Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. In a little under a week the annual UN Climate Summit, the Conference of the Parties. It's called that because these are all of the people who are party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or the unf Triple C, and they meet every year to talk about what their governments are going to do about climate change. This is year thirty and I think it's fair to say that this process is facing a real crisis of legitimacy at
the moment. This year, the US government has barred any of its officials from attending to negotiate, so that should be interesting. For the last couple of years, the gloves have been completely off when it comes to fossil fuel executives being involved in this process.
We had first COP.
Twenty eight in Abu Dhabi, where the president of the national oil company was also the President of the Climate Summit, and then last year in Baku in Azerbaijan, where similarly, loads of folks involved in the petroleum business were part of the COP organizing committee and there were just blatant
oil deals happening all over the conference. This year's COP is being held in the Brazilian Amazon, which is quite interesting, and the Brazilian government and the conference organizing committee have really made a commitment to information integrity around climate. They
want to highlight this issue. They would like to see something around information integrity actually being adopted into the final commitments coming out of this COP and they have made a big commitment to keeping things like climate denial out of this conference. However, as we know on this show, there are lots of different ways that disinformation can make its way into climate conversations, and what we're going to talk about today is the way that climate obstruction makes
its way into international negotiations. So not just the cop but also the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
These are not, you know, super.
Objective, uncorrupted and uncorruptible processes, as much as they are often described that way, and as much as we might like for them to be. So today a very interesting conversation with Kerrie Duprick from University of Geneva and Eduardo Viola from the Institute of International Relations in Brazil about how climate obstruction shows up in international negotiations. That conversation is coming up after this quick break.
I'm going to start with the very very basics, which is to have you guys define for people what is the UN Framework conventioned on Climate Change and the Inner Governmental Panel on Climate Change and.
Why are we looking at these bodies for climate instruction.
The United Nations Frame or Convention on Climate Change is the basic document, the foundational document of the climate regime.
The most important thing.
Is it settled the goal that humanity should reduce emissions for avoiding dangerous climate change. This was very important document signed in nineteen ninety two, was a very important example of multilateralms at the end of the Cold War and with the optimistic spirit, let's say, of great potential of human collaboration.
Gay and we have the unit to policy because the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was established in nineteen eighty eight before the unf T policy was established to build the case scientifically for an international climate negotiations. And since the nineties, the IPCC has been producing main assessment reports. So now we are entering the seventh assessment cycle and all those reports and assessments have been the scientific basis
of the negotiations. That's why the IPCC does play a key role in how we understand the climate problems as well as the solutions. It's being discussed a lot in the negotiations and that's why we also wanted to include it because it's quite related and we often see that many of the x spirts, the government representatives, they actually travel from IPCC to n f T COOCY meeting, so there is a clear connection and links between those two institutions.
Great, okay, and you mentioned in the chapter that there's only kind of recently been research that's laid out of framework for looking at obstruction in the unf Triple C. Can you say a little bit more about that. What is that research and what is the framework for looking at obstruction?
So there has been already quite some research on climate obstruction in the unf tpolcy by Johanna Deeblett, for instance,
but they were focusing on some specific countries. And what we've seen with the publication recently by Danie Lee Phelson and her colleagues is these kind of first attempts at having a comprehensive framework of what climate obstruction means in the unf T policy and in their paper publishing Global Environmental Politics, they do identify four different main ways to do obstruction, one being limiting the scope of an issue, whether it's being only discussed within a dialogue, whether it's
going to lead to some decisions that parties are supposed to take into account. We have also the question of reducing transparency in terms of how much data is available to understand a specific problem. Knowing that the authors actually use the case of loss and damage in their study. We have also questions around manipulating language. How are we
going to define and speak about loss in damage? And for instance, there is this interesting case in the negotiations where the negotiations with use and speak of loss and damage in the same and with capital letters, whereas in the IPCC and in some of the technical discussions in the UNFTY policy they well mentioned losses and damages, so
using the plural and lower cases. And the final element is the question of promoting non transformative solutions, so solutions that do not necessarily question the structural aspects and reasons that are responsible for the climate crisis we're in.
