November 11, 2025 • 36 mins
COP30 negotiations have officially started, and began with a fight about what to put on the agenda. While not completely unexpected for these enormous multilateral gatherings, it’s a rockier start than the Brazilian hosts in Belem would have wanted. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Rachel Kyte, the UK’s Special Representative for Climate, to talk about how to forge climate consensus in an increasingly polarized world, and who is ready to fill the void left behind by the US.
Explore further:
- Norway Pledges $3 Billion for Forest Fund, With Conditions
- Find all the latest news from COP30 here: https://www.bloomberg.com/latest/cop-climate-summit
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Anna Mazarakis, Siobhan Wagner, Sommer Saadi and Mohsis Andam. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati. Today were leaders at
the gateway to the mighty Amazon River. It's November eleventh,
and the United Nations Climate Summit COP thirty has officially
(00:22):
begun here in Brazil. It's happening in Berlen, a port
city of about two million people at the mouth of
the Amazon River. The negotiations started with a fight about
what to put on the agenda, and that's not unexpected.
It often happens at the start of a COP meeting,
but it is certainly a rockier start than the Brazilian
(00:43):
hosts of COP thirty would have wanted. Later on in
today's episode, I'm speaking with an experienced climate diplomat, Rachel Kite,
about the outcomes she's looking for here in Brazil and
who will fill the void left behind by the US.
But first, I want to give you a sense of
what it's like to be at a climate summit near
(01:03):
the Amazon Forest and our reactions to the world leader's
speeches that took place last week opening the proceedings here
in Brazil. To do that, I'm joined by my colleague
Sarah Wells, who leads Bloomberg's coverage of climate and energy. Sarah,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Thanks Egsha.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So we got a chance to see a little bit
of the Amazon forest. What was it like we did?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It was great. I mean after a couple of days
in the blue Zone at the World Leader's Summit, you
could be literally any country in the world. You were
in a windowless tent, and so to be outside in
the forest learning new things about fruits and plants and
how they grow, getting some time on a boat, getting
(01:46):
to have a beer and look at our surroundings was fantastic.
And did I guess speak to the controversial reason for
putting the summit in Belem in the first place, which
was to try to give the attendees some exposure to
what's happening here.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
We saw a three hundred year old tree called the Sumahoma.
We saw a boat filled with military police trying to
take care of all the delegates who are coming here.
And the reason for all that security is that we've
had many world leaders show up here at copp and
give speeches. It's typical at the start when they want
(02:21):
to inspire the delegates to go and do something bold,
But there weren't that many world leaders this time around.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
That's right. I mean, I had the King and Queen
of Sweden on my plane coming here. But unfortunately, within
the Blue Zone itself, the journalists were very segregated from
the world leaders. It's literally a barricade going down the
middle of the corridor, and so seeing a physical world
leader in the flesh was not what we experienced. We
(02:50):
sat an ow media room and watched them on TV.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Regardless, I know that was not ideal. We would have
wanted to really be in the room with the world leaders.
But were there highlights from the speeches?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, I think I enjoyed. Me and Motley, the Prime
Minister of Barbados obviously you know she has has some
credentials as a as a climate campaigner, but she came
with a specific idea around methane, which was something new.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I have come here however, this afternoon to speak on
one s and that is methane. The scientists advise that
this is the main way that we can not stall
the increase in temperatures, but reverse the temperature increase that
we have seen across the planet.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
For Bloomberg clients and listeners, Petro Sanchez floated the idea
of a levy on business class flights and private jets
class premium. Yet obviously that's of a concern to a
relatively small proportion of the world, but certainly for some.
(03:58):
And then we did have some quite remarks from some
of the Latin American leaders about Trump. In particular, Columbia's
Petro was the most direct.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Elke Senor Donald Trump Novenga el dubta l personal dena
Jevas Sosia that a laismo econeia allow maney that.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
You know he he said that Trump is against humanity
and a bunch of other things. And so there were
definitely some strong feelings expressed about the American position on
climate at this point.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And it's just the start of the negotiations. It's your
first COP meeting. What has your experience been like.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I think everyone said before I came that you know,
the sort of the rest of the world recedes and
suddenly you're in this bubble where you know, some some
things make sense, some things really don't, And I think
that's that's the case. You know, you suddenly find yourself
sort of pouring over very technical discussion which can have
real world consequences. So definitely, you know, being being in
(05:04):
a media center with hundreds of other journalists, expensive food,
very popular, occasional arrivals of coffee deliveries that you know,
that stuff has been has been fun. But I think
what we you know, what we are all here to
write about, is significant pieces of news that will hopefully
come out of this. And that's that's on all the attendees,
but it's obviously most of all on our on our
(05:26):
host country, Brazil.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And what do you expect we might be writing about
in two weeks time.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Well As of now, the discussion is all around what
ends up on the agenda. That's a very you know,
temporary discussion. As I said earlier, I do think methane
seems to have some momentum behind it, so let's see,
let's see if we get anywhere on that. And then
I think this discussion around whether there should be a
potential roadmap to move away from fossil fuels. Obviously, the
declaration to even attempt to move away from fossil fuels
(05:55):
was highly contentious at previous cops and so I think
the fact that Brazil is even looking to put that
back on the agenda does suggest that they're prepared to,
you know, to go into a region that will come
with a fight, so we will be watching that really closely.
And then lastly, I would say I think the influence
(06:15):
probably not on the ground, but let's see the influence
or otherwise of the US on proceedings is obviously a
huge thing for us to watch.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Thank you, Sarah, thank you for having me join me
after the break where I speak with Rachel Kite, the
UK's Special Representative for Climate, about negotiations in an increasingly
polarized world. To find all of Bloomberg's coverage of COP thirty,
head to our website bloomberg dot com Forward Slash Green.
(06:43):
You can also sign up to Bloomberg Green's newsletter that
comes out daily during the COP meeting. Find it at
Bloomberg dot com Forward Slash Newsletters. There are a few
people as well placed to understand how climate negotiations play
(07:07):
out as Rachel Kite. She is the UK's Special Representative
for Climate and she has held a number of significant
positions across the climate space. She was the Special Representative
of the United Nations Secretary General and the CEO of
Sustainable Energy for All. She also served as World Bank
Groups Vice President and Special Envy for Climate Change. In
(07:30):
her current role. She has spent the last year up
to COP thirty meeting diplomats and leaders from around the
world trying to show up the support for action here
in Berlin.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Rachel, welcome to the show.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
It's lovely to see you. Actually, So you.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Were appointed a UK Special Representative for Climate just over
a year ago and your goal is wide ranging. You're
supposed to support ministers that will help increase UK's diplomatic
engagement on climate globally. What have you done so far.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
I've been out there in the world really pushing out
the intention of this government when it came into office,
which was that even though we're only one percent of
global emissions, that's not a reason to disengage, which I
think had sometimes been the case beforehand, but precisely because
we're only one percent of global emissions, we need the
(08:22):
other ninety nine percent to be going through the transition
that we've started to go through ourselves, and at the
same time this growing realization about how much we need
to be dealing with adaptation and resilience. Now we've just
seen the Climate Change Committee come out with a domestic
report on how vulnerable we are as our own country.
