Cropped 17 June 2026: Coral reef ‘hope’ | Ocean talks | Plant flowering times ‘shift’

We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight. This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here. Key developments Ocean talks MAKING WAVES: African and Commonwealth countries issued a “call to action” to implement the High Seas Treaty at the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya this week, reported the Associated Press. The summit, which ends on 18 June, is focused on ocean issues including “climate change, biodiversity and pollution”, said the newswire. The UK government announced £13.9m in marine-related funding at the summit. OCEAN ‘STRAIN’: Climate change, pollution, overfishing and biodiversity loss are putting oceans under “severe strain”, according to a UN report. The third “world ocean assessment” noted that conservation efforts have also “grown”, including through “nature-based solutions, ecosystem restoration and sustainable management techniques”. Meanwhile, another UN report said that fisheries and aquaculture production reached an all-time high of 235m tonnes in 2024. OBSERVATION ISSUES: Scientists told the Guardian that the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle a key ocean-observation system run by the US would “severely degrade” the accuracy of weather forecasts around the world. Several Democratic and one Republican lawmaker pushed back against the plan to get rid of the system, reported the Associated Press. [For more, see the first edition of Cited, Carbon Brief’s newsletter on climate science.] Plant and fungi update OFF-KILTER: Plant flowering times have “shifted significantly” over the last century, according to an AI-assisted analysis of 8m “digitised herbarium specimens” in the latest “state of the world plants and fungi” report from the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. The report stated there have been “both advances and delays” in flowering date, with a median shift of 2.5 days per decade in either direction.