Welcome to the first COP28 special edition of DeBriefed, an essential guide to all the key developments at the Dubai climate talks.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
This week
COP28 kick-off
LOSS AND DAMAGE DEAL: The first day of COP28 in Dubai saw agreement on the details of a new “loss-and-damage fund” to help developing countries pay for climate impacts, the Financial Times reported. This comes after a year of “clashes” over “basic issues”, such as who should pay into the fund, the FT said. Several parties, including COP28 host UAE, Germany and the UK, immediately announced “more than $400m” to establish the fund, according to Climate Home News. (The Conversation noted annual loss-and-damage financial needs are “roughly 1,000 times” this amount.)
KING’S SPEECH: The second day of COP28 saw world leaders descend on the conference for the first day of the “World Climate Action Summit”. Opening the event, King Charles warned countries they were “dreadfully far off track” to meeting climate targets and urged them to make COP28 a “critical turning point for genuine transformational action”, the Independent reported. Ahead of his talk, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak told reporters he is “not in hock to ideological zealots” and issued a press release defending climate rollbacks.
COP TEXT TRACKER: After world leaders fly off home on Saturday evening, all attention will turn to COP’s crucial, yet infamously hard-to-follow negotiations. To help keep track of what is happening, Carbon Brief has just launched its traditional COP text tracker, but newly improved thanks to data-scraping wizardry from Dr Simon Evans and Dr Verner Viisainen.
Oily influence
‘OIL-AND-GAS DEALS’: Despite early progress at the summit, a shadow was cast by a series of investigations alleging that the fossil fuel industry could be influencing proceedings. An investigation by BBC News and the Centre for Climate Reporting alleged that the UAE planned to use its role as COP host to strike “secret” oil-and-gas deals behind the scenes of the summit. Journalists at the Centre for Climate Reporting obtained briefing documents from the UAE’s COP28 team that indicated plans to discuss fossil fuel deals with 15 different countries.
‘CAUGHT RED-HANDED’: On Twitter, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said the COP28 presidency had been “caught red-handed” and “will be under public scrutiny like no other ever before”. The UAE’s COP28 team at first refused to deny the allegations to BBC News and said that “private meetings are private”. After the story’s release, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber released a statement saying that the allegations were “false, not true, incorrect and not accurate”, Bloomberg reported.
SAUDI’S OIL PLAN: The Centre for Climate Reporting also released a second investigation alongside Channel 4 News alleging that Saudi Arabia has a plan to “artificially” boost oil consumption in African and Asian countries. In an undercover sting operation, journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting posed as oil investors and asked officials from Saudi’s ministry of energy whether the country had plans to boost oil demand in certain markets. In response, an official said: “Yes…It’s one of the main objectives that we are trying to accomplish.” Representatives from Saudi’s government refused requests for comment.
Around the world
- MIND ON METHANE: The US and China plan to hold a joint summit on methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases during COP28, the South China Morning Post reported. This follows a pledge from the two countries to “jointly tackle global warming” by “ramping up” renewables.
- DECARBONISING CLUB: Germany and Chile are set to launch a “club of governments” to help developing nations invest in cutting industry emissions, particularly from “hard-to-abate sectors” such as steel and cement, according to Reuters.
- KENYA FLOODS: At least 76 people have died and 40,000 have been displaced since heavy rains and flash floods began “pounding” Kenya in October, the Associated Press reported.
- INFLUENCING AFRICA: Climate Home News obtained leaked documents and interviewed multiple people about the alleged influence of the US consultancy firm McKinsey on Africa’s first climate summit.
- PHASE-OUT: Sunak was warned by the UK’s oil and gas regulator that his plan to introduce annual North Sea licensing rounds was “not necessary” to boost production, the Financial Times reported. Former prime minister Theresa May told the Times she disagreed with Sunak’s oil-and-gas push.
84,101
The number of registered delegates at COP28, the biggest UN climate summit in history, according to newly released Carbon Brief analysis.
Latest climate research
- Accounting for the long-term impacts of tropical cyclones increases the “social cost of carbon” – a metric that assesses the societal costs of CO2 emissions – by more than 20%, according to a new study in Nature Communications.
- Global warming could intensify heavy rainfall more than expected, according to a Journal of Climate study using high-resolution climate models.
- There is “little trade-off” between alleviating extreme poverty and limiting global warming, with ending extreme poverty expected to have a “negligible impact” on emissions, according to a Nature study.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The UK’s contribution to climate change since the start of the industrial era is almost twice as high when its activities in former colonies are taken into account, according to new Carbon Brief analysis covered by the Guardian. This is illustrated in the graphic above, which shows CO2 emissions caused by the UK both within its own borders (blue) and in colonised countries under British rule (red). The story is part of a wider Carbon Brief investigation into how considering colonial rule radically shifts responsibility for climate change globally, covered by the Hindustan Times in India and the NRC newspaper in the Netherlands, among others.
