The number of climate lawsuits is growing – at times reaching the highest courts and scoring big wins, too – as politics and diplomacy struggle to coerce countries into climate action.

From Peru to the Philippines, plaintiffs are increasingly turning to the law to win justice where negotiations fail, a trend sent to continue in the year ahead.

Since becoming leader of Britain’s Green Party in September, Zack Polanski has gone viral on social media, propelled his party higher in opinion polls and been compared to New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Despite leading a party with the environment in its name, Polanski’s leadership has focused most closely on another issue: economic inequality.

Adapting to the new era of extreme weather is costing countries hundreds of billions of dollars, with poor nations saying they pay most despite contributing least to climate change.

As leaders gather for COP30 talks in Brazil, delegates are divided over how to split the bill for vital adaptations to a fast-changing climate, given the havoc it has unleashed in record fires, floods and storms.

The climate crisis in the Philippines is not a theory, it is a lived reality. Our dry seasons are harsher, and our wet seasons are more punishing. Typhoon seasons have grown increasingly violent, leaving entire communities struggling to rebuild year after year.

The costs of these disasters are staggering, and they fall unfairly on ordinary Filipinos. Against this backdrop, I have joined five other members of the House of Representatives to advance legislation that shifts the burden away from our people. The Climate Accountability Act, or CLIMA Bill, can be a game-changer.

As COP30 climate talks kicked off in Brazil’s port city of Belém on Monday, opening speeches in the Amazonas hall were heavy on ambition, but just down the corridor there was a stark reminder of what failure looks like.

“Hurricane Melissa slammed into Jamaica a week-and-a-half ago and every single Jamaican now knows the word catastrophic,” said UnaMay Gordon, a former director of climate change for the Jamaican government and adviser to the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, which coordinates climate action.

Nobel Laureates, scientists, the World Health Organization and cities around the world have all backed a commitment to phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.

Supporters of the global Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative (FFNPTI) – with 17 countries and over one million individual signatories – is hoping to gain more traction at November’s U.N. COP30 summit in Belem, Brazil.

The initiative is rapidly gaining momentum, said Africa Campaigner, Prince Papa, based in Nairobi.

Global military spending following the outbreak of conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza is at its highest since the Cold War, which African leaders warn is leaving less international aid available to help their countries adapt to the climate crisis.

At the second African Climate Summit (ACS) in Ethiopia last week, African heads of state, researchers and activists made a plea to international donors to help the continent withstand floods, droughts and heatwaves.

Environmental crime – from illegal logging and gold mining to wildlife trafficking and toxic waste – has long been sidelined in climate diplomacy. COP agendas were consumed with emissions, adaptation, and finance.

Meanwhile, the illicit economies accelerating deforestation and biodiversity loss were left in the shadows of the UN’s framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) and absent from nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and Global Stocktakes. The result was a dangerous blind spot: negotiators talked-up ambition while ignoring the illicit markets hollowing it out.

Same city, same heatwave – so why are poor neighbourhoods 3°C hotter?

A Peruvian court this week handed down jail sentences of 28 years each to four illegal loggers for the murder of four Indigenous leaders, 11 years after the crime took place in a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest.

The sentencing marks a rare legal victory for crimes committed in the Amazon against Indigenous peoples, among them the prominent anti-logging campaigner Edwin Chota.