But what's been really interesting. So I've been in every continent.
(08:43):
I've been talking to middle income countries about missions reduction
and their energy transitions, and then talking to lower income
countries about growth and prosperity and investment and trade that
is green, and then to countries that are really vulnerable
about how much more we can do to mainstream adaptation
and resilience into their economic.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Growth and planning.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
But when I'm out there, what countries want is the
how to, especially on the energy transition. So countless numbers
of countries that want technical assistance, support on power sector reform,
on how to build an offshore wind industry, how to
decommission call, how to make the transition that we've made
over the last twenty odd years, and then how to
(09:25):
partner with us, and how to get more UK investment
into their green transitions, how to talk about the difficulties
of hard to debate sectors, and how to get more
of their investment into the UK economy. So yeah, special
representative for Climate, but a big piece of this is
about the trade and investment that makes those transitions really happen.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
And you get to do this because the UK has
for the last seventeen years since the UK Climate Change
Actor was passed a leader on climate issues, whether it
was the Conservative Party which led the government for most
of that time, or whether it's the Labor Party now,
And in the process the UK has shown not just
how to do a law, but also how to deploy
(10:05):
large amounts of renewables, how to build the grid, and
you get to take UK's learnings out to the world
but also reflect back on the UK at a time
when the politics are shifting. The Conservative Party that led
on climate now wants to get rid of the Climate
Change Act. Reform Party, which is gaining in polls at
(10:27):
least and is ahead of Labor and Conservatives in many cases,
is saying they want to get rid of net zero goal.
Even though this Labor government, the one that you represent,
isn't turning back on climate How hard does that make
your life when you go abroad to take the message
of what needs to be done on climate change.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Well.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
I think that across the world many countries are experiencing
a pushback from populace on the right mainly but also
in the past on the left around the drive nets.
If people can't feel or imagine what a clean energy
(11:07):
future looks like to them, and feels like in their pocket.
Then they are vulnerable to the sort of miscommunication, disinformation
or whatever you often see now. So actually it's a
point of conversation, right. So people see that we had
a bipartisan support, right as Americans would say, around our goals,
and you know, and of course a lot of the
(11:27):
indications are that the public still wants clean air, wants
clean water, wants safe communities, wants protection from extreme heat,
wants floods planning. But what they don't like is energy
bills that are expensive, and there's very real reasons for that.
And also with all humility, I mean, you know, nobody's
got this all the way right, right, So, as a
country that is going through a moment of political tension
(11:50):
around the speed with which this transition is happening, the
government came in and started fixing pieces of the regulatory system,
putting in place bits and pieces that would allow us
to go faster to meet the goal of twenty thirty
that was set by the government when it was running
for office. All of that is happening, but you don't
necessarily see the result immediately. So then what's the challenge
(12:10):
of communication internationally? People see us in a leadership position.
See that this is a difficult issue domestically, but for
many other countries it's a difficult issue domestically, and so
that's a point of commonality.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Really.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
So you're saying, so far the UK's leadership on climate,
whether that was through making laws or through energy, is
one that other countries wanted to copy. But now they're
also looking at the UK and the crumbling political consensus
and they are seeing whether there are lessons they can
learn from it. Because these things are not isolated. They're
not just happening in the UK. They're happening in other places. No.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
I mean, look across the EU, look across Socania, look
across Latin America. You know, these are issues that are
present in any democracy, right. And what's interesting is a
number of countries now have got governments, you know, with
commitments to you know, phasing out of coal by twenty
forty or really ambitious goals around the energy transition. And
(13:07):
you know, it's not just the political narrative which has
become more pungent, right, it is also that global growth
has slowed or is not rampant. Right, So, for fear
of a populist uprising, right, a number of countries are like, Okay,
how do I transition away from coal on the timeline
that I've set, Where is the investment going to come from?
(13:30):
How do I navigate tensions around tariff's what is that
doing to the level of growth? How do I secure
a just transition for the people employed in the sector.
So these are universally difficult and universally important themes that
countries want to work on together. And so when I'm
traveling that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Are there specific country examples where over the past year
you have seen that play out and work in favor
of climate action.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
So the Philippines has got extremely ambitious goals around phase
seeing out coal and bringing in offshore wind and diversifying
and bringing more investment into solar, not just in the
sort of metromillar area, but across the country. So Korea
new government in place inherits it and was very bullish
on the campaign trail around their ambitions how do they
(14:18):
do it? They're about to invest in an offshore wind
industry as well. Vietnam, which is a country that we've
worked through the Just Energy Transition Partnership for a number
of years, but that's starting to move along the AZI
and power grid. How do you build a power grid
that allows each of the Asian countries to grow their
economies by accessing the clean energy that each of them possess.
(14:39):
Right Eastern Caribbean, how do each of those countries build
out their geothermal You know, it's probably cheaper and easier
to do it as an integrated grid, but that's really complicated.
How do they think about that? Australia India huge move
to develop offshore wind off the good coast goods you're
out off Tamil Nadu. You know how to do that.
(15:00):
We have a really built out technical cooperation with them anyway,
and now we're investing in each other. And then China.
I've just come back from China where we have a
technical cooperation on power sector reform and also now on
battery storage and hydrogen.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
So in your time covering climate, you've covered it from
many different angles. You've worked in the private sector, You've
tried to push carbon markets, You've worked at the cop level,
looking at diplomacy and how negotiations work. We are in
the tenth year of the Paris Agreement. Could have been
this year when we celebrate what Paris has achieved. But
(15:36):
with the US the largest emitter, leaving the Paris Agreement,
how would you class the progress that the world has
made so far.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
It's definitely made progress. I mean, over the next few days,
you know, the narrative will be, oh, we're not on track. Yeah,
we're not on track. We're more on track than we
would have been without the Paris Agreement, and the plan
that countries are now submitting are fully politically contested at home,
you know, hard fought economic plans, which is what we
(16:08):
really wanted ten years ago. But we're now just beginning
to see in the third generation that this is what
they are. And we wouldn't be there without the Paris Agreement.
I don't think countries would be lining up to go
through the pain of developing these reports if we hadn't.
But the point is that we're not going fast enough
and we're not going far enough, and so the Paris
Agreement is vulnerable to attack from popular so or from
(16:31):
the polls on the right and on the left, because
it isn't meeting needs sufficiently well. And so when we
gather in Brazil, the leaders that gather and those who
aren't there but by proxy need to sort of say, okay,
we're not yet on track, but we commit to doing more.
Transitions don't go smoothly, they don't go in a straight line.
