Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Hormuz latest
DELAYED ULTIMATUM: The week started with US president Donald Trump giving Iran 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital supply route for oil and gas, or the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants, reported the Guardian. By the end of the week, Reuters was reporting Trump’s statement that he would “pause” the threat of strikes for 10 days, claiming talks with Iran were “going very well”.
CLOGGED SUPPLY: Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, called the ongoing blockage of oil and gas supplies through the Strait “the greatest global energy security threat in history”, according to the Financial Times. A separate article in the Financial Times reported that countries are “facing a cliff-edge as the flow of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Gulf comes to an abrupt end in the next 10 days”.
COAL RESURGENCE: Asian countries are “shifting back to coal” amid disruptions to LNG supplies sparked by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, reported the Associated Press. Similarly, Japan announced plans to allow more use of coal power plants in an effort to boost energy security, noted Bloomberg. Elsewhere, analysts told CNBC how the crisis could “accelerate a shift into renewables” in a “watershed” moment for the energy transition.
UK fallout of Iran war
RENEWABLE HIGHS: The UK’s renewable output hit a record high on Wednesday, “helping to blunt the impact of the Middle East war on power prices”, reported Bloomberg. Meanwhile, the Press Association described a new government announcement on solar panels and heat pumps for all new homes from 2028 as “doubling down on its clean-energy drive in response to the Iran war”. At a household level, the Times reported that UK homeowners are “rush[ing] to install solar panels amid [the] Iran conflict”.
NORTH SEA MYTHS: Using a comment piece in the Sunday Telegraph, Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch led calls predominately coming from right-leaning politicians and media to issue more oil and gas licences in the North Sea. Carbon Brief has published a factcheck exposing nine false or misleading claims about the impact on household bills, emissions and energy security of more North Sea drilling.
Around the world
- CLIMATE PROTECTION: Germany unveiled a plan to help it reach its 2030 climate target and reduce its dependence on “volatile fossil-fuel imports”, reported Reuters.
- DIAGNOSIS: A long-awaited report into the unprecedented blackout that left Spain and Portugal without electricity last April concluded that the “problem did not lie with solar and wind power”, said the Financial Times.
- DELUGED: The US state of Hawaii struggled in the aftermath of “catastrophic flooding” that could cost over $1bn in damages, reported USA Today.
- ARCTIC LOW: Sea ice in the Arctic has tied last year’s record for the lowest-ever peak winter extent, reported Carbon Brief.
91%
The amount of excess heat trapped by the Earth that is stored in the ocean, according to a UN World Meteorological Organization report covered by Agence France-Presse.
Latest climate research
- Extreme events and climate change pose “major threats” to the preservation of underwater cultural heritage, such as sunken ruins, wrecks and archaeological remains | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Human-driven climate change made extreme fires across the Arctic from 2019-21 more than 200 times more likely | Environmental Research Letters
- A county-level study in the US from 2013-24 suggests “higher temperatures are associated with increased risk of police violence” | PLOS One
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
India’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions grew by 0.5% in the second half of 2025 and by just 0.7% in the year as a whole, the slowest rate in more than two decades, according to analysis for Carbon Brief published this week. This marks a sharp slowdown from 4-11% in the preceding four years and is largely explained by increases in steel and cement production being compensated by falling emissions in the power sector. Carbon Brief also took an in-depth look at India’s delayed nationally determined contribution (NDC) published this week, which contains a new target to reduce its emissions intensity to 47% below 2005 levels by 2035.
Spotlight
The IPCC and Indigenous representation
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to researchers about how the UN’s climate science panel can better incorporate Indigenous peoples and their knowledge into its highly influential reports.
From the Quechua people in Latin America to the Oraon Tribe in Asia, Indigenous peoples’ lands cover more than a quarter of Earth’s surface.
Built up over millenia and transferred through generations, Indigenous knowledge is vital in conserving the world’s remaining biodiversity and building climate resilience.
Prof Pasang Yangjee Sherpa is a Sherpa woman from the Mount Everest region in Nepal and an assistant professor of lifeways in Indigenous Asia at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Her research advocates for the inclusion of Indigenous people and their knowledge in climate science, particularly in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Sherpa told Carbon Brief:
“If we are really interested in planetary health…we have to make sure that Indigenous peoples and Indigenous peoples’ knowledge is also on the table next to physical science and Euro-Western science.”
