 Okay, good morning everybody. Welcome to COP26 and the climate crisis. My name is Edward Simpson and I'm one of the hosts along with Tom Tanner for the next two days. We're fortunate to be joined by Adam Habib this morning, the director of SOAS, who is going to welcome you all formally to this event. Adam. Colleagues, thank you very much. And colleagues, students, alumni, ladies and gentlemen, friends, welcome to this SOAS conflict and the climate crisis. It's a real pleasure to invite each one of you at this moment as we gear up for COP26. It's a real pleasure to be able to welcome all of you here, partly because what we're doing at this conference is bringing multiple stakeholders under a single banner. We kind of recognize that we have to come together as multiple stakeholders as members of a human community to address the historical challenge of our time. How to save our planet and the human community that resides in it. You know, I think the fact that we've decided to have this conference not simply amongst academics, but academic students, NGO activists, alumni, the broader public is a recognition that we need to build a cohesive agenda. The human community, all of us in our multiple stakeholder communities need to come together. And frankly, as we come together, we need to build this cohesion based on certain fundamental foundational elements. You know, a couple of weeks ago, I did the closing address to a conference hosted by Standard Bank, which is the largest bank in Africa, and so as. And at that closing conference, I highlighted four foundational elements that seem to have emerged in the conversation of that conference. And I think that those four foundational elements are useful introductory principles for us to bear in mind as we go over these conversations in the next two days. First, I think we all have to recognize that climate change is having a physical impact in all our communities all over the world. We're having an economic impact on our societies in quite serious ways. There are some parts of the world, Africa in particular, that have been minor contributors to the challenge. I'm here one or 2% of global contribution. Yet, we, they, and everybody else are going to have to bear the disproportionate effect of the consequences of climate change. That's why we all have to do something. The developed world, North America, Western Europe, China, but we all in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, in the island states of our bill, all of us have to do something and become part of the agenda to address climate action climate change. The second point I want to make is that the core element of this agenda of climate action is to drive down Greece greenhouse emissions to net zero by 2050. But what all of the speakers in that conference said is you can't achieve climate action. If it is not accompanied by a just transition. We need to connect the environmental and social governance agendas, such a just transition involves mitigating the effects of human be on human beings and addressing the deep inequalities that exist in our world. It requires us to mitigate the displacement of workers that would inevitably arise to reskill communities and to create better jobs that are equitably distributed across the world. It requires being mindful of context and recognizing that they are parts of our world, parts of Asia, parts of Africa, parts of Latin America that cannot have the same solutions as may pertain in the short term in North America and Western and Western Europe. For instance, what would be worth thinking through is how we sequence reforms and our interventions. You can't simply think of moving your entire transport networks to electrical cars in an energy deficient continent like Africa. We're thinking of the contextual realities, the sequencing of reforms and the interventions that we make in different parts of the world. Three, none of these interventions are going to happen without the flow of resources from the developed to the developer, the developing world. And as Nick Robbins put it, you first need to start with international public financing. And that international public financing will be required to crowd in private sector financing and investment. For charity, I want to make clear, these are public goods, they're global public goods, and therefore need to be resourced on an equitable basis by the global community. And that's something that needs to happen. And then finally, as if all of this is not enough. Finally, it requires our behavior as human beings, our consumption patterns to change. We need to bring down the energy demands we make in the way we live in the way we eat and we need to transform this. We need to eat less meat and get our proteins in other ways. We will be helped in part by new technologies in food production by new forms of agriculture. But it is also requires us to change our habits, not only poor people to change their habits, but rich people and middle class people you and I in the developed world to change our habits. That is as important. Some colleagues friends. We are in desperate need of concrete action with desperate need of concrete action by government by business, scientists and academics, civil society, but by the collective of the human community. This is what is required. This is what you're going to speak about in the coming 48 hours. And those words that you articulate here, and in multiple conferences around the bill, they need to be heard loudly by the political elites that meet in Glasgow in the end of this year. And particularly, I want to say, given that this is so as the voices of the human community in Africa, Asia and the Middle East needs to be resoundly heard. They need to be heard like it no other time. And what needs to be said is climate action is not possible without social justice without a just transition. So I thank you all for coming to this conference, and I wish you important deliberations in the next two days. Thank you very, very much. Thank you very much. I think it was an important note to start off with climate justice and just transition. So welcome everybody. Welcome to so as pre cop 26 briefing days. We have two days as Adam has said today and tomorrow. We have an highly unusual format. We have two hours per day, and we have rapid fire presentations using