May 27, 2025 • 34 mins
The world just agreed a pandemic treaty. But without the United States. Is it really a milestone?
‘‘It is a major step forward. I mean, just imagine if we failed. We would not only go back to the point before the pandemic, before COVID-19 struck us, we'd go back to a point much further back,” said Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein from the International Peace Institute.
But what about the global challenge of climate change?
“We're up against a ticking clock. And even though we've enjoyed successes in the past, even though the renewables rollout is going rather well, it's all too little, too late from the point of view of avoiding genuinely dangerous degrees of warming,” says climate security expert Peter Schwartzstein.
Why can’t world leaders really unite around global challenges?
‘Their children and grandchildren have to deal with abominable and extreme heat levels and forest fires and fierce hurricanes and no trade and collapsed economies and extreme food security and complete anarchy. Is this what they wish for their children. What form of love is that?” continues al Hussein.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva for in-depth analysis of where we stand.
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Inside Geneva .
I'm your host, imogen Foulkes,and this is a production from
Swissinfo, the internationalpublic media company of
Switzerland.
In today's programme… I see noobjection.
The resolution is adopted.
Member countries of the WorldHealth Organization have
(00:28):
finalized an agreement on how totackle future pandemics.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
It is a major step forward.
I mean, just imagine if wefailed we would not only go back
to the point before thepandemic, before COVID-19 struck
us, we'd go back to a pointmuch further back.
The next pandemic could be froma point that we don't have
technology and the means toarrest it.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
President Trump has issued a flurry of executive
orders designed to cut back onUS environmental protection.
We're up against a tickingclock and, even though we've
enjoyed successes in the past,even though the renewables
rollout is going rather well,it's all too little, too late
from the point of view ofavoiding genuinely dangerous
(01:22):
degrees of warming view ofavoiding, like, genuinely
dangerous degrees of warming.
So I mean we need significantlygreater levels of ambition than
we were seeing even beforeTrump's re-election in November.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva.
In today's programme we've gottwo fascinating interviews for
you, both of them reflecting theglobal crossroads we seem to be
at.
In the first we talked toformer UN Human Rights
Commissioner Zayd Rad Al-Hussein, who reflects on the challenges
to multilateralism as the USpulls out of the Paris Climate
(01:59):
Accord, but also some successesthe new pandemic treaty agreed
just a few days ago at the WorldHealth Assembly.
Is the treaty a triumph forglobal cooperation at a time
when so many populist leadersare telling us that sovereignty
is all important?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
You need to give up sovereignty if you're going to
have a system that works.
We give power to a referee whenwe're playing football because
without the referee it becomeslike football when we were six
or seven we're all charging intoeach other and kicking each
other in the shins and so forth,and so we decide to have a
referee and we give them thepower to blow the whistle, to
(02:38):
adjudicate and award the pointsand give the penalties out.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's what we need to do in the international
system, and then later in theprogramme we talked to
environmental journalist PeteSchwarzstein, who specialises in
climate insecurity.
He's the author of the book theHeat and the Fury on the
Frontlines of Climate Violence.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
The best characterisation of climate
change's contribution toviolence globally is it's
basically applying tremendouspressure to whatever place or
society's existing weaknessesare, and that's a big, big
problem globally because we haveso many fissures that can be
exploited from inequality tomisinformation, to corruption,
(03:20):
to state brutality.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That's to come.
But first let's hear from ZaidRadal-Hussein.
Since finishing his term as UNHuman Rights Commissioner, he
has remained active ininternational affairs.
He's professor of the practiceof law and human rights at the
University of Pennsylvania.
He's the founder of theInternational Peace Institute
(03:43):
and he's a member of the Elders,the body founded by the late
Nelson Mandela to bring togetherglobal leaders to work for
peace, justice, human rights anda sustainable planet.
Part of his work has includedbehind-the-scenes diplomacy,
trying to bridge differences inthe negotiations over that
(04:04):
pandemic treaty.
Because, although everyoneagrees we don't want to be
unprepared for another pandemic,we don't agree exactly how the
treaty did unite countriesaround the need for global
cooperation.
But a key element still has tobe ironed out on pathogen access
and benefit sharing.
(04:25):
In other words, what countriescan expect to get vaccines and
treatments, for example, inreturn for sharing data on any
new viruses emerging in theirterritory?
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So when I talked to Zaid, I began by asking him
whether the treaty really wasmeaningful.
It is a major step forward.
I mean, just imagine if wefailed, if this treaty was
defeated at the World HealthAssembly and didn't garner the
requisite votes.
I think there's a strong pointof view and I support it.
I think there's a strong pointof view, and I support it, that
(05:05):
we would not only go back to thepoint before COVID-19 struck us
.
We'd go back to a point muchfurther back.
(05:27):
The next pandemic and if yourecall that 70% of the diseases
we experience come from animalsthe next pandemic could be from
a point that we don't havetechnology and the means to
arrest it and let's say, for thesake of argument, it killed
slowly but surely.
You know, we have no defenses,and so the argument that somehow
this is, you know, it'simmaterial, or whether we had it
or not, is, I think, very false.
Also, what it does, which isreally intriguing, is that it's
(05:49):
really the leading edge of thewedge in terms of the data
revolution, because what wenoticed in the negotiations is a
very strong pushback,principally by the African
countries, on this idea thatthey would make available their
sequence data.
They would sequence, a mutationof, as they did with the
(06:12):
Omicron variant of COVID, andthey upload the genetic sequence
data.
And for this efficient andrapid action they received
precious little in the way oftherapeutics, diagnostics and
vaccines, and they were likewait a minute, wait a minute.
We did our job and what do weget in return in terms of
(06:36):
vaccines?
And so what they've done now isthey've said we're not going
down that road again.
If we're going to make dataavailable, we're not going down
that road again.
If we're going to make dataavailable, it's going to cost
you, and I think what's going tohappen and what we see emerging
from this pandemic negotiationis that many people in the
global south will say no longer.
(06:56):
We are not going to make thisdata free.
If you in the high incomecountries want to use our data,
monetize it and profit from it,we want something in return.
