Report reveals financial support promised by rich nations for adaptation measures is well behind the pace that is needed

Flows of money to help poor countries cope with the climate crisis have been flat or falling since 2022, despite growing impacts from extreme weather and warnings from scientists that global heating may be accelerating.

A new UN report has revealed that financial support for adaptation – which includes measures such as stronger infrastructure, early warning systems, flood protection and drought-resilient irrigation – is woefully short of what is needed and far behind even the inadequate promises that rich countries signed up to in 2021 in recognition of their far greater responsibility for the crisis.

AR7 report was scheduled for 2028 in time for Cop33 summit but some petro-states and major developing countries want to postpone it

Scientists are coming under pressure from some petro-states and major developing countries to delay publication of a key global report on the climate, despite pleas from vulnerable countries worried that postponement could spell disaster for them.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-convened body of the world’s leading climate scientists, is meeting this week in Addis Ababa to discuss its seventh assessment report, a comprehensive survey of all that is known about the climate crisis.

‘The climate issue is the security issue,’ says Turkish minister at Pacific pre-Cop summit in Fiji

Wealthy countries should spend far more on dealing with the climate crisis than the 5% of GDP promised by Nato members for defence because “the climate issue is the security issue”, the host of the next UN summit has said.

But, in comments that are likely to prove contentious, the Cop31 president-designate, Murat Kurum, hedged on whether countries should try to repeat a previous agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels” – the primary cause of the climate crisis – when they meet in Turkey next month.

Colombia hosted nearly 60 countries at pivotal time on world stage for fight to transition to a clean energy future

Looking out to sea from the grey sandy beaches of Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, it is never hard to spot evidence of the country’s thriving fossil fuel export trade. Oil tankers ride at anchor on the horizon and sometimes, locals say, lumps of coal wash up on the shore, blown off the collier ships that carry cargos from the nearby mines.

It was here, on Wednesday evening, that the Colombian government took a bold step to shift its economy – and that of the rest of the world – away from dependence on coal, gas and oil and into a new era of clean energy. With the first ever conference on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, the host joined nearly 60 countries determined to loosen of the grip of petrostates on the world’s future.

Developing countries face possible shelving of crucial green action plan at IMF and World Bank spring meetings

Governments desperate for cash to protect their citizens from the growing impacts of the climate crisis are being put in a “beyond absurd” situation this week at global finance talks: they are being urged not to mention the climate, even as they address the current oil crisis.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) spring meetings take place this week amid a fragile ceasefire in Iran and upended geopolitics. One of the priorities was to forge a new “climate change action plan” (CCAP) for the world’s biggest provider of funds to developing countries, to replace the current strategy, which expires in June.

Reaching agreement in divisive political landscape shows ‘climate cooperation is alive and kicking’, says UN climate chief

The world is not winning the fight against the climate crisis but it is still in that fight, the UN climate chief has said in Belém, Brazil, after a bitterly contested Cop30 reached a deal.

Countries at Cop30 failed to bring the curtain down on the fossil fuel age amid opposition from some countries led by Saudi Arabia, and they underdelivered on a flagship hope – at a conference held in the Amazon – to chart an end to deforestation.

With temperatures breaching the Paris limit, experts say tackling the powerful gas could buy crucial time as the clean-energy shift stalls

• Cop30: click here for full Guardian coverage of the climate talks in Brazil

For two years, global temperatures have exceeded the 1.5C heating limit laid out in the Paris climate agreement. This overshooting will have “devastating consequences”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has warned.

The biggest worry for scientists is that further heating could trigger irreversible tipping points, such as the widespread drying out and dying off of the Amazon, or the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, beyond which climate breakdown could spiral out of control.