Ways of knowing
Last month, the IPCC held a workshop in Reading, UK, on engaging diverse knowledge systems in ways that are “inclusive, equitable and aligned with future needs”.
The workshop is expected to produce a set of recommendations, but the report is not yet available and the workshop itself was closed to journalists.
Sherpa was co-author of an independent report that informed the IPCC workshop. The research, funded by Wellcome, combined the team’s experience with a literature review and multilingual “listening sessions” with Indigenous scholars, leaders and thinkers.
The report explained how Indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by climate change due to “historical and contemporary colonial processes of territorial dispossession, political exclusion and structural inequality”.
But the inclusion in climate science of Indigenous peoples and their knowledge is not just a justice issue, the report continues:
“Indigenous peoples are not merely vulnerable populations – they are frontline climate leaders whose territorial governance and sciences are essential to understanding and responding to the climate crisis.”
Addressing marginalisation
The report makes some “immediate” recommendations that can be done in the current seventh assessment cycle “to prevent harm, ensure equitable participation and begin redressing historical exclusions”.
These include appointing a minimum of two Indigenous contributing authors per relevant chapter and establishing an ad-hoc Indigenous advisory group.
Looking further ahead, the authors argue the eighth assessment cycle (likely due in the 2030s) requires “institutional transformation” to “reshape governance, methodologies and participation structures”.
Sherpa told Carbon Brief:
“It’s very interesting to me that when you look at the UN and other policymaking spheres, Indigenous peoples from around the world have been actively involved for decades. It’s almost like academia has to catch up to reality, globally.”
Dr Rosario Carmona, also a co-author on the report, is a Chilean anthropologist with the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. She was also part of the scientific steering committee that proposed the IPCC workshop, on behalf of the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research in Chile. Carmona told Carbon Brief:
“There are good precedents – and the IPCC works on these precedents – that recognise Indigenous knowledge systems as standalone, that don’t need to be validated [by other types of knowledge].”
Soul-searching
The IPCC has been convening this week in Bangkok, Thailand, to consider, among other things, fundamental questions about how it does things, for what purpose and on what timelines.
Now is a good opportunity for wider change in the IPCC mindset, Carmona told Carbon Brief:
“I feel that there is a critical moment now – and there is a huge awareness and a willingness to do things better.”
Watch, read, listen
CHOKING OF HORMUZ: The New York Times took a look inside the “global, exceptionally critical journey of oil and gas, now upended by war”.
WARMING LIMITS: Writing in the Kathmandu Post, Maheswar Rupakheti, vice-chair of Working Group I of the IPCC, and policy researcher Gobinda Prasad Pokharel explored “climate overshoot”.
REFORM RECKONING: A feature in the Guardian examined how residents of flood-stricken Lincolnshire are growing tired with the climate-sceptic views of their MP, Reform deputy leader Richard Tice.
Coming up
- 22-29 March: COP15 for migratory species, Campo Grande, Brazil
- 23 March-2 April: Third meeting of the preparatory commission for the High Seas Treaty, New York
- 30 March: International Energy Agency energy technology perspectives 2026 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, secretary | Salary: Unknown Location: Geneva, Switzerland
- International Institute for Sustainable Development, policy adviser, trade and climate change | Salary: Unknown. Location: Manila, Philippines, Jakarta, Indonesia or remote
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, research scholar/modeller – global land carbon cycle and land-use change | Salary: €55,215.00. Location: Laxenburg, Austria
- Beyond Fossil Fuels, energy campaigner in Poland | Salary: €33,000-€37,000. Location: Poland
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 27 Mach 2026: North Sea myths debunked | India’s climate plan | IPCC and Indigenous knowledge appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Jackie Chesnutt, who lives outside San Angelo, is tired of pollution from wells she says should have been plugged years ago. Experts say Texas rules allow companies to defer plugging wells for far too long.
Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Low-Producing Oil Wells in Texas Cause Headaches for Landowners
An interview with author Catherine Coleman Flowers.
The fourth installment in our special Earth Day series
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever.
David Ritter
So often in life, our most authentic moments of joy are the result of years of shared effort, and the culmination of a kind of deep faith in what is possible.
A few weeks ago, I had the honour of being in Canberra, along with some fellow environmentalists and scientists, to witness the enactment of the High Seas Biodiversity Bill 2026 by our federal parliament.
This was the moment that the Global Ocean Treaty—one of the most significant environmental agreements of our time—was given force through a domestic Australian law.
