Reusable brick walls for the construction industry

A team from Graz University of Technology has developed a prefabricated brick wall that can be dismantled and re-used without being destroyed. This reduces emissions significantly and conserves valuable resources

Graz University of Technology

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The brick walls can be dismantled and rebuilt without being damaged. Here, the building is being rebuilt following dismantling.

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Credit: IBPSC - TU Graz

The construction sector still has some way to go in terms of reducing the consumption of resources and greenhouse gas emissions. One of these relates to the construction waste produced during the demolition of buildings. Buildings used for rather short periods of between ten and 20 years, such as consumer markets, have a negative impact on the balance sheet. In the Re-Use Ziegelwand project, a team from Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), together with the biggest Austrian brick producer wienerberger, has now developed a solution that decouples the service life of the building materials from that of the building. The centrepiece is industrially prefabricated brick wall elements that are not joined by conventional mortar joints but by using reversible joint solutions. This means they can be re-used several times after a building has been dismantled.

60 per cent CO2 savings over three life cycles

“Bricks are very high-quality building materials and their production is very resource-intensive. It therefore offers enormous advantages if they can be removed non-destructively after a building has been used, and re-used elsewhere,” says project manager Hans Hafellner from the Institute of Building Physics, Services and Construction at TU Graz. “The results of our research to date show that a significant proportion of total emissions can be avoided during the second phase of use through reuse by developing an innovative jointing solution. Considering three life cycles, CO₂ emissions can be reduced by around 60 per cent compared to conventional construction methods.”

A particular challenge in the realisation of the reusable brick walls was to ensure that they could be dismantled and at the same time meet all structural requirements in terms of tolerances, statics, tightness, thermal insulation and stability. In addition to the non-permanent joint solution, the team therefore relied on a few other necessary elements. The brick thickness of the walls is 44 cm and the bricks contain insulating wool to guarantee sufficient thermal insulation. The prefabricated brick walls are also pre-plastered at the factory, which reduces the work involved on the construction site. There are two options when it comes to statics and stability. Either the roof of the building is heavy enough to stabilise the structure or threaded rods which run through the bricks vertically and are pre-stressed provide the necessary stability.

Successful dismantling and reconstruction

The team tested its developments using a demonstrator building. Not only did the joints and wall structures fulfil all the requirements, but the building was still fully functional even after being dismantled and rebuilt at a different location. To ensure that this also applies to buildings after ten to 20 years of use, the researchers rely on what is known as modal analysis. A body, in this case the pre-built brick walls of the building, is stimulated by means of vibrations in order to first determine the natural frequency in a healthy state. If there is a change in the natural frequency at some point during the period of use, it is possible to determine the load-bearing capacity of the walls without having to use destructive test measures.

“The successful construction, dismantling and reassembly of the demonstrator on a large scale confirms the technical feasibility and robustness of the system under realistic conditions,” says Andreas Trummer, who supervised the project at the Institute of Structural Design at TU Graz. “Ultimately, this solution not only benefits the users of the building, as it has a higher residual value at the end of its service life, but also the environment.” In addition to the Institute of Building Physics, Services and Construction and the Institute of Structural Design as well as wienerberger, the Laboratory for Structural Engineering at TU Graz was also involved in the research. The project was funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG.

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Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A Reusable Prefabricated Brick Wall System for Circular Construction: Development, Structural Concept, and Life Cycle Potential

Article Publication Date

12-Aug-2026

 

Laboratory test to check for leaks.

Initial construction of the building with its reusable brick walls. (IMAGE)

Graz University of Technology

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Initial construction of the building with its reusable brick walls.

 

The building, rebuilt following its dismantling. The walls are still in good condition.

Credit

IBPSC - TU Graz

The fungus that spoils nearly everything

Researchers discover the secret behind gray mold’s unstoppable spread

University of California - Davis

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Even if you haven’t heard of Botrytis cinerea, you’ve likely seen it — slowly growing in your store-bought blueberries, tomatoes or even on your beautiful orchids. Commonly known as gray mold, the fungus attacks hundreds of plants. For years, scientists have unsuccessfully tried to breed crops that could resist the fungus. New research from the University of California, Davis, suggests decades of crop breeding strategies may have overlooked a crucial piece of the puzzle: the pathogen itself.

