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	War-driven energy price spikes highlight value of renewables: UN climate chief by UNFCCC, UNEP, news agencies   16 Mar. 2026   War-driven energy price spikes highlight value of renewables: UN climate chief   The disruption of global energy supplies is being felt worldwide, the UN’s top climate change official warned, as conflict in the Middle East drives oil and gas prices sharply higher – echoing the market turmoil triggered by the war in Ukraine.   Speaking at the 2026 Green Growth Summit in Brussels, Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said the volatility underscored the strategic value of renewable energy.   “Renewables turn the tables,” he said during a keynote address to the event, which brings together European climate and environment ministers alongside businesses, investors and other key stakeholders.   “Sunlight doesn’t depend on narrow and vulnerable shipping straits, wind blows without massive taxpayer-funded naval escorts and renewable energy allows countries to insulate themselves from global turmoil and to side-step might-is-right politics.”   Renewable energy delivers on people’s top priorities: security, well-paid jobs, better health and relief from rising living costs, he added.   “Fossil fuel dependency is ripping away national security and sovereignty and replacing it with subservience and rising costs,” he said, adding that the reality is what most voters are demanding, climate action delivers at scale. “Renewables and resilience keep bills down and create far more jobs,” he said.   “Cutting out fossil fuel pollution cleans our air, improving health and quality of life.”   “Some responses to the fossil fuel crisis, incredibly, argue for doubling down on the cause of the problem and slowing the shift to renewable energy even though it is clearly cheaper, safer, and faster to market,”   “This is completely delusional because history tells us, this fossil fuel crisis will happen again and again,” Mr. Steill said, adding that fossil fuel dependency means economies, household budgets and business bottom lines are “at the mercy of geopolitical shocks and price volatility in a chaotic world”.   His message was simple: Meek dependence on fossil fuel imports will leave countries forever lurching from crisis to crisis, with households and industries literally paying the price.   10 Mar. 2026   The Iran war has sent oil and gas prices soaring. Countries invested in renewable energy are better protected. (DW)   Countries that generate more of their power from wind, solar and other renewable sources are better protected from global energy shocks, experts say, as the escalating conflict in the Middle East rattles global markets.   The war has widened since the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran more than 10 days ago. Critical infrastructure in the region has come under attack and the risk of Iranian strikes has essentially shut down the Strait of Hormuz,the crucial waterway used to transport 20% of the world's oil and gas.   The disruption means fuel may struggle to reach the countries that depend on it to generate electricity, heat homes, power industry and run transport. The resulting supply squeeze is pushing prices higher around the world and intensifying cost-of-living pressures.   "Energy is the lifeblood of our societies and our industries," said Antony Froggatt, aviation, shipping and energy expert at Brussels-based NGO Transport & Environment. "And we're still highly dependent on fossil fuels."   The world still gets about 80% of its primary energy from fossil fuels, the main source of greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. In his second term, US President Donald Trump has doubled down on fossil fuels, scrapping Biden-era green energy and climate regulations aimed at cutting emissions.   That dependence makes economies and societies vulnerable to geopolitical shocks, said Rana Adib, executive secretary of the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21).   Countries with a higher share of "homegrown" renewables in their energy mix are "less vulnerable to these shocks," she argued.   "Once you bring the technology into the countries, the fuel you're using is the sun, is the wind, is the heat that is local," Adib told DW. "And this is a reason why renewable energy as a solution for energy production is much more resilient to those global shocks."   Uruguay bets on wind and hydro   After the financial crisis in 2008, unease about a reliance on oil and gas imports was what drove Uruguay to go all in on renewables.   Two decades ago, the small South American country with a population of 3.5 million embarked on a plan to phase fossil fuels out of its power grid by rapidly expanding wind farms.   Today, more than 90% of the country's electricity comes from renewables — mainly wind, solar, hydropower and biofuels. That figure has reached 98% in some particularly wet and windy years.   "It shows us that a 100% renewable electricity grid is fully possible," said Adib, adding that Uruguay has managed to do so without the massive amounts of storage required for when the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing.   Adib said the shift to green power helped limit Uruguay's exposure to past energy price surges.   "During the energy crisis linked to the war in in Ukraine, Uruguay energy prices remained stable," Adib said. "This is extremely important because it means that the inflation does not hit this country in the same way as a country that has a high dependence on fossil fuel imports."   Adib said the investment in renewables created 50,000 jobs and has allowed the country to save $500 million in energy import costs annually. Uruguay is now moving to electrify its public transport system and decarbonize industry.   Another country that has significantly reduced reliance on fossil fuels is Denmark. The oil crisis in the 1970s hit the Scandinavian country hard, prompting it to begin developing renewables early.   