Petra culture format. For those of you who don't know it. It's 20 images or 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. So there with us many of our speakers admitted. This is the first time they're doing it. Normally they have 45 minutes to an hour to say what they want to say, but today they have six minutes and 40 seconds or something like that. So here our focus is firmly on showcasing and exploring climate change research done at so as all of our speakers are affiliated with so as in some way shape or form. And then tomorrow we move out to explore work done in so as regions. Adam has already said Africa, Middle East and Asia. So, as the slide has just changed. And tomorrow you see we have presentations from Bangladesh, India, Ghana, Japan, Southeast Asia, and China. I am the director of the South Asia Institute along with Tom Tanner has we've put this conference together Tom is the chair of the center for development environment policy. So as, and we have multiple agendas rolled in to this short event. First of all, we wanted to work together across so as to bring colleagues together from different departments and centers to bring all of our climate oriented research into one place for the first time. But we also wanted to have a different kind of conference where we were working with the so as community. So unusually, we took, we took the step of inviting all of so as professional service colleagues to this event as well. We've extended the invitation to alumni and other friends of so as. So this is, it's a so as focused event that we also hope will resonate with broader public. That's where we were coming from, and the format is supposed to be accessible to speak to different kinds of audiences in a new sort of way. The event is going to be recorded. It is being recorded. Now I wanted to bring that to you. And I hope you are challenged and enjoy the presentations, but you do so with some humility, remembering that everybody only has six minutes and 40 seconds to present many years of. Okay, I'm going to hand over now to Tom Tanner, who I've said is the chair for the center of relevant environment policy at so as Tom might want a couple of words of introduction but his first talk is climate crisis 101. Why and how is so as engaging Tom is our host for the morning and I am the host for tomorrow. So Tom, thank you. Thanks for, thanks for much it and it looks like it's climate crisis 1010. It seems. So, I'm just going to open with a brief six minutes on just where where we stand regarding climate crisis why it's happening, why it's a justice issue and just briefly the ways that so as is engaging and why and how it might engage. Forgive me if a slide transitions are not as smooth at the beginning because I don't have so first of all, I'd like everyone just to take 15 seconds just to think about your own experience, how you've experienced climate change, your interrelationship with the subject with yet with impacts with mitigation the impacts, your own footprint, canvas advocacy that you're doing and situate a little bit in a way we think of so as is situating these this science, the indisputable fact that, excuse me that climate change is being caused by human activities. That's the recent IPCC report has made that really centrally clear and something that was engaging with skeptics is important. That's now indisputable. We're past that discussion, we need to have other discussions and what's important is that that human influence is at a rate we haven't seen in the last 2000 years. And what's important there is that the modeling of the future climate change. It matches the observed change that we see so our modeling of the increase in greenhouse gases is matching what we're seeing we're getting pretty good at predicting this. The anomalies in the climate, the kind of crazy climate events that we're seeing isn't as worrying as the fact that having done this for 20 years. We used to have maps like this that showed the anomalies over the course of a decade. Then we'd have like an annual one that showed you the anomalies over the course of a year. And now, NASA know is producing one of these every month with significant numbers of events and you'll have seen that in the media, you'll have seen that in your own lived life. And that evolution of maps tells us a lot, I think, about the evolution of the climate crisis. Also want to stress, and this is important from a size perspective in particular that we look at we think about the natural and the human system dimensions, very easy to get caught thinking about just changes in nature because science often, you know, likes to focus on the natural systems, and then the social scientists like to focus on human linking the two is absolutely vital. There's some lingo on climate change, and there are three key responses if you're not familiar with this mitigation which is limiting greenhouse gas emissions and improving the sinks to absorb greenhouse gases, adapting adaptation to impacts. And then where adaptation isn't sufficient, we're now starting to deal with losses, losses and damages. There has been a lot of progress with mitigation greenhouse gas emissions we shouldn't all be doing gloom, but there's a long way to go we can see the impact of the Paris agreement the stated policies at least of governments on the on the emissions trajectory, and the Glasgow pledges of further bent that curve downwards, but there's still a huge way to go and a gap to reach net zero. The impacts around the world are differentiated. We see, in terms of the impact vulnerability indices can see on this map. But so is the responsibility. This is why it's a climate justice issue fundamental. The capacity to respond varies around the world as touched on by Adam in the introduction, and that is central to the way so as thinks about these, these issues. I don't forget that it's not just geography that matters it's poverty and wealth fundamentally. And if we think of rich people in the world as causing most of the problem this is the famous Martin, he me glass front. And just 10% are responsible for 49% of lifestyle emission consumption emissions. We looked at some of these in equities as well in academia recently so the Reuters hot list of 1000 academics shows on the top there the global population and the difference on the Reuters