(16:53):
They can go very fast and then slow down and
very fast, and it's a series of s curves. It's
a series of leaps forward, and there's no reason why
we can't commit to doing that. But the fact that
we're multilaterally all sort of working together to make this
go faster, that's the conversation. It's not a conversation about
going slower. Is important.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Are we working together though, because recently we saw a
very clear sign of how things don't work together at
multilateral forums. The International Maritime Organization had a vote to
put in a global carbon tax for shipping, a sector
that produces one billion tons of emissions, and until about
(17:33):
the day of the vote, there was good feeling among
countries that they'd argued over politically contested plan and had
come to something that they could agree on. And then
one country, the US, with its ability to call diplomats
and make threats, which we've reported on, caused them to
delay the vote, and now some say that it may
(17:56):
never come to pass. So are we working together.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
This majority of countries are working together. For sure. I
think what happened at the IMO was extraordinarily disappointing, right,
I mean, that's a decade's effort at best delayed, at
worst put on the shelf. And so we'll have to
come back at it another way and find a way
to do this, because that the polluter has to pay
is a kind of fundamental principle of all of this.
(18:21):
And yeah, the United States made clear its position over
the summer and then intensified its diplomacy in the days
up to the vote. But it also creates space for
plausible deniability for other countries that, for whatever reasons, didn't
like this or didn't like that. So in any multilateral negotiation,
there may be one protagonist which attracts most of the attention,
(18:43):
but it normally creates new spaces which can be exploited
one way or the other. But when it comes to blame,
I think obviously the United States has said that it
filed its intention to withdraw. That comes due after cop
right but at the end of the year beginning of
twenty twenty six. So for the moment, the United States
is in, but it has made clear its intention to leave,
(19:06):
which puts it in a minority, even if it is
a large economy and nobody else is leaving it. And
so I think it is clear that everybody's working together,
and I think it's clear that when we gather on
the port city in the middle of the Amazon, that
what leaders will be saying is that this is a
multilateral process which is a value and will be defended,
(19:27):
and we will defend the multilateral processes that help us
work together on these problems which go beyond all boundaries.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
If you take this ten years on Paris, A lot
of it at COP meetings, and I've been to five
of them, so not as many as you, but I
can say it's so technical and so in depth necessary,
but one that doesn't break through for a politician to
go back home and make a case for why we
are doing climate action. How do you take what has
(19:57):
been achieved and make that case in a political away
to people so that the next ten years leaders can
continue to support this multilateral forum.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Yeah, it's a great question. So for the last ten years.
So first of all, we agreed Paris, then everybody sort
of went home, and then the negotiators sort of negotiated
a rule book on how we would implement what we'd agreed,
and that took way too long, But that's done now
and you could actually say that we've negotiated everything that
needs to be negotiated, and so what this cop represents
(20:28):
is a significant pivot to accelerating implementation. So it's all
about implementing all of the things that we've agreed. That's
what the Brazilians are trying to organize, like outside of
the negotiations, and I think that that's actually much easier
for politicians to sell at home. So why would we
go to Brazil and discuss investing in the Amazon and
(20:50):
other tropical forests right? Well, first, because if we lose them,
we lose control over the thermostatu of the planet. Right
we will pass a tipping point which will bring much
more climate impact to everybody. But you know, to look
at it from a British perspective, if we lose the
tropical forests and their integrity, our own food security is
(21:11):
going to be massively disrupted. So the idea that our
domestic security is secure if we haven't got you know,
a climate regime which is starting to see real progress,
is you know, at the very heart of why I existed,
my rule and my twin Ruth Davis, who's the special
representative of nature, why she exists. You know, we're there
(21:31):
because our foreign policy has to have climate and nature
at the heart of it, because we need those relationships
in order to be secure ourselves. So that's the reason
to go, right, We're not going to be safe and
we're not going to be secure. We're not going to
prosper if we lose the tropical rainforests. It's as simple
as that. So I think that as we get into
implementation and accelerating implementation, it's actually easier to explain to
(21:54):
the world's public why we're there.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
You've got many examples that you could use to say, sure,
this should land right. The price of coffee has gone
up because there's been persistent drought in Brazil, which produces
forty percent of the world's coffee. The price of electricity
is high because we've had very high gas prices because
of the Russian attack on Ukraine, which have been brought
(22:20):
down because of renewables. There are real world clear examples,
but they're not cutting through to people. What's missing.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
I think that we haven't in many cases taken the
time and the effort to convey those stories in ways
that people can hear. I mean, I think, you know,
there's a danger in seeding the marketplace, the public marketplace,
to the scare mongering and the misinformation from the far
right and the far left. So I think that we
(22:50):
have a responsibility to tell these stories in the way
that people can understand. And I think in particular around
the issues around nature, I think people are inclined to
understand that without nature, it's going to be very difficult
to produce food, to have stable watersheds, to be able
(23:12):
to balance the planet's own needs with hours, and that
we're not going to be resilient without nature. I mean,
I think there's a sensibility in people in countries around
the world that that makes sense to them.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
And so if the next ten years of COP are
about implementing all the goals and the rules that have
been put in place, this cop and what it produces
will be a test case for what next cops are
going to look like. What do you expect this coup
will achieve?
Speaker 5 (23:39):
Well, so I think we'll go back to the theory
of change, right, theory of changes that we have an
energy transition that moves us towards clean energy, that that
clean energy allows us to electrify services to people and
to the economy, which means that they can engage with
them benefit from all of the installed renewable energy. I
(23:59):
think of electrification transforms people's lives, right. And then at
the same time, we stop deforesting in particular tropical forests,
and then we have to protect land usee et cetera.
And then there's bits about the oceans or whatever. But
at the very center of that, then I think what
I would expect from this COP is that first of all,
we have a COP where the rest of the world
says we're going to continue working on this. You know,
(24:21):
if you want to leave, leave, but we're going to
keep going. Then I would expect to see announcements around
funding tropical forests. I'd expect to see investing in them
rather not funding them. I would expect to see statements
around the growth of carbon markets, both what I would
call compliance markets, so trading systems and taxes, but also
(24:43):
I would expect to see, you know, statements around governments
leaning in to stimulate demand from the corporate sector for
voluntary markets as well. I think you'll see some agreements
between countries as well using Article six, So a big
thing about revenue into nature. I think you'll see the also,
then statements around methane. Methane or methane is the handbrake
(25:06):
that we can apply to global warming, because if we
can deliver on all the pledges and the statements that
have been made, that's half a degree of warming in
a very short period of time. I think you'll see
then a big discussion, a big discussion, and hopefully a
positive resolution around adaptation finance. This has always played the
step sister to funding mitigation, but every country in the
(25:29):
world is experiencing really quite extreme impacts, and so how
we pay for that, And that means that we have
to take the adaptation finance discussion away from just the
cops and the sort of highly sort of stylized debate
that we have there. Not to say that we walk
away from our commitments, We're good for that, but we
have to start having a conversation about how we help
(25:50):
people be resilient, which is about safety nets and social security,
and how do you fund your health service and education service,
how do you help nature are resilience, which means funding nature,
And then how we help infrastructure be resilient. So you know,
what is the cost of infrastructure which is resilient to
the kinds of impacts that we see already, and who's
(26:11):
paying for that? And could we reward companies for investing
in making sure that that infrastructure is resilient rather than
sort of charging it as a cost. So there's all
kinds of issues which we never get to talk about
in the negotiation because it's sort of you know, rich
world versus poor world, you know, North versus South. But
I hope that we would actually come out with a
way forward on adaptation finance.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
The dynamics in previous cops have been, as you point out,
rich versus poor because there is a historical reason for it.
