Africa

BBC Sport has a look at which Premier League clubs will be most - and least - affected by the Africa Cup of Nations.

BBC Sport has a look at which Premier League clubs will be most - and least - affected by the Africa Cup of Nations.

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COP30 Belém Amazônia (DAY 03) - PCOP Daily Press Briefing. Credit: Rafa Neddermeyer/COP30 Brasil Amazônia

By Joyce Chimbi
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 17 2025 (IPS)

COP30 negotiations are midway. So far, talks about historic agreements are moving forward, backward, or stalling, depending on who you ask. The most pressing issues on the table are finances, adaptation, fossil fuel phase-outs, and climate justice.

Wide-ranging and ambitious promises across these issues are not translating smoothly into action. On the first day of COP30, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage [established at COP27 and operationalized at COP28] launched the call for funding requests for its startup phase.

From December 15, 2025, developing countries will have six months to request funding for projects and programs of between USD 5 and 20 million. The entire kitty has USD 250 million, which compares poorly to what is needed. On matters of loss and damage, developing countries needed USD 395 billion in 2025 alone.

The issue of finance is not a sticking point in itself at COP30, but has been identified as the thread that connects all other thematic areas as encapsulated in the ‘Baku to Belém Roadmap.’  When COP29 in Baku failed to deliver an ambitious climate finance package deal, this roadmap was added on at the last minute to build on the USD300 billion per year in financing agreed upon in Baku.

But this roadmap is not a singular goal to be achieved; it is about coming together to ‘scale up climate finance in the short and long term to ensure that annual climate financing climbs from USD 300 billion to at least USD 1.3 trillion a year by 2035. The roadmap is about increasing finance across all climate funds, be it for preventing, reducing or adapting to climate change.

Climate finance discussions have focused on mobilizing new funding sources, including innovative mechanisms like the proposed Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF). Brazil has defined oceans and forests as the twin priority areas for discussion at COP30.

TFFF is a Brazil-led initiative that aims to mobilize nearly USD 125 billion for tropical forest conservation. It is a radical new solution to combat deforestation.

Brazil has, however, been left ‘surprised’ the UK would not be joining Germany, Norway and other nations towards contributing to the TFFF funds, despite the UK having helped design the tropical forest conservation initiative.

COP30 is determined to build a bridge between promises and performance, words and actions, and there are multiple sticking points in the development of this bridge. In other words, it’s a ‘COP of implementation.’

Unlike the emotive issues of fossil fuel phase-outs and finances that defined recent COPs, COP30 seems to be where the rubber meets the road. After all is said and done, with the agreements to move away from fossil fuels, the Loss and Damage Fund, and the calls for climate adaptation financing, the technical details of how these promises become actions are the sticking point.

For fossil fuels, those whose economies are not dependent on oil, gas, or coal want an immediate transition. Those that depend on fossil fuels are asking for time to find a pathway that helps the transition as they seek alternatives to cushion their economies. This is one of the most contentious climate mitigation issues.

But still all is not lost; there seems to be notable movement in this direction, in 2024 alone, more than USD 2.2 trillion was put into renewable energy—which is more than the GDP of over 180 countries.

Amidst fragile and fragmented geopolitics, COP30 is multilateralism under test. Leaders of China, the US, Russia and India are absent. Some say this is symbolic and could derail climate talks, but many observers say taking this as a sign that political support for international climate initiatives is waning is misleading.

Some observers from the natural-resource-rich African continent say the developing world simply needs to start conducting the climate business differently, particularly in how they trade with the global North over their natural resources.

To be clear, what defines this COP is not necessarily finance, adaptation, fossil fuels or even climate justice; for many, this is a COP implementation. The ongoing negotiations face challenges in translating ambitious promises into action.

Brazil has already launched the COP30 Circle of Finance Ministers—a key initiative under the COP30 presidency to support the development of the Baku to Belém roadmap. This circle will be a platform for regular consultations throughout 2025.

Another first in the history of COPs is that the Asset Owners Summit is included in the official COP agenda. Asset owners representing approximately USD 10 trillion met in Belém in the first week of the COP to work with climate scientists, multilateral development banks, and governments to meet the climate’s financial needs.

A major point of discussion is how to shift from loans to other forms of finance, with a focus on increasing funding for adaptation and ensuring transparency. Climate finance loans remain an unresolved issue.