hot list of the top academics, overwhelmingly skewed towards Europe and America. If we do the same and look at these, the distribution of IPCC authors in the last in the current reports, and we see a similar, there's a much more balanced IPCC authors yet for the hot list again, you know it shows Africa with very few African authors very few women authors, and we've written about this extensively, just as an example of some of the, the workers so as is doing to examine the structure inequalities. And the work we do do it covers all all remits, and many many disciplines, as you will, as you'll hear from disciplinary perspectives in the forthcoming petrocutia talks. So, think embed that in, in the way you think about what needs to be done, and particularly this debate between what needs to be done personally, what actions you're taking in your own lifestyle, versus the attempts to change the system, they are not mutually incompatible, we can campaign for one and the other. We need both system changes and individual behavioral changes, they go together. So in terms of what so as is doing we kind of, we embed everything we do in promoting climate justice through activism and outreach of our work. We want to develop that evidence base if the interdisciplinarity is really crucial to us and our global partnerships, trying to bring those perspectives in from elsewhere in the world. As you'll hear tomorrow, and we bring want to bring that into our teaching in terms of decolonizing knowledge and our curricula, but also integrating sustainability across our teaching program. But at the same time, yes, thinking about our own footprint, and, and how to reduce that, and increasingly how to adapt to some of the particularly the extreme events that we're facing. I also want to say, let's stay positive. It's very easy to get doom and gloomy. Huge changes are happening around the world. Look at the way that the Indian government responded to cyclone. Yes, not with three days. In addition, during a COVID pandemic, incredible the amount of lives and assets saved, and the huge growth in so so globally as examples. At events, we're going to touch a little bit on the practicalities of cop on international policy on those kind of big global current transitions on the financial changes needed different disciplines and some of those different perspectives about which we'll hear a lot more tomorrow. And that's my time up. So we will pass on next to Harold Haybound, who is work, works in the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy and within the Department of Politics and International Studies. He's going to give us a lowdown on the UNFCCC, the UN Framework Convention on its structure and its evolution. Hi. Thank you very much, Tom. Yeah, force for me to talk about the slightly drier history of the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change, the process of evolution, and its outcomes. Please do bear with me the basic basis for for these negotiations, of course, is scientific cooperation scientific findings on the reality of man made anthropogenic climate change, the man made greenhouse effect which the scientific cooperation underpins the diplomatic negotiations engagement we've seen over the last many years so in many ways climate change is an older scientific problem we've gathered evidence for its existence for quite some time. Now reaching back into the late 19th century but more systematically since the 50s and 60s and the creation of the intergovernmental panel on climate change precedes the creation of the UNFCCC it's publishing its first assessment report in 1990. That's two years before the UNFCCC is created so from this flow to assumptions. Can we because we agree that climate change is reality and the project climate change. Can we have a shared understanding of the problem. And can we actually do something about can reduce greenhouse gas emissions well that's proof difficult because the complex and highly politicized nature of this process. That is not so much in view in 1992 yet when countries gather for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development the so called Rio Earth Summit and they stand together and saying we need to do something about climate change is present George Bush senior in his address to delegates very much understanding that this should be a shared undertaking. And the result for the outcomes of this Rio Earth Summit is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change it comes into effect two years later after enough countries ratified it. And that begins this multi year negotiation process. That's where the conferences of the parties the cops come from. So we're now in the 26th cop to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And as the UNFCCC say it says the overall goal is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere in a level that prevents dangerous impact, and they can do it in a timely fashion. We don't really agree on what dangerous and timely fashion means at this point yet. A second key point of this framework convention is that it should be done in an equitable way. So countries that are historically more responsible for the problem should take action first. It's common, but it's differentiated in the way we address it and countries that are welfare and have the capabilities should act first and not those that are poor unless able to do so. It makes us to ask before wealthy countries should assist those poorer countries, developing countries in the global south in addressing the impacts of climate change to so all the key things that we're discussing still today are already contained within this framework convention on climate change in those early years and money is often sticking point in record time. We've gone to the first treaty under the United Nations Framework Convention climate change just three years after UNFCCC comes into effect the Kyoto Protocol is negotiated in the United States takes a leading role here Vice President Al Gore in Japan for the negotiations. But of course the United States later backs backs out of this process and doesn't want to be part of it. So what does it say the Kyoto Protocol gives us an actual target. Let's reduce emissions by at least 5% below 1990 levels within the commitment period 2008 2012 framework convention doesn't yet say