The rich countries absolutely emit more and are responsible for
most of climate change as it's occurred, and poor countries
still have room to emit carbon but also have a
(26:52):
deep need for economic growth. In this COP, where the
US is not yet left but is leaving, the dynamics
will be much harder because it's not just about rich
versus poor. It's also about a rich country abandoning its
goal to act and other rich countries not yet standing
(27:17):
up and saying we can fill that gap.
Speaker 5 (27:20):
Well, I don't think anybody can fill the US's gap,
but I think that we and other countries within the
EU and other developed countries, if that's a word that
still we can use. We'll be leaning in and saying
this is how we can use the international architecture, this
is how we can use our own resources. And then
(27:40):
you've got a set of voluntary contributors right under the
Convention and under the Paris Agreement who are now really
leaning in and doing an extraordinary amount. So that's the
China's and the Saudi Arabias and the Indias of this world.
And then you've got sort of all of the multilateral processes.
And then you've got this leadership call from Mia Motley
(28:02):
in the Bridgetown Initiative, but you know, joined by most
other countries, which is to flip a switch or to
redesign the international architecture around the lack of fairness in
the way that the architecture works at the moment. So
you know, when you've got more cash leaving the Caribbean
than arriving into the Caribbean, then how on earth do
(28:24):
you build the fiscal space and the resilience for them
to be able to withstand I mean, I mean, I'm
talking to you today with Hurricane Melissa bearing down on Jamaica.
So you know, the US can absent itself from the
Paris Agreement. But look at the leadership from Singapore, look
at the leadership from China, from Saudi Arabia, from US,
from Germany. This is where it's growing. And I was
(28:46):
just at the Africa Climate Summit just a few weeks
ago in Alice Aberba, and you know, there weren't a
lot of Western journalists then there weren't a lot of
Western business leaders there either. But the message from African
leaders was like, this is our moment. Help us meet
our moment. This is good investment. You will be rewarded. Well,
(29:08):
don't misperceive the risk of investing in our infrastructure. Oh
and by the way, adaptation is job rich. And you
know we've got lots of young people. So I'm not Pollyanna,
and I don't want to underestimate the impact of the
US's withdrawal. US finance, US business, Global finance, Global business
(29:29):
is dealing with the reality of what climate is doing
to our economy and that changes the opportunities as well
as produces more risks, right, So climate change has changed
our economic geography. That is reflected then in opportunity seeking
and risk management by the financial sector.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
If the COP meeting plays out like the IMO did,
and we have seen failures at COP before the two
and nine Copenhagen Summit led to a lot of reflection
and took a good time before multilateralism could work and
have a Paris Agreement agreed on twenty fifteen, six years later.
(30:08):
If we see a failure like that at COP thirty,
how should the world react?
Speaker 5 (30:15):
So I think that our Brazilian hosts and countries that
are prepared to lead and have led by the quality
of their NDCs, are very alive to the risk of
a collapsed CARP or a COP that struggles to come
to an agreement. But that was then and this is
now in that this is about implementing what we've already agreed,
(30:39):
and so in some respects it is a different COP
And I think the real issue is how to communicate
that to the global public. You know, how to communicate that. Yeah,
there was a point in gathering and we didn't all
need to get together because we do need to go
further than what we promised to do. And by the way,
there's all of this amazing stuff already happening. So you know,
in a moment of transition, whether you follow Gramchy or others, right,
(31:03):
that's good going on. There's lots of bad going on.
There's incoherence, but those two truths are living simultaneously, and
we've got to make sure that we actually deliver. But
I don't believe that one country can collapse this process.
First of all, I think that the IMO was a
salutary lesson to everybody. And secondly, I think the vested
interests of the majority of the world's population are in
(31:25):
finding a way to move through this transition in an affordable,
reliable way. There is no doubt that the science is
clear and that at some point people expect their leaders
to protect them.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
So you've just come back from China. Now, as much
as we talk about the rich poor divide at COPS,
there's also the US versus China dynamics that play out
at COP. In this case, the US is leaving and
China is stepping up. They are going to put out
an NDC. We understand they have a goal to reach
that zero by twenty sixty. They have become an exported
(32:00):
giant on clean tech. How significant do you think China's
leadership will be for this.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
Cop Yeah, so as the largest elector state, they play
an outsized role in terms of their influence on the
global economy and of the opportunity of clean energy and electrification.
And then politically they are emerging. So by that I
mean that they are bilaterally very strong when they want
(32:28):
to be, but they are emerging as a master of multinaturalism.
They are completely committed to the multnatural process. They have
been very vocal all the way through twenty twenty five
about their commitment to the Paris Agreement. They spoke out
strongly at the recent annual meetings of the IMF and
the World Bank, so that commitment is clear. But they
are just emerging as into a space where the world
(32:51):
expects them to sort of lead on the multilateral stage.
I mean, obviously they've been members of the G twenty
for a number of years since the beginning. But it's
one thing to lead by lad it's another to lead multinaturally.
And I think that they're feeling their way a little bit.
So yes, they are clearly a very important and you know,
significant power how they play their cards, I think is
(33:13):
something that remains to be seen, but they will come,
you know, fully committed and that I think they're bringing
a large delegation of business leaders and other leaders as
well as the negotiators that we all know so well.
So yeah, committed multilateralists emerging as multilateral leaders.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
So Brazil, as home to the Amazon, is working towards
getting this Tropical Forest Forever Facility funded, and that would
be a way to get countries with these forests a
revenue stream to protect those forests. But a lot of
the deforestation, not just in the Amazon, but around the
(33:52):
world happens because people have needs for food and for fuel.
They'll either cut it to cook the food, or they'll
cut it so that they can grow food on those lands.
What is the way to actually start to reduce emissions
from this land news sector that is so varied and
so important to people.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
One of the reasons why I think Brazil's got credibility
in trying to build this fund, and of course it's
only one part of the Amazon stewardship, is that it
has shown that you can change the rate of deforestation
very quickly. Right if you look at Lula's first term,
and also look at what he's done in his second term.
He has reversed accelerating rates of deforestation very quickly. And
(34:32):
so for both the sort of Indonesia and the broader
Southeast Asian basin, for the Congo basin and for the Amazon,
the politics are different, the array of countries that steward
the forests are different. But if you can get at
scale payments, I mean fundamentally, it's payments for ecosystem services.
You get payments into countries and then to the people
(34:55):
most directly affected. So they're in this TFFF Future Forest
Fund or facility. If it goes forward, twenty percent of
the revenues will go directly to indigenous peoples and to
local communities in countries that qualify i e. They committed
to integrity in the way in which they manage their forests.