Today, more than 80% of Denmark's electricity is supplied by green energy, with wind making up almost 60% of that amount, followed by biogas. The country of 6 million has cut its planet-heating emissions by half since 1990 and wants to have a fossil-fuel free electricity system by 2030.   Its district heating systems, which link up more than 65% of homes, have largely phased out coal and are planned to rely 100% on renewable biomethane by 2030.   Froggatt said having renewables dominate the grid keeps prices down, citing an IMF study showing that every 1% increase in the amount of renewables translates on average to the wholesale electricity price falling by 0.6%.   "And that's in normal circumstances. Obviously, when you have vastly inflated gas prices, then the economic advantage of renewables goes up even higher," he added.   He says that consumers will only be protected from rising oil and gas prices when things like transport and heating are fully electrified, for example, with electric vehicles and heat pumps.   High fossil fuel prices and the vulnerability of the commodities to supply bottlenecks make clean energy more competitive and financially attractive, as well as pressuring governments to find alternative solutions, say analysts.   "The current crisis shows again that we need to enter the renewable-based era and leave the fossil fuel-based era behind" if we want societies and economies that are more resilient, said Adib.   Accelerating renewables to secure a more stable energy supply will take greater investment and system change. Though green power sources are now much cheaper than fossil fuels, oil and gas are highly subsidized. Froggatt says making the switch is not just about slowing climate change, but also about energy security.   http://unfccc.int/news/un-climate-chief-in-brussels-fossil-fuel-dependency-is-ripping-away-national-security-and http://news.un.org/en/story/2026/03/1167135 http://www.dw.com/en/iran-war-sends-oil-prices-soaring-these-countries-are-better-protected-thanks-to-renewables/a-76294122 http://www.clientearth.org/latest/news/fossil-fuels-and-energy-security-what-s-the-issue/ http://dialogue.earth/en/energy/energy-security-is-national-security-and-it-starts-at-the-subnational-level/ http://dialogue.earth/en/climate/the-gulf-conflict-shows-climate-finance-must-evolve-to-withstand-geopolitics   Feb. 2026   UN climate chief says 'new world disorder' threatens climate action cooperation. (AFP)   The UN's climate chief has urged countries to unite against an "unprecedented threat" to international cooperation from pro-fossil fuel forces.   Simon Stiell, the head of the United Nations climate body, spoke in Istanbul as Turkey prepares to host the COP31 climate summit on its Mediterranean coast later this year, with Australia leading the negotiations.   "COP31 in Antalya will take place in extraordinary times. We find ourselves in a new world disorder," Stiell said in an address alongside the president-designate of COP31, Turkish environment minister Murat Kurum.   "This is a period of instability and insecurity. Of strong arms and trade wars. The very concept of international cooperation is under attack," he said.   He did not name any countries but his plea comes as climate action is competing with concerns over security and economic growth around the world.   US President Donald Trump has championed oil, gas and coal while moving to withdraw the United States from the UN's bedrock climate treaty after pulling out of the Paris Agreement, the landmark deal reached in 2015 on curbing global warming.   Stiell said in a news conference that the "door remains open" to welcoming the United States back to the fold.   The American leader, who has called global warming a "hoax", has revoked a landmark scientific finding that underpins US regulations aimed at curbing planet-warming pollution.   The COP30 summit in Brazil late last year ended with a modest deal that lacked any explicit mention of fossil fuels amid opposition from oil giants such as Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Russia and coal producer India among others.   The United States, the world's largest economy and second-biggest polluter after China, shunned COP30.   The last three years have been the hottest globally on record, driven by rising greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change.   Stiell warned that international climate cooperation was "under unprecedented threat: from those determined to use their power to defy economic and scientific logic, and increase dependence on polluting coal, oil and gas".   "Those forces are undeniably strong. But they need not prevail. There is a clear alternative to this chaos and regression," he said. "And that is countries standing together, building on all we have achieved to date, to make it (international global cooperation) go further and faster."   He noted that investment in clean energy was more than double that of fossil fuels last year, while renewables overtook coal as the top electricity source.   "Security is the word on most leaders' lips, yet many cling to a definition that is dangerously narrow," Stiell said, warning that rising greenhouse gases mean "escalating climate extremes fuelling famine, displacement, and war".   Stiell urged nations to deliver on their 2023 agreement at COP28 in Dubai to triple clean energy capacity by 2030 and transition away from fossil fuels, and for the most ambitious to form "coalitions of the willing".   "Climate cooperation is an antidote to the chaos and coercion of this moment, and clean energy is the obvious solution to spiralling fossil fuel costs, both human and economic," he said.   http://www.unep.org/resources/global-environment-outlook-7 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/09/food-fossil-fuel-production-5bn-environmental-damage-an-hour-un-geo-report- http://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1w9ge93w9po http://www.unep.org/resources/state-finance-nature-2026 http://hdr.undp.org/content/new-climate-dataset-warns-poorest-nations
