 Felly, gan eich fawr am ymddangos â yw'r ymddangos, fel amddangos, yw Andrew Norton, dyma ymddangos i ysgriwytaidd ymddangosethol i'r ymddiadau ymddangos i Anglesiad. Mae gwnaeth yma yn y Llandwm, ychydig eir Mondiaeth Ymddangos i'r hefyd ei bobl cyftwyrddol gyda y rhaid gweithio cyflyn ymddiadol i ymddiadau fwyllt amwylo gyntaf aitio'r F haddiadau yn marwaraeth amddangos oeddaeth'r Cymru. Mae'n fyddaeth yma i weld yma I'm delighted to be early in the programme of the London Climate Week, which is a really exciting new innovation for us here, organisations that are London based. Many thanks to all of you for attending. We're also excited to be partnering for this event with the Global Resilience Partnership, the Global Commission on Adaptation and Willis Towers Watson, and also, of course, supporting the Lease Develop Countries Group with this event. The event is part of London Climate Action Week, organised by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to define next steps after declaring a state of climate emergency. And the objective of the week is to bring together climate expertise across sectors and stakeholders to highlight the scaling up of practical solutions and also identifying new solutions to help support us to achieve global goals, particularly those from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the CBD targets, the IT buy a diversity targets and the Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction. And at this event, we're looking to contribute to this by exploring the need for urgency in addressing the climate emergency from different perspectives. The first panel will explore the nature of the climate emergency and how communities on the front line, the poorest and most vulnerable communities that are most impacted by climate change, and of course, generally did the least to create the problem, how they will be impacted and what steps we need to take going forward in order to ensure urgent climate action, particularly incorporating support to the resilience of the poorest communities. The second panel will explore how we can step up financing to meet those ambitions. Introducing the first panel. There have been these two landmark reports over the last year, which have really heightened public awareness of climate and ecological emergency. Last October, the 1.5 degree report from the IPCC, which has had a big impact on public consciousness and led to a number of follow up kind of initiatives to raise public consciousness in the UK and beyond. And then from April of this year, the IPCC global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, which also brought some stark realities into the public debate, the risk of losing up to a million species in the coming decades if current trends are not reversed. And those drivers, the drivers of biodiversity loss include climate change, but they also include land use change, over exploitation of natural resources and pollution. We need to stop adding to the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2050 and bend the curve of global emissions towards that end by 2020, looking to Harvard against 2010 levels by 2030. That was essentially the step change in ambition that came out of the IPCC 1.5 report. And of course rich countries will need to go faster than that, or the world as a whole will not meet those targets. The least developed countries, and in the IID we've had a close partnership with them in the climate negotiations for over 20 years. The LDCs are the 47 poorest countries in the world, most vulnerable and facing difficulties of exposure to hazard, but also of capacity to respond. The LDCs and the world's poorest communities will be those most affected by the impacts of climate change. But rather than seeing themselves as victims, LDCs and civil society groups, social movements in those countries, want to show the world what is possible by making real commitments to build a resilient and prosperous future in line also with ambitious targets in relation to reducing or a low carbon development pathway for themselves as well. They're showing momentous ambition and commitment to tackling the challenges of poverty, climate change and nature and biodiversity loss together as an integrated whole. They have emerged as champions in the fight against climate change and they are leading the way globally, showing much of the rest of the world what needs to be done. And of course we've seen since the Paris Agreement disturbing movements away from that ambition from some very significant countries from the US but also others as well. And the recent debates in Bonn highlighted the fact that there are more laggards than just the US in this respect. We're also seeing the power of mass movements getting behind these ambitions and demanding that we work towards these mutual goals which are essential for the future of people in play. Millions of school children worldwide have joined the school strike and the Sunrise movement in the US and Extinction Rebellion activists powerfully highlighted these issues through a programme including civil disobedience campaign in May in London which brought much of the city to a standstill. These movements have the power to bring significant change demanding a global effort to step up and support the ambition that we need to show to tackle the climate emergency. This is particularly important as we have seen that business as usual has not been working so far so far at all. The rate of emissions has actually increased rather than bending the curve downwards in recent years which is deeply disturbing. And finance has not been reaching the poorest countries and the poorest communities which is essential to ensure that they are protected from the damages of climate change in particular. We need to work progressively with front runners to build the ambition and reform international support. Recent studies by IED found that only 18% of global climate finance is reaching the least developed countries with less than 10% even intended to go down to the local level. The front line where people experience the harm and the negative impacts of climate change to benefit the most vulnerable communities in building their resilience. All eyes will be on the Secretary General's Climate Action Summit in September 2019 which we need to see as a starting point not an ending point where nation states and multilateral institutions have been asked to commit to delivering transformative climate action with ambitious but concrete actions. So the key messages from these discussions at London Climate Week will be collated to strengthen the voice of the least developed countries at the UN Secretary General's Summit calling for meaningful commitment and meaningful partnerships to push for ambitious climate action and enhancing the resilience of the most vulnerable countries and the most exposed and vulnerable populations. So to kick us off we're really excited to convene this panel to discuss what is being done so far and how we need to respond to the climate emergency going forward. This session will discuss the implications of the IPC's special report on 1.5 degrees and explore bold visions for urgent and ambitious action that different sectors and actors including the LDC's citizens and communities at the frontline of climate change are taking to build a fair, sustainable and resilient future. I would like to start by inviting Miles Allen to respond on this topic. Miles is the Professor of Geosystem Science and the Head of Climate Dynamics at the University of Oxford and will set the scene by discussing what the climate science is telling us. Thank you, Miles. Thank you. Well, thank you all very much for coming and thank you IOD for convening this. It was a great way to start London Climate Week. I'm slightly nervous because the last time I was on a panel with somebody from