(35:15):
Then that helps. But I think what the Brazilians are
trying to do is actually build a scaled fund, right,
so not you know, handouts of aid money or whatever
in small amounts to small communities, but actually you know
a significant revenue stream of hundreds of millions of dollars
and growing every year for the payment of those services
(35:37):
from the forest that are standing. So in some ways
it's not new, but the structure and the scale of
ambition and who would participate is new.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
Thank you, Rachel, thank you, thank you for listening to Zero.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
If you like this episode, please take a moment to
rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This episode was produced by Oscar Boyd with additional help
from Anna Mazarakis. Our theme music is composed by Wonderly
Special Thanks to Samarsadi Moses Andam Laura Milan and Sharan
chan i'm Akshadrati Baksu
Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati. Today were leaders at
the gateway to the mighty Amazon River. It's November eleventh,
and the United Nations Climate Summit COP thirty has officially
(00:22):
begun here in Brazil. It's happening in Berlen, a port
city of about two million people at the mouth of
the Amazon River. The negotiations started with a fight about
what to put on the agenda, and that's not unexpected.
It often happens at the start of a COP meeting,
but it is certainly a rockier start than the Brazilian
(00:43):
hosts of COP thirty would have wanted. Later on in
today's episode, I'm speaking with an experienced climate diplomat, Rachel Kite,
about the outcomes she's looking for here in Brazil and
who will fill the void left behind by the US.
But first, I want to give you a sense of
what it's like to be at a climate summit near
(01:03):
the Amazon Forest and our reactions to the world leader's
speeches that took place last week opening the proceedings here
in Brazil. To do that, I'm joined by my colleague
Sarah Wells, who leads Bloomberg's coverage of climate and energy. Sarah,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Thanks Egsha.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So we got a chance to see a little bit
of the Amazon forest. What was it like we did?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It was great. I mean after a couple of days
in the blue Zone at the World Leader's Summit, you
could be literally any country in the world. You were
in a windowless tent, and so to be outside in
the forest learning new things about fruits and plants and
how they grow, getting some time on a boat, getting
(01:46):
to have a beer and look at our surroundings was fantastic.
And did I guess speak to the controversial reason for
putting the summit in Belem in the first place, which
was to try to give the attendees some exposure to
what's happening here.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
We saw a three hundred year old tree called the Sumahoma.
We saw a boat filled with military police trying to
take care of all the delegates who are coming here.
And the reason for all that security is that we've
had many world leaders show up here at copp and
give speeches. It's typical at the start when they want
(02:21):
to inspire the delegates to go and do something bold,
But there weren't that many world leaders this time around.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
That's right. I mean, I had the King and Queen
of Sweden on my plane coming here. But unfortunately, within
the Blue Zone itself, the journalists were very segregated from
the world leaders. It's literally a barricade going down the
middle of the corridor, and so seeing a physical world
leader in the flesh was not what we experienced. We
(02:50):
sat an ow media room and watched them on TV.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Regardless, I know that was not ideal. We would have
wanted to really be in the room with the world leaders.
But were there highlights from the speeches?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, I think I enjoyed. Me and Motley, the Prime
Minister of Barbados obviously you know she has has some
credentials as a as a climate campaigner, but she came
with a specific idea around methane, which was something new.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I have come here however, this afternoon to speak on
one s and that is methane. The scientists advise that
this is the main way that we can not stall
the increase in temperatures, but reverse the temperature increase that
we have seen across the planet.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
For Bloomberg clients and listeners, Petro Sanchez floated the idea
of a levy on business class flights and private jets
class premium. Yet obviously that's of a concern to a
relatively small proportion of the world, but certainly for some.
(03:58):
And then we did have some quite remarks from some
of the Latin American leaders about Trump. In particular, Columbia's
Petro was the most direct.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Elke Senor Donald Trump Novenga el dubta l personal dena
Jevas Sosia that a laismo econeia allow maney that.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
You know he he said that Trump is against humanity
and a bunch of other things. And so there were
definitely some strong feelings expressed about the American position on
climate at this point.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And it's just the start of the negotiations. It's your
first COP meeting. What has your experience been like.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I think everyone said before I came that you know,
the sort of the rest of the world recedes and
suddenly you're in this bubble where you know, some some
things make sense, some things really don't, And I think
that's that's the case. You know, you suddenly find yourself
sort of pouring over very technical discussion which can have
real world consequences. So definitely, you know, being being in
(05:04):
a media center with hundreds of other journalists, expensive food,
very popular, occasional arrivals of coffee deliveries that you know,
that stuff has been has been fun. But I think
what we you know, what we are all here to
write about, is significant pieces of news that will hopefully
come out of this. And that's that's on all the attendees,
but it's obviously most of all on our on our
(05:26):
host country, Brazil.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And what do you expect we might be writing about
in two weeks time.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Well As of now, the discussion is all around what
ends up on the agenda. That's a very you know,
temporary discussion. As I said earlier, I do think methane
seems to have some momentum behind it, so let's see,
let's see if we get anywhere on that. And then
I think this discussion around whether there should be a
potential roadmap to move away from fossil fuels. Obviously, the
declaration to even attempt to move away from fossil fuels
(05:55):
was highly contentious at previous cops and so I think
the fact that Brazil is even looking to put that
back on the agenda does suggest that they're prepared to,
you know, to go into a region that will come
with a fight, so we will be watching that really closely.
And then lastly, I would say I think the influence
(06:15):
probably not on the ground, but let's see the influence
or otherwise of the US on proceedings is obviously a
huge thing for us to watch.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Thank you, Sarah, thank you for having me join me
after the break where I speak with Rachel Kite, the
UK's Special Representative for Climate, about negotiations in an increasingly
polarized world. To find all of Bloomberg's coverage of COP thirty,
head to our website bloomberg dot com Forward Slash Green.
(06:43):
You can also sign up to Bloomberg Green's newsletter that
comes out daily during the COP meeting. Find it at
Bloomberg dot com Forward Slash Newsletters. There are a few
people as well placed to understand how climate negotiations play
(07:07):
out as Rachel Kite. She is the UK's Special Representative
for Climate and she has held a number of significant
positions across the climate space. She was the Special Representative
of the United Nations Secretary General and the CEO of
Sustainable Energy for All. She also served as World Bank
Groups Vice President and Special Envy for Climate Change. In
(07:30):
her current role. She has spent the last year up
to COP thirty meeting diplomats and leaders from around the
world trying to show up the support for action here
in Berlin.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Rachel, welcome to the show.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
It's lovely to see you. Actually, So you.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Were appointed a UK Special Representative for Climate just over
a year ago and your goal is wide ranging. You're
supposed to support ministers that will help increase UK's diplomatic
engagement on climate globally. What have you done so far.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
I've been out there in the world really pushing out
the intention of this government when it came into office,
which was that even though we're only one percent of
global emissions, that's not a reason to disengage, which I
think had sometimes been the case beforehand, but precisely because
we're only one percent of global emissions, we need the
(08:22):
other ninety nine percent to be going through the transition
that we've started to go through ourselves, and at the
same time this growing realization about how much we need
to be dealing with adaptation and resilience. Now we've just
seen the Climate Change Committee come out with a domestic
report on how vulnerable we are as our own country.
But what's been really interesting. So I've been in every continent.