And what this negotiation hasshown is that the global south
is fed up, and the next phase inthe negotiation is precisely
(07:17):
this issue is how to work outthe details of the mechanism
such that, when sequence data ismade available, that there is
something in the form of areturn.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So you have been kind of involved in the behind the
scenes diplomacy, talking todifferent member states about
how it's important to have thistreaty, and they bring their
wishes to the table and so on.
Give us a glimpse behind thescenes.
How difficult has it been?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yes, we hosted, I think, about nine retreats.
We always had a partner in theform of a member state, but we
brought most of the keynegotiators to a site on the
other side of Lake Geneva and,as one of the negotiators said,
we provided them with a sort oftherapy, because hitherto there
(08:09):
was no organization that wouldtake the negotiators out of the
negotiating space and then workthrough what the problems were,
why they were unable to actuallynegotiate.
The first several rounds therewere no negotiations.
It was a so-called input-drivenexercise where they just repeat
their statements and then theBureau, the sort of number of
(08:33):
countries, would determine whatgoes into the next iteration,
next draft.
And it's very unusual becausethis way the way in which health
negotiations operated is verydifferent from the way many
other treaty negotiations work,and it was sort of to someone
versed in the traditional methodthis was a very unusual bird,
(08:56):
put it this way, but toward theend we managed, I think through
the retreats we hosted, toidentify a number of bridge
builders and we were able tobring the African group Group 4
Equity with the high incomecountries.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
As you said, there's this key thing about pathogen
sharing still to be agreed.
How difficult is it going to beto get that final key step?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Now it won't have any meaning until this final part,
the pathogen access and benefitsharing, is agreed to, and then
that altogether, one may makethe argument that the treaty
altogether may remain as fairly,we will only open up our market
space to pharmaceuticals thatbuy into the system, then the
(09:49):
market strengthens the treaty,right, because then the
pharmaceuticals will have adecision to make.
Africa is a continent of 1.3billion people, right.
And if the African countrieswere to say no, no, no, no, we
will only open ourselves topharmaceuticals that are in the
system, then suddenly you havean extremely strong, strong
(10:11):
treaty, a very strong treaty inplace, and that is the
importance of this thing.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
One of the things I think that does worry some
people.
One it's good, this treaty, butthe United States is not there.
It has left the World HealthOrganization.
Can a global health treaty workwithout the United States?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
So I don't know whether it's that important at
this current stage.
I think what is important isthat we have a treaty that's
been adopted by the World HealthAssembly and now we move to the
next phase.
It also, I think, is importantin that it sort of restates the
importance of science andmedical science.
You know, there's this totalbizarre thing that you see,
(10:59):
whether it's anti-vaxxers, allof whom believe that they're
medical experts, it'santi-vaxxers, all of whom
believe that they're medicalexperts, you have anti-vaxxers
or those who are denying climatescience, and yet, at an
individual basis, if any of themfall ill, where do they go to?
They go to a clinic, they goget tested.
If they suspect they may havecancer, they would willingly
(11:21):
submit to chemotherapy if thatwas the prescribed sort of
action.
So it's a mad world we live innow.
It's sort of completely insane.
Everything is tribalized andeverything becomes sort of
polemic and becomes really sillybecause the threats we face are
so grave and so enormous andit's almost childish and puerile
(11:44):
what you see happening.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
It's my heartening to see you almost laugh about it,
but I do hear people, certainlyin Europe and in the global
south, very worried about whatappears to be this other huge
multilateral challenge which wecan only solve multilaterally is
climate change.
You mentioned it there climatechange deniers.
(12:06):
We see almost an abandonment ofclimate work to try and keep,
say, global warming undercontrol.
I mean certainly the UnitedStates has now completely
abandoned it and some Europeancountries are also saying they
talk about in fixed cost terms.
We can't afford it right now.
(12:28):
How do you see that?
How could this momentum whichwe had a bit of for a while, how
do you think that could berestored?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, I was listening to Johan Rockström speak a few
days ago and he said yes, ofcourse we're now overshoot.
So we're heading towards a 3.1degree increase from
pre-industrial levels in termsof global warming and it's very,
very dangerous and we'll havefive years now remaining in
(12:59):
which we need to bring thisunder control.
Otherwise we hit the tippingpoints and then we tumble into
the abyss, and of course I meanit's extremely serious.
You hope that there are enoughcities, there are enough
companies that actually do worryabout the future and are not so
short-sighted to believe thatthey will.
(13:20):
The CEOs of these companies orthe mayors of these towns will
step safely into their gravesand just won't care whether
their children and grandchildrenhave to deal with abominable
and extreme heat levels andforest fires and fierce
hurricanes and no trade andcollapsed economies and extreme
food security and completeanarchy.
(13:43):
I mean, if that's what they wishfor their children, what form
of love is that in futuregenerations, right?
So it shows, I suppose, theextreme selfishness that we
still are possessed by, and itneeds a deeper way of thinking.
You know people who say, well,unless you experience it, unless
you live in a coastal resort,and it sort of goes under the
(14:06):
waves and the oceans.
Basically, you know, you're notmotivated by it, because you
have daily preoccupations youhave to pay your bills, you have
to pay your mortgage or rent,you have to send your children
to school, and that is all well,well accepted.
But you know, all of us know,for instance, that you don't
have to have suffered from anair crash to know you don't want
(14:27):
to be in one.
Your imagination is powerfulenough to know that if you were
to be in a plane that's fallingout of the sky, it's horrible
enough and you'd do everythingto prevent that from happening.
Well, the planet is travellingthrough space and it's going to
crash soon.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It sounds like you've kind of given up a bit on the
political class then, but ofcourse it is political leaders
who represent member states atthe United Nations.
So where does that leavemultilateralism, if you think
that that class can't gettogether and solve?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
If you look at the UN Charter, nowhere is there
consensus written into it.
There's Article 18, which saysevery country has a right to
vote, and you vote on everything.
And that's what you do, andthat's how you actually get to a
strong consensus, becausecountries in the minority who
are trying to block, block,block, block, block on behalf of
commercial interests, banks orwhoever they may be, would just
(15:25):
be outvoted.