Extinction Rebellion I was firmly told that I was part of the problem. So I hope to be part of the solution as well. The context of that was I was one of the coordinating lead authors on the IPC's special report on 1.5 degrees. And I was trying to explain or push back at least on the assertion that that was that report called for governments to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. It is important to be clear what the IPCC does. We don't call for governments to do anything. The job of the scientific community is to tell governments the implications of the decisions they make. The IPCC itself can't say we think it would be a good idea for you to do this. We simply say if you don't do that, these are the implications. And of course the key findings of the 1.5 report which was commissioned uniquely as part of the Paris Agreement because governments recognized that the academic community had been rather dozing at the crease a bit in looking at these very ambitious mitigation goals. There was very little research on how to get to 1.5 degrees and what the benefits would be of doing so available at the time of the Paris Agreement. So there was a lot to be done and a lot to be pulled together for this report to address the question of whether there really was, was it worth it? Was there a benefit to actually limiting warming to 1.5 degrees opposed to the rather weaker goal which had been agreed in Cancun a few years before Paris? And one of the key findings of the report was clearly that every half a degree of warming matters were already at 1 degree, warming at 0.2 degrees per decade, slightly over 0.2 degrees per decade. So you don't have to be a mathematical genius or have a complicated model because the rate we're going will reach 1.5 degrees around 2040. And if we're going to bend the curve as you put it to actually limit warming to 1.5 degrees we have to get emissions down on a similar timeframe. That's not a scenario or a model result, it's a simple matter of geometry and if you're doing that you've got very little time to turn the curve. So in some respects this has made climate scientists like myself rather less important, which is a good thing. Because it's increasingly obvious what needs to be done. You don't really need a climate scientist sitting here telling you yet again the world's warming up and the only way to stop it warming up is to bend the curve by getting emissions down. So it's very easy to sit here as a climate scientist and make everybody feel depressed. As you said, the numbers aren't great. We are warming at the moment faster than ever. The rate of human induced warming in the climate system is going up faster than ever. Emissions are going up faster than ever. So we're a long way off bending that curve towards flattening that warming curve to limit the warming to 1.5 degrees. Never mind 2 degrees, we're not even on track for that either. The key thing which has to happen to achieve that is to get global carbon dioxide emissions to zero. That's one of the main developments. I'm going to tell you one sort of positive thing to remember about the policy process at the moment. Less than 10 years ago, I think most people working in this space thought that what we had to do to solve the climate problem was to get emissions down by 30% by 2030 or 20% by 2020 50% by 2050, it always seemed to rhyme these targets. It was because of research coming out of the climate science community in the late 2000s that showed that actually, no, it wasn't about reducing emissions. The only way to stop the warming was actually to get emissions to zero. That's really where the activists come in because that's such a big change from the previous narrative. The previous narrative was very much, you know, contraction and convergence was the mantra. Rich countries would reduce their emissions, poor countries would allow them to rise, we'd all meet in the middle, and that was the sort of goal of climate policy as little as 10 years ago. The enormous achievement of Paris, and something which I think many people don't appreciate, was the developing countries there, recognising that that comfortable contraction and convergence model which would have allowed them to continue their emissions to rise just wasn't going to work. It didn't fit with the science. The only way to stop the warming was to get emissions to zero. And so although Europe and, you know, the Obama administration would love to take credit for the success of the Paris Agreement, the real achievement in Paris was the world's developing countries recognising that they too were going to have to move on from dumping CO2 in the atmosphere if we were going to stop the warming. So in less than six years, that finding came out of the area of sort of scientific journals and ended up in an international agreement. And I think that it's very easy to get depressed about this, but you've got to take your hat off to the international negotiators that they did that. They actually took up the new science and they wrote it into article four of the Paris Agreement. So we know what we need to do, and governments have acknowledged the reality of stabilising climate, means getting CO2 emissions to zero. The challenge, of course, is that we're going in the wrong direction. So, you know, there's many words said, you know, a couple of weeks ago, the UK committed to net zero emission by 2050. I absolutely don't think that would have happened without extinction rebellion on the school strikers. After all, I haven't been doing anything different in the past year as a climate scientist. I've been saying the same thing for the past 20 years, pretty much. So something's changed, and it's the movement on the streets which is doing that. So that, you know, we are seeing change, we're seeing recognition of what's needed. What we're not seeing is the real engagement with the big levers of power in the world to actually make things happen. You know, because I'm determined not to make you feel depressed, I'm going to end on just pointing out one of the little findings in the 1.5 degrees report which may chime with, since we're sitting here in the heart of the city, may chime with people here and wasn't really pulled out at the time as well as it should have been. The cost of achieving the 1.5 degree goal, the cost of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would be, was estimated in our report, to be an additional investment of $830 billion a year into the global energy system over the next 35 years to 2050. If you look at that in absolute terms, it's an eye-watering amount of money. It's the kind of money that had our Treasury writing letters to the Prime Minister saying, don't do net zero, it'll cost too much. But to put it into context, that money is less than 10% of what will spend on energy over that same period if we just carry on spending on energy, the fraction of our wealth and our income that we currently spend on, have been spending on energy for the past 50 years. Numbers always look extraordinarily huge in this area because the global energy system is just so big. It's still 10% of the world economy. It's still, you know, multiple trillions of dollars a year. The cost of turning it around is less than 10% of what we spend on energy in the first place. That's where we need to engage the financial community and those who invest in the energy system to divert investment flows away from the stuff that's driving temperatures ever upwards and onto the stuff that'll assure us a sustainable future, which is a good point to hand on to Emma because she deals with a lot of this kind of thing. I'm not sure we're going quite in that order. Never mind, bad timing. OK. OK. Thank you very much. Thanks very much, Miles, and I'm expertly kept to time as well. Our next speaker is His Excellency, Mr Lamine Diba, who is joining us from