Can climate change be solved without COP? with Patricia Espinosa

No government in the world has enough money to be able to effect this transition at the speed we need without bringing the private sector to the table and improve what us in my ask for by the significant amount of three hundred and sixty eight billion dollars. We need trillions of dollars in the time to force action is right now right here as the African COP. It's been a busy first week at COP twenty seven. Loss and

Damage made it onto the agenda. World leaders came and spoke in their dozens and everyone the Zero team included is running a little bit shot on sleep. But we're only halfway. Next week the negotiations will gather pace and we will get a clearer idea of what the outcome will be at the end of these two frenetic weeks. Later in the show, we'll be hearing from Patricia Espinoza, who until this year headed the United Nations Framework Convention

on Climate Change, the body that organizes COP meetings. We'll hear what goes on behind the scenes to get each of the two hundred odd member states to agree on a deal. But first I'm joined by Bloomberg's West Africa bureau chief, Yinka Ibukum. Welcome to Zero. Thanks that shut Now. Every time I've seen you this week, you seem to have interviewed someone really interesting. It seems like you are the one who's got all the secret climate party invites. Yeah,

I mean that wasn't intentional. I just really came with an open mind and had lots of conversations and some of those conversations spelled into COP after parties. Oh that's beautiful. Now tell me who are the people that you talked to and what's been like for you because it's your first one. Yeah. So COP has been very enlightening, also

very sobering in some ways. But I think at the end of the day, it's going to help us make our reporting more focused on climate as we go back, because what I've realized from copies that really this conversation is not niche. It penetrates and insultrates every single area

of life. So before now thinking of the climate coverage in terms of what happens to the oceans, what happens to the forests, because my part of the world has big forest area, But now I'm thinking of how we live, how we retrofit buildings, how we cook with clean fuels, how we power our cars, how we power our motorbikes, moto taxis. So it's really in every area of life. And do you think Africa was represented as it should

be at a corp that is happening in Africa? And were the issues of inequity and financing met with solutions? Africa showed up prominently. There was an Africa Day, there were Africa events. The African Union was well represented by its president who was also the president of Senegal, President Marquisale, And there was a message to Africa by most of the world leaders really focusing from an Africa perspective. The

United Nations Secretary General gave a message to Africa. The International Monetary Fund Managing Director gave her message to Africa as well. So I do feel that Africa had its place. The issue of inequity is one that pervades actually all

parts whenever you speak about Africa. So financial inequity in terms of the interest rates as which African countries borrow, but also climate inequity because richer nations have already industrialized and polluted, and developing nations, particularly Africa, which accounts for just four percent, if not less, of global emissions, are now being told that they can't exploit fossil fuel or contribute to pollution, which obviously is important, but there's also

this sense that those that have come ahead of them have already done it and now they're not able to do the same. Yeah, it might seem a little repetitive, but the main question is who will pay for the green transition in Africa. Last year, even though Africa Union as a whole has seven percent of the global economy, it only got one percent of table energy investment according to figures from Bloombergen e F. And there has to

be a way to address that iniquity. Yes, and that's I mean, you've talked about renewable energy projects, but even when you look at the cup and credit market, Africa coups for fifteen percent of the trading volume. So there's just a need to unlock the finance. And there's been

some solutions that have been brought. I mean last year, the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, did an injection of six hundred and fifty billion dollars into the world economy, and only thirty three billion of that amount went to Africa. That's just what France and Italy god. And that's less

than half of what the US god. And at that point there was a move Richard nations were encouraged to actually on land or donate their their SDRs, their special drawing rights to developing nations, but that's not happened, and so these equities are growing. And you spoke with Maki sal the President of Senegal, who said that the Africa Union, which he chairs at the moment, is supposed to get a seat at the G twenty. Do you think getting

that seat will help address some of these inequities. That's the hope, But you know, these inequities are very enshrined in the world. It's a system that has permitted for a very long time. And even the Miyamotli of Barbados said that the world today looks too much like what it used to look like in an imperialistic system. This world looks still too much like it did when it

