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Is the end near for COPs in petrostates?
Fossil fuels have been given warm hospitality at COPs in recent years, with the last two climate summits being held in fossil fuel-expanding petrostates with presidencies even getting caught promoting oil and gas deals on the job.
That’s why a group of top climate experts, scientists and former UN chiefs called for reform in an open letter published this Friday, where they argue that countries expanding oil and gas should not be able to hold the COP presidencies.
Signed by former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, the letter calls on countries to establish a “strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.
The letter does not provide details of who would judge this criteria. Climate Home requested additional information, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
While the experts recognise the importance of UN climate talks, they also call for reform of the COP process, writing that the “current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale” needed to address the climate crisis.
The COP29 presidency has been vocal about its disinterest in a quick fossil-fuel phase out, with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev even telling the opening plenary that fossil fuels are a “gift from god” and that “we must be realistic” about energy transition.
An analysis of Aliyev’s speeches published today by campaign group 350.org found that the Azeri president defended or promoted fossil fuels in more than three quarters of his energy and climate-related speeches. In over a year of such speeches, Aliyev never even mentioned the Paris Agreement, the campaign group found.
Some campaigners backed the reform proposal. Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, said it is “demoralising” to hear the messages sent by Azerbaijan’s COP presidency.
She told media in Baku that the UN climate body, UNFCCC, should come up with a “conflict of interest policy” for delegates and the COP presidency that “puts a firewall between fossil fuel interests and the COP process.
She also called on countries to limit the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists at COP. According to another report published today by Global Witness, almost 1,800 lobbyists have shown up at COP29 – around 700 hundred less than last year but more than the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined.
Currently, countries can select who participates in their delegations, either with a “party” or “party overflow” badge. They do not choose people with an “observer” badge. Most lobbyists are observers, but some countries such as Japan, the UK, Canada and Italy brought fossil fuel lobbyists as part of their national delegations, the Global Witness report found.
According to the report, the biggest group of fossil fuel lobbyists is from an observer group called the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) which sent 43 people.
But IETA denies this characterisation. While it does have a representative from French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies, an IETA spokesperson told Climate Home their delegates were “a broad mix” which “includes emitters who are committed to a just transition and solution providers who will help them on that journey”. Drawing up an exclusion list will be contentious.
Peace, Baku style
It is the “Energy, Peace Relief and Recovery” Day here in Baku. But if you’re running through the halls you won’t note much change – as there hasn’t been in conflict-afflicted nations across the world, despite Azerbaijan’s COP Truce proposal.
The COP29 host wanted to pause all the conflicts in the world – which number more than 50 – for the duration of the climate talks, inspired, they said, by the Olympic Truce.
On Friday, the COP Truce appeal did not feature prominently on the agenda. Nonetheless, the presidency said that the initiative received the support of 132 countries. That includes nations currently involved in civil wars and international conflicts, like Sudan, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Azerbaijan itself has yet to reach a fully-fledged peace deal with neighbouring Armenia. According to Azeri media, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said that there cannot be any “physical meetings” with their Armenian counterparts until December as the climate summit is the government’s main focus.
When the COP Truce was first announced, climate campaigners called it a “performative… PR exercise” and “a distraction” from a separate UN-supported push to strengthen climate action in conflict-affected regions.
On that front, the COP29 presidency and six countries launched today the ‘Baku Call on Climate Action for Peace, Relief, and Recovery’, aiming to develop a strategy for preventing climate-induced wars and scaling up support for conflict-struck vulnerable nations.
The initiative will see the creation of a hub through which countries can “collaborate on peace and climate initiatives”.
During an event on this initiative, Climate Home asked Elshad Iskandarov, special envoy of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, about the ceasefire appeal. He said that the truce was proposed to “foster peace in the world and highlight the importance of climate” without giving any further details.
But not everyone feels attuned to the “COP of peace” vision pushed by the COP presidency. Mohammed Usrof, founder of the Palestinian Youth Climate Negotiators Team, voiced concerns about COP29 being hosted in Azerbaijan because the country is Israel’s biggest crude oil supplier, as shown in a recent report by Oil Change International.