the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Natural Resources in the Gambia. We're delighted to have you here. Thank you very much. Well, good afternoon. Having listened to a researcher or a scientist or professor as a policy maker, I'm scared whether I'm taking the wrong direction or the wrong direction. But nonetheless, you will hear what we are doing. It is indeed a pleasure for me to be part of you to join you in this London first-ever climate week, Action Week, which I held is one of the greatest things that can happen in the heart of London to have people come around to remember climate, that this is part of our system that we need to look up to and say, this is where we are going and this is what we need to do and this is how we need to do it. I think this is another milestone in the history of climate and the actions that we take to correct our climate. But I also understand that the United Kingdom has declared a climate emergency, and which I'm pleased that events like this are drawing attention globally to deal with climate crisis. As the MC introduced, I am Mr Lamendiba from the Gambia, Minister responsible for Environment, Climate Change and Natural Resources. The Gambia is also one of the 47 least-developed countries. We work together as a family, as a least-developed country. We have about 47 in our membership. We also negotiate at the level of the UN as a group. That shows our common position as a least-developed country and the way we want to go about climate. This is very, very important for us. We have been doing this since the year 2000. Last year in Catawise, I was representing the LDCs in the climate adaptation negotiations. We are very much pleased to our supporters who have been supporting the process that at least we have reached. We have drawn the rule book that at least guide us as to how do we move from Catawise. The last session of the UN climate negotiations just concluded in Bourne, is ongoing just last week, it's concluded. Sadly, the preparatory meetings for the UN Secretary General climate summit is happening today. That's why we cannot have the chair of the LDC, which is Bhutan. The minister is currently in Abu Dhabi supporting the chair of the LDC group. So that is why we cannot have him here. But he has graciously agreed for me to represent him in this meeting. In my deliberations, I will briefly outline the climate change threats to all the least developed countries. I will also detail the LDC group and my own country, the response we have towards it. The least developed countries are classified as the world's poorest nations and are home to around 1 billion people. This number is significant when it comes to world population. You look at the geographic locations of these countries. We have almost 33 of it in Africa. We have 13 countries in Asia and one in the Caribbean. You can see the geographic distribution of these countries and how the impact of climate change would have impacted on the lives and the livelihood of 1 billion people and what would be the cost of that on the global economy and individual country economy. So these are important figures that we need to take in our climate actions. Collectively, our countries have contributed least towards causing the problem. To give you a typical example of my own country, we are emitting 0.01% of global warming gases, but the impact of climate change on my country far exceeds what we are putting into. So the issue of equality, the issue of sharing the problem I think also needs to be looked into and how developed countries can come to the aid of these least developed countries within the framework of the Paris Agreement, within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention to Combat Climate Change. I think these are important statistics that our policy makers from the United Nations level to the policy makers at the governmental level to understand the impact that these have on least developed countries that need a lot of support in terms of technology, in terms of capital development, in terms of capacity development, in terms of technological development, and we need to develop the resilience of our communities who bear the brunt of these problems because of their vulnerability levels, because of their economic status. These are important issues that we need to factor in when we want to deal with climate and climate-related issues. Members of the LDC group include Mozambic, Malawi, which we have all seen, Hurricane Eidai, Rek Harfog on these communities. This brings me to the issue of resilience at the level of the communities. How do we build the capacity and resilience of these communities so that even when the slightest wind can blow off their habitats? In my own country, just recently, the first rain we experienced, we have over 840 people who are displaced and we have infrastructures that are damaged. Just the first rain with minimal wind speed of less than 50 meters per hour. So that shows that the communities are vulnerable. But how do we address that vulnerability is to build their resilience? And how do we build the resilience? Do we have the resources to build the resilience of those communities? So these are fundamental questions that we need to look for. In the case of Malawi, which were hit this year by unprecedented cyclones that killed over 600 people and over 2.6 million more are affected. How do you address the immediate need of this? Because most of them, they lose their food stock, they lose their animals, which they use as falling back when their crop season fails. So there must be a kind of resilience building that will support these communities to ensure that the effects of climate change is minimal on their lives and their livelihoods. And around the same time, another member of the country, Nepal, a member of the LDC, also experienced its forced tornado in recorded history. But it is not just extreme weather events that threatens our people and livelihoods. As I said, it is a complex, it should be a package that should address their vulnerability. But as we are taking into consideration the model of economies that we have, if we want to depend solely on fossil fuel, how long would it take us? I was scared when you were talking even the 1.5, we were talking about 0.2 increment on anual basis. This is alarming. Now, if this happens, countries like mine and my capital city, we are at a high risk, because research has shown that with 0.5% rise in sea level can resolve to total inundation of the capital city and all coastal cities around my country. So how many people will be affected? And in the capital banjo, a lot of investments, we have one of the hospitals, the referral hospital in the city. So now these are issues that we need to take into consideration when we are making decisions. The special circumstances of least developed countries and these special circumstances differ in context, social, economic, political, cultural. And when we are dealing with this text at the level of negotiation, we cannot go into these details, but we need to provide a common framework that can support these developing, least developed countries that have common features. As I was just saying, sea level rise and accompanying salination of groundwater continues to present major economic, social and environmental challenges to the Gambia and other low-lying the LDCs. This was what I was just explaining. Like the Pacific Islands nations and Tuvalu, whose highest point of elevation is just 4.6 meters above sea level. So you can see how vulnerable these communities are. And the impacts of climate change hits us in varieties of friends and every facet of our society and natural environment. Now we all know that our livelihoods depend on our ecosystems. And if these ecosystems are threatened by climate change, the mangrove ecosystems, we can no longer have