Yeah, I would like to add the kind of more structural dimension of the struct that is, what are the basis of the behavior of states, And it's a lot related to some strong structural dimasion, like for example, the carbon intensity of their economists, the share of global carbon issues, the capita emissions, the dependence of their economists of fossive fuels. So those issues are not a matter of negotiation, but they shape the behavior of most the states, not all
the states, but most the states. And so there is is always present in the negotiation that the states don't want to do.
For example, if they have high carbon.
Intensity in their economy, don't want to reduce the carbon intensity, or if they have a trajectory of growing carbon emissions, they don't want to diminish a growing trajectory of their carbonymission and so on.
Right, and that comes up in the IPCC as well. Right that they the higher well at least the fossil fuel producers or the bigger agg producers tend to bring those issues in at the IPCC level as well, Right, not just at the cops for.
Both, yes, totally and maybe to name a few what we have seen from different studies, I mean, we have the usual suspects like Saudi Arabia offerens, and there has been a lot of work on how the SODIA is trying to obstruct the deliberations within the UNFT policy and
the IPCC. But we have also seen, notably around questions of loss and damage equity issues, the United States as well European countries also being more and more critical about acknowledging what it means to take seriously, especially financially, what it means to take loss and damage and compensation seriously.
But we have also seen global seuce countries as well and Edward who probably knows better, but also countries like China India also tend to try to put more emphasis on their right to development, not acknowledging that today they also are big economies and also put out far more than they did ten years ago.
M yeah, Actually, I wanted to ask you to define the principle of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities. Can you define what that means and how it gets leveraged in these negotiations and IBCC.
I mean, this is a key thriller of the Rio Convention, but it is vague, okay, and depart from dividing the world in a very simplified world develop the countries and developing countries okay, And so it doesn't caused that developing countries are extremely stratified. I mean in terms of capital income.
So this is one of the problems of the Rio Convention that this has not used the classification of countries of the World Bank that is much better, much sophistical, and classify the countries in four levels high income, high mid the Lincoln, low middle Lincoln, and low income.
Okay, So one problem with.
This principle is how high mid the Lincoln countries use being in the category of developing countries for avoiding tanking significant responsibilities. Okay, but the principle say that everybody is responsible for climate change, but some countries are more responsible,
and some countries have the obligation. The countries that are more responsible that have produced historically the idea historically is the data well, a lot of things remained vague, so the interpretation of the principle became.
A major role in the dynamic of the convege.
In my view, this is one of the weakest port not the principle, but the fact that there was not a more complex classification of developing countries.
What we can also add is that the signature of the Various agreement in twenty fifteen kind of changed a bit. How CIBI there is being interpreted and discussed because it
adds in the light of national circumstances. And that's kind of supposed another of those very vague expressions that you find in the Paris Agreement and in the unit people see, But it is supposed to highlight the fact that some economies now in some countries do play a big role in how much they emit, and especially emerging countries, and that's supposed to be a sign to bring them on board also to take ambitious actions. So it's an time to try to add another layer of differentiation in the
unif people see. But knowing that it's still very contested and still today being discussed a lot in the negotiations.
I wanted to ask you more about that as well, because there was that change, and there were a few other kind of key changes and the Pairents agreement that shifted things a little bit. So I was hoping you
could talk about that. You mentioned like this difference around developing countries, but I know there was also a hybrid and multilateralism saying introduced and kind of bringing Nansen actors in more So I wonder if you could talk a bit about how Paris changed the negotiations and also the pathways to obstruction.
Of the Paricis linion is a product of the failure of the reform of the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol settled a kind of mandatory goals of reduction emission for developer countis okay, So the Kyoto Protocol was basing the idea of precision in relation to the obligations of developer counts,
but not in relation to developing county of course. So what happened is that at the time of the reform of the Kyoto Protocol, there was an idea that the principle of mandatory, the principle of having mandatory goals should be extended to all kinds of course, very different kind of mandator according to their capita income and kappabis, let's say. But this fail, okay for many reasons, and so the party's agreement was the kind of second best in relation
to something a strong agreement. At the same time, it's the principle that bought on up. Each country says what I can't do, and I will implement, and there is no idea of any punishment if you don't implement.