You need to give up sovereigntyin many of these respects if
you're going to have a systemthat works.
We give power to a referee whenwe're playing football, because
without the referee, it becomeslike football when we were six
or seven we're all charging intoeach other and kicking each
other in the shins and so forth.
And so we decide to have areferee and we give them the
(15:47):
power to blow the whistle, toadjudicate and award the points
and give the penalties out.
That's what we need to do inthe international system, and
how silly can we be otherwise?
And that's what we've decidedto do.
We've decided now to strip ornot.
We but those acting on populisttendencies have decided to
strip normative system that wehave in place, but also the idea
(16:11):
that we solve problemscollectively and, if you want to
each member state were to go onits own.
Well, thank you very much.
Anarchy is the next stop on ourjourney, so the epitaph will
start to etch it, humanity'sepitaph will start to word it,
and I'm sure it's going to besomething like you know, here
(16:32):
lies humanity, but the marketswere up, something ridiculous
like that.
It was all about the markets,the long-term viability of us as
a species and living togetherwith other species, and this
fragile biosphere becomessecondary.
I mean, it's rather amazing tome.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Zaid Rad Al-Hussein there lamenting what he called
the stripping away of oursystems of international
cooperation, or globalrefereeing, as he so nicely put
it.
We did learn during theCovid-19 pandemic that global
cooperation is vital.
Viruses don't recognise borders.
The pandemic treaty, modestthough it is so far, is a sign,
perhaps, that we have learnt afew lessons.
(17:25):
But what about climate change?
That knows no borders either.
Our entire planet is warmingand yet the United States
appears to be abandoning thework to tackle climate change
and even removing all referencesto it from government documents
.
What does that mean when aworld superpower actively denies
(17:48):
what the vast majority ofscientists see as a huge threat
to our planet, even to ourexistence?
I talked to Pete Schwartzstein.
He's an environmentaljournalist, an independent
climate security consultant andauthor of the Heat and the Fury
on the Frontlines of ClimateViolence.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I think for those of us in the climate space, as with
those in so many other fields,the past few months have been
one of continual, mostly veryunhappy whiplash In the climate
space.
The Trump administration isgoing out of its way to kill
both climate language but alsoanything even tangentially
(18:29):
related to climate programming,and this, of course, is sort of
bleeding into all sorts of kindof very wide ranging and not
always easy to sort ofanticipate changes.
I mean, even many NGOshumanitarian aid, development
organizations that are kind oftangentially or at least partly
dependent on whatever US fundingis left are carefully scrubbing
(18:52):
mentions of climate from theirwebsites, carefully scrubbing
mentions of climate from theirwebsites.
So there's a real sort ofculture of fear and I don't
think that's sort of too grandand too devastating a way of
putting it.
That's sort of taken hold ofeven agencies and even people
that are not kind of explicitlyunder the thumb of Trump and his
(19:14):
people.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Some people here in Europe, perhaps clinging to some
vestiges of optimism, have beentrying to tell me that look,
yeah, this is not good, butactually we are making good
progress towards net zero, or atleast reducing greenhouse gases
.
Is that optimism valid?
Can other parts of the worldkeep going, even if the supposed
(19:38):
world's greatest superpowerabandons ship?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
It's certainly true that emissions are not
increasing at the same speedthat they previously were, and
that's a success that's not tobe sniffed at.
I mean, people forget thatuntil the Paris Climate
Agreement we were on track forfive or six Celsius worth of
warming, as opposed to theroughly three Celsius of warming
that we're on track for thusfar Now.
It's hard on a certain level toconstrue that as success when
(20:04):
even at three Celsius of warmingis devastating in the extreme
and will kind of likely changealmost every part of the planet
in ways that sort of localsstruggle to imagine.
But nevertheless the fact thatwe have enjoyed significantly
better outcomes than we were ontrack for not that long ago is
sort of fodder for relativeoptimism.
Equally and I mean within theUS, if you move kind of beyond
(20:28):
the federal government, at astate level, at a city level,
there's still a lot going on.
So it's possible that evenwithin the kind of big, outsized
beast that is the US, that itmight not end up being quite as
irresistibly bleak a story as itsort of currently looks from a
DC perspective.
But and this is I guess thesalient point we're up against a
(20:49):
ticking clock and even thoughwe've enjoyed successes in the
past.
Even though the renewablesrollout is going rather well,
even though we're getting somepretty positive developments
coming from China and to acertain, but perhaps lesser
extent, from the EU, it's alltoo little, too late from the
point of view of avoiding likegenuinely dangerous degrees of
(21:12):
warming.
So I mean we need significantlygreater levels of ambition than
we were seeing even beforeTrump's reelection in warming.
So I mean we need significantlygreater levels of ambition than
we were seeing even beforeTrump's re-election in November.
So unfortunately, I thinkthere's a little bit more in the
pessimist column, for the timebeing at least.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
You talk about it being too little, too late,
given the kind of strategy we'vegot at the moment, which is
already being weakened, in fact,not just by the United States.
With your book you have seenthe consequences of that and
reading some parts of that I wasreally interested that I
thought I knew the link betweenclimate change and conflict.
(21:49):
I hear in Geneva, UN aidagencies, the World Food
Programme, the Red CrossFederation deals with natural
disasters.
They talk about it a lot andyet the examples you were giving
are much more in some waysubtle, perhaps below the radar.
I'd really be interested in youtelling our listeners a few of
those.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Absolutely.
I mean, I've spent the pastdecade and a bit working to
articulate both the extent ofclimate's contribution to
violence but most particularlyalso the manner in which climate
contributes to forms ofconflict, large and small, and I
guess the sort of headlinerationale for doing this is that
, I mean, to my mind, there'sperhaps no manifestation of
climate change more in your faceor more arresting than the
(22:32):
kinds of violence that it'sincreasingly leaving in its wake
.
And this I mean, this violencetakes many, many different forms
.