fish where the factory for making fish happens. If these are affected, the production system in our various communities will go down. We will not be able to produce effectively because climate change is taking effect with unpredictable rain patterns. Most of our countries do not have the technology to go into irrigation to do mass production. The LDCs are fighting to confront the disestablished state. Combatting climate change is a priority across our governments. And many are widely recognized as climate leaders. In 2009, the group of chairs countries, the Kingdom of Bhutan, became the first country to commit to bring carbon neutrality. Now it is only a carbon negative country in the world absorbing three times more CO2 than it emits. So you can see the leadership shown by the least developed countries. This is the leadership of the most vulnerable and this is the leadership that inspires us to take bold actions against climate. Now the LDC group has also articulated a strong collection of vision for the future. This vision was initiated under the previous chairmanship and is carried forward with the Bhutan. By 2030, our vision is for all 47 LDC to deliver climate resilient development pathway that ensure our societies and ecosystems drive and we achieve net zero emission by 2050. By 2030, we also wish to achieve 100% energy access through people-centered development. By 2050, 100% of electricity should come from renewable sources in all LDC countries. These goals are articulated in the LDC Initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience, LifeAR and the LDC Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Initiative, which are working to simultaneously address climate change and drive sustainable development. We hope to present our vision at the Upcoming UN Secretary General Climate Summit, along with the accompanying ask for support for the international community. That is why representatives from Bhutan could not join us today. This is why they are there to ensure that we put this through. They are representing LDC group at the preparatory meeting. The LDC group will also continue to push ambitious efforts to hold global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees. Excellent. Can I please ask you to wrap up? Yes, I'm wrapping up. I'm coming to my own. Because I'm very passionate about this. I didn't want to interrupt you. I'm very passionate about this. This is why I'm very... my audience to understand the efforts we are doing. From my own country's perspective, we are not waiting for anybody. Under the Paris Agreement, the Gambia has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030. To achieve this great target, the Gambia intends to reduce dependency on fossil fuel for electricity generation by more than half. The way we do this, within the framework of the Gambia river basin, four countries, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, we are working on a hydroelectric dam. The dams are already constructed, Kieleta and Swapiti Dam that can support the Gambia to have 114 megawatts. That is even more than half of the energy required by the country. And also under our nationally appropriate mitigation action with the United Nations Development Programme, we are also having already the programme is launched 10 megawatts through solar to the national grid. And this is... European Union. We are solarising 1,000 schools all over the country and over 100 hospitals around the country to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel. And the Gambia is also developing... We have also developed a strategic programme for climate resilience which provides an overarching framework for guiding climate friendly investment programme priority sectors of the economy. And this came against the backdrop of developing a climate policy in 2016. And yet this policy, this SPCR the focus of it is to enhance the resilience of our communities and to look at the main drivers of climate change within the economy and set some kind of funds to support those sectors to mainstream climate and climate related actions. And the Gambia has initiated the formulation of a long-term development strategy which will guide our mission to achieve low-carbon climate resilience by 2050 as a means of delivering the long-term strategy in ways to reach and support our communities at the frontier of climate action. The Gambia is pleased to step forward as a front-runner for the LDC initiative of effective adaptation and resilience life AR. To implement Gambia's ambitious plan we must be supported to access new technologies and to tap into the bigger financial market. Our capacity to adapt to climate change impacts and mitigate its causes is also constrained by limited resources which I have highlighted earlier and the promise support in catawise 100 billion per annum I hope is forthcoming to support the LDCs and other vulnerable communities to reach their ambitions. Above all to wrap it up Mr Chair thank you for giving me extra time. Above all those countries now this is the message those countries with high emissions must act to cut their emissions to give us the best chance to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees. Now I understand from the scenario of the IPCC even 1.5 is damaging our ecosystems. So the Gambia and other LDCs are champion in this effort and we look forward to the international community to rise up to our leadership in this endeavour and the UK and others have rightly declared climate emergency. So my question is where are the first responders and we must all act and we must act quickly we must have acted yesterday not today. Thank you very much. Thank you excellency that was incredibly eloquent and an incredible illustration of the issues of vulnerability resilience but also justice, climate justice in this field. Gambia has indeed been a leader in the LDC group in the climate negotiations for many years and held the chair for many years very very effectively so thank you also to the Gambia for extraordinary leadership. Right, next speaker is Roxanne Travers-Lieberman from Extinction Rebellion Youth and a couple of us have mentioned how important we felt the youth movements and the action movements social mobilisation has been to shift the dial in this country so we're delighted to have you here Roxanne. But you guys can all call me Roxy. This is the first panel I've ever spoken on so please bear with me if I don't know what I'm doing or if I lose my train of thought and get nervous I don't know what's going to happen but we'll see. So yeah I'm here today to tell you guys first about my story how I found Extinction Rebellion Youth I study at university right up the road Queen Mary University in Tower Hamlets and I study international relations which kind of brought me very quickly up to speed with the part in the pun the climate that my generation is kind of entering the world into. In university I became very depressed when I found out how bad this situation really is we've heard the science we can hear from the people on the front lines but the reality is we live in this world of privilege where we have everything at an arms distance so we don't really know what it's like and that's what made me sad because climate justice isn't just a justice issue it's a social justice issue where people who live in countries like the UK western nations, countries like Canada where I'm from are never going to be able to understand the consequences of climate change to the same extent as someone whose house has been swept away by a hurricane whose entire farm stock has been kind of ruined the parallels are incredibly unimaginable for someone who can walk into co-op and get a meal deal sandwich and then throw the wrapper out into the trash and not think about it so I think personally we're set up to fail the corporations around us have been