Spotlight
Key issues to watch at COP28
This week, Carbon Brief’s team of COP28 reporters break down the key issues to watch as the summit’s first days unfold.
Fossil fuels
As delegates gather in a petrostate made luxurious by fossil-fuel wealth, all eyes are on how COP host UAE will deal with growing calls for countries to commit to phasing out fossil fuels.
The need to “phase down unabated coal” use was mentioned in a COP legal text for the first time at the end of COP26 in Glasgow two years ago. At last year’s talks, COP27 host and oil-and-gas producer Egypt ignored repeated calls for the “phase out” of all fossil fuels to be discussed as part of the summit’s final agreement.
Ahead of COP28, allegations that the UAE planned to use COP to make “secret” oil and gas deals (see above) raised significant doubts about the presidency’s impartiality.
However, during the summit’s opening press conference on Thursday, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber indicated that he would support including fossil fuels in negotiating texts in the context of tackling climate change – and an early stage negotiating text for the global stocktake (see below) released on Friday morning does make reference to “fossil fuels”. It is yet to be seen whether such references will survive the days to come.
Global stocktake
The “global stocktake” (GST) is the first major review of countries’ progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, with an aim of encouraging nations to take more ambitious action.
The two-year process is set to wrap up at COP28. At the first press conference of the talks, Al Jaber told reporters he was “laser-focused” on delivering an ambitious GST. “I’m determined to demonstrate that this presidency is different,” he added.
While the GST’s “technical” phase finished with a report that spelt out the clear shortfall of climate action, finance and capacity to cope, states still have to sign off on political takeaways to deliver faster emissions reductions.
The GST decision is likely to be the main landing zone for language around phasing out fossil fuels, while providing guidance to countries on the next round of climate pledges and how they can course-correct against the 1.5C limit.
The first bare-bones draft of this decision text was published on Friday and mentions peaking global emissions, fossil fuel phase-out or phase down, as well as phase down of unabated coal power. While this is an early-stage draft that could see many iterations and cuts, observers expressed tentative optimism about its contents.
Climate finance
The most high-profile climate-finance outcome of COP28 will undoubtedly be the agreement on the loss-and-damage fund (see above). Yet, with so much climate action depending on scaling up finance for developing countries, the issue permeates the whole event.
On the first day of COP, Canada and Germany assured attendees that developed countries “likely” hit their outstanding $100bn annual climate finance goal last year. But, with the numbers to support this claim still unavailable, developing countries are unlikely to drop the issue. A decision on the new goal to replace the $100bn is not expected until next year.
For the past couple of years, there has been growing pressure on development banks and the private sector to fund more climate action. Building on this, on day two of the conference, 10 countries including the US, the UK, Kenya and Barbados banded together with a “leaders declaration” on a new framework for financial system reform.
Funding for climate adaptation still lags far behind support for emissions-cutting technologies. There are hopes that negotiations on the global goal on adaptation and the global stocktake could both provide venues in which to remedy this.
Food systems
Historically not garnering as much attention at COPs as fossil fuels, the world’s food systems – which account for a third of all human-caused emissions – are on the menu in Dubai. COP28 is the first to designate an entire thematic day for food and agriculture, taking place next weekend.
During the World Climate Action Summit on Friday, UAE environment and climate change minister Mariam Almheiri announced the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action. Some 134 countries signed the agreement at the time of the announcement. The declaration included a recognition of the impacts that the agricultural sector is already experiencing due to climate change and an intention to integrate food systems into national climate plans (called “nationally determined contributions” or NDCs) and other national strategies before COP30 in Brazil.
Most of the new announcements on food systems at COP28 will occur through pledges, rather than negotiated outcomes. Expect to see new funding and new promises from both governments and non-state actors over the next week and a half.
Watch, read, listen
COP OVERVIEW: The Guardian has released a podcast on “everything you need to know” about COP28.
EXTRA READING: Hardy COP watchers at the Third World Network have released an update on what to expect at the Dubai talks.
EXTRA EXTRA READING: The daily summaries from observers at the Earth Negotiations Bulletin are a must-read for COP attendees. Pay attention to the “in the corridors” section for a sense of how behind-the-scenes negotiations are progressing.