I mean, between about 2014 and2017, I was heavily focused,
sort of working across differentparts of Iraq and Syria trying
to lay out how ISIS hadbenefited tremendously from
collapsing agriculturalconditions to bolster its ranks,
(22:54):
the idea being that withoutkind of climate and wider
environmental induceddifficulties in farming areas,
the group never would have beenable to grow as large and as
deadly as it soon became.
But then I mean, much of thisclimate-related violence is much
less headline-grabbing, muchless dramatic than massive
(23:16):
jihadi groups roving acrosspatches of territory the size of
Great.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Britain.
Actually, the Bangladeshexample is one that fascinated
me.
Tell our listeners about that,because I think this is
something people perhaps wouldnever have dreamt of.
We know about rising sea levels.
We know that it is reducingpeople's ability to fish or grow
crops, but this particulardevelopment hadn't expected.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Absolutely, I mean.
So I spent a chunk of time overthe course of a bunch of
different assignments working insouthern Bangladesh, and my
assignment, or at least my earlyones, were targeted on kind of
articulating some of the kind offorms of climate stress there
that the average person acrossthe world is perhaps relatively
well acquainted with, the waysin which more and more people
(24:01):
are losing their livelihoods torising seas and ever stronger
cyclones and a bunch of otherclimate stresses and shocks.
But while I was working there,much to my surprise came across
one of these many low-level,localized, geopolitically
largely insignificant instancesin which climate change
contributes to violence, andthat was that as rising seas
(24:24):
sort of eat away at many of thefields on which sort of local
farmers almost entirely depend,more and more of these people
are kind of seeking alternativelivelihoods, fishing in the
longtime pirate infested coastalwaterways, and all of them are
acutely aware of the dangersthat come with plying their
(24:44):
trade in these sort of classicbandit lairs, but they feel that
that really is their onlyoption.
But as the volume of kind ofhostages because that's the way
in which the pirates mostlyderive a living as the volume of
hostages has increased, so toohas the number of pirates,
because there's just so muchavailable kind of human lucre
(25:05):
that it's sort of worth thewhile of these groups to sort of
tolerate the deepunpleasantness that comes with
sort of negotiating jungleconditions and diseases and
snakes and tigers and crocodilesand this kind of A to Z of
complications.
So yeah, just one of many, manyexamples that we see across the
world in which the lives ofordinary people are being
(25:25):
rendered basically totallyintolerable by a bunch of
climate related securitychallenges.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So, basically, rising sea levels have deprived
coastal farmers of theirlivelihood.
They try their hand at fishing,but this is notoriously lawless
territory.
There are pirates.
The pirates have now developeda new business mode which is
kidnapping the people who aretrying to fish and extorting
money from their families.
(25:51):
So climate change is fuelinginsecurity, violence and crime.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
It is, and I mean perhaps the best
characterization of climatechange's contribution to
violence globally is.
It's basically applyingtremendous pressure to whatever
place or society's existingweaknesses are, and that's a big
, big problem globally, becausewe have so many fissures that
can be exploited from inequalityto misinformation, to
(26:17):
corruption, to state brutality.
And just the more intense theclimate stress has become
globally, the more pressure itis applying to these situations,
which often need littleencouragement to worsen.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
You're a journalist, so am I.
Climate change now isincreasingly.
We see a lot of misinformationand disinformation and a revival
of this idea, which we thoughthad been put to bed, that it
doesn't really exist.
It's our job to actually layout the facts.
How do you do that now?
How would you compellinglytackle the misinformation?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Yeah, I mean, I think I'd be.
It's one of these classic casesin which I'd be an exceedingly
rich man if I had a stronganswer to that one.
I mean, I guess, to recast thequestion in a kind of slightly
optimistic way, we know that thevast majority of people across
both rich and poor parts of theworld both believe climate
change to be real and areclamoring for climate action.
(27:19):
I mean, recent studies suggestthat about 89% of people
globally want climate change tobe tackled in some kind of
meaningful way.
Equally, we know thatpercentage tends to drop rather
precipitously if people are toldthat, well, that action will
come with a price tag and a costthat will potentially hit them
personally for at least a periodof time.
(27:40):
All of which is to say, thatkind of misinformation, I think,
is, in the broad scheme ofthings, a less sort of
devastating obstacle than somany of us sometimes think.
The trouble is, I think, that somany of our elected leaders,
particularly in the US, haveproven extra susceptible to
misinformation anddisinformation, and so I guess
(28:02):
it's more the nature of thepeople that are kind of falling
afoul of proverbial fake newsthan the sheer number that is
problematic.
I would say that it's duringperiods in which climate
stresses are just too obviousand too terrifyingly in your
face to ignore, the clamor foraction tends to increase.
(28:24):
So when we're gearing up for asummer like this one, in which
we've had a relatively drywinter, in which we've got the
makings of yet another kind ofwildfire and drought-ridden next
few months, well, surprise,surprise and totally
unsurprisingly, those tend to bethe periods in which the
average man or woman on thestreet is just that bit more
(28:44):
convinced of the necessity ofgetting out there and lobbying
and taking kind of necessary,painful action than they are
during kind of more temperate,less unpleasant periods of the
year.
So while all of us kind of wishfor a summer that's not
characterized by the sorts ofhorrors that so many European
summers increasingly have been,that may well be the necessary
(29:04):
price in order to get variousinitiatives off the ground.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Peter Schwarzstein leading us to the conclusion
that maybe, as with pandemicsand COVID-19, we are doomed to
learn every lesson the hard way.
And that's it from this editionof Inside Geneva.
We hope you enjoyed theprogramme.
Do drop us a line atinsidegeneva, at swissinfoch, to
(29:36):
tell us what you think.
My thanks to Peter Schwarzsteinand Zaid Rad Al-Hussein for
their time and their analysis.
Join us next time on InsideGeneva, where we'll be looking
at the proposed GazaHumanitarian Foundation.
(29:57):
Is it a way to finally get aidinto Gaza, or is it, as many
longstanding aid workers fear, apoliticization of humanitarian
principles?
Speaker 4 (30:09):
We would welcome anything that would allow us to
resume work for a populationthat is starving and that has
been suffocated by a siege overtwo months, but this seems to be
militarized, politicized,manipulated.
