Demonstrators at a climate protes in Zurich, 25 September 2026. (Keystone/Claudio Thoma)

🌡️UN climate panel head wants swift end to deadlock over key scientific report. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suspended talks last week in Addis Ababa after member states failed to agree on when to release its report on global warming.

🏆Martin Ennals Prize suspended over governance issues. The prestigious human rights award, created in honour of the British rights activist Martin Ennals, was not granted its subsidy by its main funder the City of Geneva this year after an audit revealed "management, governance, and financial risks". The structure is in the process of being dissolved although discussions are underway to find new donors.

🫁Most major carbon emitters barely mention health in their climate plans. Low- and middle-income countries that contribute little to global warming have done the most to plan for its toll on health, while the major economies behind more than half the world’s emissions barely consider it in their latest climate commitments, filed with the UN ahead of next month’s COP31 summit. That's according to findings by a network of over 300 health organisations.

🧾UN tax experts group to target transfer pricing, digital taxes. In a meeting being held in Geneva this week. United Nations’ tax experts will review and approve plans covering a wide range of emerging taxation issues, including the difficulties developing countries have with transfer pricing rules in the UN’s model double-tax treaty, which clash with a model treaty developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

🦎Can countries deliver on a deal to save the world’s plants and animals? As leaders gather for the Cop17 biodiversity conference in Yerevan, Armenia, the pressure is on to follow through on commitments made four years ago to protect nature.

❝How Europe can help stop the Amazon’s illicit gold rush At UN talks in Vienna this week, Brazil is pushing for a new protocol to clamp down on widespread environmental crimes, including from illegal mining, that EU states would be wise to back, write Juliane Kippenberg, senior children’s rights adviser, and César Muñoz, Brazil director, at Human Rights Watch.