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As well as claiming more than 550 lives, the war between the United States and Israel and Iran threatens to inflict severe economic damage across the world, by pushing up the oil, gas and energy prices.
About a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) passes on ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch of water separating Iran from the Gulf countries.
With Iranian missiles hitting oil and gas sites in the Gulf – including the world’s largest LNG export facility Ras Laffan – and fears that ships may be targeted, Qatar has halted its LNG production and traffic through the Strait has slowed drastically.
The disruption has sent oil and LNG prices surging, raising costs for households and businesses worldwide that rely on fossil fuels for electricity, transport, heating and manufacturing.
In two online briefings – focused on Europe and Asia, respectively – energy analysts warned journalists that prolonged disruption could trigger a global economic crisis. Governments should seek to reduce their reliance on oil and gas – through investments in clean energy and energy efficiency – rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers, they said.
Seb Kennedy, founding editor of EnergyFlux.News, said the war is “a bonanza for US LNG exporters and a catastrophe for everyone else.” He added that “if this goes on for months and months then [the energy crisis] could be on the scale we saw in 2022”.
Asia hit hardest
Asian economies are expected to bear the brunt as the largest buyers of Qatari LNG. Research by ZeroCarbon Analytics suggests that Japan and South Korea, which get over three-fifths of their energy from oil and gas imports, are among the most vulnerable.
Sam Reynolds, a researcher from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said that Japan’s definition of energy security prioritises diversifying fossil fuel supply over promoting domestic renewables and, while Reynolds said this crisis could change that, he doubts that it will. Both Japan and South Korea are likely to speed up their pursuit of nuclear energy though, he added.
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Several South-East Asian nations – like Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand – have invested in infrastructure to import LNG over the last few years in an attempt to gain energy security by diversifying supply routes beyond natural gas pipelines.
But ZeroCarbon Analytics researcher Amy Kong said that these countries were “seeing the same problems with new dealers” as “all the cards are held by a few LNG suppliers”. As these countries have huge untapped renewable potential, she said that “clean energy – not LNG – would be the key to avoiding impacts from these crises”.
Khondaker Golam, research director at Bangladesh’s Centre for Policy Dialogue, said Bangladesh’s already strained energy system will come under further pressure. In the short term, the government is likely to ration supply and seek LNG cargoes from outside the Gulf. Over time, however, the crisis could accelerate implementation of the country’s rooftop solar programme and other renewable projects.
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Middle East crisis increases Southeast Asia’s coal risk
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China and India are also reliant on Gulf oil and gas and are now exploring alternative suppliers like Russia and, at least in India’s case, Canada and Norway. Over the longer term, Oxford University energy and climate professor Jan Rosenow said that China is also likely to double down on moving away from oil and gas by promoting electric vehicles, batteries and electrifying industries.
Although Europe imports a smaller share of its energy from the Gulf than Asia, it will not be insulated from price shocks. As Asian buyers compete for LNG cargoes – particularly from the US – gas prices will rise across the world, Kennedy added, with Europe already seeing increases.
Europe suffers too
Rosenow said that he was experiencing “deja vu” from when Russia restricted gas supplies to Europe, sparking a global energy crisis. Following that, he said, Europe had “not really managed to scale up the alternatives fast enough”, adding that “now we pay the price for that”.
He cited the example of Germany, where the government last week weakened requirements for buildings to install electric heat pumps instead of gas boilers. “We [in Europe] just haven’t made enough progress in terms of rolling out heat pumps, decarbonising industry and scaling up electric mobility,” he said.
Some in non-Gulf oil and gas producing countries have argued that this disruption justifies more production. Kennedy said the industry would “do everything it can to make that case”, but warned that new projects must consider demand decades ahead. By then, he said, “this conflict has probably long been forgotten about and we’re on to the next one”.
Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls
In the United Kingdom, the government is under pressure from the right-wing opposition and US President Donald Trump to reverse its ban on licenses for new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.
But business secretary Peter Kyle said the crisis showed the UK must “double down” on renewables to protect its “sovereignty” as the crisis has exposed the country’s reliance on fossil fuels “from parts of the world which are fundamentally unstable”.
“We keep on seeing these lived examples of how instability, through regional instability, is creeping into our energy prices for which the British government has no agency”, he said.
Interest rates stymie renewables
But in the short term and without government policy intervention, Morningstar equity analyst Tancrède Fulop told Climate Home News that the crisis is likely to hold back the development of renewables.
This is because rising inflation from higher energy costs is likely to prompt governments to raise the cost of borrowing, he said. As renewables projects typically require large upfront capital investment, higher borrowing costs can undermine profitability.
Gas-fired power plants, by contrast, typically require lower initial investment than solar, wind or hydro, but higher operating costs over time, as fuel must be continuously purchased.
“What we saw between 2022 and 2024 with high inflation, high gas and power prices – a bit similar to today – renewable companies materially underperformed because of those high interest rates,” he said, “so all in all it won’t be as simple as oil and gas prices are surging so it’s good for renewables”.
The post Gulf oil and gas crisis sparks calls for renewable investment appeared first on Climate Home News.
Gulf oil and gas crisis sparks calls for renewable investment
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.
The 2026 global carbon budget report also estimates that:
- Fossil emissions are projected to fall in China (-0.9%), the US (-1.3%) and the EU (-1.5%) in 2026, but rise by 4.4% in India.
- Oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region, with the largest drop in China (-4.6%).
- Land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, around 21% lower than the decade before.
- Total CO2 emissions (fossil and land-use) grew by an average 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over the decade before.
- The remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is 150GtCO2, or less than four years of current emissions.
- The land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, rebounding after being weakened during the 2023-24 El Niño. The current El Niño is expected to weaken the land sink in 2027.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels.
(For more on previous editions of the Global Carbon Project’s annual report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022.)
Total emissions edge up as land-use emissions rise
Total global CO2 emissions, which combines fossil fuels and land-use change, are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026, up from 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
The increase in 2026 comes entirely from a projected rise in land-use emissions, which are more challenging to estimate than fossil emissions.
(The global carbon budget groups emissions from fossil fuels and cement production as “fossil emissions”. Carbon Brief follows this convention throughout this piece.)
If land-use emissions had stayed at 2025 levels, total emissions would have fallen slightly in 2026 to around 42.6GtCO2.
Each edition of the global carbon budget updates the historical record as new data and methods become available. The chart below shows total emissions in this year’s budget compared with the five previous editions.