giving us options but the options are just not good enough we walk into stores and we've got a million things to choose from 99% of them actually harm our environment yet we're unaware this is why I chose to become at least more or try and be vegan I eat a Mediterranean diet where I eat fish and chicken I try not to fly I try to take my bike everywhere I don't really take cars anymore there's a million things you can do to try and save the climate but unfortunately we don't actually know about them because we're not changing our day to day life we're continuing to exist at a business at usual pace because that's what's worked that's what's comfortable but the thing about this crisis is that we need to be uncomfortable we need to make ourselves uncomfortable yeah you'll turn up to work sweaty but you won't be emitting carbon on your journey when I noticed that the changes I was making in my life as an individual were impacting or reducing my carbon emissions I felt inspired because I realized the people around me were not making the same changes as I was in fact they were making fun of me calling me vegan as an insult or a climate justice warrior or that eco girl that's the thing about the environmentalist movement it's seen as a white middle class movement in the UK at least and that's just not fair because we're not fighting for our future as an individual group we're fighting for everybody's future the privilege and the platform to do so as a young person I'm just 20 years old and I've probably been alive for about as long as some people who've been working in this field we've just not seen enough change we don't have the time to waste we don't have the time to continue going to meetings and think oh sustainability is just a business trend this next generation of consumers isn't going to buy my product if it's not sustainable that's not what we're doing it for because a supply chain should not have children in it it should not be mistreating its workers we need to make the world work at a level that respects every single person so this is how I discovered Extinction Rebellion I found a place to confide in people and to find a safe space where I could share how upset I was feeling about this kind of this mission that was so difficult to accomplish as an individual and solace and other people who are trying to accomplish the same thing through individual daily actions and changes where is my next note yeah sorry my younger sister once told me that anybody who knows the truth about climate change changes something in their life any individual who can make an action once they know the truth does make an action and that ignorance is the only thing holding people back from making a change in their life so Extinction Rebellion is a group titled Extinction because humanity is leading itself towards an extinction if we continue to let these temperatures rise and Rebellion says that we cannot keep existing on a day to day level on a business as usual schedule we have to be taking to the streets and showing people in power who have the power to make these decisions corporations, governments even people who have the well the means to not take a business trip and video call instead it's about showing people that there are options that we can make in our daily lives for example how many of you have taken a flight in the last year I have how many of you have eaten meat in the last year I have if you look at the statistics of that those are horrible additions to our car emissions but we still do them why it's because we're not informed and I think that that's one incredibly important part of this movement that we need to look at each other as a community of people who can work together to form change and form a new society that works for all of us for too long we've I've not grown up in a world that has been aware of the horrible prejudices and terrible track record of human rights abuses but unfortunately they're still happening today they're just not being reported on and we're not sharing them amongst each other for example how many disasters need to happen before we can justify a change in our individual lives stop eating hamburgers stop taking flights stop taking the car to work or the train or the bus and just biking choose your energy providers as a renewable source instead of the normal one there's everyday changes that everyone can be making so many conflicts are being driven by climate change that we're not even reporting all of them two fun facts I wouldn't call them fun at all but two facts that very much shook my understanding of politics and conflict through my studies at school is that prior to the Arab Spring in 2011 Russia had a wheat shortage and 80% of its wheat crops was not able to be exported that hunger drives political change because when you don't have food, who do you go to your government another one that's interesting to think about is in Sudan prior to the Sudanese uprisings the price of bread raised by raised by 10 times 10 times imagine going to the store and the price of bread goes from what is it now it's like £2.60 I don't buy bread and packaging anymore so I wouldn't know but £2.60 to what I can't do math, that's fine you know what, we're moving on from that one it's okay I've embarrassed myself already that's okay, great moving on to XR Youth and what are messages XR as a group has three messages that it wants to convey to the public we want governments to tell the truth about the climate crisis so that people can be inspired to take action in their daily lives and understand the consequences of their actions or their choices the second is we want governments to act now and act as if this crisis is real yeah, we've declared a climate emergency but what else has the government done organised a week of conferences we need to put people together in the same room which is exactly what the government's been doing but we really need to get every single individual on the same page nobody should be left behind on this change this is where I think Extinction Rebellion Youth is an amazing creation an amazing extension of the organisation itself Extinction Rebellion Youth has some shared visions of change that are elaborate on XR as a whole group in that we focus on having an inclusive culture a regenerative culture that ensures that everybody who participates in our community is taken care of has the well-being to participate and kind of engage in a community because the way that our world has been set up has not given people equal standings in terms of everyday social interactions in my university studies I realise that politics is not just what happens in Parliament politics is the way we interact between people and that's unequal because of the way that our history has progressed so Extinction Rebellion Youth and myself advocate for everyone to be equal and to use the marginalised voices that are at the forefront of climate change to drive our future in a way that includes everybody because that's what a future should be it's all of our futures yeah I'm young and yeah I'm choosing not to have kids because I really don't think this world is going to be a place to bring children into I'm choosing not to fly home to go see my parents because I feel very guilty about so but the reality is I'm a 20 year old girl in university who's lived in privilege her whole life I don't know what it's like to lose my entire house I don't know what it's like to lose my family to conflicts that could've been prevented should I have food in my belly I don't know these big things but that's why we need to reach out to the exact people that do know these things the people who understand the way that climate impacts our daily lives we've been locked up in cities for so long because that's where the money lies right but we need to remember that it's not meant to be 30 degrees in