Significant punishment. Okay.
That it wasn't the Guiodo Protocol, but was for didn't have enough teath anyway.
So from this point of view, this is a major change.
It's universal that any country had obligations, but the obligations are defined by each country according to whatever criteria, okay,
and these obligations are not mandatory. There we are attempts of saying, okay, these are the goals, should be mandatory, should be legal eviding, okay, But there was the strong opposition of the United States and the India to this kind of Well, India is more complex, okay, but the United States not because of the not necessarily the Obama administration was agaged, but the Obama administration was saying and we all knew that to pass in the American Senate,
any treaty that had legally binding goals of reduction emissions would not pass that the Americans read that is very difficult to pass any international treaty in the American Senate historically.
And on your point on the role of non state actors, I think that's also an important shift that we saw with the signature of the Paris Agreement, where we knew why negotiating the treaty that adding up the voluntary commitments by countries wouldn't lead us to limit the global warming to two degree or one point five. That's what is
being called the emission gap. And the idea was that this emission gap could be reduced by giving non stead actors, and especially if you see the private sector a bigger
role in the transition. That that's why with the Paris Agreement, we have these whole discussions around hybrid multilateralism, about orchestration of the action of non state actors to try to reduce this emission gap in a context in which in the past the private sector was kind of more like either opposed or in favor of a treaty of the
pure protocol notably. But then we so really changes around the Paris Agreement, with the private sectors and the industry wanting to play also a bigger role and also not only at the national level but also internationally to bring up and to have this kind of bigger dialogue and initiatives being also discussed at the multilateral level.
So you mentioned in this chapter, and we talked a little bit about it already, but the sort of operations of the unf tripleC.
And the IPCC and how those enable or empower obstruction and I was hoping you could talk about that a little bit. Just what are some of the ways that these organizations are set up to allow obstruction.
I can start and mentioned two and then Eduardo can jump in any time. I think first, there is the question of access and participation to both the IPCC and UNF tripleC. In the sense that even so everyone like every representative of a country is welcome to participate and be part of those institutions, it does require quite a
lot of resources human resources but also financial resources. For the IPCC, it also means quite a lot of epistemic resources being able to understand the very technical discussions that
go on in the IPCC. And that does mean because they are huge a symmetries and structural asim trees between countries, that does mean that often those who have the most capacities are also the most represented in those institutions because they can send more delegates, they can also stay overnight, they can stay longer if the negotiations do not finish on time, and so abcy that makes them have bigger
influence on what's going on in those institutions. And the second I think is and that's also similar, and it's a practice and procedure in both institutions. The fact that decisions are taken by consensus, which means that every country has a say and a voice and can at any time oppose a decision, pose an agreement, which means that everything has to be made to try to find a
compromise to get them on board. And that gives some countries, and especially those countries who wants to do obstruction also a big leeway and a big way to kind of really try to slow down the debate or have their views reflected in some of those documents negotiated.
Yeah, this is actually the idea of the consensus is one of the major vulnerabilities of the convention and the whole history of the trilogy. Okay, so that it is just one country, and particular is it is a country with some power, even doesn't mean to be strong.
This power you can diminish. What is the agreement. So this is the idea that the consensus give the negotiation to.
The final decision of minimal common common de nominate, meaning the minimal ambition for fighting global war.
When I was reading this chapter, especially this part about how access and resources really come to play in the IPCC, and the unittriblecy. It also made me think about the academic research and the funding of it, and how much more industry funding there is for that research in some countries than others, and I wonder how much that comes into play as an obstruction tactic as well.