	Nature is everybody’s business by Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity Dr. David Obura, Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services   Feb. 2026   * In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature, were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion.   * Less than 1% of publicly reporting companies mention their impacts on biodiversity in their reports.   Every business depends on biodiversity, and every business impacts biodiversity. The growth of the global economy has been at the cost of immense biodiversity loss, which now poses a critical and pervasive systemic risk to the economy, financial stability and human wellbeing. This is a central finding of a landmark new report published today by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).   Even companies that might seem far-removed from nature or that do not see themselves as nature-based rely, directly or indirectly, on material inputs, regulation of environmental conditions. Yet, businesses often bear little or no financial cost for their negative impacts on the environmental conditions we all depend on for life. Businesses are central to halting and reversing biodiversity loss.   The IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment report finds that the current conditions in which businesses operate are not compatible with achieving a just and sustainable future, and that these conditions also perpetuate systemic risks.   Businesses often face inadequate or perverse incentives, barriers that hinder efforts to reverse nature’s decline, an institutional environment with insufficient support, enforcement and compliance, as well as significant gaps in data and knowledge. These combine with business models that result in ever-increasing material consumption and an emphasis on reporting quarterly earnings, whilst contributing to the degradation of nature around the world.   The Report makes the point that fundamental change is possible and necessary to create an enabling environment to align what is profitable for business with what is beneficial for biodiversity and people.   “This Report draws on thousands of sources, bringing together years of research and practice into a single integrated framework that shows both the risks of nature loss to business, and the opportunities for business to help reverse this,” said Matt Jones (UK), one of three Co-chairs of the Assessment.   “This is a pivotal moment for businesses and financial institutions, as well as Governments and civil society, to cut through the confusion of countless methods and metrics, and to use the clarity and coherence offered by the Report to take meaningful steps towards transformative change. Businesses and other key actors can either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction…both of species in nature, but potentially also their own.”   Business-as-usual incentives are driving nature’s decline and do not support the transformative change necessary to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.   For example, large subsidies that drive losses of biodiversity are directed to business activities with the support of lobbying by businesses and trade associations.   In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature, were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion.   In contrast, $220 billion in public and private finance flows were directed in 2023 to activities contributing to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity, representing just 3% of the public funds and incentives that encourage harmful business behaviour or prevent behaviour beneficial to biodiversity.   “The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business”, said Prof. Stephen Polasky (USA), Co-chair of the Assessment. “Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it. Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points.   The Report shows that business as usual is not inevitable – with the right policies, as well as financial and cultural shifts, what is good for nature is also what is best for profitability. To get there, the Report offers tools for choosing more effective measurements and analysis.”   The Report finds that a wide range of methods, knowledge and data exist for measuring business impacts and dependencies, which can already inform decisions and action. Yet less than 1% of publicly reporting companies mention their impacts on biodiversity in their reports.   The Report makes it clear that all businesses, including financial institutions, have a responsibility to address their impacts and dependencies. The authors point out in their report the many actions that businesses can take now that benefit business and biodiversity.   “Better engagement with nature is not optional for business – it is a necessity”, said Prof. Rueda. “This is vital for their bottom line, long-term prosperity and the transformative change needed for a more just and sustainable future. To avoid greenwashing though, it is essential that businesses have transparent and credible strategies, which clearly demonstrate their actions and how they contribute to biodiversity outcomes and that they publicly disclose their impacts and dependencies as well as their lobbying activities”.   The Report explores both actions that can be taken by businesses themselves and ‘signalling’ actions that can publicly influence and inspire action by others.   Another central message of the Report is that businesses cannot, by themselves, deliver the scale of change needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. Collaboration, collective and individual actions are essential to create an enabling environment where businesses contribute to a just and sustainable future.   Five specific components are identified as central to such an enabling environment: policy, legal and regulatory frameworks; economic and financial systems; social values, norms and culture; technology and data; and capacity and knowledge. The Report provides more than 100 specific examples of concrete actions that can be taken, across each of these five components, by businesses, governments, financial actors and civil society.   “Better stewardship of biodiversity is central to managing risk across the whole of the economy and throughout societies – it’s not some distant environmental issue, but a core challenge now in every boardroom and cabinet-room,” said Prof. Polasky.   “We need to move beyond the fallacy of a binary choice between governments and decision-makers being either pro-environment or pro-business. All business depends on nature, so actions that conserve and sustainably use nature can also be those that help businesses thrive in the long-term.   One of the innovations of this Report is that it provides a template for accelerating collaboration and collective actions at all levels among and by governments, financial actors, other actors including civil society, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, consumers, NGOs, international organisations, and academia in addition to the action needed by businesses and financial institutions themselves.”   Speaking about the significance of the Business and Biodiversity Report, Dr. David Obura, Chair of IPBES said: “This IPBES Assessment Report was delivered with urgency, as a vital contribution to efforts by businesses, governments, financial actors and the whole of society to meet the goals and targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change".   "It relates very directly to Target 15 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which focuses on businesses, but ultimately to all our shared global goals because businesses are at the centre of how our economies, and large parts of our society, depend on and impact nature”.   "Nature is everybody’s business and the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity is central to business sustainability and success".   http://www.ipbes.net/business-impact http://www.ipbes.net/node/97532 http://ipbes.canto.de/v/IPBES12Media/ http://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1y/k1yl72cx8w http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/time-to-align-economic-practice-with-ecological-reality-the-critical-need-to-include-nature-in-macroeconomic-models/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2026/02/a-business-necessity-align-with-nature-or-risk-collapse-ipbes-report-warns/ http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/biodiversity http://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/biodiversity/ http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/governments-must-protect-nature-or-pay-a-higher-price-for-borrowing-study-finds/   # Biodiversity is the natural world around us, and the variety of all of the different kinds of organisms - the plants, animals, insects and microorganisms that live on our planet. Every one of these live and work together in ecosystems to maintain and support life on earth, and exist in delicate balance. Biodiversity is one of the most precious and important things we have.   Without biological diversity, our entire support system for human, as well as animal life, would collapse. We rely on nature to provide us with food and clean water, for medicines, to prevent flooding and other extreme weather effects. So much is provided by the natural ecosystems around us – they’re truly vital to life on earth. Because biodiversity is so crucial to our future survival, its loss is a crisis on a global scale.   Dec. 2024   IPBES: Tackle Together Five Interlinked Global Crises in Biodiversity, Water, Food, Health and Climate Change.   Environmental, social and economic crises – such as biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks and climate change – are all interconnected. They interact, cascade and compound each other in ways that make separate efforts to address them ineffective and counterproductive.   Underlines the landmark new report launched by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report - offers decision-makers around the world the most ambitious scientific assessment ever undertaken of these complex interconnections and explores more than five dozen specific response options to maximize co-benefits across five ‘nexus elements’: biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.   The report is the product of three years of work by 165 leading international experts from 57 countries from all regions of the world. It finds that existing actions to address these challenges fail to tackle the complexity of interlinked problems and result in inconsistent governance.   “We have to move decisions and actions beyond single-issue silos to better manage, govern and improve the impact of actions in one nexus element on other elements,” said Prof. Paula Harrison (United Kingdom), co-chair of the Assessment with Prof. Pamela McElwee (USA).   “Take for example the health challenge of schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia) – a parasitic disease that can cause life-long ill health and which affects more than 200 million people worldwide – especially in Africa.   Treated only as a health challenge – usually through medication – the problem often recurs as people are reinfected. An innovative project in rural Senegal took a different approach – reducing water pollution and removing invasive water plants to reduce the habitat for the snails that host the parasitic worms that carry the disease – resulting in a 32% reduction in infections in children, improved access to freshwater and new revenue for the local communities.”   “The best way to bridge single issue silos is through integrated and adaptive decision-making. ‘Nexus approaches’ offer policies and actions that are more coherent and coordinated – moving us towards the transformative change needed to meet our development and sustainability goals,” said Prof. McElwee.   The report states that biodiversity – the richness and variety of all life on Earth – is declining at every level from global to local, and across every region. These ongoing declines in nature, largely as a result of human activity, including climate change, have direct and dire impacts on food security and nutrition, water quality and availability, health and wellbeing outcomes, resilience to climate change and almost all of nature’s other contributions to people.   