If you are part of the great Greenpeace family, you will know exactly why this was such a huge deal. The high seas make up around 60 per cent of the Earth’s surface and for too long, they have been subjected to open plunder. Now, for the first time in human history, there is an international instrument that enables the creation of massive high seas sanctuaries within which the ocean can be protected. This is a monumental collective achievement by Greenpeace and all the other groups who have campaigned for high seas marine sanctuaries for many years.
But as momentous as the ratification was, the parliamentary proceedings were distinctly lacking in drama or fanfare–so much so, that Labor MP backbencher Renee Coffey felt the need to gesture to those of us in the gallery with a grin, to indicate that the process was over and done.
The modesty of the moment had me thinking about the decades of quiet dedication by many hands that are invariably required to achieve great social change. In particular, I found myself thinking about researchers. So much of the expert academic work that underpins achievements like the Global Ocean Treaty is slow, painstaking, solitary—and often out of sight.
I think of the persistence and tenacity of researchers as an expression of love, founded in an authentic sense of wonder and curiosity about the world—and frequently linked to a deep ethical desire to protect that source of wonderment.
In 2007, one of the very first things I was given to read after starting with Greenpeace as an oceans campaigner in London was a report entitled Roadmap to Recovery: A global network of marine reserves. Specific physical sensations can tend to stick in the mind from periods of personally significant transitions, and the tactile reminiscence of holding the thin cardboard of the modest grey cover of that report is deeply embedded in my memory. I suspect I still even have that original copy in a box somewhere.
Written by a team of scientists led by Professor Callum Roberts, a marine conservation biologist from the University of York, the Roadmap provided the first scientifically informed vision of a large-scale global network of high seas marine sanctuaries, protecting the world’s oceans at scale. Of course, twenty years ago, this idea felt more like utopian science fiction, because there was no Global Oceans Treaty. But what seemed fanciful at the start of this century is now possible-–and I have every confidence the creation of large scale high seas marine sanctuaries will now happen through the application of ongoing campaigning effort—but we would never have gotten this far without the dedication of researchers, driven by their love of the oceans. And now here we are, with the ability for humanity to legally protect the high seas for the first time.
Campaigning and research so often work hand in hand like this: the one identifying the need and the solutions; the other driving the change. Because in a world of powerful vested interests, good science alone doesn’t shift decision makers—that takes activism and campaigning—but equally, there must be a basis of evidence and reason on which to build our public advocacy.
So, I want to take a moment to think with love and appreciation for everyone who has contributed to making this possible. I’ve never met the team of scientists who authored the original Roadmap, so belatedly but sincerely, then, to Leanne Mason, Julie P. Hawkins, Elizabeth Masden, Gwilym Rowlands, Jenny Storey and Anna Swift—and to every other researcher and scientist who has been involved in demonstrating why the Global Oceans Treaty has been so badly needed over the years—thank you for your commitment and devotion.
And to everyone out there who continues to believe that evidence and truth matter, and that our magnificent, fragile world deserves our respectful curiosity and study as an expression of our awe and enchantment, thank you for your conscientiousness.
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever. You have Greenpeace’s deepest gratitude. Every day, we build on the foundations of your work and dedication. Thank you.
Q & A
I have been asked several times in recent weeks what the ongoing war means for the renewable energy transition in Australia.
While some corners of the fossil fuel lobby and the politicians captured by these vested interests have been very quick to use this crisis to call for more oil exploration and gas pipelines, the reality is that the current energy crisis has revealed the commonsense case for renewable energy.
As many, including climate and energy minister Chris Bowen have noted, renewable energy is affordable, inexhaustible, and sovereign—its supply cannot be blocked by warmongers or conflict. People intuitively know this; it’s why sales of electric cars have climbed to an all-time high, it’s why interest in rooftop solar and batteries has skyrocketed in recent months.
The reality is that oil and gas are to blame for much of the cost-of-living pain we’re feeling right now; fossil fuels are the disease, not the cure. If Australia were further along in our renewable energy transition and EV uptake, we would be much better insulated from petrol and gas price shocks and supply chain disruptions.
Yes, we need short-term solutions to ease the very real cost-of-living pressures that Australian communities and workers are facing as a result of fuel shortages. While replacement supplies is no doubt a valid step for now—Greenpeace is also backing taxes on the war profits of gas corporations to fund relief measures for Australians—in the long term, we will only get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel dependency and price volatility if we break free from fossil fuels and accelerate progress towards an energy system built on 100% renewable energy, backed by storage.
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