Yeah, that's a difficult question because the IPCC is not being funded by the private sector, is being funded by the governments on a voluntary basis. But it's true that in the selection of the authors, it's possible because it's being done based on the list provided by governments, it's possible to have authors who have been working for fossil fuel companies. We know, for instance, of authors from Excellent
Mobile or Saudi Aramco. We been authors in some of the IPCC assessments, and I wouldn't say it's necessarily because of them that we have this kind of openness to carbon capturing storage or carbon dioxide removal, which has been documented in the last reports. I think in general, the IPCC also wants to work very closely with the private sector and also once and it's part of a bigger narrative in which nonstate actors and the private sector does
play a big role in providing the solution. So it's it's really part of a bigger change, and that's what the I think the interesting point the IPCC was kind
of said, Okay, let's let's have closer links. And we know from the previous president Hosson Lee for instance, was really open to having greater dialogues and input from from the big business industry, and so that might be one of the reasons, through the leadership of the IPCC, through the authors who are being part of the report, that we tend to give those technologies big roles in the transition. Even though it's been criticized a lot. IPCC is aware
of that. There have been discussions about how to also show some of the negative impacts two technologies can have, notably on biodiversity for instance, or water security.
Yeah.
Interesting, Okay, can we talk about which countries are the biggest problem, which countries are the big instructors? We know the United States, so we can talk about the United States more for sure, But what are the big instructors? You mentioned them in this chapter, and I'd like to have you kind of list them and then give some examples of the kinds of things that they do to obstruct at the international level.
Yeah, So I guess the most obvious one, the most that has been discussed a lot in the literature also in media reporting is Saudi Arabia, because Soudia Arabia is very open and in a way and very like not deranged or not posing Saudi Arabia or problem of being finger pointed as obstructing the negotiations and putting it it's veto.
I think it's even part of the DNA. It's part of the identity of the SODI delegation to have this very kind of aggressive, very forthcoming position and in the negotiations. So that's the kind of obvious one, I would say, but in a way extremely well done. I mean, it's it's impressive to see the sod navigate the different rooms and have their point of view being presented and listed
in the discussion. So it's it's very effective and it's it's not something they are really thinking, I think, very clearly about how to organize themselves and how to influence the negotiations. The second one probably the biggest in a way, but it's the United States United States. I think the difference with the sodius that the United cares about it's
about the public opinion. It cares about what people are going to say and see of the United States within the negotiations but also outside as wanting to have this kind of leadership role in the negotiation, even though in practice we know the United States has left and withdrew from the Kudo Protocol, from the Paris Agreement. Is a big opposer of historical responsibilities, which I think is obviously a very big problem given that we need to have
ambitious but also just action. The United States also has been really opposing a lot of loss and damage discussions in the negotiations, really opposing any discussions in terms of reparation and compensation, and that's why it took so many decades to have the Lost Damage Fund established at COP twenty seven.
There is a significantly difference between Republican and democratic administration, so in general speaking is in a country that produced a lot of obstruction even in democratic administration. But I mean the particularly Di Biden administration was the first time that the United State has really a climate police, because Obama didn't have it. Was take some measures by executive order,
but didn't have a climate police. So we have a climate police in United sedy for the first time that is based in promoting renewable energy and energy, not in reducing emission, because this wouldn't have support in Congress. But anyway, the difference between the bide And administration and the second Tramp administration in terms of the impact in the global climate police is giant, I mean the impact of And
this is one problem that is very important. We are now living in a world that's extremely conflicting, extremely based in the priority of art geopolitics considerations. Okay, in a well in which the military spending is growing a lot in most countries.
And so the will in which we are now is somehow.
The opposite of the world of ninety two when the Tridment regime was born, and even the world of twenty to fifteen when the Party's agreement was signed. So negotiations were always difficult for the reasons we have mentioned and are in the chapter. And now the negotiations have much more obstacles because of this new geopolitical and particularly now with the Trump administration that is not being in the agree.
Women is impacting she's impact in a lot many countries. Okay, so openly or not so this is a consideration by the United States and I would say that another old stackle that has been that this has been important is the position of China.
Until twenty fourteen, previous.
To Paris Agreement, China was has a non cooperative policy at all Okay. In twenty fifth fourteen, after the negotiation between governmansgi in Pin, there was moved from a non comparative to partially compared positions in the negotiation. So this was very important for sure, and Miski the Paris Agreement would not happen without this change in the Chinese position. But still until now China has be came right. He
continued building gold feed the term of our plants. But at the same time it is a super power of renewals, okay, and this is very important for China and for the web. But still China continues consider itself as a developing gun and this is a major problem for the advance of the lagoship.
