Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Oil prices rebound
OIL UP AGAIN: Oil prices surged by more than 7% and back above $100 a barrel on Monday after US-Iran peace talks faltered and US president Donald Trump ordered the blockading of Iranian ports, reported BBC News. The jump came after prices fell last week in the wake of the announcement of a conditional two-week ceasefire, it said.
RESCUE PLANS: European countries unveiled plans to protect citizens and businesses from rising energy prices. Ireland announced a support package worth €505m, reported BBC News, while Germany agreed on measures worth €1.6bn, said Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Reuters reported on a draft EU proposal due to be unveiled next week that would see the bloc reduce electricity prices and roll out clean energy more quickly in response to the crisis.
UNSOLICITED ADVICE: Trump renewed his criticism of UK energy policy and called on the government to “drill, baby drill”, reported the Independent. Via social media, the president said: “Europe is desperate for energy, and yet the United Kingdom refuses to open North Sea oil, one of the greatest fields in the world. Tragic!!!” (See Carbon Brief’s recent factcheck of various false claims about the North Sea.)
Around the world
- C-WORD: Faced with pressure from the US, countries attending spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were urged to “not mention the climate”, reported the Guardian. It added that plans to agree a new “climate change action plan” for the World Bank “may be shelved, along with substantive discussion of the climate crisis”.
- NEW DIRECTION: Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Victor Orbán in Hungary’s elections “presents new opportunities for the country to reduce emissions and invest in clean energy”, reported Time. Carbon Brief explored what it means for European climate action.
- ‘FURNACE’ SUMMER: There was widespread coverage – including in the Boston Globe, ABC News, CNN, Euro Weekly News, Guardian and New Scientist – of warnings from meteorologists of the development of a “super” El Niño phenomenon that could ramp up temperatures and drive extreme weather.
- ANTALYA COP: The Turkish government unveiled the dates and venues for the “leaders’ summit” segment of November’s COP31 conference, according to Climate Home News.
- PACIFIC PRE-COP: Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that Tuvalu will host a special meeting of world leaders before the climate summit in Antalya.
€10bn a year
The amount of state support that French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has pledged for electrification through to 2030 in a bid to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. In a speech late on Friday 10 April, Lecornu noted the figure amounted to a “doubling” of existing support.
Latest climate research
- Over a four-month period of 2023, more than 70% of editorials discussing net-zero in four right-leaning UK newspapers included “at least one misleading statement” | Climate Policy
- Air pollution from global transport currently has a net cooling effect that offsets 80% of the warming impact of the sector’s CO2 emissions | npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
- The incorporation of “observational constraints” into climate-model projections suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could weaken by 50% by 2100 in a medium-emissions scenario | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that global electricity generation from fossil fuels fell in the first month of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Across all countries with real-time electricity data outside of China, coal-fired power generation fell 3.5% and gas-fired power generation fell 4.0%, according to CREA. This was offset by a rise in solar power and wind generation, which increased by 14% and 8%, respectively. Hydropower generation also saw a small increase, the analysis showed, but this was “more than offset” by a drop in nuclear power generation.
Spotlight
How climate change affects Afghan lives
This week, Carbon Brief reports on the impact of climate change in Afghanistan, following deadly floods this year.
Earlier this month, heavy rains, flash floods and landslides struck large parts of Afghanistan, damaging thousands of homes, destroying crops, bridges and roads and taking nearly 100 lives.
The flooding – reported to have affected 74,000 people in 31 of 34 provinces – is the latest weather-related catastrophe to afflict the nation, whose communities have suffered the brunt of repeated flash floods, droughts and landslides in recent years.
Hameed Hakimi, non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, told Carbon Brief the recent floods would hurt livelihoods and food security, noting reports of destroyed wheat and rice crops in the most affected eastern parts of the country. He said:
“This is common. For at least a decade now, [we have seen] these flash floodings and the damage that happens to rural life, farming, the disruption to crops…Flash flooding physically eats up the land. So, it not only damages where people live, but also people’s livelihoods, based on what they grow.”
The damage to crops will be felt acutely, he explained, given that food security in the landlocked nation is already strained by the blockage of its main transit trade artery through Pakistan and international sanctions that have frozen long-term development aid.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Abdulhadi Achakzai, founding CEO of the Environmental Protection Trainings and Development Organization (EPTDO), an Afghan NGO, described flooding in Afghanistan as a “chronic situation”.
