's refusal to negotiate decentralization or allow a referendum on self-determination necessitates a democratic process for Catalonia to decide its own future. The text highlights the failure of the 2005 renegotiation of competences and the subsequent 2010 Constitutional Court repeal as catalysts for the independence movement. It compares the situation to Scotland's referendum and asserts that a new Catalan state would be built on a pluralistic, participatory process with a strong welfare state. The document notes that over 80% of Catalans wish to be consulted and that the EU must respond democratically to any verdict.

The text advocates for a citizen-led constituent process in Catalonia to determine its future status, citing the failure of negotiations with the Spanish state and the example of Scotland's referendum. It emphasizes that a majority of Catalans desire a consultation and that the resulting state should prioritize a strong welfare system and democratic pluralism while remaining within the European Union.

The research paper investigates the effectiveness of Bonus-Malus schemes for promoting energy-efficient household appliances in Spain, specifically focusing on dishwashers, refrigerators, and washing machines. The authors develop a methodology to optimize the combination of taxes and subsidies to minimize dead weight loss (DWL) while meeting specific policy goals such as emission reductions or budget neutrality. The study finds that while simple subsidies can lead to welfare loss and increased energy bills due to a higher total number of appliances, a combined tax-subsidy approach can more effectively shift the market toward efficient goods. For instance, achieving a 10% emission reduction for dishwashers would be most effective by taxing both labelled and non-labelled goods, though this results in a significant reduction in the total number of appliances. Conversely, budget-neutral schemes can increase the share of efficient appliances but may inadvertently increase total energy consumption if the increase in efficient units outweighs the reduction in inefficient ones.

The IAI Executive Committee has established an ad hoc committee to draft terms of reference for a new Advisory Committee on Science-Policy Liaison, aimed at integrating global change science into decision-making. The EC is also exploring strategies to increase member country involvement and funding, including reviewing the IAI Strategic Plan. Additionally, the IAI participated in the ENSOCIO-LA consortium to foster EU-Latin American cooperation on climate change and resource efficiency, and co-organized a World Climate Research Program (WCRP) conference in Montevideo to define a regional research agenda for climate services.

The document examines how Spain's Feed-in Tariffs and Feed-in Premiums successfully drove the deployment of 2.3 GW of CSP and fostered a world-leading domestic industry, but later shattered investor confidence through retroactive cost-cutting measures. It highlights that the lack of deployment caps and failure to drive cost reductions led to unsustainable public costs, resulting in a market standstill since 2012 and increased financing costs due to heightened risk aversion.

The 2014 European Green Party primaries served as an unprecedented experiment in pan-European internal party democracy, allowing members across the continent to select the lead candidate for the European Parliament campaign. While the process faced challenges regarding communication and turnout, it demonstrated the potential for transnational political mobilization. The author argues that this experience should lead to the creation of transnational electoral lists—specifically proposing a 25-member general European list—to shift the political narrative from national interests to a shared European project and to counter populist discourse.

The Green Primary served as a first-of-its-kind transnational experiment to select leading candidates for the European Green Party in the May 2014 elections. While it faced challenges such as varying national contexts and low turnout in some regions, it demonstrated the potential for European-level party structures. The author argues that the next step for European democratic institution building is the creation of transnational lists, as proposed in the Duff Report, to shift the political narrative from national interests to a collective European vision.

The author argues that Dr. Charles R. Frank, Jr.'s analysis incorrectly concludes that nuclear and gas combined-cycle plants are more beneficial than wind and solar. By replacing Frank's data with empirical figures from the EIA and DOE, the author asserts that the priority for carbon savings actually shifts to hydro, wind, gas combined-cycle, nuclear, and solar. The critique highlights significant underestimations of renewable productivity and overestimations of gas and nuclear costs and reliability.

The report examines the financing of renewable energy in China, highlighting the transition from an electricity surcharge system to potential environmental fiscal measures. It analyzes global investment trends, the types and risks of renewable energy subsidies, and provides a framework for designing a carbon tax to fund the energy transition, drawing on international examples from Europe and North America.

The 2014 European elections saw a significant rise in far-right and eurosceptic forces, particularly in France where the Front National achieved 25% of the vote. While the German Greens maintained a double-digit result, they lost three mandates. Across Europe, the Green faction became more regionally diverse with new representatives from countries like Spain, Hungary, and Croatia, though it lost influence due to the collapse of a progressive majority in the Parliament. The author argues that the Greens must counter the narrative of the EU as a neoliberal tool and push for an end to unilateral austerity policies to restore trust in European integration.

The analysis argues that traditional media remained the primary source of election information during the 2014 European elections but failed to foster a 'European public' by prioritizing national politics over European issues. In Germany, the UK, and Spain, the author finds that media coverage was often biased or sensationalist, frequently granting disproportionate visibility to anti-European parties like UKIP and AfD while marginalizing others, such as the Greens. The report highlights a lack of prime-time transnational TV debates and suggests that economic pressures and political apathy have turned journalism into a consumer product rather than a public service.

EU coal emissions rose 6% from 2010 to 2013, contributing to 18% of total EU CO2 emissions. This increase was driven by fuel-switching from gas to coal in Germany, the UK, and Poland, which together account for 66% of coal-based emissions. While renewables and falling demand reduced overall fossil generation by 4.3% per year, the low carbon price under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) failed to prevent coal's resurgence. The report warns that the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) may not force expected closures because of cheaper compliance technologies and the introduction of capacity markets, particularly in the UK and Poland, which risk locking in high-carbon infrastructure into the 2030s. Modelling suggests that if coal remains cheaper than gas, emissions will fall only 3% by 2016, though the potential for fuel-switching will increase by 2020. Sandbag recommends urgent ETS reform, mandatory carbon intensity reporting, and targeted CCS funding.

The document outlines the systemic shifts required to integrate low-carbon energy, arguing that traditional power plant financing and grid structures are ill-suited for renewables. It proposes new financing models like YieldCos and Muni Finance to lower costs, emphasizes the need for regionally integrated transmission and updated balancing markets to manage variability, and discusses the disruptive impact of distributed generation and demand-side flexibility on traditional utility models.