Can I have you, guys to find the difference between procedural and substantive obstruction and then maybe give some examples of those both in the UNF t PC and IPCC.
Yeah, so I can give you broadly a kind of overview, and then we can discuss examples, So we wanted this rupture to have an easy way to look at obstruction in a way, and that's why we differentiated between procedural obstruction and substantial obstruction, knowing that obviously there also clearly related So looking at procedural obstruction is more when the country tried to delay the deliberation when it puts its
veto on some decisions. As we mentioned that it's very important for decisions to be taken by consensus, so some countries do use a lot their veto to have the views reflected in the documents and those can be unit to posy decisions, but also IPCC summaries for policy makers. It can be also about taking the floor a lot to delay the deliberations that can then will be extended over the days. Sometimes will be also extended overnight, which makes it very difficult for small delegations to be part
of the negotiations. And substantial obstruction is done more about being obstructive on how specific thematic area is going to be addressed and obvious. This can be done by dealing the discussions and this can be for instance when discussing fossil fuel phase out in the negotiations and that took so many years and decades even to finally have a
proper discussion about fossil fuel phase out. But there are other examples in the chapter about loss and damage discussions and how for a long time it has been kind of framed around the question of adaptation, and that only recently some negotiations have been allowed also to develop independently on loss and damage.
The something I thought was really interesting in this chapter, and maybe surprising for people who don't follow this so closely, is that there's almost never is energy being discussed explicitly in these negotiations. I wonder if you could talk about that and sort of why it was a big deal that.
At the wrap up of I think it was COP twenty eight that they actually mentioned fossil fuels in those negotiations. But yeah, why is energy not being talked about in explicit terms in these negotiations?
Well, I mean I would say that there was at the moment of the real convention, there was. All these things are related to the limitations and vulnerabilities of the real convention.
So what happened at that time countries that we are living like.
The European Union, they were expecting that the most important was to reach a consensu to reach a treaty. Okay, so the what example is the United States was against introduc energy openly in the discussion. Also obviously all the Oily support for example.
Okay, so it's amazing that energy is not discussive.
It's amazing that just into any eight there was a mention to going transition away from fossil fuels.
Really really is and this is kind of say, in my view.
The general limitations of the convention that anyway has produced global public aware about the issue, because imagine without the convention, the well without the convention, without and the annual discussions about this, so the public awareness in the world about climate change would be dramatically low.
Okay, So the convention has been very important.
The negotiations sometimes have been not useful, but generally there is a trajectory of progress. But with all these limited so I would say energy is very It's not discussed because all the companies that are carbon intensive in the production of energy are against.
And there is this famous statement by Saudi Arabia which was that the Unity Policy is not an energy treaty, so we should discuss we can discuss emissions but we shouldn't go too much into the details of how we can reduce those emissions and how we can also think
about fossil fuel phase out. But what is interesting is and that's part of the chapter as well, and that's the work that has been done by a colleague of hours Stephan I could, which is that in a way fasil fuels have been discussed in the Unit to POCY meetings, but through the impact of climate policy on for sil fuel economies, and that's what is being called response measures, and it's agenda items in the negotiation that has been there for several decades, and that's where the consequences of
the response measures are being discussed and what can be done to help countries that are heavily dependent on fossil fuel for the economy, what can be done done to support their transition. That's obviously an agenda item and thematic area where Saudi Arabia has been pushing a lot to consider those very important, obviously consequences, and today we discuss that as well on the Just Transition agenda item.
Yeah, that's super super interesting. Kind of related to this. I wanted to talk about this phrase unabated emissions.
Why it's important for people to understand what that means and how it gets used as a loop.
Call.
