As the world sprints toward COP30 in Belém, Brazil, one unlikely front has emerged in the race against climate change, and that is sport. It’s where flooded football pitches, melting ski slopes, and parched running tracks tell a story no scoreboard can capture. And it’s where the new global campaign, Adapt2Win, is rallying athletes to use their star power to push for serious action on climate adaptation. 

Brazil’s 8th COP30 welcome letter should be received with both hope and caution. 

Yes, it signals ambition. Yes, it speaks of unity and urgency. But from where we stand, in communities losing homes to floods, farmers battling unpredictable rains, and countries drowning in debt while paying for a crisis they didn’t create, warm words are not enough. 

The Global South, especially Africa, has heard visionary speeches before. What we need now is clarity on who will act, who will pay, and who will finally take responsibility. 

When the deadline for submitting Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) lapsed last month, more than 100 countries had yet to update their commitments. The UN had extended the deadline to September after 90 percent of the world's nations failed to meet the initial target of February. Seven of these countries, and a regional bloc, are industrial powerhouses with carbon-intensive economies and significant diplomatic sway globally. So, where do they rank in the global emissions output? In this list of shame, we will highlight the main drivers of their emissions, the composition of their electricity mix, and the last time they updated their NDCs. 

One person dies every minute in the world due to heatwave-related health complications. Yes, one life snuffed out per minute.  

This means that, by the end of 2025, more than 500,000 lives will have been lost to heat exposure alone. When you factor in fatalities from other climate disasters, the number runs into millions.   

The final whistle: Adapt2Win, by leading social impact agency WRTHY, is a bet on both narrative and the political muscle of cultural influence. It recognises that climate politics is not decided solely in negotiation halls, but also in living rooms, stadiums and on social feeds. By assembling a global team of athletes, the campaign redefines adaptation as a bold and achievable strategy, rather than a debatable choice. 

If the United Nations were a human born in 1945, it would have grown up in a world of war, pandemics, refugee crises, hunger, technological miracles, and a planet on the brink. This piece traces that imagined life story — one filled with survival, breakthrough, heartbreak, and hope — to question whether the global future the UN was created to protect is still within reach.

For over a decade, the people of Lamu have stood firm against a proposed 1,050 MW coal power plant backed by Amu Power Company Ltd. The plant was to be constructed on Manda Bay in Lamu, within the rich, biodiverse ecosystem of the Lamu Archipelago

When it comes to the food security situation in the world, there’s no shortage of numbers. To the average African, however, many of these numbers are just that: cold, lifeless, abstract statistics. Mind-numbing and confusing. 

This World Food Day, we attempt to make sense of some of the numbers that feature in food security conversations and how these determine your dinner plate, and whether you can afford the dinner.  

For too long, adaptation has been the proverbial neglected stepchild of international climate negotiations. The world’s attention and money have mostly gone towards mitigation, which in this case means cutting emissions, building renewables, and, in some instances, setting carbon prices; while adaptation, which deals with surviving and thriving in the face of climate impacts already unfolding, has been left behind.

Funding for fossil fuel projects globally decreased by 78 percent in 2024, according to a report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).  

Countries slashed public financing for oil and gas projects by between $11 and $16 billion. 

While this injects some thrust into the fossil fuel phaseout journey, renewable energy investments aren’t spiking – at least not fast enough. Only a fifth of the money recovered from fossil investments is finding its way into renewables. 

Power Shift Africa has been a strong and vocal critic of carbon markets in Africa as they, like the fossil fuel industry, serve the interests of polluters and not communities. Evidence against these controversial projects is mounting.  

Across continents, ordinary people, young and old, are taking on governments and corporations over their failure to act on the climate crisis.

Climate reparations are gaining attention ahead of COP30 in Brazil. In this explainer we breakdown why African nations and global activists say developed countries must pay for historical pollution, colonialism, and loss and damage from climate change.

Before you hurl the epithets at us, think about this: the heating of the planet is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced, but it is also the biggest opportunity for business-as-usual grifting. Carbon markets, fake finance, extraction in green disguise, net zero pledges without substance, all of it amounts to a massive transfer of responsibility and cost from the Global North to the South. So, when Trump sneered that climate change was a “con job” as he addressed this year’s United Nations General Assembly, he was right. Not in the way he meant, but in the sense that the climate agenda has been hijacked by con men in suits who’ve discovered that you can turn planetary survival into just another racket. 

Each September, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) transforms New York into the world’s political epicentre.

ACS 2.0 was more than a summit. It was a statement of intent that Africa will no longer be defined by what it lacks, but by what it contributes

PEOPLE VS POWER: AS SADC SEEKS ENERGY AND INDUSTRY TRANSITIONS, PLUNDER AND PILLAGE ARE ON GOVERNMENT CARDS, BUT THE PEOPLE WANT JUSTICE AND EQUITY 

LISTICLE: 10 things from the Addis Ababa declaration that cut through the noise.

The decision by the Brazilian COP30 presidency to award a media contract to Shell-linked PR agency Edelman has outraged climate experts globally. See the reflections in this piece.

On the outskirts of Johannesburg, a previously abandoned and crime-ridden patch of land has been transformed into a thriving oasis of food and hope. At Gardens of Grace, Mama Judy and a group of women farmers are proving that agroecology is more than theory; it is adaptation in action.

Where invasive bushes once stood, rows of spinach, pumpkins, and fruit trees now flourish. Chickens help control pests, compost nourishes the soil, and herbal plants like moringa and artemisia thrive alongside vegetables.