For developing nations, developed nations whose industrial revolution is responsible for altering the climate system have a moral obligation to climate finance on terms and conditions that take into account that developing nations are the victims. Developed nations, on the other hand, see climate finance loans as a business opportunity—for every five dollars received in climate finance loans, they repay seven dollars.

Activism has been a defining issue at COP30, as has been the increased participation and visibility of indigenous people. It is a step in the right direction when 15 national governments, including Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Tanzania, the United Kingdom and Germany, and one sub-national government have formally announced their support for the Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment, a landmark global agreement to secure and strengthen the land tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities on 160 million hectares in tropical forest countries.

As to how COP30 pans out, the next few days will be critical as the UN Climate Summit nears its conclusion.

IPS UN Bureau Report

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

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Excerpt:

COP30 is determined to build a bridge between promises and performance, words and actions, and there are multiple sticking points in the development of this bridge. In other words, it’s a 'COP of implementation.'

Brazilian Indigenous leader and environmentalist Cacique Raoni Metuktire (center) during the closing ceremony of the Peoples’ Summit in Belem on November 16, 2025. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS

By Tanka Dhakal
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 17 2025 (IPS)

Brazilian Indigenous leader and environmentalist Cacique Raoni Metuktire appealed for support for Indigenous peoples and their land. From the podium of the Peoples’ Summit, Cacique Raoni warned negotiators at the UN climate conference in Belém that without recognizing Indigenous peoples’ land rights, there will be no climate justice.

“It is getting warmer and warmer. And a big change is going on with the earth. Air is harder to breathe; this is only the beginning,” he said on Sunday while addressing representatives of the global climate justice movement at the Peoples’ Summit. “If we don’t act now, there will be very big consequences for everyone.”

Indigenous people and civil activists from around the world took part in the Peoples’ Summit. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS

While Belém city is hosting world leaders, government officials, scientists, policymakers, activists, and more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists to decide the future course of global climate action, the Peoples’ Summit gathered frontline voices.

About nine kilometers from the COP30 venue, at the grounds of the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA-Federal University of Pará), activists engaged in diverse dialogue for five days and issued the “Declaration of the Peoples’ Summit Towards COP30” in the presence of Indigenous leaders like Raoni, which was handed over to the COP presidency.

The Declaration states that the capitalist mode of production is the main cause of the growing climate crisis. It claims that today’s environmental problems are “a consequence of the relations of production, circulation, and disposal of goods, under the logic and domination of financial capital and large capitalist corporations.” It demands the participation and leadership of people in constructing climate solutions, recognizing ancestral knowledge.

 

Artists performing indigenous folklore during the closing event of the Peoples’ summit. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS

Sebastián Ordoñez Muñoz, associated with War on Want, a UK-based organization and part of the political commission of the Peoples’ Summit, said the political declaration constructed through the summit process reflects peoples’ demands and proposals. “It has our solutions, people’s solutions,” he said. He explained that crafting the declaration was a convergence of diverse voices, uniting around clarity on what needs to happen to address the climate crisis.

“It is an expression of the autonomy of people’s movements coming together, converging to develop clear proposals that are based on the real solutions happening on the ground-in the territories, in the forests, in the seas, in the rivers, and so on,” he added. “It’s important to hand it over because we need to make sure that our voices are represented there [at COP]. Any space that we have inside the COP has always been through struggle.”

As a space for community members to come together and deliver the public’s point of view, Peoples’ Summits have been organized as parallel conferences of the COP. It did not take place during the last three COPs. But in Brazil, civil society is actively making its case.

The Peoples’ Summit attracted a large number of Indigenous leaders and community members, whereas at COP their access is limited. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS

“We need to continue making our voices heard there, but also not to beg-to state that we have the solutions and that we must be listened to, because none of these answers, none of these solutions are possible without the communities themselves,” Ordoñez Muñoz told IPS News from the Peoples’ Summit ground. “I think it’s a statement and a road map. Where do we go from here?”

Unlike COP30, the Peoples’ Summit attracted diverse groups of community members and civil society leaders. The COP venue follows the process of negotiations, while the summit emphasizes collaboration to find solutions and celebrate unity. It blends discussion with Indigenous folklore and music to bring stories of community.

“If you go into the COP summit, it’s so stale. It’s so sterile. It’s so monotonous. So homogeneous. So corporate,” Ordoñez Muñoz said. “Over here, what we have is the complete opposite. We have such diversity-differences in voice, vocabulary, language, and struggles.”