People have to walk longdistances through the rubble to
(30:31):
get aid, and it is then somekind of a military scheme that
decides whom will get it, howthey will get it and if they
(30:55):
will get it so, it is inviolation of basic humanitarian
principles.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Check out our previous episodes how the
International Red Cross unitesprisoners of war with their
families, or why survivors ofhuman rights violations turn to
the UN in Geneva for justice.
I'm Imogen Folks.
Thanks again for listening you.
This is Inside Geneva .
I'm your host, imogen Foulkes,and this is a production from
Swissinfo, the internationalpublic media company of
Switzerland.
In today's programme… I see noobjection.
The resolution is adopted.
Member countries of the WorldHealth Organization have
(00:28):
finalized an agreement on how totackle future pandemics.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
It is a major step forward.
I mean, just imagine if wefailed we would not only go back
to the point before thepandemic, before COVID-19 struck
us, we'd go back to a pointmuch further back.
The next pandemic could be froma point that we don't have
technology and the means toarrest it.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
President Trump has issued a flurry of executive
orders designed to cut back onUS environmental protection.
We're up against a tickingclock and, even though we've
enjoyed successes in the past,even though the renewables
rollout is going rather well,it's all too little, too late
from the point of view ofavoiding genuinely dangerous
(01:22):
degrees of warming view ofavoiding, like, genuinely
dangerous degrees of warming.
So I mean we need significantlygreater levels of ambition than
we were seeing even beforeTrump's re-election in November.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva.
In today's programme we've gottwo fascinating interviews for
you, both of them reflecting theglobal crossroads we seem to be
at.
In the first we talked toformer UN Human Rights
Commissioner Zayd Rad Al-Hussein, who reflects on the challenges
to multilateralism as the USpulls out of the Paris Climate
(01:59):
Accord, but also some successesthe new pandemic treaty agreed
just a few days ago at the WorldHealth Assembly.
Is the treaty a triumph forglobal cooperation at a time
when so many populist leadersare telling us that sovereignty
is all important?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
You need to give up sovereignty if you're going to
have a system that works.
We give power to a referee whenwe're playing football because
without the referee it becomeslike football when we were six
or seven we're all charging intoeach other and kicking each
other in the shins and so forth,and so we decide to have a
referee and we give them thepower to blow the whistle, to
(02:38):
adjudicate and award the pointsand give the penalties out.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's what we need to do in the international
system, and then later in theprogramme we talked to
environmental journalist PeteSchwarzstein, who specialises in
climate insecurity.
He's the author of the book theHeat and the Fury on the
Frontlines of Climate Violence.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
The best characterisation of climate
change's contribution toviolence globally is it's
basically applying tremendouspressure to whatever place or
society's existing weaknessesare, and that's a big, big
problem globally because we haveso many fissures that can be
exploited from inequality tomisinformation, to corruption,
(03:20):
to state brutality.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That's to come.
But first let's hear from ZaidRadal-Hussein.
Since finishing his term as UNHuman Rights Commissioner, he
has remained active ininternational affairs.
He's professor of the practiceof law and human rights at the
University of Pennsylvania.
He's the founder of theInternational Peace Institute
(03:43):
and he's a member of the Elders,the body founded by the late
Nelson Mandela to bring togetherglobal leaders to work for
peace, justice, human rights anda sustainable planet.
Part of his work has includedbehind-the-scenes diplomacy,
trying to bridge differences inthe negotiations over that
(04:04):
pandemic treaty.
Because, although everyoneagrees we don't want to be
unprepared for another pandemic,we don't agree exactly how the
treaty did unite countriesaround the need for global
cooperation.
But a key element still has tobe ironed out on pathogen access
and benefit sharing.
(04:25):
In other words, what countriescan expect to get vaccines and
treatments, for example, inreturn for sharing data on any
new viruses emerging in theirterritory?
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So when I talked to Zaid, I began by asking him
whether the treaty really wasmeaningful.
It is a major step forward.
I mean, just imagine if wefailed, if this treaty was
defeated at the World HealthAssembly and didn't garner the
requisite votes.
I think there's a strong pointof view and I support it.
I think there's a strong pointof view, and I support it, that
(05:05):
we would not only go back to thepoint before COVID-19 struck us
.
We'd go back to a point muchfurther back.
(05:27):
The next pandemic and if yourecall that 70% of the diseases
we experience come from animalsthe next pandemic could be from
a point that we don't havetechnology and the means to
arrest it and let's say, for thesake of argument, it killed
slowly but surely.
You know, we have no defenses,and so the argument that somehow
this is, you know, it'simmaterial, or whether we had it
or not, is, I think, very false.
Also, what it does, which isreally intriguing, is that it's
(05:49):
really the leading edge of thewedge in terms of the data
revolution, because what wenoticed in the negotiations is a
very strong pushback,principally by the African
countries, on this idea thatthey would make available their
sequence data.
They would sequence, a mutationof, as they did with the
(06:12):
Omicron variant of COVID, andthey upload the genetic sequence
data.
And for this efficient andrapid action they received
precious little in the way oftherapeutics, diagnostics and
vaccines, and they were likewait a minute, wait a minute.
We did our job and what do weget in return in terms of
(06:36):
vaccines?
And so what they've done now isthey've said we're not going
down that road again.
If we're going to make dataavailable, we're not going down
that road again.
If we're going to make dataavailable, it's going to cost
you, and I think what's going tohappen and what we see emerging
from this pandemic negotiationis that many people in the
global south will say no longer.
(06:56):
We are not going to make thisdata free.
If you in the high incomecountries want to use our data,
monetize it and profit from it,we want something in return.
And what this negotiation hasshown is that the global south
is fed up, and the next phase inthe negotiation is precisely
(07:17):
this issue is how to work outthe details of the mechanism
such that, when sequence data ismade available, that there is
something in the form of areturn.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So you have been kind of involved in the behind the
scenes diplomacy, talking todifferent member states about
how it's important to have thistreaty, and they bring their
wishes to the table and so on.
Give us a glimpse behind thescenes.
How difficult has it been?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yes, we hosted, I think, about nine retreats.