Coming up at COP28
- 1-2 December: World Climate Action Summit and high-level segment for heads of government
- 2 December: High-level party event: nation-states join forces to pursue a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty negotiating mandate
- 2 December: Leaders’ event: protecting nature for climate, lives, and livelihoods
- 3 December: 2023 high-level ministerial dialogue on the new collective quantified goal on climate finance, online
- 5 December: Eliminating methane emissions by 2030
Pick of the jobs
- University of Oxford, postdoctoral research fellow in environmental economics | Salary: £45,585-£54,395. Location: Oxford, UK
- Proof, investigative climate reporter | Salary: $2,000 a week. Location: Remote (EST time zone)
- Covering Climate Now, associate audience editor | Salary: $65,000-$72,000. Location: Remote
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org
The post COP28 DeBriefed 1 December 2023: Countries strike loss and damage deal; Oil influence; Key issues to watch appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Discussing climate change can make a difference. Focusing on the impacts in everyday life is a good place to start, experts say.
When Bad Bunny climbed onto broken power lines during his Super Bowl halftime show, millions of viewers saw a spectacle. Climate communicators saw a lesson in how to talk about climate change.
Wondering How to Talk About Climate Change? Take a Lesson from Bad Bunny
Sydney, Thursday 19 March 2026 — In response to escalating attacks on gas fields in the Middle East, including Israeli strikes on Iran’s giant South Pars gas field and Iranian retaliations on gas fields in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the following lines can be attributed to Solaye Snider, Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“The targeting of gas fields across the Middle East is a perilous escalation that reinforces just how vulnerable our fossil-fuelled world really is.
“Oil and gas have long been used as tools of power and coercion by authoritarian regimes. They cause climate chaos and environmental pollution and they drive conflict and war. The energy security of every nation still hooked on gas, including Australia, is under direct threat.
“For countries that are reliant on gas imports, like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and South Korea, this crisis is just getting started. It can take months to restart a gas export facility once it is shut down, meaning the shockwaves of these strikes will be felt for a long time to come.
“It is a gross and tragic injustice that while civilians are killed and lose their homes to this escalating violence, and families struggle with a tightening cost-of-living, gas giants like Woodside and Santos have seen their share prices surge on the prospect of windfall war profits.
“We must break this cycle. Transitioning to local renewable energy is the way to protect Australian households from the inherent volatility of fossil fuels like gas.”
-ENDS-
Images available for download via the Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact: Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lkeller@greenpeace.org
Greenpeace response to escalating attacks on gas fields in Middle East
Climate Change
DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Iran war fallout continues
WORK FROM HOME: The International Energy Agency has advised its member countries to take 10 steps in response to the ongoing energy crisis fuelled by the Iran war, including reducing highway speeds and encouraging people to work from home, said the Guardian. It came after retaliatory attacks between Israel and Iran continued to destroy energy infrastructure in the Middle East, causing energy prices to soar further, said Reuters.
SUPPLY DISRUPTED: The IEA also said it is prepared to make more of its member nations’ 1.4bn-barrel oil reserves available to help ease the impacts of what it called the “biggest supply disruption in the history of the oil market”, reported Bloomberg. The outlet noted that Asian countries have been hit hardest by the shortages, caused by a “near-halt” of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
EU SUMMIT: The energy crisis dominated talks at an EU leaders summit on Thursday, said Politico. Arriving at the summit, Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez attacked other European leaders for using the energy crisis as an excuse to “gut climate policies”, according to the EU Observer. The Financial Times said that some European leaders have asked the European Commission to overhaul its flagship emissions trading system (ETS) by summer in response to the energy crisis.
COAL BOOST: In response to the conflict, utility companies in Asia are “boosting coal-fired power generation to cut costs and safeguard energy supply”, said Reuters. UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell told Reuters: “If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, breaking dependencies which have shackled economies, this is the time.”
Around the world
- WINDFARM WINDFALL: The Trump administration in the US is considering a nearly $1bn settlement with TotalEnergies to cancel the French energy company’s two planned windfarms off the US east coast and have it instead invest in fossil-gas infrastructure in Texas, according to documents seen by the New York Times.
- BUSINESS CLASH: Following “clashes” with the agribusiness sector, Brazil launched its new climate plan, which calls for a 49-58% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2022 levels by 2025 and includes “specific guidelines for different sectors”, reported Folha de Sao Paolo.
- SALES SLUMP: Sales of liquified petroleum gas from India’s state-run oil companies have fallen by 17% this month due to cuts in deliveries to commercial and industrial consumers “amid the widespread logistical bottlenecks triggered by the Iran war”, said the Economic Times.
- CUBAN ENERGY CRISIS: The US imposed an “effective oil blockade” on Cuba, leaving the country facing its “worst energy crisis in decades”, reported the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Chinese exports of solar panels to the island have “skyrocketed” since 2023, it added.
- RECORD HIGHS: An “unprecedented” heatwave in the western and south-western US is “shattering dozens of temperature records” and could lead to drought in California in the coming months, reported the Los Angeles Times.
- VULNERABILITY CONCERNS: Landslides that killed more than 100 people in southern Ethiopia have “renewed concerns about Ethiopia’s vulnerability to climate-related disasters”, said the Addis Standard.