February it's not meant we're not meant to have I've never lived in a stable climate in my life and I probably never will and anyone who's born after 1990 never has either how sad will it be for a child who never doesn't have a chance to grow up in a world that we all have the privilege to experience we have a duty living in western countries in global north countries in countries that are incredibly developed and have technologies, have the resources to share this knowledge share this wealth absolutely so to explain I guess what's important to convey is that there has been a historical precedent of direct action in making actual change the three examples that I've highlighted highlight three different groups of people who have been able to use their voices and use their distinct roles in society to highlight their importance the first one is the children's crusades in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights movement so in 1963 about 3,000 students took to the streets and there were about 250 to 300 arrests which filled the jails much like what Extinction Rebellion did in their protests in April through that about two weeks later local stores were desegregated that's a huge change for 3,000 kids to make next an important example is Iceland's women's strike in 1975 90% of women left their jobs on one singular day in 1975 and the following year equal pay was enacted in the law the Velvet Revolution of 1989 was a two-hour general strike of the whole population and two weeks later their constitution was edited Extinction Rebellion is advocating for 3.5% of the population to participate in its movements as it says that that can ensure lasting social change but that's exactly what we need we need people to stop thinking about what's going on on Friday night and where they're going on holiday next week we need people to start thinking about what they can do to save the world today Thanks very much Thanks a lot The last speaker is Emma Boyd who's the chair of the UK Environment Agency and also a commissioner on the Global Commission on Adaptation Thank you and I'm slightly regretting suggesting that Roxy comes before me but I wanted to do that deliberately because I think ever since I heard Greta Thunberg speak back in January and really be held to account in my current roles as a leader I have wanted to invite youth into meetings and it's something that I would encourage you all to think about I hosted a conference for the Environment Agency I can't remember if it was last week or the week before but it's all about our latest flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy and I invited someone called Emma Greenwood who is 15 and I met at a summit in Manchester earlier in this year incredibly eloquent just as you were Roxy despite it being your first panel and the words that Emma delivered to the conference last week in her session was you adults she's too young to vote right now you adults have the capacity the ability to either make or break my future and so I would urge you all to listen to young people and invite in those people who are taking action to really challenge those of us in leadership roles right now not to wait until they grow up or become leaders in their own right but to take action today as we heard from His Excellency this is absolutely critical and if I look at the front page of this strategy document we have here on the front page the Thames Barrier and behind the Thames Barrier is the Canary Wharf where there are a huge number of financial institutions my background is in the finance industry I currently chair the environment agency which is the UK government's regulator we also have responsibility for flooding and coastal erosion in England and we are finding in relation to where are the emergency responders our staff are on the forefront of the climate emergency here in the UK on a daily basis just a couple of weeks ago we had the flooding that took place in Lincolnshire where two days rain fell in sorry two months rain fell in two days and at the same time we are dealing with prolonged dry weather where we are looking at how we potentially over the rest of this summer made me dealing with the consequences of prolonged dry weather last year when we had those sorts of we had a heat wave combined with prolonged dry weather our staff were in incident mode virtually every day working with farmers working with river systems where we see often fish suffering in shortages of water so we know and understand what it is to be an emergency responder working very closely with those other members of the emergency services here in the UK and I say that to acknowledge that whilst the significance of some of the events that we are dealing on of a smaller scale today than some of the ones that you highlighted your excellency in your speech we are moving to that point where we will wherever you are potentially experience that contrast of climatic events and the physical risks of climate change which is why when I was invited to join the global commission on adaptation as the UK's commissioner I was delighted to get involved in that strand of work the global commission is chaired by Bankimoon Bill Gates and Kristalina Georgieva of the World Bank a really interesting combination of world leaders and to my mind it was a way of making sure that the adaptation and resilience agenda preparing for the physical risks of climate change were put on an equal footing to thinking about the low carbon transition that doesn't mean that I'm not keen as anybody else in this room for us to head towards net zero at the quickest way that we can do that but also recognising that we have locked in a huge amount of climate responses that we're going to see regardless and therefore no matter how much effort we put into investing in that low carbon future we need to make sure at the same time that we're integrating climate resilience because no matter where you are in the world what is the point of investing in an energy efficient building or piece of infrastructure if it washes away in a flood or indeed melts in a heat wave and all the other physical risks that our infrastructure and our livelihoods face in the interest of time and I know a colleague from Difford the UK's department of international development will be on the next panel I would urge those from the least developed countries to think about the leadership that you hold as we face into the summit this September we've heard talk of the small island states almost rebranding themselves as the large blue continent and thinking about the way through your leadership and you've highlighted some fantastic steps that you are taking as developing countries to lead on the low carbon agenda and approach those talks from a position of strength because I think what we all need to understand is we all need to act the other thing that I've learnt because I've spent my career in finance is that we also need to make sure that this agenda is not just owned by those with an environmental label or a climate change label but perhaps with the label of money and certainly I was really pleased when our Chancellor joined a group of other finance ministers at the discussions held in Washington back in the spring as ministers of finance understanding the importance of taking action on climate change whether it's through the low carbon transition or from the resilience agenda because it's the finance ministries that own the purse strings and we have to as a world unlock those. The same goes to the private sector. I am spending far more time in my different roles making sure that we are talking to finance directors and chief executives we need to make sure that we are pushing our messages to those leaders of organisations be they third sector public sector or private sector. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Emma. Many thanks to the whole panel. In particular thanks to Roxy for the first panel speaking. It's great. Okay let's let me open it up now for Q&A We don't have a huge amount of time but let's try and get through two panels. We've heard about the urgency of change. We've heard about climate justice about the need to build resilience in the poorest countries about the need for social mobilisation and also about what the science can tell us in relation to the actions we need to take and maybe what it can't tell us as well. So thanks very much to the panel. Who wants to kick off? Laurie. Have we got any microphones? I think you're just going to have to shout Laurie by the look of it. Emma, do you have a vulnerability in rich countries? I think the vulnerability is there. If you look at the events of last year whether it's California, Japan, parts of Europe it's happening right now. I think one of the things that we also need to look at is where there is a lot to be gained if that's the right word from sharing technologies, particularly around preparing for incident response. I know this is where the UK Government indeed some colleagues from the Environment Agency as well as our Department of International Development have worked with countries to look at early warning systems where you have seen through a range of different ways of working saving lives on the back of being prepared in a very very different way. So I think you can answer your question in many different ways. Learning from poorer countries? I think it's absolutely there's a huge amount to learn from poorer countries and indeed I am aware of some private sector organisations who are keen for their staff, their employees to be learning how best to respond to some of these incidents that we're now seeing wherever they are in the world because they understand that that's something that's going to be needed in the future just as much as it is today. It looks like the whole panel wants to take a shot at that. Roxy, do you want to go next? It's a great question. Basically I wanted to highlight an issue that's going on right up the road. Air pollution is a huge issue in London in central London and one of the things that I campaigned with my local XR group is air pollution in tower hamlets. 7% of people in tower hamlets actually die a year from air pollution related diseases and children who grow up in tower hamlets have 5 to 10% smaller lungs than children who grow up in without or even in west London in like richer boroughs. One of the things that I'm most passionate about is geography gentrification which is a huge issue that's impacting low income impoverished people in western developed nations. A crucial example is in Miami where a lot of people who are abandoning their beachfront properties and moving further inland but that's getting people who live inland further out living way away from their places of work and I think it's important to realize that climate change is not just these unpredictable disasters. Climate change happens every single day. When I ride my bike I have to wear an air mask because there's too much pollution in the air and I feel very sick if I'm waiting behind all the cars. If you become more aware of what's going around in your daily life you realize that pollution is everywhere waste is everywhere. The trash that you throw out is taken to the trash processing factory which is probably in your neighborhood and that goes into the air that you breathe to. So it's about, for me I think the most important thing that we can go forward with is making sure that everyone in every community is informed about the health consequences of climate change at every single level because if everybody is informed then the only thing stopping people from taking action is their own imperative but once everyone's on the same page we can act together collectively and that's where we can make actual change. Thanks Ruxie. Thank you very much. I think this is a very fascinating question. Climate change whether you know it or not affects both developed and developing countries and there are important lessons that we should learn from each other from the developing country perspective we have learned that economics in our environment costs you more and it damages your society and following that low carbon emission path for us would be the solution but also taking lessons from the developing country building resilience of communities even urban infrastructures you need to build resilience in your urban infrastructure to be able to accommodate the changes that are happening in the climate of for instance London we need to learn from each other and it's happening every day and it affects every society whether you know it or not it's affecting the Americas, Europe everywhere and in Africa I've just highlighted and even yesterday in my own country something of this nature happened there was a windstorm that this logic a whole community of my country so this is a reality and I think everyone in this room understands that climate change is a reality and we need to listen to our scientific community this is very important the statistics coming out from the scientific community would give us a direction as to where we are heading to so I think it is important that we learn from each other so that we avoid the mistakes that we have already committed OK Thank you Thank you very much Any other questions this would probably be the last round so I'll just take two one from there and one from there Can you introduce yourself please Great question, thank you very much one last question though so this would be the last time across the panel because we are running slightly short on time but excellency first. Thank you. Thank you very much. The reason why I'm saying we need to have a common framework because all the futures in developed, least developed countries are similar but as I have at the end indicated that you know we are a little bit different in terms of social, political, economic and cultural but that framework will help us to know to have milestones that when we reach here this is the amount of finance that is required to support this particular community. Yes there is a global mechanism called the green climate fund that we are accessing but we need within that how do they make it easy for developing countries because sometimes the bureaucratic processes, the procedures, you need it immediately, you need to go through a lot of process. How do they make those easy for developing countries to access finance? Technology when it comes to technology we require technology to solve most of our problems but how available is this technology to us so this is what I mean by a common framework that can support our resilience and adaptation activities. Thank you. Thank you very much Emma, migration. So one of the initiatives that is relatively recent across the UK government is the setting up of something called a national strategy and implementation group and I mention that because it's about bringing together leaders from each of the departments to discuss what climate change means for government and I think that is a really excellent way of everybody from or a leader from every department to understand what climate change means for a government as a whole. I think it's at the early days of working where it's way through the agenda but is a good way to join the dots up and very much led by the head of the civil service and I think it's that joining up of thinking not just from governments but governments and public organisations and companies because we need to be thinking very very differently as we deal with a changing climate and a climate emergency and I think the question about the economy that is where you start thinking very very differently about the drivers of change I think given my background in finance the investment community