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Integrity and Quality: The Words That Now Decide Prices in Carbon Markets

Integrity and Quality: The Words That Now Decide Prices in Carbon Markets

This article is part of the thematic channel The Carbon Observer. Subscribe to the newsletter or update your preferences. What do integrity and quality really mean? I have my own interpretatio...

Introducing: The Carbon Observer

Introducing: The Carbon Observer

This article is part of the thematic channel The Carbon Observer. Subscribe to the newsletter or update your preferences. The CO₂ market has moved into a new phase: no longer a business for ...

The return of carbon diplomacy

The return of carbon diplomacy

This article is part of the thematic channel The Carbon Observer. Subscribe to the newsletter or update your preferences. Over the past year, two political developments have profoundly affecte...

Why the Citizens Energy Package is the key to Europe’s energy autonomy

Why the Citizens Energy Package is the key to Europe’s energy autonomy

Europe currently stands at a crossroads. It must address several imperatives: ensuring energy independence, security, and access to affordable, clean renewable energy. Europe’s last energy cri...

Anthrofood 2050: Food Anthropology Enters the Public Arena with an Eye to the Future

Anthrofood 2050: Food Anthropology Enters the Public Arena with an Eye to the Future

It is rare for the anthropological community to choose, with a collective voice, to occupy the public square to intervene in systemic emergencies, abandoning the comfortable detachment of the observ...

Will the Board of Peace replace part of the United Nations?

Will the Board of Peace replace part of the United Nations?

Is Donald Trump creating a new international organisation in his own image, as an alternative to the United Nations? Over the past few days, the US president has sent invitations to a number of worl...

Crisis

Crisis

Misinformation, social polarisation, extreme weather events, inequality, erosion of human rights, armed conflicts, pollution. According to the highly influential analysis of systemic risks publ...

My Rivers

My Rivers

My childhood memories are tied not only to strolls under the porticoes of Saronno, a small town in the Milanese hinterland, but also to the local stream, the Lura. Largely covered over, the peculiar...

Shared power, shared security: Nordic lessons for Europe’s energy resilience

Shared power, shared security: Nordic lessons for Europe’s energy resilience

Renewables are transforming Europe’s energy landscape, but the rapid green transition is testing grid stability. The Iberian blackout exposed the risks of ambition outpacing the system’s...

Trump's energy imperialism is a danger to the future of the human species

Trump's energy imperialism is a danger to the future of the human species

Oil's role in the US military action in Venezuela is first and foremost made clear by figures: the world's leading oil producer has attacked the country with the world's largest oil reserves. But it...

New Nightmare on Elm Street: The “Donroe Doctrine” and Its Implications

New Nightmare on Elm Street: The “Donroe Doctrine” and Its Implications

In the 1984 slasher film, Nightmare on Elm Street, US Midwestern teenagers fall prey to the evil Freddy Krueger, who after invading the teenagers’ dream worlds turns their dreams of disme...

7 Transition Economy Stories to Follow in 2026

7 Transition Economy Stories to Follow in 2026

The year 2026 is shaping up to be a year of transition, in which major economic shifts will enter a harsher and less ideological phase. Between technology, climate, raw materials and finance, the sy...

The Paris Climate Agreement marks its first ten years

The Paris Climate Agreement marks its first ten years

Ten years ago, the Paris Agreement united the world in the fight against climate change at the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference. With this historic agreement, 195 countries pledged to t...

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Fading Relevance of International Water Law

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Fading Relevance of International Water Law

In September, Ethiopia unveiled the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), hailing it as a “generational victory”. Standing before the dam's cascading waters, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ...

A valuable COP for undervalued wetlands

A valuable COP for undervalued wetlands

COP30 in Brazil is done and dusted. As always, the outcome was mixed with many crying “too little, too slow”, while others pointed to potentially significant progress woven into the fina...

COP30’s local legacy: Cities will make or break the climate fight

COP30’s local legacy: Cities will make or break the climate fight

As ICLEI’s Regional Director for Europe, I am often asked why we invest so much effort in global climate negotiations. Why does an organisation of cities and regions engage so deeply in p...

COP30, awaiting a negotiation reform

COP30, awaiting a negotiation reform

COP30 comes to an end as a mirror of the current times. Multilateral cooperation on climate change barely survives, notwithstanding geopolitical tensions. Growing are the divisions between countries...

The new channel The Social & Governance Observer is launched

The new channel The Social & Governance Observer is launched

‘A just ecological transition is inclusive and leaves no one behind,’ declared Marina Silva, Brazil’s combative Minister of the Environment and Climate, at the opening of COP30, th...

Transition and international trade: China’s role at COP30

Transition and international trade: China’s role at COP30

From Belém - At COP30 in Belém, global trade was for the first time explicitly included in climate negotiations. It was inevitable: the transition is no longer just a matter of climate...

Cúpula dos Povos: a no to Mercosur from the heart of the Amazon

Cúpula dos Povos: a no to Mercosur from the heart of the Amazon

The 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place in a location that is at once symbol and battleground of the ongoing crisis: the Amazon. The forest, a treasure trove of biodiversit...