Two related studies led by Dan Kliebenstein, professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, show the problem may lie in a fundamental misunderstanding of how plants and the pathogen interact. The studies were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

An unexpected defense

Scientists had long assumed that when different plants are attacked by a fungus, they mount a broadly similar defense — the same basic response with minor variations. 

“It’s like they might do little decorations on the Christmas tree, but it’s always a Christmas tree,” Kliebenstein said. The team’s findings challenge that assumption. For some plants, it’s not a Christmas tree at all. It’s a saguaro cactus. 

Each plant mounted a response that was fundamentally its own, whether comparing closely related crops or distant ones. That finding alone helps explain why decades of resistance breeding have yielded only modest results.

“It’s why we could never figure out how to move information from one plant to help another become resistant, because what one plant is doing doesn’t actually do anything for the other plant,” Kliebenstein said.

A human-like pathogen

The second study yielded more surprising results. Rather than having a universal “master key” to infect any plant it encounters, gray mold appears to sense what it’s growing on and adjusts its attack accordingly. 

"The pathogen is like a human," Kliebenstein said. "At some level, it knows it's attacking a strawberry, and there's one set of things it should do. If it's attacking a tomato, it knows it's attacking a tomato and it decides to do something completely different." 

In a sense, Kliebenstein said the fungus is “tasting” the difference between a strawberry and a tomato — reading the plant's own chemical defenses and flavors — then countering them.

Reframing the problem

The two studies could shift how scientists approach disease prevention, Kliebenstein said.

“They suggest that everything we’ve been trying on the plant or fungus side is probably always going to be doomed to fail, and instead we should be looking at how the pathogen knows what it’s attacking,” he said. 

If researchers can identify the genes the fungus uses to recognize which plant it’s attacking, they might be able to confuse the fungus chemically or genetically. A disoriented pathogen could allow the plant’s own natural defenses to take over. 

“We've been hitting ourselves against a brick wall and we just never thought about this,” Kliebenstein said. “Now we might have realized — oh, if we take two steps to the right, the brick wall ends.”

It's a strategy that could, in theory, work across many crops at once, in contrast to current approaches that must be engineered one plant at a time.

The stakes are significant. Gray mold causes an estimated 5% to 10% crop loss across many fruits and vegetables, affecting everything from grapes and lettuce to soybeans and cut flowers. 

Other authors of the studies include Ritu Singh, Anna Jo Muhich, Cloe Tom, Celine Caseys, Jack McMillan, Karishma Srinivas and Lucca Faieta of UC Davis.

The studies were funded by the National Science Foundation. 

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2521414123 

Subject of Research

Cells

Article Title

Combined generalist and host-specific transcriptional strategies enable host generalism in the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea

Article Publication Date

19-May-2026

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H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space TPB :: Profile :: Dark...

H.P. Lovecraft's horror story, rendered in chilling detail by modern manga horror master Gou Tanabe! The complete story in one volume,...

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"The Colour out of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft

'The Colour out of Space' by H. P. Lovecraft

 

Carbon markets underestimate the risks U.S. forests face from climate change

Forests can’t offset emissions as a carbon store if trees are constantly succumbing to droughts, pests and fires

University of California - Santa Barbara

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(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The world’s forests form a vast network of carbon reservoirs, keeping carbon sequestered from the atmosphere where its presence is disrupting Earth’s climate systems. Many corporate, national and sub-national climate policies rely on forests’ essential ability to store carbon, often tracked and funded through a system of “carbon credits” issued to polluting industries in exchange for protecting and restoring forests.

But if trees die — from wildfire, drought or insect infestation — large amounts of greenhouse gasses are released, exacerbating ongoing climate change. And the warming climate is accelerating this problem by making such disturbances more frequent and severe, but only in some places and not in others.