We always had a partner in theform of a member state, but we
brought most of the keynegotiators to a site on the
other side of Lake Geneva and,as one of the negotiators said,
we provided them with a sort oftherapy, because hitherto there
(08:09):
was no organization that wouldtake the negotiators out of the
negotiating space and then workthrough what the problems were,
why they were unable to actuallynegotiate.
The first several rounds therewere no negotiations.
It was a so-called input-drivenexercise where they just repeat
their statements and then theBureau, the sort of number of
(08:33):
countries, would determine whatgoes into the next iteration,
next draft.
And it's very unusual becausethis way the way in which health
negotiations operated is verydifferent from the way many
other treaty negotiations work,and it was sort of to someone
versed in the traditional methodthis was a very unusual bird,
(08:56):
put it this way, but toward theend we managed, I think through
the retreats we hosted, toidentify a number of bridge
builders and we were able tobring the African group Group 4
Equity with the high incomecountries.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
As you said, there's this key thing about pathogen
sharing still to be agreed.
How difficult is it going to beto get that final key step?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Now it won't have any meaning until this final part,
the pathogen access and benefitsharing, is agreed to, and then
that altogether, one may makethe argument that the treaty
altogether may remain as fairly,we will only open up our market
space to pharmaceuticals thatbuy into the system, then the
(09:49):
market strengthens the treaty,right, because then the
pharmaceuticals will have adecision to make.
Africa is a continent of 1.3billion people, right.
And if the African countrieswere to say no, no, no, no, we
will only open ourselves topharmaceuticals that are in the
system, then suddenly you havean extremely strong, strong
(10:11):
treaty, a very strong treaty inplace, and that is the
importance of this thing.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
One of the things I think that does worry some
people.
One it's good, this treaty, butthe United States is not there.
It has left the World HealthOrganization.
Can a global health treaty workwithout the United States?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
So I don't know whether it's that important at
this current stage.
I think what is important isthat we have a treaty that's
been adopted by the World HealthAssembly and now we move to the
next phase.
It also, I think, is importantin that it sort of restates the
importance of science andmedical science.
You know, there's this totalbizarre thing that you see,
(10:59):
whether it's anti-vaxxers, allof whom believe that they're
medical experts, it'santi-vaxxers, all of whom
believe that they're medicalexperts, you have anti-vaxxers
or those who are denying climatescience, and yet, at an
individual basis, if any of themfall ill, where do they go to?
They go to a clinic, they goget tested.
If they suspect they may havecancer, they would willingly
(11:21):
submit to chemotherapy if thatwas the prescribed sort of
action.
So it's a mad world we live innow.
It's sort of completely insane.
Everything is tribalized andeverything becomes sort of
polemic and becomes really sillybecause the threats we face are
so grave and so enormous andit's almost childish and puerile
(11:44):
what you see happening.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
It's my heartening to see you almost laugh about it,
but I do hear people, certainlyin Europe and in the global
south, very worried about whatappears to be this other huge
multilateral challenge which wecan only solve multilaterally is
climate change.
You mentioned it there climatechange deniers.
(12:06):
We see almost an abandonment ofclimate work to try and keep,
say, global warming undercontrol.
I mean certainly the UnitedStates has now completely
abandoned it and some Europeancountries are also saying they
talk about in fixed cost terms.
We can't afford it right now.
(12:28):
How do you see that?
How could this momentum whichwe had a bit of for a while, how
do you think that could berestored?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, I was listening to Johan Rockström speak a few
days ago and he said yes, ofcourse we're now overshoot.
So we're heading towards a 3.1degree increase from
pre-industrial levels in termsof global warming and it's very,
very dangerous and we'll havefive years now remaining in
(12:59):
which we need to bring thisunder control.
Otherwise we hit the tippingpoints and then we tumble into
the abyss, and of course I meanit's extremely serious.
You hope that there are enoughcities, there are enough
companies that actually do worryabout the future and are not so
short-sighted to believe thatthey will.
(13:20):
The CEOs of these companies orthe mayors of these towns will
step safely into their gravesand just won't care whether
their children and grandchildrenhave to deal with abominable
and extreme heat levels andforest fires and fierce
hurricanes and no trade andcollapsed economies and extreme
food security and completeanarchy.
(13:43):
I mean, if that's what they wishfor their children, what form
of love is that in futuregenerations, right?
So it shows, I suppose, theextreme selfishness that we
still are possessed by, and itneeds a deeper way of thinking.
You know people who say, well,unless you experience it, unless
you live in a coastal resort,and it sort of goes under the
(14:06):
waves and the oceans.
Basically, you know, you're notmotivated by it, because you
have daily preoccupations youhave to pay your bills, you have
to pay your mortgage or rent,you have to send your children
to school, and that is all well,well accepted.
But you know, all of us know,for instance, that you don't
have to have suffered from anair crash to know you don't want
(14:27):
to be in one.
Your imagination is powerfulenough to know that if you were
to be in a plane that's fallingout of the sky, it's horrible
enough and you'd do everythingto prevent that from happening.
Well, the planet is travellingthrough space and it's going to
crash soon.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It sounds like you've kind of given up a bit on the
political class then, but ofcourse it is political leaders
who represent member states atthe United Nations.
So where does that leavemultilateralism, if you think
that that class can't gettogether and solve?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
If you look at the UN Charter, nowhere is there
consensus written into it.
There's Article 18, which saysevery country has a right to
vote, and you vote on everything.
And that's what you do, andthat's how you actually get to a
strong consensus, becausecountries in the minority who
are trying to block, block,block, block, block on behalf of
commercial interests, banks orwhoever they may be, would just
(15:25):
be outvoted.
You need to give up sovereigntyin many of these respects if
you're going to have a systemthat works.
We give power to a referee whenwe're playing football, because
without the referee, it becomeslike football when we were six
or seven we're all charging intoeach other and kicking each
other in the shins and so forth.
And so we decide to have areferee and we give them the
(15:47):
power to blow the whistle, toadjudicate and award the points
and give the penalties out.
That's what we need to do inthe international system, and
how silly can we be otherwise?