has a huge role to play in driving change. Everybody in this room will have savings or links to savings so if you're at university your college will have savings and you can send messages to the people who are managing money through that mechanism. I've just recently moved to Bristol and after one of the climate strikes I just got home and switched on the local television there were two very eloquent 16 year olds who had just worked with others at their school to post a letter to teachers in Ontario about Bristol airport because Bristol airport is owned by the Ontario teachers pension plan that was a very very polite and eloquent holding though well letting teachers know are you aware that your retirement plan is investing in this or airport which is just about to expand I'm not I'm not giving any views as to whether that's a good thing or a bad thing are you aware that your pension fund is is funding that and I think that's the sort of new way of thinking and holding people who are decision makers to account that we're beginning to see really rise up the agenda thank you thanks I want to give Roxy the last word this time so Miles you've been very patient but does climate science say anything about structural changes in the economy it can say quite a lot about this I'm a climate scientist not an economist so I will duck that one but I will I will actually ask the minister actually to consider something and actually everybody in this room to consider something over the past five years what did climate change cost the UK you don't know the answer to that question and frankly that's a scandal we probably don't even know what climate change cost to Gambia we could know okay and as as um Sasha pointed out information is power here we could know at the moment we document in gory detail which country's emitting what and they every year the Gambia has to contribute a submission to the UNF triple C about your 0.01% of emissions and you have to and you do all that countries do this in with great enthusiasm nobody's counting what climate change is so we're all expected to say what we're doing to cause climate change nobody's really documenting what climate change is doing to us and that's got to change if we're going to actually get ministries of finance to take this problem seriously it's not just about what's going to happen in 50 years time it's about what what climate change how climate change is affecting your country your municipality your neighborhood now and it can be done um New Zealand an example to us all at the moment um actually has through their involving their ministry of finance a programme where they look at the impact of weather related disasters work out what the role of climate change is in those weather related disasters you can't just assume because there's a piece of bad weather it's climate change there's some science to be done in working on what the role of climate change is in these events and then they're documenting these involving their national weather service to work out what climate change is actually doing to New Zealand as well as how New Zealand is contributing to the problem and I think that could be something which the least developed nations really could take forwards because this is the one area where your you you know information would be massively to your advantage because there's a fraction of your GDP there's no question you're being you know you're going to find you're being massively impacted more than than wealthy countries up here and it's something that many countries seem strangely reluctant to get the numbers on and I think we need to to push on that to get those numbers surface those numbers so that people are clear what climate change is doing now and and that should be what's framing our conversation about what we're going to do about it thanks very much Miles um Roxy do you want to say a last few words with our own time yeah so in reference to your question about systematic change and the kind of just what kind of system we live in today um I think this statistic explains the changes that we've seen and the problems that we've faced based on these changes in the past 20 years our levels of consumption have increased by 400% since I was born people buy 400% more than they used to and I'm not talking about the whole world I'm talking about the western world and the global north that's criminal because all of those things don't stay in our houses we just chuck them out if you donate your clothes to charity they sell 80 to 90% of those clothes to third world countries who have turned around and said we don't want your country your old clothes your recycled textiles and you know what our nations have said to them well you're disrupting our cycle of our like you know our our what is it cycle of consumption so I guess we'll just not trade with you then can you believe that we're producing more than we can actually wear more than we can eat one third of food waste is thrown out in this country alone and we still do it there's something wrong with a system that has stock shelves I've always thought this why do I have a stocked grocery store when there's people in the world starving it doesn't make sense if we all stopped eating meat everyone in the world could eat simple math right wrong all these companies want to make money and this is where what you're saying comes in these corporations are not transport parent we don't know how much carbon airports are emitting and airplanes are emitting we don't know how much carbon fashion companies are emitting we don't know what these companies are doing because it's against their best interest to tell us the truth because then we will uprise against them so we need to demand as people the truth we need to know what's going on in our world know the true impact of everything you eat everything you wear on your body everything every time you take a car exactly how much carbon comes out every time you turn on the lights in your home exactly how much energy you're wasting how long your showers cost we need to know what we're doing so that we can be aware of making a change in our life and I think I went to a business meeting like two weeks ago with a bunch of like CEOs and heads of sustainability's various companies and one of the discussions that we were having was accountability and that's a big discussion that I have with a lot of people when I talk to young people and I say hey you need to stop eating me you need what I don't say that because then I become pushy and that's the thing that XR avoids but I say hey did you know that eating meat like eating one cheeseburger you could have 16 pita and falafels for the same price of water and carbon emissions I try and inform people in that way like kind of a fun way anyways um Roxy I think we are gonna have to wrap up now sorry sorry sorry I'm I'm nearly done but basically in terms of accountability all the young people are saying it's not my choice I just choose what's available to me and when I spoke to these corporations I said hey you need to give young people really good options options that they would enjoy to have that are respectful to our climate and our world and those companies say we're not the ones buying the things so we're not the ones making the decisions and that is what we need to rise up against we need to make companies know that what we want we need to vote with our dollar because that's what we live in a capitalist system and make a true change so I hope I've inspired you guys to at least look into the Grantham Institute has nine things that you can do to save the climate nine in your everyday life I hope that you've each and every person I'm trying to make eye contact with you all will be inspired to make a change in your daily life because that's what this action needs change starts with you great and on that note many thanks