1%
The percentage of England’s land surface that could be devoted to renewables by 2050, according to the long-awaited “land-use framework” released by the UK government this week and covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Approaching international climate action by shifting the burden of mitigation onto higher-income countries could avoid 13.5 million premature deaths from air pollution in middle- and lower-income countries by 2050 | The Lancet Global Health
- Beavers can turn the ecosystems surrounding streams into “persistent” sinks of carbon that can sequester an order of magnitude more than non-beaver-modified ecosystems can store | Communications Earth & Environment
- Mobile-phone data from seven diverse countries during the summer heatwaves of 2022-23 showed a “widespread tendency to withdraw into homes” and an increase in out-of-home activities that can offer cooling, such as indoor retail | Environmental Research: Climate
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief this week published a significant update to its map of how climate change is affecting extreme weather events around the world. The map now includes 232 new extreme weather events from studies published in 2024 and 2025. Of these events, 196 were made more severe or more likely to occur by human-driven climate change, 12 were made less severe or less likely to occur and 10 had no discernible human influence. (The remaining 14 studies were inconclusive.)
Spotlight
New Zealand breaks new ground on climate litigation
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts about a first-of-its-kind climate lawsuit in New Zealand.
Earlier this week, representatives from two environmentally focused legal advocacy groups challenged the New Zealand government’s climate-action plan in court.
The plaintiffs argued that the measures laid out in the plan are insufficient to achieve the country’s legal obligation to hold global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.
The case could be “influential” in shaping lawsuits and rulings around the world, one legal expert not involved in the case told Carbon Brief.
Reductions vs removals
The new case contends that there are several issues regarding the New Zealand government’s response to climate change.
One of the key arguments the plaintiffs make is that New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan, which covers the period from 2026-30, is overreliant on the use of tree-planting to achieve its targets.
When the plan was released in December 2024, it was “immediately clear that it was a pretty lacklustre plan”, Eliza Prestidge Oldfield, senior legal researcher at the Environmental Law Initiative, one of the groups behind the legal case, told Carbon Brief.
The plan called for large-scale planting of pine tree plantations, which are not native to New Zealand and have a high risk of burning. Because of this, there are concerns about how permanent any carbon removal provided by these plantations actually can be, experts told Carbon Brief.
Catherine Higham, senior policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who was not involved in the case, said:
“The lawyers are arguing that there are real challenges with equating the emissions that you may be able to remove from the atmosphere through afforestation with actual emissions reductions, which are much more certain.”
‘Global dialogue’
While other climate lawsuits elsewhere in the world have also focused on the inadequacy of a government’s plan to meet its stated emissions-reduction targets, this is the first such case that addresses the role of removals head-on.
Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, told Carbon Brief that the lawsuit “builds on a decade of climate litigation” in national, regional and international courts.
Maxwell, who was not involved in the New Zealand case, added that there is a “real global dialogue” between, not just plaintiffs, but national courts as well. She said:
“[National courts] look to common issues that have been decided in other countries. They’re not binding on that court if it’s at the national level, but they are influential.”
Given that many other countries have legal frameworks requiring their governments to create plans outlining the pathway to their long-term climate targets, Prestidge Oldfield told Carbon Brief that other jurisdictions “should be interested in these questions around the level of certainty”.
Higham noted that, even if the case is successful, addressing the plan’s shortfalls will face its own set of challenges. She told Carbon Brief:
“A lot of these decisions are political and they can be politically contentious…Those [measures] have to be put into action through legislation and that is then subject to the usual political process. So that’s where the challenge comes in.”
While she could not speculate on the outcome of the case, Prestidge Oldfield said it was “very heartening” to see that both the judge and the opposing counsel “appreciated how much of a concern climate change is globally”.
She added:
“It’s not a given that the judge would even be interested in climate change.”
Watch, read, listen
COMMON APPROACH: The Heated podcast analysed fossil-fuel advertisements and highlighted the most common deception tactics they employed.
THREAT ASSESSMENT: Mongabay mapped the potential threat that oil extraction poses to Venezuela’s ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest and its coral reefs.
SALT LAKES? GREAT!: High Country News interviewed journalist Dr Caroline Tracey about her new book on saline lakes – such as Utah’s Great Salt Lake – the threats that face them and what they can teach us.
Coming up
- 23 March-2 April: Third meeting of the preparatory commission for the High Seas Treaty, New York
- 24-27 March: 64th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bangkok
- 26-29 March: 14th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Pick of the jobs
- International Centre of Research for the Environment and Development (CIRAD), IPCC chapter scientist | Salary: €3,200-3,750 per month. Location: Nogent-sur-Marne, France
- Avaaz, chief of staff | Salary: Dependent on location. Location: Remote, with preferred time zones
- Green Party, social media officer | Salary: £31,592-£32,192. Location: Remote or Westminster, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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