(08:43):
I've been talking to middle income countries about missions reduction
and their energy transitions, and then talking to lower income
countries about growth and prosperity and investment and trade that
is green, and then to countries that are really vulnerable
about how much more we can do to mainstream adaptation
and resilience into their economic.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Growth and planning.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
But when I'm out there, what countries want is the
how to, especially on the energy transition. So countless numbers
of countries that want technical assistance, support on power sector reform,
on how to build an offshore wind industry, how to
decommission call, how to make the transition that we've made
over the last twenty odd years, and then how to
(09:25):
partner with us, and how to get more UK investment
into their green transitions, how to talk about the difficulties
of hard to debate sectors, and how to get more
of their investment into the UK economy. So yeah, special
representative for Climate, but a big piece of this is
about the trade and investment that makes those transitions really happen.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
And you get to do this because the UK has
for the last seventeen years since the UK Climate Change
Actor was passed a leader on climate issues, whether it
was the Conservative Party which led the government for most
of that time, or whether it's the Labor Party now,
And in the process the UK has shown not just
how to do a law, but also how to deploy
(10:05):
large amounts of renewables, how to build the grid, and
you get to take UK's learnings out to the world
but also reflect back on the UK at a time
when the politics are shifting. The Conservative Party that led
on climate now wants to get rid of the Climate
Change Act. Reform Party, which is gaining in polls at
(10:27):
least and is ahead of Labor and Conservatives in many cases,
is saying they want to get rid of net zero goal.
Even though this Labor government, the one that you represent,
isn't turning back on climate How hard does that make
your life when you go abroad to take the message
of what needs to be done on climate change.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Well.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
I think that across the world many countries are experiencing
a pushback from populace on the right mainly but also
in the past on the left around the drive nets.
If people can't feel or imagine what a clean energy
(11:07):
future looks like to them, and feels like in their pocket.
Then they are vulnerable to the sort of miscommunication, disinformation
or whatever you often see now. So actually it's a
point of conversation, right. So people see that we had
a bipartisan support, right as Americans would say, around our goals,
and you know, and of course a lot of the
(11:27):
indications are that the public still wants clean air, wants
clean water, wants safe communities, wants protection from extreme heat,
wants floods planning. But what they don't like is energy
bills that are expensive, and there's very real reasons for that.
And also with all humility, I mean, you know, nobody's
got this all the way right, right, So, as a
country that is going through a moment of political tension
(11:50):
around the speed with which this transition is happening, the
government came in and started fixing pieces of the regulatory system,
putting in place bits and pieces that would allow us
to go faster to meet the goal of twenty thirty
that was set by the government when it was running
for office. All of that is happening, but you don't
necessarily see the result immediately. So then what's the challenge
(12:10):
of communication internationally? People see us in a leadership position.
See that this is a difficult issue domestically, but for
many other countries it's a difficult issue domestically, and so
that's a point of commonality.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Really.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
So you're saying, so far the UK's leadership on climate,
whether that was through making laws or through energy, is
one that other countries wanted to copy. But now they're
also looking at the UK and the crumbling political consensus
and they are seeing whether there are lessons they can
learn from it. Because these things are not isolated. They're
not just happening in the UK. They're happening in other places. No.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
I mean, look across the EU, look across Socania, look
across Latin America. You know, these are issues that are
present in any democracy, right. And what's interesting is a
number of countries now have got governments, you know, with
commitments to you know, phasing out of coal by twenty
forty or really ambitious goals around the energy transition. And
(13:07):
you know, it's not just the political narrative which has
become more pungent, right, it is also that global growth
has slowed or is not rampant. Right, So, for fear
of a populist uprising, right, a number of countries are like, Okay,
how do I transition away from coal on the timeline
that I've set, Where is the investment going to come from?
(13:30):
How do I navigate tensions around tariff's what is that
doing to the level of growth? How do I secure
a just transition for the people employed in the sector.
So these are universally difficult and universally important themes that
countries want to work on together. And so when I'm
traveling that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Are there specific country examples where over the past year
you have seen that play out and work in favor
of climate action.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
So the Philippines has got extremely ambitious goals around phase
seeing out coal and bringing in offshore wind and diversifying
and bringing more investment into solar, not just in the
sort of metromillar area, but across the country. So Korea
new government in place inherits it and was very bullish
on the campaign trail around their ambitions how do they
(14:18):
do it? They're about to invest in an offshore wind
industry as well. Vietnam, which is a country that we've
worked through the Just Energy Transition Partnership for a number
of years, but that's starting to move along the AZI
and power grid. How do you build a power grid
that allows each of the Asian countries to grow their
economies by accessing the clean energy that each of them possess.
(14:39):
Right Eastern Caribbean, how do each of those countries build
out their geothermal You know, it's probably cheaper and easier
to do it as an integrated grid, but that's really complicated.
How do they think about that? Australia India huge move
to develop offshore wind off the good coast goods you're
out off Tamil Nadu. You know how to do that.
(15:00):
We have a really built out technical cooperation with them anyway,
and now we're investing in each other. And then China.
I've just come back from China where we have a
technical cooperation on power sector reform and also now on
battery storage and hydrogen.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
So in your time covering climate, you've covered it from
many different angles. You've worked in the private sector, You've
tried to push carbon markets, You've worked at the cop level,
looking at diplomacy and how negotiations work. We are in
the tenth year of the Paris Agreement. Could have been
this year when we celebrate what Paris has achieved. But
(15:36):
with the US the largest emitter, leaving the Paris Agreement,
how would you class the progress that the world has
made so far.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
It's definitely made progress. I mean, over the next few days,
you know, the narrative will be, oh, we're not on track. Yeah,
we're not on track. We're more on track than we
would have been without the Paris Agreement, and the plan
that countries are now submitting are fully politically contested at home,
you know, hard fought economic plans, which is what we
(16:08):
really wanted ten years ago. But we're now just beginning
to see in the third generation that this is what
they are. And we wouldn't be there without the Paris Agreement.
I don't think countries would be lining up to go
through the pain of developing these reports if we hadn't.
But the point is that we're not going fast enough
and we're not going far enough, and so the Paris
Agreement is vulnerable to attack from popular so or from
(16:31):
the polls on the right and on the left, because
it isn't meeting needs sufficiently well. And so when we
gather in Brazil, the leaders that gather and those who
aren't there but by proxy need to sort of say, okay,
we're not yet on track, but we commit to doing more.
Transitions don't go smoothly, they don't go in a straight line.
(16:53):
They can go very fast and then slow down and
very fast, and it's a series of s curves. It's
a series of leaps forward, and there's no reason why
we can't commit to doing that. But the fact that
we're multilaterally all sort of working together to make this
go faster, that's the conversation. It's not a conversation about
going slower. Is important.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Are we working together though, because recently we saw a
very clear sign of how things don't work together at
multilateral forums. The International Maritime Organization had a vote to
put in a global carbon tax for shipping, a sector
that produces one billion tons of emissions, and until about
(17:33):
the day of the vote, there was good feeling among
countries that they'd argued over politically contested plan and had
come to something that they could agree on. And then
one country, the US, with its ability to call diplomats
and make threats, which we've reported on, caused them to
delay the vote, and now some say that it may
(17:56):
never come to pass. So are we working together.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
This majority of countries are working together. For sure. I
think what happened at the IMO was extraordinarily disappointing, right,
I mean, that's a decade's effort at best delayed, at
worst put on the shelf. And so we'll have to
come back at it another way and find a way
to do this, because that the polluter has to pay
is a kind of fundamental principle of all of this.