that in terms of target Kyoto does this global target breaks down into individual countries, the Europeans, Canada, the United States, Japan, but not China, India, South Africa and Brazil and therein lies a big challenge for these negotiations and for countries to come together around the same table the United States as well. If China India don't get targets why should we do anything it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. So we see regime failure for the Kyoto Protocol, even though it comes into effect in 2005. We're not managing to realize those targets look at the compliance period 2008 12 we don't reduce emissions, nearly enough the United States withdraws from the process and emerging economies are not really integrated because of common differentiated responsibilities we move on in this process we try to do more we try to do better. Chaos chaos with negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009 this make or break point Copenhagen turns into a disaster countries can't agree can't come together and the rift between developing and developed countries really emerges in a much bigger way. We've gone on and fast forward a few more years and all of a sudden we have success in Paris in 2015. This is because we change our approach to the negotiations we change the kind of goals and outcomes that we want to achieve. And that we think are important so not a top down agreement. The likes of the Kyoto Protocol that set targets for individual countries by the bottom up approach that lets countries put forward voluntary solutions without without so much direction so the approach in negotiations is different to bring everyone together instead of taking parties against each other have the heads of state and government negotiate first, and then take it into the more functional level. So, a bottom up agreement in nature, rather than a more top down approach that the Kyoto Protocol took which was put to be impossible. At this point, there's only a very limited number of legally binding commitments the most important ones to the target that countries have agreed to, but achieving that depends on the bottom up approach with those so called nationally determined contributions in which countries can put forward anything that they believe is important and contributing to achieving the goals of the convention. And so we've seen that the NBCs have looked rather different from country to country some have been more ambitious. Some have been less ambitious. The road ahead this is of course pre COVID times. We see that this process continues it's been going on for quite some time, we continue to have contents of the parties continue to have negotiations. We were supposed to have COP26 last year already that's now the window, but there are a number of different and important markers along the way, a global stock take of where we are in emissions, trying to achieve the outcomes of the Paris agreement. So what have countries done countries have put forward plans to try and make Paris a reality. And we in accordance with a sort of net zero target by the middle of the century net zero by the way it's not included in the Paris agreement climate change, but it follows from our goal of wanting to reduce emissions in a way that keeps us within two degrees that we have to achieve net zero by the middle of the century so it's where we are now in terms of our negotiations process, and I leave that the next more interesting bits to the following speakers. So that provides a little background to the evolution of the COP process. I tell us as I get the joy of the fun bit of saying how COP actually works. It's based in no large part on my pre academic life. I started life as a climate negotiator. As you can see it's very stressful and it made me lose a lot of hair. But that was for the UK UK delegation part of the EU, and then later working advising Bangladesh government as well. And so that was my original grounding. And it's important to acknowledge just how political the processes involves diplomacy there's crazy position far out positions in order to reach something in the middle, and politicians may have a longer timeline, and despite the COVID breakthroughs may not be following the science. So if you don't know where Scotland is. And Glasgow is the first UK host of climate change negotiations, and it's in the, it'll be held in the event campus, which is a, and other buildings, lots more pavilions being put up as we speak around and about Glasgow. It has a ridiculously complicated architecture. This just gives a taster of that I will break it down to something more simple but getting ahead around the different all the different bodies and committees that run under the conference of the parties is difficult, it's a difficult job. There are three apex body so the conference of the parties, essentially is the foot is the overarching body, and it exists both for the convention itself, and for any treaties underneath including the Paris agreement so those who haven't signed the Paris agreement but are still members of the UN framework convention will be in different parts of that system. So the conference of the parties sit subsidiary bodies, the two main surgery bodies basically one that's advisory on science. So that's where you'll get all the technical geeks who like talking about inventories of emissions, and this surgery body on implementation, which is where the decisions are made for actually taking action. And when you're at cop, you're looking for the agenda, the document that sets out the individual agenda items, quite technical quite legal jargon, and you follow those through the formal contact groups, but also informal consultations so there may be on any given day, you'd look for the rooms where there are, there are contact groups that are formal ones the informal ones you can't tend to go into unless you are a government delegation batch, batch holder. But you can see how those are, those are emerging and you're looking for where those groups are, and following that generally best to follow one particular agenda through through the process, rather than just getting overwhelmed with everything. There are formal discussions held in normally little rooms like this depending on the importance of the of the agenda item. But there's numerous huddles as well so