Scientists at the University of Utah and UC Santa Barbara, in collaboration with international experts, sought to determine which forests are most likely to release their stored carbon over the next 100 years, and whether current carbon-credit systems accurately account for those risks.

The results, published in Nature, show that there are places in the United States where carbon emissions from die-backs far exceed what is currently accounted for in carbon-credit systems. This is particularly true for the parched American West. Fortunately, the researchers point out ways it can be corrected.

“Getting to net zero emissions will take a portfolio of solutions,” said co-author Anna Trugman, a forest ecologist at UCSB. “But in many regions, escalating disturbance associated with climate change makes it riskier to count on forests to sequester carbon.”

“Forests are facing increasing durability risks due to climate change,” added senior author William Anderegg, a biology professor at the University of Utah. “Those risks have been underappreciated to date in multi-billion-dollar carbon markets.

“But with better science, we can set these policies up to potentially work better,” Anderegg continued. “We’re providing a potential solution as well.”

Carbon-credit programs aim to cover the risk of fire and other disturbances by using “buffer pools.” These are reserves of extra carbon credits set aside to compensate for forests that suddenly lose carbon if their trees burn or die. However, the study found these buffer pools are currently far too small for US forest projects within the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which manages one of the largest compliance carbon-credit programs in the nation. On average, they would need to be around six times larger to fully cover the expected losses over a century for the projects that have been set up so far.

The research team, which included scientists from seven other universities and organizations, used forest plot data, satellite observations and machine learning to predict where forest losses are most likely to occur. They mapped areas across the continental U.S., and calculated the risks of a carbon reversal — or carbon loss — occurring at least once in the next 100 years from wildfire, drought and insects. The maps show how risks vary across the landscape based on historical models and updated ones that account for climate change. The differences are stark.

While parts of the country remain relatively low risk, the portion of the country projected to experience a reversal expanded from 10% to 33% for wildfire; from 19% to 21% for drought; and from 23% to 25% for insects. Broad areas in Idaho, Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico show an 80% or more chance of experiencing such a carbon loss due to wildfire over the next century.

“Compared to other natural disturbances, we found that wildfire is the largest climate-sensitive risk to durability for forest nature-based climate solutions,” said co-lead author Chao Wu, now at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. “Our analysis shows for the first time what a robust, climate-informed buffer pool would look like to handle accelerating climate threats.”

Along with the maps, the Wilkes Center is releasing a set of interactive tools to help plan where and how to conduct forest management and conservation efforts with the highest chances of success.

Carbon credits are among a host of mechanisms to finance nature-based climate solutions. These strategies harness market incentives to encourage investments that keep greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Promoting tree growth is a great way to pull carbon and keep it locked up for decades — as long as the risk of trees dying prematurely is considered and appropriately managed.

“Nature-based climate solutions in forests aim to store carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere,” Anderegg said. “Sometimes that forest carbon is claimed as a ‘carbon offset’ for fossil fuel emissions elsewhere. Somebody’s buying that credit, assuming that a ton of carbon in the trees is the same as a ton of carbon in fossil fuels that you emit to the atmosphere.”

For this system to function as a climate solution, that carbon has to remain in the trees for a long time. Projects are typically planned on a 100-year horizon in the major California program that the researchers examined. Many offset protocols assume risks are stable over time and space. In reality, risks vary widely by location and are increasing due to climate change. And this new research makes it possible for the first time to account for how risks vary through space and time.

Trugman’s lab is currently investigating which species will continue to thrive under emerging climate conditions, why this is, and what managers can do to increase the resilience of high-value ecosystems under threat.

“There is some positive news here,” Anderegg said. “Once you have the best-available science and data directly incorporated into programs and policies, you can then inform and strategically guide where new projects get developed.

“This ability to choose and really focus on forest carbon in low-risk areas is very promising,” he continued. “This can incentivize these forest activities where they’re likely to last, and then maybe steer clear of areas where forests are likely to be gone in 100 years.”

