COP15 begins and other climate change stories you need to read this week

Climate campaigners waved placards and chanted pro-nature slogans on 7 December as the United Nations COP15 biodiversity summit kicked off in Montreal, Canada, bringing together global negotiators for a "once-in-a-decade opportunity" to protect nature. Negotiators hope the two-week event delivers an agreement that ensures there are more animals, plants and healthy ecosystems in 2030.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres told delegates there is no time to lose: "Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction. This conference is our chance to stop this orgy of destruction," he said at the opening ceremony on 6 December.

Negotiations on a deal to protect 30% of the Earth by 2030 are woefully behind in addressing the concerns of native people, whose land holds the majority of the world's remaining biodiversity, indigenous advocates told Reuters at COP15.

US Special Climate Envoy John Kerry has hailed the decision to hold next year’s COP28 climate summit in OPEC member the United Arab Emirates, saying fossil fuel economies should be encouraged to lead the transition to clean energy.

The World Bank and partners including Singapore have launched a global tracking system to clean up the opaque market for carbon credits and help developing countries raise much-needed climate finance quickly and more cheaply.

The White House has launched the first standard on cutting carbon emissions from federal buildings as part of the Biden administration's policy on curbing climate change.

Air quality in India's financial hub of Mumbai was worse than in the capital New Delhi on 8 December, raising concerns of long-term health risks to people living in the country's two highly populated cities. Mumbai's air quality was "very poor" and was expected to remain the same for the following two or three days, government data showed.

Portugal hopes to speed up investments in green hydrogen projects by ending mandatory environmental assessments for them in March 2023, Prime Minister Antonio Costa says.

The European Union has reached a deal on a law to increase the price that airlines have to pay when they emit carbon dioxide, adding pressure to the sector to shift away from fossil fuels.

Environmental and social problems in global cocoa supply chains are likely to continue unless companies pay farmers substantially more for their beans, according to a major report on cocoa sustainability.

The Cocoa Barometer, produced by the VOICE Network group of civil society organizations, says farmers in many cocoa-producing countries remain poverty stricken and unable to reduce levels of child labour and deforestation.

The report comes a day after the European Union agreed a new law to prevent companies from selling products linked to deforestation, such as cocoa and chocolate, into the EU.

The law comes after decades of efforts by companies to clean up their supply chains through "certification schemes" – or third-party audits – have largely failed to have an impact.

A major part of the problem, according to the report, is that the schemes don't commit to paying farmers a living wage, even if they do pay them a premium for cocoa certified as free from environmental and social harms.

"We've got new data that shows you cannot have sustainable cocoa without higher prices for farmers. It's just not going to work," VOICE Network Director Antonie Fountain told Reuters.

India saw a big jump in extreme weather events such as heatwaves and lightning strikes this year, and related deaths rose to their highest in three years, government data shows. Scientists blame climate change for the heavy toll.

There were nearly 8 times as many heatwaves, 27 in all, and lightning strikes rose more than 111 times, killing 907 people, the Ministry of Earth Sciences said in a report to parliament. Thunderstorms increased more than 5 times, to 240.

The 2,183 deaths due to such events in January-November were the highest since the 3,017 recorded in 2019. Lightning and floods and heavy rains have accounted for 78% of the deaths this year, the data shows.

Temperatures during India's monsoon season have risen this century and the country could see more frequent heatwaves in future, the government said in August. India is the world's third-largest carbon polluter, though its per-capita emissions are much lower than many developed countries.

The country of nearly 1.4 billion suffered its hottest March in more than a century and temperatures were unusually high in April and May, blamed mainly on climate change.

This is what governments must agree at COP15 to accelerate business action on biodiversity and nature, according to Eva Zabey, Executive Director of Business for Nature, and Akanksha Khatri, Head of Nature and Biodiversity at the World Economic Forum.

The aviation sector wants to reach net zero by 2050. From using sustainable fuels and carbon offsetting to deploying low-emission technologies like electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft, here's how it could achieve the goal.

Natalie Pierce, Head of the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Community, and Sophia Simmons, Project Specialist, Climate and Environment, explain how youth representation at the COP27 climate talks was encouraging.