Achakzai, whose organisation runs projects that help urban and rural communities adapt to climate impacts, says climate change hurts the country in four key ways: extreme drought; extreme temperature; “natural hazards”, including landslides and dust storms; and, finally, flash flooding. He said:
“Climate change is a serious matter in Afghanistan. Every nation and every corner within this country is severely affected.”
Ranked 176 of 187 on the University of Notre Dame “global adaptation index”, Afghanistan is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Average temperature across the country has increased from 12.2C in 1960 to 14.2C in 2024, according to the World Bank’s climate change knowledge portal. Drought is widespread, severe and persistent – harming food and water security in a nation of subsistence farmers.
Meanwhile, extreme weather events are the leading driver of internal displacement in the country. More than three-quarters of the 710,000 people who relocated within Afghanistan in 2024 did so driven by “environmental hazards”, such as drought and flood, according to a recent climate vulnerability assessment from the International Organization for Migration.
Finance struggles
Despite feeling the impacts of extreme weather, Afghanistan has been barred from UN climate negotiations and had limited access to climate finance since 2021. (The government attended COP29 in Baku as guests of the Azerbaijan hosts, but did not take part in formal negotiations.)
This is because the international community does not recognise the Taliban government, which resumed power in 2021, due to its record on human rights and its repression of women and girls in particular.
Almost all financing from key climate funds has been suspended, with the exception of a few projects where UN agencies and NGOs act simultaneously as a “requesting” and “implementation” partner.
Aid from UN climate funds fell from $5.9m annually over 2014-20 to $3.9m annually over 2021-24, according to recent analysis by the Berghof Foundation. Multilateral development banks provided a further $337m of funds badged as “climate finance” over 2021-23, it said.
By comparison, Afghanistan’s national climate plan, submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2016, requested $17.4bn in climate finance over 2020-30. An updated national climate plan seen by Carbon Brief – completed in 2021 and later endorsed by the Taliban government, but not accepted by member governments of the UNFCCC – called for $20.6bn through to 2030.
Achakzai, whose organisation attends the COP climate summit each year in an observer capacity, has in the past been the sole delegate from Afghanistan to the conference.
He is calling on the UNFCCC to accept the country’s latest climate plan – and to find an “alternative solution” that would give the people of the country a voice in negotiations. He said:
“Every year we are losing hundreds, thousands of people because of climate change-related matters. Every year we are losing hundreds, thousands of hectares of crops. We are affected by [the decisions of] other countries. Why are we not part of this process?”
Watch, read, listen
BLOSSOM WATCHER: The Guardian reported on the successful search to find a researcher to continue Japan’s 1,200-year cherry blossom record.
COP OUT: Deutsche Welle spoke to experts to understand why India walked away from its bid to host COP33 in 2028.
‘BOMBS AND PORN’: The New Republic looked at who is set to benefit from the rapid build-out of energy-intensive AI datacentres.
Coming up
- 20-24 April: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group one report author meeting, Santiago, Chile
- 22 April: Earth day
- 22 April: Launch of third edition of the Lancet Countdown’s Europe report
- 24-29 April: First conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, Santa Marta, Colombia
Pick of the jobs
- International Organization for Migration, senior thematic associate (climate action) | Salary: UN G-6 salary grade | Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Climate Action Network UK, several board member roles | Salary: Unknown. Location: Unknown
- UK Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs, G7 science lead | Salary: £56,375. Location: Bristol, London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne or York, UK
- Save the Children UK, senior climate change advisor | Salary: £62,000-£65,000. Location: London
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 17 April 2026: Fossil-fuel power slumps | ‘Super’ El Niño warning | Afghanistan’s climate struggle appeared first on Carbon Brief.
At least fifty countries have yet to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) climate plan to the United Nations, even though the latest set of plans was due in 2025 – and among them, around half have failed to provide information on why they have not met the deadline.
More than a year past an initial deadline of February 2025, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) met this March and said 55 countries had yet to communicate an NDC to the UN climate body. According to the UN’s registry, two have since submitted their plans.
A key requirement of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement is that governments publish a more ambitious NDC every five years, setting targets to reduce their planet-heating emissions and outlining their policies to adapt to climate change, in order to meet the accord’s goals on limiting global warming and protecting people from its effects.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in 2025.
After India’s recent submission, the countries yet to publish their new NDCs are mostly poorer and smaller nations, with few emissions. The biggest emitters in the group are Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina and the Philippines. The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement, although the US submitted a 2035 NDC under the Biden administration before Donald Trump pulled the US out of the UN climate accords.