He added that the COP process is moving in one direction, unjust in nature, and reproducing many of the dynamics that led to the crisis in the first place.

“Over here, we’re all moving together. We have unity.”

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
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This is a COP of implementation. I do not want to see more texts that pile up on promises. But what we need is to detail what has already been promised. I want much more emphasis on adaptation because we have been too occupied with mitigation. —Carlos Lopes, Special Envoy for Africa, COP30 Presidency

Barcelona bestreitet am Samstag seinen ersten Match im Camp Nou seit zweieinhalb Jahren. Wie der Klub mitteilt, darf er gegen Athletic Bilbao im noch nicht komplett renovierten Stadion antreten.

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Israel says South Africa had previously agreed to receive the 153 Palestinians who arrived last week.

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As an Indigenous woman, I would like to see more of us at the negotiating table. Because you cannot be deciding about our life, about where we live, at the national level or even at the global level. There should be inclusion of all voices at the ground level. —Immaculata Casimero, a leader of the Wapichan Women’s Movement

With 80 percent of climate finance going to developed nations and just USD 5.5 billion, or 0.8 percent of climate finance, going to small-scale farmers and micro or small agri-food enterprises globally, rice farmer Mohd Yaseen Khan fears erratic weather will ruin him.

Egyetlen ideológia sem alakíthatja önkényesen az állampolgárok életét és nem sértheti a jogaikat. Nem üldözheti őket a származásuk, a hitük vagy politikai nézeteik miatt, – jelentette ki Peter Pellegrini a szabadságért és demokráciáért vívott harc napjának alkalmából Pozsonyban.

Mark Rutte NATO-főtitkár november 18-án, kedden Pozsonyba érkezik. Találkozik Robert Fico (Smer) miniszterelnökkel – tájékoztatott a NATO sajtóirodájának közleménye alapján a TASR hírügynökség. A sajtóiroda közölte, a NATO-főtitkár nem nyilatkozik a sajtónak a szlovákiai látogatás kapcsán. (tasr)

BBC Sport examines where it went wrong for Nigeria, with the Super Eagles missing out on a second successive World Cup.

BBC Sport examines where it went wrong for Nigeria, with the Super Eagles missing out on a second successive World Cup.

Fishermen on the banks of the river Yamuna, surrounded by clouds of toxic foam on the water surface. Credit: Raunaq Singh Chopra / Climate Visuals

By Joyce Chimbi
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 17 2025 (IPS)

Mutirão first entered the global climate discourse in Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago’s first letter to the world, which was sent in March 2025 as part of his COP30 presidency.

“The Brazilian culture inherited from Brazilian native indigenous peoples the concept of ‘Mutirão’ or Motirô in the Tupi-Guarani language.

“It refers to a community coming together to work on a shared task, whether harvesting, building, or supporting one another,” he wrote.

As a nation of football, he assured the world that the global community can win the climate fight by “virada,” which means “fighting back to turn the game around when defeat seems almost certain.” Delegates say the COP30 Mutirão approach, inspired by the Brazilian tradition of communities working together to solve shared problems, is fit for purpose amidst escalating climate crises.

Importantly, Brazil has framed the ocean as an emerging priority. The Mutirão approach for COP30’s oceans plan is a collaborative, action-oriented strategy emphasizing the ocean’s role in climate change, moving from negotiation to implementation.

The plan is called Mutirão Azul, or the Blue Collective Effort, and integrates solutions for oceans, cities, water, and infrastructure, encouraging participation from governments, businesses, and communities to achieve tangible oceanic climate actions and commitments. The Mutirão spirit will now embody international efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

“I research physical oceanography and energy in the climate system. And what we would like to see out of this COP (Conference of Parties) is more focus on blue climate solutions,” says Kerstin Bergentz from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego.

The Mutirão approach for COP30’s oceans plan is a collaborative, action-orientedstrategy emphasizing the ocean’s role in climate change. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

She told IPS that if the world were to “implement all of the blue climate solutions that are out there, including protecting mangroves, restoring wetlands, investing in blue carbon in all shapes and sizes, and marine carbon dioxide removal, these blue climate solutions have the potential to provide 35 percent of the CO₂ emission reductions that we need to see by 2050 in order to meet our target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

“Unfortunately, climate funding for ocean projects or ocean-based solutions is less than 1 percent at the moment. And so, what we would like to see is more focus on the ocean because the future is not just green—it is also blue.”