these informal meetings tend to get into these smaller groups and particularly the different negotiating groups. So you have regional blocks you have small islands negotiating together, at least developed countries and the bigger blocks around the European Union, for example, and the, the g 77, which is very, you know, most of the rest of the world, not in the OECD. There's a high level section to finalize agreements and normally that comes in the second week towards the end to sign off on the things that are going to be gaveled through on the on the plenary. But this year, that's happening at the beginning. I don't quite know why. The idea is to get some formal declarations and get everyone signed up early so you build momentum for then the discussions that happen in the subsequent week and a half. And you'll see this, you know, again, the picture from Copenhagen. This these often go into the night and go into smaller groups. Let's see if that happens here in Glasgow. And then everyone makes it in a final to create the decisions. There's often a lot of tension often goes into the night to actually agree these and people putting forward their own perspectives or complaints, and it's a consensus based body. So, importantly, the smallest country can can actually have it say. But the other side of the cop is our whole host of side events, some more fun than others, and around massive variety of topics so some are organized by the UNFCCC, some are organized in what's called the green zone by a variety of the NGOs. And then of course is that is lobbying. So this constant activity to just discussions with the government groups who are doing the negotiations and access to that to that and building that is really a matter of working before the cop to be quite frank and to create those relationships before cops happen and push agendas because things are very busy. Because the whole place is full of activists, and also pushing their agendas both inside the cop building and outside on the streets with the huge marches that we've seen, particularly in recent times this one is Copenhagen. So we're interested I guess from a service perspective in particular who has a voice in these negotiations. There are constituencies for businesses for non party non government stakeholders and the multilateral system. And, but at the end of the day, most of the input needs to come before the cop actually happens. The delegations themselves have structural inequalities because of the sizes and capacities of different delegations from around the world some invest more than others some are able to invest more than others who looked in particular. And those that aren't able to stay late, for example, and so the structural inequality of missing those late nights when it runs on an extra day people have had to go home. And there's increasing attention to gender balance, at least within the delegations themselves, and that has been improving and there's a big there's a major process within the UNFCCC to improve gender balance, and gender is taking accounted for across its decision making bodies. So finally, there will be blogs on the so as websites that the, there'll be obviously chance to engage on there will be doing video logs from those who was who at in cop in Glasgow, we'll make sure that this group is sent out the link and do follow us on Twitter, I haven't bought everyone's Twitter handles, just selfishly my own, but also the so as the so as research and Twitter handle there so do follow for more so as related reporting from cop itself next week. And with that, I will hand over to Felicia Jackson, who is a teaching fellow with us and an associate on our research and who's going to talk you through a little bit about what some of the key issues are at cop 26. She's particularly expert in finance and in data around finance but she's going to talk more generally about the. What's at stake. Can you confirm everyone can see. Yeah, excellent checking. So, the thing about cop Tom mentioned that I'm interested in finance and actually finance is one of the really really big issues that has got to be resolved this year. The problem we've got is that we missed last year. We're a long long way away from where we need to be in terms of actually addressing climate change, especially if we're going to actually try to reach the 1.5 degree of warming, which is the goal of the Paris agreement. I mean we passed one degree, I think in 2030 but if you think about the context, we're actually talking about the fact that despite covert we only managed to cut emissions by 6.4% last year. We need to do a number of things. We need to increase the ambition. We need to increase the Paris rulebook which is basically all the details of how we're going to implement the carbon market, how we're going to basically how the Paris agreement should work. That's despite the fact that it's already been in place for five years, which means we're also now talking about aligning timetables, because that's one of the really big areas of disagreement. So we need to see ambition. We need to know what's going to happen. We need to actually move things forward from just commitments, but to actually find ways of proving accountability and seeing actions put into place. So the main issues we've got to get through are these, obviously. The difficult question of finance is really hugely about the enhanced transparency framework, which we actually have to get through and adaptation and loss and damage so all of these issues here are significant for COP26, but they're also very closely interconnected. It's a very interesting image table just because it talks very clearly about which NDCs are in line with the 1.5 degree goal and we have one country where that's the case. And I think given the fact that, you know, we know that emissions are cumulative we know that we've actually passed one degree of warming. We know that we're running out of time in terms of taking action. We know that we need new NDCs. We know we need new ambition. We also know that we need collaboration and that's between business and stakeholders and activists and countries. We've got some issues, you know, she's not coming. Biden's having problems with his climate strategy. The reality is, we run the risk of there being not enough agreed. Now this is the figure for the amount