Building on previous IPBES reports, in particular the 2022 Values Assessment Report and the 2019 Global Assessment Report, which identified the most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss, including land- and sea-use change, unsustainable exploitation, invasive alien species and pollution, the Nexus Report further underscores how indirect socioeconomic drivers, such as increasing waste, overconsumption and population growth, intensify the direct drivers – worsening impacts on all parts of the nexus. The majority of 12 assessed indicators across these indirect drivers – such as GDP, population levels and overall food supply, have all increased or accelerated since 2001.   “Efforts of Governments and other stakeholders have often failed to take into account indirect drivers and their impact on interactions between nexus elements because they remain fragmented, with many institutions working in isolation – often resulting in conflicting objectives, inefficiencies and negative incentives, leading to unintended consequences,” said Prof. Harrison.   The report highlights that more than half of global gross domestic product – more than $50 trillion of annual economic activity around the world – is moderately to highly dependent on nature. “But current decision-making has prioritized short-term financial returns while ignoring costs to nature, and failed to hold actors to account for negative economic pressures on the natural world. It is estimated that the unaccounted-for costs of current approaches to economic activity – reflecting impacts on biodiversity, water, health and climate change, including from food production – are at least $10-25 trillion per year,” said Prof. McElwee.   The existence of such unaccounted-for costs, alongside direct public subsidies to economic activities that have negative impacts on biodiversity (approximately $1.7 trillion per year), enhances private financial incentives to invest in economic activities that cause direct damage to nature (approximately $5.3 trillion per year), in spite of growing evidence of biophysical risks to economic progress and financial stability.   Delaying the action needed to meet policy goals will also increase the costs of delivering it. Delayed action on biodiversity goals, for example, could as much as double costs – also increasing the probability of irreplaceable losses such as species extinctions. Delayed action on climate change adds at least $500 billion per year in additional costs for meeting policy targets.   “Another key message from the report is that the increasingly negative effects of intertwined global crises have very unequal impacts, disproportionately affecting some more than others,” said Prof. Harrison.   More than half of the world’s population is living in areas experiencing the highest impacts from declines in biodiversity, water availability and quality and food security, and increases in health risks and negative effects of climate change. These burdens especially affect developing countries, including small island developing states, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, as well as those in vulnerable situations in higher-income countries. 41% of people live in areas that saw extremely strong declines in biodiversity between 2000 and 2010, 9% in areas that have experienced very high health burdens and 5% in areas with high levels of malnutrition.   Some efforts – such as research and innovation, education and environmental regulations – have been partially successful in improving trends across nexus elements, but the report finds these are unlikely to succeed without addressing interlinkages more fully and tackling indirect drivers like trade and consumption. Decision-making that is more inclusive, with a particular focus on equity, can help ensure those most affected are included in solutions, in addition to larger economic and financial reforms.   If current “business as usual” trends in direct and indirect drivers of change continue, the outcomes will be extremely poor for biodiversity, water quality and human health – with worsening climate change and increasing challenges to meet global policy goals.   A focus on trying to maximize the outcomes for only one part of the nexus in isolation will likely result in negative outcomes for the other nexus elements.   For example, a ‘food first’ approach prioritizes food production with positive benefits on nutritional health, arising from unsustainable intensification of production and increased per capita consumption. This has negative impacts on biodiversity, water and climate change.   An exclusive focus on climate change can result in negative outcomes for biodiversity and food, reflecting competition for land. Weak environmental regulation, made worse by delays, results in worsening impacts for biodiversity, food, human health and climate change.   “Future scenarios do exist that have positive outcomes for people and nature by providing co- benefits across the nexus elements,” said Prof Harrison. “The future scenarios with the widest nexus benefits are those with actions that focus on sustainable production and consumption in combination with conserving and restoring ecosystems, reducing pollution, and mitigating and adapting to climate change.”   http://www.ipbes.net/nexus/media-release http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/ipbes-nexus-report-integrated-solutions-to-address-interconnected-global-crises http://www.carbonbrief.org/ipbes-nexus-report-five-takeaways-for-biodiversity-food-water-health-and-climate/ http://www.iied.org/new-biodiversity-reports-wake-call-for-action http://www.ipbes.net/media_release/Values_Assessment_Published http://www.ipbes.net/transformative-change/media-release http://www.ids.ac.uk/news/new-global-report-on-transformative-change-for-biodiversity/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2024/12/transformative-change-will-save-a-planet-in-peril-ipbes/ http://sfcs.fao.org/cfs/cfs-hlpe/insights/news-insights/news-detail/new-hlpe-fsn-note--tackling-climate-change--biodiversity-loss-and-land-degradation-through-the-right-to-food/en Visit the related web page
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