Well, it's a bit related to the previous question on the role of some of the technologies like carbon dioxide
removal and carbon capturing storage in INDIPCC. And it's true that this unabated emission statement became very important, very much discussed because it was mentioned in the Glasgow Pact at COP twenty six and the idea was that they was supposed to have a phase down of unabated emissions from call notably and yeah, it's part of those terms that allow for consensus to be found and because an abated is supposed to prolong the life of the fossil fuel
industry and infrastructure, because there is this these expectations that by deploying at large scale carbon dioxide capture and storage, we can continue to extract fossil fuel from the ground, but then capture the emissions at the source and store them underground. And this is a technology that has been discussed for several decades. There was actually a special report produced by DIPCC in two thousand and five, if I remember correctly, which was expected to assess the role that
ccs could play in the transition. It's still it hasn't scaled up as expected. There are still a lot of uncertainties, a lot of debate. But we can see that it came back in the discussions because some countries and economies really hope, varies strongly that those technologies can help them continue extract for seal fuel. And there is no very interesting discussion going on in the IPCC about how do we define an abated emissions? What is an abated infrastructure?
And it's been going on because the IPCC, obviously after Coup twenty six, became involved in the discussions about these the deposition, So there have been authors IPCC authors trying to find some kind of definition to assess whether an infrastructure is really producing an abated emissions or not.
Interesting.
Okay, we've talked about non state actors a little bit and how they've been increasingly welcomed and active in this process. Can you talk a little bit about specifically what types of non state actors are getting involved and where do they play a role in obstruction.
There had a lot of non state but we can't classify them in saying in geos and business players, and also there is more recently in another non state actor, that is non national state tactor, but in some countries are important, particularly in democratic federative countries.
That is the sub national goal.
But the most importance are the business and in geos at the beginning of the coups the idea not of non state actors. We are much more in geos because the business community was reluctant to the whole idea of the convention.
Okay, when there were.
Some changes, some perception in the business community, particularly promoted by the World Economic Forum since twenty fourteen fifteen one, so the business participation became very very strong and particularly increased dramatically then the participation of business that are related to fossil fuels corporations. So we have today these worlds of the business community and the NGOs community.
And there are some ENGOs that are.
Not independent ENGOs representing civil society, the more public goods like in the past, but represent business centers and sometimes carbon intensive business interests. And you can say that there are some business non state actors that are more progressive and recognized the need of the carganization. And there are other businesses non state titles that are clearly conservative with the in favorable start to go with different discourses that are not open.
Saying that, and we have also the NGO community.
Most of the NGO community is much more representative of civil society, national civil societies and global civil society. But there are also significant part of the growing of NGOs that are much more dependent on related to the business community and both sides. But particularly what is the major product with NGOs that are related to fossil fuels non state.
Yeah, maybe beild on that. What we see is because of this whole Paris agreement which is expected to orchestrate action by non seed actors, we see a great interest from non set actors and especially the private section during cups. They go to cubs because they can showcas they ate latest technologies and solutions. They can be part of different side events where they show how they are becoming leaders
in the transition. They are also there to lobby government representatives and they have been studies and buy by different organizations, really showing how they are More and more lobbists from the fossil fuel industry being part not only of government delegations but also going to cups to be part of side events to do also deals with different countries and actors.
I think there is still in general, some more knowledge and research that would be needed to really understand what those actors are actually doing at cop and what's their potential of influencing the negotiations. Knowing that still today and it has always been the case for non state actors to have an impact and an influence on decision making processes, being at angios or the private sectors, it's more effective to do it nationally.
But have you talk a little bit about the efforts that are working to reveal the substruction or oppose it, including your own work, this book, you know, academic research, activism, journalism. What are the things that are pushing back against this and do you see any that are particularly effective.
Yes, So, Sadia has been quite a lot going on in the negotiations and also in the side events to try to name and shame in a way those actors who are obstructing negotiations, but also policy making nationally. And we can mention the notorious Fossil of the day that is being awarded by NGOs to some of the countries who have been obstructing the discussions. So that's yeah, those
kind of name and shaming. Naming and shaming practices and strategies are being used a lot by civil society, and obviously they provide this kind of really important moral dimension and moral argument in the negotiations. Is the fact that we also have a very active and influential coalition of countries who are the most vulnerables to climation. And here I'm thinking about the AOSIS, the Alliance of Small Island Developing States, which has been very active as well to
kind of push for more ambitious action. That has been also active in trying to bridge between the different countries and developed and developing countries. And that that's something that I find very interesting, which because it's an initiative that brings together not only these countries is being pushed by them,
but it also initiated also from discussions academic discussions. Is this non proliferation agreement on fossil fuel, and that's being discussed and increasingly also supported in the negotiations, which I find an an interesting example of how to build collaborations and support from different actors, being civil society, government representatives as well as researchers.