Anya Stajner, also from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, told IPS that the ocean makes up “over two-thirds of our planet and it should no longer be a side conversation during these negotiations. The ocean is an important climate control. It absorbs up to 90 percent of the excess heat in the atmosphere, keeping our Earth 55 degrees cooler than it would be otherwise.”

Ocean currents, often referred to as the “great ocean conveyor belt,” transport warm water from the tropics toward the poles and cold water back toward the equator. This circulation helps distribute heat around the planet, moderating regional climates; without it, temperatures would be far more extreme.

“Some students at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have done an analysis to see how often the ocean is mentioned in Nationally Determined Contributions—a country’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impact of climate change.”

Blue NDCs refer to Nationally Determined Contributions that integrate ocean-based climate solutions. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

“They found that while that number of mentions has risen and become more meaningful in the past five years, it is still not central enough to discussion.”

The Belém climate talks could turn the tide. The Brazilian Presidency’s appointment of Marinez Scherer as a Special Envoy for Oceans and the adoption of the Mutirão approach are bringing the ocean closer to the epicenter of global climate negotiations and diplomacy.

At COP30, the ocean is being increasingly positioned as a partner in mitigation and adaptation toward the protection of vulnerable coastal and island communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

Ocean financing at COP30 is a major focus, aiming to secure predictable, accessible, and targeted funding for ocean-based climate solutions and the sustainable blue economy.

Key goals include creating dedicated finance windows, integrating ocean health into national climate plans or Blue NDCs, and mobilizing public and private investment for ocean-based mitigation, adaptation, and science.

Blue NDCs are Nationally Determined Contributions that explicitly integrate ocean-based climate solutions. This emerged from the Blue NDC Challenge, an initiative launched by Brazil and France at the UN ocean Conference in Nice in June 2025, to urge countries to include ocean-focused climate actions in their national climate plans ahead of COP30. Said actions range from restoring coastal ecosystems and adapting maritime industries to promoting ocean-based renewable energy.

Eleven countries have already committed to the Blue NDC Challenge, including Brazil, France, Australia, Chile, Fiji, Kenya, Madagascar, Mexico, Palau, the Republic of Seychelles and the United Kingdom. Blue or green, NDCs are important because they are the core mechanism for countries to set and meet climate goals under the Paris Agreement. These countries have explicitly placed the ocean resource in their climate impact plan.

NDCs are the vehicles through which international commitments translate to national actions. Overall, as of the official opening of COP30 in Belem on November 10, 2025, more than 100 countries, representing at least 70 percent of global emissions, had tabled new NDCs. Among the G20—the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters—12 had tabled their new NDCs.

Blue NDCs in particular facilitate the integration of the ocean into national climate goals, supporting initiatives like the Mangrove Breakthrough and strengthening ocean governance through frameworks like the BBNJ Agreement.

Like the Paris Agreement, the BBNJ Agreement is a legally binding international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction or the high seas. Adopted in 2023, the BBNJ or the High Seas treaty will enter into force in early 2026 after reaching 60 ratifications.

At COP30, the High Seas Treaty is the most concrete ocean-related item on the table, and Brazil has committed to ratifying it by the end of this year. Overall, the treaty establishes a global framework for issues such as area-based management tools, including marine protected areas, environmental impact assessments, and equitable benefit-sharing from marine genetic resources.

“The High Seas Treaty is a win for multilateralism because it allows governments to work together to protect more of the oceans that go beyond our exclusive economic zones,” Stajner stressed.

“There has been a lot of talk at the last decades of COPs and we have plans and now it’s about pushing those plans forward. And I think the High Seas Treaty is an example of how that is moving forward.”

“And so, this COP is all about action and implementation for the ocean.”

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
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Excerpt:

If the world were to implement all of the blue climate solutions, including protecting mangroves, restoring wetlands, investing in blue carbon in all shapes and sizes, and marine carbon dioxide removal, it would result in a 35 percent reduction of the CO₂ emissions. —Ocean scientist Kerstin Bergentz

Der Rat stimmt der Richtlinie über alternative Streitbeilegung (AS) endgültig zu.

The army is called in to help the police search nearby forests and rescue the kidnapped girls.

The structure fell after panicked miners reportedly fled from military gunfire.