was part of an imperialistic empire. So yeah, that's definitely the hope that they will be able to have a bigger voice on a table, but it's going to be a long journey to get there. The global North bars between interest rates of between one to four percent, the global South of fourteen percent, and then we wonder why the just energy partnerships are not working. Talking of world leaders, actually you were in the room when President Joe Biden spoke on Friday fresh off fo S one or what

were the main highlights of his speech? Well, luckily podcast listeners got a preview of what his speech was going to be because we had his National Climate Advisor Alizadi on the episode on Friday in the morning. And I suppose the new thing that he talked about was giving five hundred million dollars alongside the European Union to Egypt to build more renewable energy. There was also for US

president speeches a very unusual moment. As I stand here before you, we've taken enormous strives to achieve that but I don't stand here alone. Midway through his speech, there were shouts and noises, and climate activists got up on the table and unfiled a message for the president. He didn't seem particularly perturbed. He paused for a moment and

just kept going with his speech. Security came very quickly and took the protesters down so quickly that the media that was sitting far behind couldn't really see what the message was. But these things tend to not happen, especially don't tend to happen in a country where protests have been so limited. Yeah, it's ironic that they even got in there in a context where there's been so little

protest space at COP twenty seven. Absolutely. I mean there have been sporadic protests within the blue zone, which is controlled by the UNF Triple C that organizes the meeting, but nobody can really protest there because it's very heavily surrounded by police, and you can't be bringing whatever signs you would like. Everything has to go through security and

has to be approved. The one place where I really heard the voice of activists loudly was at the Bloomberg event that we had on Thursday, actually, where young activists spoke about one of the lack of protests, but also they were much more clear headed than a lot of the policymakers that we've heard so far about really the

urgency of saving the planet. And one of the person who also stands out for me was Hindu Ibrahim, who is an indigenous leader from Chad and a COP veteran, and she had a lot of interesting things to say, but also she said that indigenous voices were not being listened to, and I thought that that was really interesting to me. I mean, just walking the pavilions, you would see people who look like indigenous people with the colorful dress,

and people take pictures of the man. You always see people getting taken pictures of But the question is that they're being heard and was their contribution. Well INGA thanks for coming on the podcast. I know you're off back home, so safe travels. Thanks so much, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Acshal. After the break, how do you get a deal done at a climate conference with two hundred nations attending? Former unf TRIPALC executive secretary Patricia Espinosa

gives us the inside track. Joining me now is Patricia Espinosa, who was the head of the UNF TRIPALCY between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty two. The UNF TRIPALC is the main organizing body of the annual climate conferences. Patricia, welcome to the show. Thank you, Thank you for inviting me. You were the executive Secretary of the UNF PPULC for the last six years. Now you've passed on the baton

to Simon Steele, but let's just start there. Paris Agreement was a landmark agreement when it came to climate change. For the first time countries agreed on very clear targets that they had to meet. But agreements, voluntary as they are, are worth nothing if they can't be implemented, and you, in your tenure had to make sure that implementation of the many, many promises in there could happen. If you look back, what do you think you succeeded on and

where did you fail? Well, first of all, yes, I want to fully conquer with you and underline the fact that the Paris Agreement is really one of the most important achievements of multilateralism in the history of the United Nations. Now, as you say, also yes, this wonderful agreement is nothing if we don't implement it. The agreement was adopted in Paris in twenty fifteen. I came to the Secretariat in

twenty sixteen, just after the agreement had been adopted. Imagine, the Secretariat and parties had spent twenty five years discussing what an agreement like that would look like, and so when I came, the big issue was and now what are we going to do? What is next? The first point in trying to address implementation was to work on the guidelines for implementation, because the Paris Agreement provides a very broad general framework. But then we needed the tools.