(18:21):
And yeah, the United States made clear its position over
the summer and then intensified its diplomacy in the days
up to the vote. But it also creates space for
plausible deniability for other countries that, for whatever reasons, didn't
like this or didn't like that. So in any multilateral negotiation,
there may be one protagonist which attracts most of the attention,
(18:43):
but it normally creates new spaces which can be exploited
one way or the other. But when it comes to blame,
I think obviously the United States has said that it
filed its intention to withdraw. That comes due after cop
right but at the end of the year beginning of
twenty twenty six. So for the moment, the United States
is in, but it has made clear its intention to leave,
(19:06):
which puts it in a minority, even if it is
a large economy and nobody else is leaving it. And
so I think it is clear that everybody's working together,
and I think it's clear that when we gather on
the port city in the middle of the Amazon, that
what leaders will be saying is that this is a
multilateral process which is a value and will be defended,
(19:27):
and we will defend the multilateral processes that help us
work together on these problems which go beyond all boundaries.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
If you take this ten years on Paris, A lot
of it at COP meetings, and I've been to five
of them, so not as many as you, but I
can say it's so technical and so in depth necessary,
but one that doesn't break through for a politician to
go back home and make a case for why we
are doing climate action. How do you take what has
(19:57):
been achieved and make that case in a political away
to people so that the next ten years leaders can
continue to support this multilateral forum.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Yeah, it's a great question. So for the last ten years.
So first of all, we agreed Paris, then everybody sort
of went home, and then the negotiators sort of negotiated
a rule book on how we would implement what we'd agreed,
and that took way too long, But that's done now
and you could actually say that we've negotiated everything that
needs to be negotiated, and so what this cop represents
(20:28):
is a significant pivot to accelerating implementation. So it's all
about implementing all of the things that we've agreed. That's
what the Brazilians are trying to organize, like outside of
the negotiations, and I think that that's actually much easier
for politicians to sell at home. So why would we
go to Brazil and discuss investing in the Amazon and
(20:50):
other tropical forests right? Well, first, because if we lose them,
we lose control over the thermostatu of the planet. Right
we will pass a tipping point which will bring much
more climate impact to everybody. But you know, to look
at it from a British perspective, if we lose the
tropical forests and their integrity, our own food security is
(21:11):
going to be massively disrupted. So the idea that our
domestic security is secure if we haven't got you know,
a climate regime which is starting to see real progress,
is you know, at the very heart of why I existed,
my rule and my twin Ruth Davis, who's the special
representative of nature, why she exists. You know, we're there
(21:31):
because our foreign policy has to have climate and nature
at the heart of it, because we need those relationships
in order to be secure ourselves. So that's the reason
to go, right, We're not going to be safe and
we're not going to be secure. We're not going to
prosper if we lose the tropical rainforests. It's as simple
as that. So I think that as we get into
implementation and accelerating implementation, it's actually easier to explain to
(21:54):
the world's public why we're there.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
You've got many examples that you could use to say, sure,
this should land right. The price of coffee has gone
up because there's been persistent drought in Brazil, which produces
forty percent of the world's coffee. The price of electricity
is high because we've had very high gas prices because
of the Russian attack on Ukraine, which have been brought
(22:20):
down because of renewables. There are real world clear examples,
but they're not cutting through to people. What's missing.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
I think that we haven't in many cases taken the
time and the effort to convey those stories in ways
that people can hear. I mean, I think, you know,
there's a danger in seeding the marketplace, the public marketplace,
to the scare mongering and the misinformation from the far
right and the far left. So I think that we
(22:50):
have a responsibility to tell these stories in the way
that people can understand. And I think in particular around
the issues around nature, I think people are inclined to
understand that without nature, it's going to be very difficult
to produce food, to have stable watersheds, to be able
(23:12):
to balance the planet's own needs with hours, and that
we're not going to be resilient without nature. I mean,
I think there's a sensibility in people in countries around
the world that that makes sense to them.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
And so if the next ten years of COP are
about implementing all the goals and the rules that have
been put in place, this cop and what it produces
will be a test case for what next cops are
going to look like. What do you expect this coup
will achieve?
Speaker 5 (23:39):
Well, so I think we'll go back to the theory
of change, right, theory of changes that we have an
energy transition that moves us towards clean energy, that that
clean energy allows us to electrify services to people and
to the economy, which means that they can engage with
them benefit from all of the installed renewable energy. I
(23:59):
think of electrification transforms people's lives, right. And then at
the same time, we stop deforesting in particular tropical forests,
and then we have to protect land usee et cetera.
And then there's bits about the oceans or whatever. But
at the very center of that, then I think what
I would expect from this COP is that first of all,
we have a COP where the rest of the world
says we're going to continue working on this. You know,
(24:21):
if you want to leave, leave, but we're going to
keep going. Then I would expect to see announcements around
funding tropical forests. I'd expect to see investing in them
rather not funding them. I would expect to see statements
around the growth of carbon markets, both what I would
call compliance markets, so trading systems and taxes, but also
(24:43):
I would expect to see, you know, statements around governments
leaning in to stimulate demand from the corporate sector for
voluntary markets as well. I think you'll see some agreements
between countries as well using Article six, So a big
thing about revenue into nature. I think you'll see the also,
then statements around methane. Methane or methane is the handbrake
(25:06):
that we can apply to global warming, because if we
can deliver on all the pledges and the statements that
have been made, that's half a degree of warming in
a very short period of time. I think you'll see
then a big discussion, a big discussion, and hopefully a
positive resolution around adaptation finance. This has always played the
step sister to funding mitigation, but every country in the
(25:29):
world is experiencing really quite extreme impacts, and so how
we pay for that, And that means that we have
to take the adaptation finance discussion away from just the
cops and the sort of highly sort of stylized debate
that we have there. Not to say that we walk
away from our commitments, We're good for that, but we
have to start having a conversation about how we help
(25:50):
people be resilient, which is about safety nets and social security,
and how do you fund your health service and education service,
how do you help nature are resilience, which means funding nature,
And then how we help infrastructure be resilient. So you know,
what is the cost of infrastructure which is resilient to
the kinds of impacts that we see already, and who's
(26:11):
paying for that? And could we reward companies for investing
in making sure that that infrastructure is resilient rather than
sort of charging it as a cost. So there's all
kinds of issues which we never get to talk about
in the negotiation because it's sort of you know, rich
world versus poor world, you know, North versus South. But
I hope that we would actually come out with a
way forward on adaptation finance.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
The dynamics in previous cops have been, as you point out,
rich versus poor because there is a historical reason for it.
The rich countries absolutely emit more and are responsible for
most of climate change as it's occurred, and poor countries
still have room to emit carbon but also have a
(26:52):
deep need for economic growth. In this COP, where the
US is not yet left but is leaving, the dynamics
will be much harder because it's not just about rich
versus poor. It's also about a rich country abandoning its
goal to act and other rich countries not yet standing
(27:17):
up and saying we can fill that gap.