We're coming up to the Cup in Brazil and I know Brazil came up in this chapter a couple of times too, So I'm curious to hear what you think we can expect to see at this cup what people should be looking for.
International situation in which this scope is going to happen isly difficult because of the new American administration.
This is a major measure problem.
But also is what I said before about the priority of national security today, how this affects all countries that has diminished the attention significantly to climate chain mitigation. Okay, so this is a major obstacle for the convention for three and I would say so, for example, the one issue that is key in obstacles of the negotiation is the major difference of position between developing countries and developing countries generally speaking.
Okay, so this is a major obstacle okay, And that is.
From one side there is less and less availability for financing from developing countries, and from the other side, there is growing resentment in developing countries. I would say, particularly in low income and low middle lincoln countries in relation to develop the countries.
And to the credibility of the negotiation.
This is something that accumulating a lot okay, and it's going to be more difficult.
In my view, there are two things that are favorable in this coupe.
One is that the first one in a democratic country after three cops out. So in the environment of the cops, there is a diffuse influence of when you have a lot of an atmosphere of civil society mobilization that could be extremely intense in this case, because Brazil is promoting the participation of civil society, national and international, even with all the vulnerability of Brazil because has a good policy for controlling deforestation right now, but the land you've changed,
but not about oil exploration. That is, Brazil is becoming more and more one of the most important oil supported in the world.
Okay.
So this is the ambivalence or of the schizophrenia of the Lula administration. But anyway, it's from the Brazilian government is promote And there is another thing that I think is relevant, and this is an uncerted in my view. The uncertainty is what would be the role of China
in this convection. Okay, would China take advantage of the of the vacuum because there is no more European Union leadership Okay, and United States is in the opposite side of the convention, so all China take advantage and change positions saying, Okay, we recognize we are a global superpower, global economy superpower and in all dimensions, and we cannot be considered anymore developing Gun to have many of the dimensions of developed Gun even if the per capita income
is still in the high media Lincoln is not high in I think theoretically this could happen.
There is a high probability of this to happen. No, it's a low probability.
But this if there is a movement of China in that direction, but maybe the specificities of this movement, this will create a new kind of environment in this scope that could diminish the negative situation of today of the world and global climate policy, and even could be very favorable for China. But because could reduce the opposition to
China in democratic countries, because China is an autocracy. Okay, so there is because theoretically, because I don't have any inside information about China, Okay, this, I think this could happen. The other thing that I think is important is would will be the role of the Brazilian president not the Brazilian government behavior in the negotiation that would be like any other country. By the Brazilian president. The most important goal of the Brazilian president is securing the continuity of
the negotiation. It's a low ambition goal, okay. So their danget is the implosion of the of COP. So this is our goal to keep the COP going on. So for that we need to have a very low ambition position in terms of hard market Let's say, okay, but we can create an atmosphere of discussion that is more forward thinking without entering in very tought.
Issues in relation to emission for example.
But yes, for example, trying to circumvent, try to avoid the deepening of the let's say, of the risks of the resentment and credibility by developing countries in relation to the COP mechans something like this. So it's uncertain, the COP is uncertain.
Yeah, I would really agree with the Douardo on the question of trust and the resentment, the lack of trust that we have seen in the last years. I was in in Baku at COP twenty nine. I was also this tune and burn and the negotiation or stuck on several issues because of the disappointment of the new collective quantified goal on finance, which is seen as completely way
too weak by developing countries. And I think that's being a really big challenge for the Brazilian presidency to try to bring trust between the countries but also to try to restore trust in the process, taking into account also that the United States pulled out that the EU is increasingly sometimes having very like having to take the same statements and kind of create like obstructive a bit kind of positions that the US used to take, for instance
on finance and loss and damage. So I think it's going to be an important cup to try to talk about this question of trusts and resentment and how to move forward in this new, very complicated, terrifying world.
That's it for this time.
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Created, written, and reported by me Amy Westervelt. Thanks for listening and see you next time.