And that's what we've decidedto do.
We've decided now to strip ornot.
We but those acting on populisttendencies have decided to
strip normative system that wehave in place, but also the idea
(16:11):
that we solve problemscollectively and, if you want to
each member state were to go onits own.
Well, thank you very much.
Anarchy is the next stop on ourjourney, so the epitaph will
start to etch it, humanity'sepitaph will start to word it,
and I'm sure it's going to besomething like you know, here
(16:32):
lies humanity, but the marketswere up, something ridiculous
like that.
It was all about the markets,the long-term viability of us as
a species and living togetherwith other species, and this
fragile biosphere becomessecondary.
I mean, it's rather amazing tome.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Zaid Rad Al-Hussein there lamenting what he called
the stripping away of oursystems of international
cooperation, or globalrefereeing, as he so nicely put
it.
We did learn during theCovid-19 pandemic that global
cooperation is vital.
Viruses don't recognise borders.
The pandemic treaty, modestthough it is so far, is a sign,
perhaps, that we have learnt afew lessons.
(17:25):
But what about climate change?
That knows no borders either.
Our entire planet is warmingand yet the United States
appears to be abandoning thework to tackle climate change
and even removing all referencesto it from government documents
.
What does that mean when aworld superpower actively denies
(17:48):
what the vast majority ofscientists see as a huge threat
to our planet, even to ourexistence?
I talked to Pete Schwartzstein.
He's an environmentaljournalist, an independent
climate security consultant andauthor of the Heat and the Fury
on the Frontlines of ClimateViolence.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I think for those of us in the climate space, as with
those in so many other fields,the past few months have been
one of continual, mostly veryunhappy whiplash In the climate
space.
The Trump administration isgoing out of its way to kill
both climate language but alsoanything even tangentially
(18:29):
related to climate programming,and this, of course, is sort of
bleeding into all sorts of kindof very wide ranging and not
always easy to sort ofanticipate changes.
I mean, even many NGOshumanitarian aid, development
organizations that are kind oftangentially or at least partly
dependent on whatever US fundingis left are carefully scrubbing
(18:52):
mentions of climate from theirwebsites, carefully scrubbing
mentions of climate from theirwebsites.
So there's a real sort ofculture of fear and I don't
think that's sort of too grandand too devastating a way of
putting it.
That's sort of taken hold ofeven agencies and even people
that are not kind of explicitlyunder the thumb of Trump and his
(19:14):
people.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Some people here in Europe, perhaps clinging to some
vestiges of optimism, have beentrying to tell me that look,
yeah, this is not good, butactually we are making good
progress towards net zero, or atleast reducing greenhouse gases
.
Is that optimism valid?
Can other parts of the worldkeep going, even if the supposed
(19:38):
world's greatest superpowerabandons ship?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
It's certainly true that emissions are not
increasing at the same speedthat they previously were, and
that's a success that's not tobe sniffed at.
I mean, people forget thatuntil the Paris Climate
Agreement we were on track forfive or six Celsius worth of
warming, as opposed to theroughly three Celsius of warming
that we're on track for thusfar Now.
It's hard on a certain level toconstrue that as success when
(20:04):
even at three Celsius of warmingis devastating in the extreme
and will kind of likely changealmost every part of the planet
in ways that sort of localsstruggle to imagine.
But nevertheless the fact thatwe have enjoyed significantly
better outcomes than we were ontrack for not that long ago is
sort of fodder for relativeoptimism.
Equally and I mean within theUS, if you move kind of beyond
(20:28):
the federal government, at astate level, at a city level,
there's still a lot going on.
So it's possible that evenwithin the kind of big, outsized
beast that is the US, that itmight not end up being quite as
irresistibly bleak a story as itsort of currently looks from a
DC perspective.
But and this is I guess thesalient point we're up against a
(20:49):
ticking clock and even thoughwe've enjoyed successes in the
past.
Even though the renewablesrollout is going rather well,
even though we're getting somepretty positive developments
coming from China and to acertain, but perhaps lesser
extent, from the EU, it's alltoo little, too late from the
point of view of avoiding likegenuinely dangerous degrees of
(21:12):
warming.
So I mean we need significantlygreater levels of ambition than
we were seeing even beforeTrump's reelection in warming.
So I mean we need significantlygreater levels of ambition than
we were seeing even beforeTrump's re-election in November.
So unfortunately, I thinkthere's a little bit more in the
pessimist column, for the timebeing at least.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
You talk about it being too little, too late,
given the kind of strategy we'vegot at the moment, which is
already being weakened, in fact,not just by the United States.
With your book you have seenthe consequences of that and
reading some parts of that I wasreally interested that I
thought I knew the link betweenclimate change and conflict.
(21:49):
I hear in Geneva, UN aidagencies, the World Food
Programme, the Red CrossFederation deals with natural
disasters.
They talk about it a lot andyet the examples you were giving
are much more in some waysubtle, perhaps below the radar.
I'd really be interested in youtelling our listeners a few of
those.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Absolutely.
I mean, I've spent the pastdecade and a bit working to
articulate both the extent ofclimate's contribution to
violence but most particularlyalso the manner in which climate
contributes to forms ofconflict, large and small, and I
guess the sort of headlinerationale for doing this is that
, I mean, to my mind, there'sperhaps no manifestation of
climate change more in your faceor more arresting than the
(22:32):
kinds of violence that it'sincreasingly leaving in its wake
.
And this I mean, this violencetakes many, many different forms
.
I mean, between about 2014 and2017, I was heavily focused,
sort of working across differentparts of Iraq and Syria trying
to lay out how ISIS hadbenefited tremendously from
collapsing agriculturalconditions to bolster its ranks,
(22:54):
the idea being that withoutkind of climate and wider
environmental induceddifficulties in farming areas,
the group never would have beenable to grow as large and as
deadly as it soon became.
But then I mean, much of thisclimate-related violence is much
less headline-grabbing, muchless dramatic than massive
(23:16):
jihadi groups roving acrosspatches of territory the size of
Great.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Britain.
Actually, the Bangladeshexample is one that fascinated
me.