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Journal

Nature

 

Lab study reveals patterns of inheritance that defy Mendel's laws

Johns Hopkins Medicine

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Genetic information in the DNA and modifications, such as DNA methylation, define the epigenetic landscape and phenotype and show both Mendelian and non-Mendelian heredity.

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Credit: Art design by Michael Koldobskiy and Andrew Feinberg, illustration by Kate Zvorykina

Scientists have long known that the DNA code in genes is not the only way to pass genetic traits from parents to offspring. “Epigenetic” marks — chemical modifications to DNA that don’t change the DNA code itself — can also be passed down. 

Now, a new federally funded study using mice reveals that some of those marks — about 7% of them — can be inherited in ways that break the century-long understanding of the rules of inheritance explored and recorded by Gregor Mendel’s work with pea plants. The study also reveals new, unexpected examples of inheritance patterns that defy Mendel’s law — such as a naturally occurring paramutation, seen previously in plants and flies, and not in mammals.  

“Non-Mendelian patterns of inheriting epigenetics could be a faster way to acquire diverse or new traits than alterations in the genomic sequence itself, especially in response to environmental pressures,” says Andrew Feinberg, M.D., Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Whiting School of Engineering and Bloomberg School of Public Health, and co-leader of the research with colleagues at Texas A&M University. 

The new study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, was reported May 20 in Nature Genetics, as well as an accompanying Nature brief. 

The well-studied rules of genetic inheritance — known as Mendel’s Laws — cover how genetic material known as alleles sort themselves, are dominant or recessive, and in what ways they get passed down to new generations. Alleles are variations on genes that lead to a specific trait or disease state. In mammals, one allele is inherited from each parent, and either of those alleles can be dominant or recessive. 

The rules state, for example, that alleles in offspring are inherited from each parent, and the traits of dominant alleles prevail over recessive ones, which are silenced. Several previous studies have already shown that some patterns of epigenetic inheritance, such as genomic imprinting, can break the guiding principles established by the Austrian-born friar. The new study also found examples of genomic imprinting, but also other types of non-Mendelian patterns of epigenetic inheritance that surprised the scientists.  

In examples of genomic imprinting, an allele in either parent can be labeled as coming from sperm or an egg and silenced by methylation. Such imprinted alleles are passed down to offspring and are silenced not because they are recessive but based on which parent contributes the imprinted allele. The new research found imprinting examples in five additional genes. 

In addition to the new examples of genetic imprinting, results of the current study suggest that epigenetic patterns of inheritance that defy Mendel’s rules may be more frequent than described in other studies. In addition, the research team found epigenetic patterns passed down to offspring that were not present in either parent. 

For the study, researchers tracked how mice inherit a type of epigenetic change to DNA called methylation, in which chemical groups made up of carbon and hydrogen atoms are attached to the so-called promoter region of a gene, which turns it on or off. 

The scientists sampled tissue from three generations of male and female mice at 4–6 months old: 26 in the first group, 34 offspring in the second generation and 19 in the third generation.

They scoured extensive parts of the mouse genome in each tissue sample, following how the genomic sequence and 12 known inherited patterns of DNA methylation were passed down in the three generations of mice. 

Feinberg worked with co-corresponding authors David Threadgill, Ph.D., Regents professor at Texas A&M, and Kasper Hansen, Ph.D., professor of biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. They worked with Johns Hopkins graduate student Adam Davidovich to develop new experimental and computational strategies to map methylation and genomic data together. 

In all, the researchers found 522 instances — about 7% of epigenetic inheritance patterns — in which methylation was inherited on non-sex chromosomes in a variety of ways that broke Mendel’s laws.

Some 54 of those instances represented rare or “emergent” types of epigenetic inheritance not present in either parent. For example, a cross between two mice with no methylation on the same allele, which should have resulted in a mouse that inherited no methylation on the allele, could instead result in a mouse with methylation on both alleles. “The methylation seemingly appeared out of nowhere,” says Feinberg. 