Mila Sirychenko, a Ukrainian activist, had reservations about expressing her views at COP due to the large size of the Russian delegation. Russia’s party at this COP counts 900 people, only topped by the Azeri (995) and Brazil delegations (984).
Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and Eni – all companies that supply crude oil to Israel – brought a combined total of 39 lobbyists to the climate summit.
“So many others continue to be complicit with maintaining business as usual,” Usrof told Climate Home, referring to the almost 1,800 fossil fuel lobbyists at COP, many of whom are part of countries’ official delegations. “And, as we see, the business as usual involves the genocide of Gazans”.
“Puzzling” lack of pledges for adaptation
There’s a “great paradox” in evidence at COP29 between leaders’ speeches urgently calling to keep people safe from worsening climate change impacts – and the apparent lack of money available to do that, according to the head of the Adaptation Fund.
The UN fund – which has been at the cutting edge of efforts to build resilience to extreme weather and rising seas for the last two decades – only managed to secure contributions of around $61 million from donor countries at a fundraising event on Thursday, against its annual goal of $300 million.
This despite exhortations from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN climate chief at the start of COP29 for rich countries to fill the huge gap in adaptation funding, which could reach $187 billion-$359 billion a year by 2030.
“These missing dollars are not abstractions on a balance sheet: they are lives taken, harvests lost, and development denied,” said Guterres.
While there’s still time for more governments to come forward with new pledges before the end of COP29, Adaptation Fund head Mikko Ollikainen told Climate Home that “this year the situation looks quite difficult”.
“Contributor governments [are] almost all talking about the importance of adaptation – and quite a few of them are recognising the need for grant-based financing for adaptation especially – so it’s puzzling how that relates to the reality of there not being new pledges to the Adaptation Fund or adaptation funds in general,” he said on the sidelines of the COP.
At last year’s climate conference in Dubai, the fund also fell short of the same target – bringing in around $188 million. But there, wealthy governments had an excuse: they were also asked to dig deep to get the fledgling loss and damage fund up and running, which they did to the tune of nearly $700 million.
This year, however, they can’t hide behind the loss and damage fund as new money for that at COP29 has so far amounted to little more than Sweden’s $18.4 million pledge. Sweden has also stumped up around $763 million for the Green Climate Fund and $12 million for the Adaptation Fund.
This week the Adaptation Fund has received pledges from 10 European countries and regions, with flood-hit Spain offering the most ($19 million). The UK and the European Union are so far no-shows, though Germany has said it plans to contribute.
To make matters worse, the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Fund – also set up under the UN climate talks to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change – has had to suspend a planned pledging event at CO29 after it “didn’t get very good signals” money would be forthcoming, the chair of the LDC Group told Climate Home on Friday.
Ollikainen said “the direction is quite wrong”, with needs going up and less money coming into the coffers of his fund. The Adaptation Fund has a long pipeline of projects but if donors don’t cough up more it will run out of money, he added. It is set to receive income from a 5% levy on sales of offsets in the new UN carbon market, but that may not start until 2026, he noted.
Samoan minister Cedric Schuster, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), told Climate Home he remains hopeful more money will come through for vulnerable countries at COP29 – and that the new climate finance goal due to be agreed in Baku will ensure contributions in the future.
“We can’t do anything if there are no pledges,” he said.
In brief…
Green light for new forest carbon credits: A key watchdog for the carbon market has given its high-integrity seal of approval to three methodologies for producing offsets that aim to reduce deforestation under so-called REDD+ projects. No credits have been issued so far under the rulebooks for forest projects approved by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), but the body said “there is a large volume of credits in pipeline”. Hundreds of millions of existing REDD+ offsets have been issued under older methodologies but have faced widespread criticism over their alleged lack of real emissions reductions and failure to protect environmental and human rights. ICVCM did not assess the criteria for these earlier projects and producers of those credits will not be able to claim the high-integrity label unless they switch to the new methodologies.
The post COP29 Bulletin Day 5: Pressure to clean up COPs and shortfall in adaptation pledges appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP29 Bulletin Day 5: Pressure to clean up COPs and shortfall in adaptation pledges
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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