Speaker 5 (27:20):
Well, I don't think anybody can fill the US's gap,
but I think that we and other countries within the
EU and other developed countries, if that's a word that
still we can use. We'll be leaning in and saying
this is how we can use the international architecture, this
is how we can use our own resources. And then
(27:40):
you've got a set of voluntary contributors right under the
Convention and under the Paris Agreement who are now really
leaning in and doing an extraordinary amount. So that's the
China's and the Saudi Arabias and the Indias of this world.
And then you've got sort of all of the multilateral processes.
And then you've got this leadership call from Mia Motley
(28:02):
in the Bridgetown Initiative, but you know, joined by most
other countries, which is to flip a switch or to
redesign the international architecture around the lack of fairness in
the way that the architecture works at the moment. So
you know, when you've got more cash leaving the Caribbean
than arriving into the Caribbean, then how on earth do
(28:24):
you build the fiscal space and the resilience for them
to be able to withstand I mean, I mean, I'm
talking to you today with Hurricane Melissa bearing down on Jamaica.
So you know, the US can absent itself from the
Paris Agreement. But look at the leadership from Singapore, look
at the leadership from China, from Saudi Arabia, from US,
from Germany. This is where it's growing. And I was
(28:46):
just at the Africa Climate Summit just a few weeks
ago in Alice Aberba, and you know, there weren't a
lot of Western journalists then there weren't a lot of
Western business leaders there either. But the message from African
leaders was like, this is our moment. Help us meet
our moment. This is good investment. You will be rewarded. Well,
(29:08):
don't misperceive the risk of investing in our infrastructure. Oh
and by the way, adaptation is job rich. And you
know we've got lots of young people. So I'm not Pollyanna,
and I don't want to underestimate the impact of the
US's withdrawal. US finance, US business, Global finance, Global business
(29:29):
is dealing with the reality of what climate is doing
to our economy and that changes the opportunities as well
as produces more risks, right, So climate change has changed
our economic geography. That is reflected then in opportunity seeking
and risk management by the financial sector.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
If the COP meeting plays out like the IMO did,
and we have seen failures at COP before the two
and nine Copenhagen Summit led to a lot of reflection
and took a good time before multilateralism could work and
have a Paris Agreement agreed on twenty fifteen, six years later.
(30:08):
If we see a failure like that at COP thirty,
how should the world react?
Speaker 5 (30:15):
So I think that our Brazilian hosts and countries that
are prepared to lead and have led by the quality
of their NDCs, are very alive to the risk of
a collapsed CARP or a COP that struggles to come
to an agreement. But that was then and this is
now in that this is about implementing what we've already agreed,
(30:39):
and so in some respects it is a different COP
And I think the real issue is how to communicate
that to the global public. You know, how to communicate that. Yeah,
there was a point in gathering and we didn't all
need to get together because we do need to go
further than what we promised to do. And by the way,
there's all of this amazing stuff already happening. So you know,
in a moment of transition, whether you follow Gramchy or others, right,
(31:03):
that's good going on. There's lots of bad going on.
There's incoherence, but those two truths are living simultaneously, and
we've got to make sure that we actually deliver. But
I don't believe that one country can collapse this process.
First of all, I think that the IMO was a
salutary lesson to everybody. And secondly, I think the vested
interests of the majority of the world's population are in
(31:25):
finding a way to move through this transition in an affordable,
reliable way. There is no doubt that the science is
clear and that at some point people expect their leaders
to protect them.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
So you've just come back from China. Now, as much
as we talk about the rich poor divide at COPS,
there's also the US versus China dynamics that play out
at COP. In this case, the US is leaving and
China is stepping up. They are going to put out
an NDC. We understand they have a goal to reach
that zero by twenty sixty. They have become an exported
(32:00):
giant on clean tech. How significant do you think China's
leadership will be for this.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
Cop Yeah, so as the largest elector state, they play
an outsized role in terms of their influence on the
global economy and of the opportunity of clean energy and electrification.
And then politically they are emerging. So by that I
mean that they are bilaterally very strong when they want
(32:28):
to be, but they are emerging as a master of multinaturalism.
They are completely committed to the multnatural process. They have
been very vocal all the way through twenty twenty five
about their commitment to the Paris Agreement. They spoke out
strongly at the recent annual meetings of the IMF and
the World Bank, so that commitment is clear. But they
are just emerging as into a space where the world
(32:51):
expects them to sort of lead on the multilateral stage.
I mean, obviously they've been members of the G twenty
for a number of years since the beginning. But it's
one thing to lead by lad it's another to lead multinaturally.
And I think that they're feeling their way a little bit.
So yes, they are clearly a very important and you know,
significant power how they play their cards, I think is
(33:13):
something that remains to be seen, but they will come,
you know, fully committed and that I think they're bringing
a large delegation of business leaders and other leaders as
well as the negotiators that we all know so well.
So yeah, committed multilateralists emerging as multilateral leaders.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
So Brazil, as home to the Amazon, is working towards
getting this Tropical Forest Forever Facility funded, and that would
be a way to get countries with these forests a
revenue stream to protect those forests. But a lot of
the deforestation, not just in the Amazon, but around the
(33:52):
world happens because people have needs for food and for fuel.
They'll either cut it to cook the food, or they'll
cut it so that they can grow food on those lands.
What is the way to actually start to reduce emissions
from this land news sector that is so varied and
so important to people.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
One of the reasons why I think Brazil's got credibility
in trying to build this fund, and of course it's
only one part of the Amazon stewardship, is that it
has shown that you can change the rate of deforestation
very quickly. Right if you look at Lula's first term,
and also look at what he's done in his second term.
He has reversed accelerating rates of deforestation very quickly. And
(34:32):
so for both the sort of Indonesia and the broader
Southeast Asian basin, for the Congo basin and for the Amazon,
the politics are different, the array of countries that steward
the forests are different. But if you can get at
scale payments, I mean fundamentally, it's payments for ecosystem services.
You get payments into countries and then to the people
(34:55):
most directly affected. So they're in this TFFF Future Forest
Fund or facility. If it goes forward, twenty percent of
the revenues will go directly to indigenous peoples and to
local communities in countries that qualify i e. They committed
to integrity in the way in which they manage their forests.
(35:15):
Then that helps. But I think what the Brazilians are
trying to do is actually build a scaled fund, right,
so not you know, handouts of aid money or whatever
in small amounts to small communities, but actually you know
a significant revenue stream of hundreds of millions of dollars
and growing every year for the payment of those services
(35:37):
from the forest that are standing. So in some ways
it's not new, but the structure and the scale of
ambition and who would participate is new.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
Thank you, Rachel, thank you, thank you for listening to Zero.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
If you like this episode, please take a moment to
rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This episode was produced by Oscar Boyd with additional help
from Anna Mazarakis. Our theme music is composed by Wonderly
Special Thanks to Samarsadi Moses Andam Laura Milan and Sharan
chan i'm Akshadrati Baksu
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.