Carbon revenues hit record high while forests are under new pressure

Global carbon pricing generated more than $107bn in 2025, according to the World Bank’s 2026 State and Trends of Carbon Pricing report – the highest figure on record. The revenue has largely come from developed economies, where carbon prices are significantly higher than in most of the developing world. The report finds that roughly 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are now covered by some form of direct carbon price across 87 implemented policies.

The average carbon price delivered through market-based instruments has doubled since 2016, driven primarily by increases in emissions trading system prices. Average carbon tax rates have held broadly stable, though some jurisdictions are moving sharply upward. Singapore, for instance, is raising its carbon tax rate by 80 percent. Global carbon credit issuances rose 8 percent between 2024 and 2025 and, while volumes remain 20 percent below their 2022 peak, they are substantially higher than a decade ago.

Circular challenges

The latest Circularity Gap Report for 2026 estimates that around €25.4tn is lost through linear rather than circular processes, equivalent to around 31% of global GDP. This means that for every €3 of economic value created globally, around €1 is lost due to linear material use. These losses are avoidable and represent a significant opportunity for circularity to enhance value recovery and long-term value retention across economies. The researchers from Circle Economy and Deloitte say that existing economic metrics do not account for value loss to linear processes. They argue that conventional economic indicators such as GDP measure activity, not value retention or erosion, and therefore overlook resource depletion, waste, underutilisation, and stock depletion embedded in linear materials management. As a result, structural value loss remains largely invisible in economic decision-making.

By retaining materials at higher utility and preventing waste and underutilisation, economies can capture substantial economic gains while reducing environmental pressures, supply risks, and social externalities embedded in linear practices.

The report concludes that no single actor can help address structural value loss alone. There is a significant opportunity for businesses, financiers, and policymakers to align innovation, investment, incentives, and regulation across value chains through standardised international frameworks such as the Global Circularity Protocol to shift from linear throughput maximisation to value retention at scale.

Joining forces on farming

Forty major food and agriculture businesses – among them Carlsberg, Diageo, Nestlé and Mondelez – have put their names to a joint declaration committing to advance regenerative agriculture across their supply chains. The declaration is being supported by SAI Platform’s Regenerating Together Programme, which works with companies to help transition sourcing toward farming practices that aim to address climate change, biodiversity loss and soil degradation simultaneously.

The declaration is notable for its framing as much as its signatories. It acknowledges that the problems confronting food systems are deeply interconnected, and that meaningful change requires coordinated action rather than individual commitments made in isolation. The programme draws in farmers, NGOs and academics alongside industry participants – an attempt to build alignment across supply chains that have historically struggled to move in the same direction at the same scale. Whether a declaration translates into verifiable change at farm level is the question that has shadowed similar initiatives before.