President Donald Trump has gone beyond policy overhauls to fundamentally alter the way the government talks about climate change and the environment, limiting or outright deleting countervailing language and evidence during the first year of his second term in office.

The administration has methodically removed references to climate change and environmental justice from government resources and even blocked or deleted access to longstanding data and information that might contradict or undermine his agenda.

European Union countries have signed off on the bloc’s largest-ever trade deal with countries in South America’s Mercosur group after months of wrangling over safeguards for European farmers who launched protests across the EU.

The deal passed despite opposition from France, Hungary and Poland, and faces final approval in the European Parliament in April or May.

Amid all the bad climate news, the Amazon rainforest – the world’s largest tropical forest – is teasing out some hope.

After record-setting temperatures, drought and wildfires in 2024, last year saw greater rainfall across Brazil and fewer trees burned.

In a room at the back of her house, Vera Alves da Silva Oliveira keeps the air-conditioning on day and night to protect bags of seeds gathered by hand from Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savannah.

Oliveira is one of more than 700 seed gatherers in the Xingu Seeds Network working to help recover forests and savannas across Mato Grosso, a major agricultural state.

Europe’s carbon border tax has come into force as of January 2026, marking a major shift in how the European Union links climate policy with global trade.

Under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the EU places a carbon tax on imports of certain high-emission goods, including steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers and electricity.

After military operations in Venezuela, U.S. President Donald Trump has restated his desire to make Greenland part of the United States.

Acquiring the world’s largest island has been on Trump’s wish list since his first term, and any takeover would expand U.S. influence, as well as counter Russian and Chinese competition in the region.

As he begins Year Two of Term Two, President Donald Trump has already left a heavy mark on U.S. climate policy, pursuing an aggressive deregulatory and pro-fossil fuel agenda.

What comes next is the big question – especially now that the president has publicly dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job” the world has ever witnessed.

From adding finance to making sure loss and damage funds reach vulnerable populations, climate adaptation is an increasingly crucial topic as extreme weather events disrupt daily life.

Around the world, local adaptation models are redesigning how communities respond to a harsher climate, such as coastal cities turning to mangrove restoration and resilient agriculture.

A major industry spill that spewed toxic waste into a protected strait off the Philippines has raised concerns about governance of the nation’s rich waterways and what can be done to safeguard dwindling biodiversity.

Conservationists said October’s spill at a private ethanol distillery in Negros Island – an area prized for its abundant coral – resulted in 255,000 cubic metres of industrial waste polluting the Tañon Strait Protected Seascape.

Mexico is attracting ever more sprawling data centres but a shortage of renewable energy means Big Tech is pumping oil, firing up gas generators and using diesel to fuel the global boom in artificial intelligence (AI).

The shortfall in green power – despite pledges by industry and government to grow capacity – has overloaded the country’s existing power infrastructure and exacerbated local pollution.