The scientists also found another rare type of inheritance called paramutation in a gene called Capn11, which encodes a calcium-dependent gene that regulates normal sperm development. Alterations in the human version of the gene cause infertility and problems with sperm. 

Paramutation occurs when methylation in one allele leads to methylation in another allele. The paramutation was located in an area of the gene associated with a repetitive element of a type known to be influenced by environmental exposure. “It’s almost like the methylation is transferred to another allele,” says Feinberg. He notes that epigenetic influences on the genome have been tied to environmental pressures such as environmental stress, trauma and diet. 

“This work may convince scientists to integrate both genomics and epigenomics more often for a complete understanding of how traits that produce disease and healthy states are inherited,” says Hansen. 

For their studies of the mouse genome, the research team used genomic sequencing involving “long-reads” of DNA segments that are between 10,000 pairs of chemical DNA letters up to more than a million chemical base pairs. Long-read sequencing is more labor-intensive, but it is better than short-read sequencing at identifying variations among alleles, as well as methylation spots that can be far away from the bulk of a gene. 

Feinberg says they plan to study epigenetic inheritance patterns using human genomic data, as well. That work may provide more insights for tracking non-Mendelian patterns of epigenetic inheritance that can inform clinical geneticists looking for patterns of disease in families. It may also help scientists study how environmental factors, such as diet, influence epigenetic inheritance patterns.

Other scientists who authored the study are Danila Cuomo and Alexandra Naron from Texas A&M University; Hang Su and Leonard McMillan from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Sandeep Kambhampati, Qingqing Gong and Rakel Tryggvadottir from Johns Hopkins. 

Funding for the research was provided by the National Institutes of Health (DP1DK119129, R35GM149323, RM1HG008529, R01DK130333), the National Science Foundation and a Texas A&M Health Science Center Seedling Grant. 

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Journal

Nature Genetics

Germany’s Merz says wouldn’t advise young people to move to US


By AFP
May 15, 2026


German Chancellor Friedrich Merz cited a worsening 'social climate' in America - Copyright POOL/AFP Matthias Schrader

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Friday he would not advise young people in his country to move to the United States for study or work, in the latest sign of cooling ties between Berlin and Washington.

Last month Merz had a high-profile spat with US President Donald Trump after the chancellor said Iran was “humiliating” Washington at the negotiating table.

Following the comment, Trump — who suggested Merz was doing a “terrible” job as leader — abruptly announced that the United States would pull 5,000 troops from bases in Germany.

At a gathering of German Catholics in the southern city of Wuerzburg on Friday, Merz garnered applause after saying: “I would not recommend to my children today that they go to the US to get an education and to work.”

He cited “the social climate that has suddenly developed” in the United States and said that “even the best educated in America have great difficulty in finding a job”.

Merz has traditionally been a transatlanticist in the mould of most centrist German politicians but the relationship with the US has become increasingly strained under Trump’s administration.

“I am a great admirer of America’s, but right now my admiration is not increasing,” he said, to laughter from the audience.

Even before the row over Iran, Merz had said that a cultural “rift” has opened between the United States and Europe due to the culture wars embraced by Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

The Trump administration has charged that Europe faces a “civilisational decline”, and has courted far-right parties on the continent.

Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO member Denmark, and his cutting back of support to Ukraine have also frayed ties between the US and its traditional European allies.

Mercedes Benz mulls diversification into defence


By AFP
May 16, 2026


US tariffs had an impact of hundreds of millions of euros on Mercedes-Benz - Copyright AFP/File STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN

The CEO of German automaking giant Mercedes-Benz has said he has not ruled out entering the defence industry.

“The world has become more unpredictable, and I think it is quite clear that Europe needs to strengthen its defence capabilities,” CEO Ola Kaellenius said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Friday.

“If we are able to play a positive role in this area, we would be ready to do so,” said Kaellenius, a German-Swedish national.