Tell our listeners about that,because I think this is
something people perhaps wouldnever have dreamt of.
We know about rising sea levels.
We know that it is reducingpeople's ability to fish or grow
crops, but this particulardevelopment hadn't expected.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Absolutely, I mean.
So I spent a chunk of time overthe course of a bunch of
different assignments working insouthern Bangladesh, and my
assignment, or at least my earlyones, were targeted on kind of
articulating some of the kind offorms of climate stress there
that the average person acrossthe world is perhaps relatively
well acquainted with, the waysin which more and more people
(24:01):
are losing their livelihoods torising seas and ever stronger
cyclones and a bunch of otherclimate stresses and shocks.
But while I was working there,much to my surprise came across
one of these many low-level,localized, geopolitically
largely insignificant instancesin which climate change
contributes to violence, andthat was that as rising seas
(24:24):
sort of eat away at many of thefields on which sort of local
farmers almost entirely depend,more and more of these people
are kind of seeking alternativelivelihoods, fishing in the
longtime pirate infested coastalwaterways, and all of them are
acutely aware of the dangersthat come with plying their
(24:44):
trade in these sort of classicbandit lairs, but they feel that
that really is their onlyoption.
But as the volume of kind ofhostages because that's the way
in which the pirates mostlyderive a living as the volume of
hostages has increased, so toohas the number of pirates,
because there's just so muchavailable kind of human lucre
(25:05):
that it's sort of worth thewhile of these groups to sort of
tolerate the deepunpleasantness that comes with
sort of negotiating jungleconditions and diseases and
snakes and tigers and crocodilesand this kind of A to Z of
complications.
So yeah, just one of many, manyexamples that we see across the
world in which the lives ofordinary people are being
(25:25):
rendered basically totallyintolerable by a bunch of
climate related securitychallenges.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So, basically, rising sea levels have deprived
coastal farmers of theirlivelihood.
They try their hand at fishing,but this is notoriously lawless
territory.
There are pirates.
The pirates have now developeda new business mode which is
kidnapping the people who aretrying to fish and extorting
money from their families.
(25:51):
So climate change is fuelinginsecurity, violence and crime.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
It is, and I mean perhaps the best
characterization of climatechange's contribution to
violence globally is.
It's basically applyingtremendous pressure to whatever
place or society's existingweaknesses are, and that's a big
, big problem globally, becausewe have so many fissures that
can be exploited from inequalityto misinformation, to
(26:17):
corruption, to state brutality.
And just the more intense theclimate stress has become
globally, the more pressure itis applying to these situations,
which often need littleencouragement to worsen.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
You're a journalist, so am I.
Climate change now isincreasingly.
We see a lot of misinformationand disinformation and a revival
of this idea, which we thoughthad been put to bed, that it
doesn't really exist.
It's our job to actually layout the facts.
How do you do that now?
How would you compellinglytackle the misinformation?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Yeah, I mean, I think I'd be.
It's one of these classic casesin which I'd be an exceedingly
rich man if I had a stronganswer to that one.
I mean, I guess, to recast thequestion in a kind of slightly
optimistic way, we know that thevast majority of people across
both rich and poor parts of theworld both believe climate
change to be real and areclamoring for climate action.
(27:19):
I mean, recent studies suggestthat about 89% of people
globally want climate change tobe tackled in some kind of
meaningful way.
Equally, we know thatpercentage tends to drop rather
precipitously if people are toldthat, well, that action will
come with a price tag and a costthat will potentially hit them
personally for at least a periodof time.
(27:40):
All of which is to say, thatkind of misinformation, I think,
is, in the broad scheme ofthings, a less sort of
devastating obstacle than somany of us sometimes think.
The trouble is, I think, that somany of our elected leaders,
particularly in the US, haveproven extra susceptible to
misinformation anddisinformation, and so I guess
(28:02):
it's more the nature of thepeople that are kind of falling
afoul of proverbial fake newsthan the sheer number that is
problematic.
I would say that it's duringperiods in which climate
stresses are just too obviousand too terrifyingly in your
face to ignore, the clamor foraction tends to increase.
(28:24):
So when we're gearing up for asummer like this one, in which
we've had a relatively drywinter, in which we've got the
makings of yet another kind ofwildfire and drought-ridden next
few months, well, surprise,surprise and totally
unsurprisingly, those tend to bethe periods in which the
average man or woman on thestreet is just that bit more
(28:44):
convinced of the necessity ofgetting out there and lobbying
and taking kind of necessary,painful action than they are
during kind of more temperate,less unpleasant periods of the
year.
So while all of us kind of wishfor a summer that's not
characterized by the sorts ofhorrors that so many European
summers increasingly have been,that may well be the necessary
(29:04):
price in order to get variousinitiatives off the ground.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Peter Schwarzstein leading us to the conclusion
that maybe, as with pandemicsand COVID-19, we are doomed to
learn every lesson the hard way.
And that's it from this editionof Inside Geneva.
We hope you enjoyed theprogramme.
Do drop us a line atinsidegeneva, at swissinfoch, to
(29:36):
tell us what you think.
My thanks to Peter Schwarzsteinand Zaid Rad Al-Hussein for
their time and their analysis.
Join us next time on InsideGeneva, where we'll be looking
at the proposed GazaHumanitarian Foundation.
(29:57):
Is it a way to finally get aidinto Gaza, or is it, as many
longstanding aid workers fear, apoliticization of humanitarian
principles?
Speaker 4 (30:09):
We would welcome anything that would allow us to
resume work for a populationthat is starving and that has
been suffocated by a siege overtwo months, but this seems to be
militarized, politicized,manipulated.
People have to walk longdistances through the rubble to
(30:31):
get aid, and it is then somekind of a military scheme that
decides whom will get it, howthey will get it and if they
(30:55):
will get it so, it is inviolation of basic humanitarian
principles.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Check out our previous episodes how the
International Red Cross unitesprisoners of war with their
families, or why survivors ofhuman rights violations turn to
the UN in Geneva for justice.
I'm Imogen Folks.
Thanks again for listening you.
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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!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.