While Paris, for example, says that transparency is key for the future of climate change, there was no clarity on how we would be achieving that transparency. Yeah, another example would be Paris never says NED zero by twenty fifty. Those are not words that exist in the Paris Agreement. And yet if you have a one point five degrees celsius goal, somebody had to do the work to translate that into an emission target. And now we have NED

zero by twenty fifty, correct, correct. So out of Paris we managed to get Also the IPCC report on one point five. That then has allowed us to be much clearer about the specific goals that we will need to achieve in the coming years, including, by the way, by twenty thirty forty five percent reduction of emissions, which is only eight years from now. So I think the one success was that we did manage to finalize in those six years the implementation rules for the Paris Agreement. So

now we can go into full implementation. And what are the lessons that you learned during your time leading this effort, running cop meetings, bringing together two hundred countries getting an agreement in Glasgow that you would like to pass on to Simon Steele, who is in your position. Now, let me go back also to the point that you were asking before about what would be the shortcomings that I would see. I would probably refer to them to the pace in which we have made a progress. Yes, progress

is made. There is no nobody except for the US, for a short period of time, has gone back and said we don't want to be part of this anymore. However, it took six years until we finalize the operating rules for the Paris Agreement. That's too long. That's too long. We don't have the luxury of time, and to my successor, I would say that, you know, while we do not have the time anymore, there needs to be an acceleration

of the way we work in that process. Well, it's nice of you to take that as a shortcoming or a failure, but the reality is it's a global problem. There isn't a global government. You do not have the power to force governments to do what they need to be doing right. You can only bring them together and make them talk. So it is a shortcoming, but it is not all on you. Yes, I know, but it's

important to take responsibility. Now you've been on the ground, you are, I'm sure clued in to the negotiations that are happening around loss and damage. What do you think we should be looking out for towards the end of this cop give us some reporters notes. No, So let me let me say that I want to be really very very respectful of the role of Simon and you know also of the old negotiators. So I want to what I would share with you is what I hope,

I personally hope that we should be achieving here. If we look at the scenario, the overall scenario in which this conference is taking place, with so many challenges, and with the fact that attention by world leaders has been directed to other priorities. I think the fact that now we have an agenda item on a loss and damage is good news. Is a step forward, but a very small step forward, right, or a big step forward, but we still have a very long way to go, however

you want to look at it. I think that it would be positive first if we could manage to have in this session the start of a very respectful, open and well informed conversation about loss and damage. What do

we really understand about loss and damage? Right? All of that could be done with a forward looking approach, so that we look towards what is coming, the disasters that we know are going to becoming, the losses and damages that will be coming, in order to try to avoid this more confrontational scenario where we would be looking at history and what are the responsibilities of the different actors.

It's not wanting to ignore that there are some that are responsible and some that are more responsible than others. That's very clear to me. But I think at this point in time, with the urgency of the situation, we need to focus on the lutions. One of the best things about coming to cop meetings is just the sheer number of people from different places, with different languages, wearing their traditional clothes, walking around talking about trying to help

world tackle this problem. But there's a lot that goes into making it happen. You've been working on that in your role at the UNF tripleC. Give us some behind the scenes that people don't get to see the good and the bad of making such an event happen every year. Well, yeah, it's a very unique process as well. By the way, I would divide it into two big areas of work, right, one has to do with the logistics and the organization and bringing people to their place. The other has to

do with the negotiations. Of course. Now on the logistics side, it's a big enterprise. Um. It involves the negotiation of an agreement that we call the host country agreement, where the responsibilities and and also the rights of the different actors are defined, mainly of the host country and the secretariat. What is the secretariat going to be providing, what is

the host country going to provide? And here also in terms for example of security, the Department of Safety and Security from the UN in New York is also involved. Why because the Secretariat doesn't have a big enough group of security officers. And actually, you know, this is one of the things that I could comment is in order to put together the team, the security officials that come here,

people from different UN venues are brought together, right. And it's more than a hundred world leaders coming in one place, which yes, I don't know if it happens apart from anything like the UN General Assembly, which is always in one place in New York, correct, correct, And this conference has become the biggest conference that is held every year,

even the bigger than the UN General Assembly. Yes, yes, because you know, the General Assembly doesn't have the action zone, doesn't have this inclusive space for all the different actors to come together. So it is it is bigger than the General Assembly, not in the number of heads of state and government, but certainly in the number of participants. And I would say also the diversity of participants, right, yes, yes, And then it is beautiful the see of humanity. Correct, correct,