His remarks come amid Germany beefing up its military capacity in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The German defence industry has locked onto that trend, as illustrated by the rise of arms maker Rheinmetall in recent years, with the group recently pushing into the naval and dronemaking spheres.

In contrast, German automakers, such as Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, are battling crises, caught between tariffs and bitter Chinese competition.

In late March, the CEO of fellow German auto giant, Volkswagen, Oliver Blume, said he was “in contact” with defence companies, particularly those involved in missile defence, to convert a German factory to produce military transport equipment.

According to the Financial Times, discussions are under way with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the company that designed Israel’s Iron Dome.

Asked by AFP to comment on Kaellenius’s interview, a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson said the firm “has for many years been supplying chassis to specialised firms which equip and market them under their own responsibility and under their own brand for military applications”.

“Our activities in the security and defence sector constitute a strategic development focus that we will continue to actively pursue, in collaboration with our partners,” the spokesperson added.

In his Wall Street Journal interview, Kaellenius did not go into details on what kind of products Mercedes-Benz might manufacture.

He predicted that defence-related business would represent only a “minor part of Mercedes-Benz’s operations” compared with auto and van manufacture.

But he added defence could be “a rapidly growing niche that could also contribute to the group’s financial results.”

UN General Assembly to take up climate change ‘obligations’ resolution


By AFP
May 17, 2026


The tiny Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has taken the lead in pressing for climate change accountability - Copyright AFP JORGE GUERRERO

Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS

The UN General Assembly on Wednesday will weigh a draft resolution underlining states’ obligations to combat climate change, a long-awaited move that has been scaled back under pressure from major greenhouse gas emitters.

In 2024, the small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu spearheaded the General Assembly’s request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the responsibility of states to fulfill their climate commitments.

The world’s top court last year ruled that states were obliged to tackle climate change under international law, and failing to do so would pave the way for “reparations” to vulnerable countries.

The decision exceeded climate advocates’ expectations, and Vanuatu in January proposed a new draft resolution to implement the ICJ ruling, which is non-binding but can be drawn on by courts around the world.

“For Vanuatu and for many climate-vulnerable states, this is ultimately about survival, but it is also about something wider: whether multilateralism can still respond to reality with unity,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate minister and a proponent of the cause for several years.

But the text was altered significantly after negotiations among states, with climate change taking a back seat to national security or industrial interests in many countries.

The resolution welcomes the ICJ opinion “as an authoritative contribution to the clarification of existing international law” and calls on states to “comply with their respective obligations” to protect the global climate.

It also emphasizes the measures needed to keep global warming limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, particularly “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” in keeping with a goal adopted by nearly 200 countries during a global climate meeting in Dubai in 2023.

However, the creation of an “International Register of Damage” to compile evidence of “damage, loss or injury attributable to climate change” has vanished from the current text, an initial draft of which was viewed by AFP.



– ‘Perseverance’ –



The register idea sparked backlash from the United States, China, the European Union, Japan and multiple oil-producing nations that argued it went beyond the ICJ opinion, diplomatic sources told AFP.

The countries most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions also regularly oppose any mechanism that could require them to pay reparations to nations at greatest risk of devastating impacts from climate change.

Vanuatu insists that the resolution avoids this.

“Let me also be clear about what the resolution does not do. It does not create new legal obligations. It does not adjudicate disputes. It does not attribute responsibility to any state,” Regenvanu said, describing the text as “a careful and balanced response to the Court’s guidance.”

Despite the watered-down draft, the resolution is unlikely to be adopted by the consensus seen in 2024, according to diplomatic sources, who expect at least one state to call for a vote on the matter.

Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, said the current version of the resolution was “still a strong text, and it really matters that it passes.”

“This text represents perseverance in the pursuit of climate justice, even in the face of enormous political pressure,” she told AFP.

Climate advocates hope that the concept of a damage registry can be brought to the table in the future via the UN secretary-general, as the draft resolution calls on the UN chief to submit a report the General Assembly “containing ways to advance compliance with all obligations” from the ICJ ruling.