Some nations have argued that they cannot put together an NDC – which requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy – because of exceptional circumstances. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC committee, seen by Climate Home News, says that the country’s civil war has led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
No information from some nations
But others have failed to communicate with the PAICC, which is tasked with encouraging governments to respect their commitments under the Paris Agreement.
In a report on its March 27 meeting, the PAICC board said it “noted with concern” that 28 countries have not provided information about either their NDCs or their biennial transparency reports on the climate action they are taking, or both. This was “despite several reminders”, it said.
Despite a push from some board members, the committee did not agree at this meeting to name these 28 countries. But it may do so at a meeting in September.
-
Oil crisis could boost struggling sustainable aviation fuel industry
As the price of oil-based jet fuel shoots up, biofuel or hydrogen-based alternatives look more appealing -
ICJ follow-up resolution is a test of climate leadership at the UN
If states back the resolution by consensus, it would send a powerful message of commitment to climate action and the rule of law, despite pushback by some big emitters
One source who has seen the list of countries told Climate Home News it was a “mixed crowd” of developing nations, including least developed countries, small island developing states, emerging economies and at least one government with a representative on the PAICC board.
The PAICC decided to send individual letters to these governments requesting that they engage with the committee and “reminding them that it shall take appropriate measures with a view to facilitating implementation and promoting compliance” with the Paris Agreement.
Non-punitive system
The PAICC’s rules of procedure state that it should be “non-adversarial and non-punitive” and the strongest measure it can take is to issue a public finding naming a government that has breached the Paris Agreement rules. It has done this once before in 2023, rebuking the Vatican for not filing an NDC and Iceland for not telling the UN how much climate finance it plans to provide.
Joanna Depledge, a historian of the UN climate process and research fellow at the University of Cambridge, said that “any measures stronger than naming and shaming would have been unacceptable” to some governments when they were negotiating the Paris Agreement.
She added that “naming and shaming in the international arena is not trivial” because governments do not like to be exposed as non-compliant. “But if the PAICC cannot even name, then that is a serious problem,” she warned.
Avoiding Kyoto’s mistakes?
Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge, said the architects of the Paris Agreement made it less enforceable so as to try and prevent countries leaving or staying out of the agreement as happened with its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol.
While the Paris Agreement asks all governments to set their own emissions-reduction targets, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol set specific targets for developed countries.
When in 2011 it became clear that Canada was not going to meet those targets, it quit the agreement rather than face formal non-compliance proceedings and a multibillion-dollar obligation to buy carbon credits to cover the shortfall, Rao said.
Japan and Russia also declined to endorse some of their emissions reduction targets and the US never ratified the Kyoto agreement. “Enforcement proceedings became politically toxic,” exposing “the limits of punitive compliance regimes”, Rao said.
The idea of the Paris Agreement’s less stringent compliance system is to engage with governments and keep them within the system rather than threaten them with sanctions and potentially push them out, he added.
Rao said this was “the right trade-off” because governments comply when they feel they have chosen to sign up to the rules rather than having them imposed. He noted that back in April 2025, 171 governments had yet to submit their NDCs and this figure is now down to just over 50.
“We’ve got countries that are at least reporting NDCs,” he said, adding that PAICC is “working as it was designed to”. “It is issuing findings of fact and non-compliance, it’s initiating discussions with parties and, as a result of those discussions, the non-compliance figures are coming down every time.”
The post Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans appeared first on Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans
Climate Change
As Energy, War and Climate Collide, A Climate Summit in Colombia Charts a Path Beyond Fossil Fuels
Participants broke a long-standing taboo by openly linking oil and gas not just to emissions, but to war, displacement and economic instability.
While some major fossil fuel producers keep pushing for expanded oil and gas use, which is linked to warfare, economic shocks and ecological damage, more than 50 countries at the first Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels began developing plans to shift toward renewable energy systems designed for stability and abundance rather than scarcity and conflict.
As Energy, War and Climate Collide, a Conference in Colombia Charts a Path Beyond Fossil Fuels
Most of the wild sloths imported by a planned tourist attraction in Orlando did not survive.
The Florida Attorney General’s office announced a criminal investigation into the deaths of dozens of sloths at a now-shuttered Orlando business, a development that signals a new level of animal-welfare accountability in the commercial wildlife trade.
Florida Opens Criminal Probe Into Sloth World After Dozens of Animal Deaths
Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans
As Energy, War and Climate Collide, A Climate Summit in Colombia Charts a Path Beyond Fossil Fuels
Florida Opens Criminal Probe Into Sloth World After Dozens of Animal Deaths
-
Climate Change9 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases9 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy7 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases10 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测