I also enjoy it. I also enjoy it. And you know, I think that the challenges include in the everyday work, you know, include from the designing of the different spaces to also trying to engage with a host country in order to make sure that hotels are available, that transportation is available, that at the airport people are taking care of that. You know, it's every single little and big detail needs to be addressed. Now, why is it that some COUP meetings end up in countries that are not

really climate forward? We're sitting in Egypt, which we can't really count as a climate forward country. We're going to the UAE next year again and oil producing nation. Why is it that these are the host of the cup meetings? Well, as you may know that the venue of the conference

is rotating in the different regional groups. One of the objectives of that rule is to give every every region in the world the opportunity to be hosts and also in line with the principle of quality within the United Nations, every country has the right to come forward and present a candidacy for hosting the conference and then it is normally up to the regional group to decide on what who will be the host for the region. And this is what has happened in this case. It was you know,

a discussion within the African group. In the case of the UAE. It was also a decision by the Asian Group. It is then a coincidence somehow that we are into Arab countries too, countries that are actually quite close. On the other hand, I would say that it is important also that we do respect the principle of equality between all countries. I understand what you are saying as these countries not being very ambitious in terms of climate change.

But part of the objective is that this possibility of hosting a conference will boost the climate agenda also nationally. So the process seeks to be a very constructive and forward looking process. Now I can tell you from my experience as a COP president in twenty ten in Mexico, it was absolutely critical that we hosted the COP. The members of parliament at that time were very interested and curious to participate, and that made it possible in a

few months time to approve the Climate change Law. That's very interesting. We were also told by Sali Mulhak who the professor at the Independent University in Bangladesh, that not many countries put their names forward for hosting. Is that true? It is true. It is a huge endeavor. You know, it's not easy for any country to be able to host. We had a very unique experience you may remember in twenty seventeen when we had COPED twenty three, presided over

by Fiji but held in bond. Why because Fiji literally cannot host a conference like this in their own country. There were some meetings that were held in Fiji, of course, but it's not only about the physical place but also giving the responsibility to countries from all regions, in all different capacities. Do you think there could be any progress made on climate change without having COP meetings? I don't.

I don't think so. I think you need to have a platform where countries and now increasingly also entities from private and public sector come together joint effort. Otherwise we would have, you know, disperse efforts everywhere. This is a global problem. It cannot be addressed effectively by one or two or even one region. Climate change doesn't recognize borders, political realities. Climate change is there and we have to work together, and this is the platform to do that.

And some of the most memorable moments that come out of COP meetings are emotional moments. You see people in tears, you see people talking in ways that you won't be able to virtually and that I do eye contact is very important. Absolutely, it's you know, you are absolutely right. You get emotional because this is really the sense of working around a problem that represents the biggest threat to humanity,

has a very very special way. It's not just any job. Well, thank you for giving us an insight into these amazing meetings that happen every year, and thank you for the work you do. Thank you, thank you very much, Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks so much for listening to Zero. If you like the show, please rate, review and subscribe, Tell a friend, or tell a climate activist. If you've got a suggestion for a guest or topic or something you just want us to look into, get in touch

at Zero pod at Bloomberg dot net. Also, until November eighteenth, the Bloomberg Green paywall is down. Head to Bloomberg dot com slash green to read all our latest coverage and everything in the archives for absolutely free. Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine driscoll. Our theme music is composed by wonder Lee. Special thanks to Kira Binzim, Laura Milan and Stacy Wong. I'm Kshatrati back next week with more from COP twenty seven