of finance that's been mobilized for from developed developing countries. It looked like there was about 20 billion missing for the 2020 figures, which is a critical issue for trust between the parties that is the funding that is intended and agreed to go from developed to developing one of the challenges of course the terminology. It's never been exactly clear whether that's public or private. We need to actually work out what the long term financing framework is going to be what's going to happen post 2025. We've got commitments for different types of finance, but you know, it's nowhere near where it needs to be. The challenge with the problem is this lack of transparency this lack of accounting rules and the fact that we need to go up beyond just greenhouse gases, because Tom mentioned this the relationship and as indeed as well, this relationship between the environment between nature and the social issues. We have to start measuring things in different ways. We've got the transition that's beginning to happen but the real danger of COP26 is if we don't get strong agreements. What we're losing is the driver for private sector action, which has been fear of transition risk. And that is investors and companies getting exercised about the fact that there could be a price on carbon that they need to, you know, that they will suffer from policy and regulation and capacity building was mentioned as well. This is usually important and has been a huge problem throughout the history of the climate negotiations and climate action. In terms of capacity and technology transfer we've got work being done on gender equality, but we really need to move much harder and much faster. This is a key element of the agreement that's got to be reached, because basically this was another one that was pushed back from Madrid because nobody would agree. This is supposed to enable voluntary international cooperation on climate action through the use of trading emissions reductions. The problem we've had and we've had the same problem since 2018 is what text is going to be agreed regarding offsets. So how do we go about avoiding double counting, whether or not countries are going to be able to use previous Kyoto emissions credits. There were talks earlier this year and they actually failed to move things forward. Everyone agrees that we need substantive decisions on Article 6 this year, but no one can actually agree on what they're going to be. Adaptation is again incredibly important issue. I'm sorry to say this, but they're all really important issues and everyone gets very exercised about them. The thing about adaptation is it's critical for a number of different reasons. It's not just because it's related to resilience because it is related to nature. It's also that there hasn't been sufficient finance devoted to it. I think it's roughly 20% of the overall climate finance so far. So what it needs to do, it connects to the ways in which nature can help protect countries from extreme weather events from droughts and fires and floods and the different ways it goes through. But it also gives us an opportunity to start thinking about valuation, how we actually put a value on the ecosystem services and nature, because what we're seeing is this link between disaster risk management, regulation of environmental cost and benefit, and growth in GHGs, and that's what's got to be actually addressed. Loss and damage is something that's pulled out of the adaptation discussion so it was actually in the second priority of the previous list. This is the idea that those affected and this was agreed in Warsaw, that those affected by climate change have the right to compensation for climate impact. If the implementation is done, and limits are reached, and irreversible loss and damage occurs, then the money, those who are suffering from those impacts should be paid. It's this idea of a climate debt. The idea that wealthy countries and companies should be held accountable. So I think it's more in Madrid the agreement on the Santiago network to connect vulnerable developing countries with technical assistance, resources, knowledge, etc. But it's still really contentious around the liability and language because while there is discussion of the fact that those affected have the right to compensation. There aren't many countries that want to actually sign up to something that may lead to like legal liability in the future. I'm not talking in detail about sexual approaches because I was through the entire lot. But I think what's important about this is we actually do have the technology. We have the processes, we have the regulations and we have an understanding of what needs to be done. This is a political and diplomatic problem. And that's why COP26 is so important. Thank you very much Felicia. So before we get into some of the issue areas that we do a quick poll. If I just share my screen and ask you to. If you look in the chat box now, you'll see the mentee the link to this mentee poll. Click on that and you can choose how pessimistic or optimistic you are that global green house emissions will start to go down. When do you think this might happen? It's quite fun watching the poll votes come in and the numbers bounce accordingly. So we've seen a lot of the use of the term net zero has become the fashionable thing to say this is basically getting minimising your emissions as much as possible. And then reducing those that you can't stop emitting by committing to reductions through global greenhouse gas sinks like forests and possibly other more engineering and technology based approaches. So that looks pretty stable now. Thanks everyone for voting. And just to make everyone feel a little bit more positive about the global climate change processes and where we are global greenhouse emissions have already started going down. So, whilst we talk about 2030 and 2050 targets for net zero emissions reductions global globally are are reducing they have started to go down and for all the talk of the COVID rebounds and the fact that the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere is still creeping up. You know, on the 400 parts a million mark and the emissions reductions that they're in pro in progress. We're making great strides. So I hope that makes everyone feel somewhat more optimistic about about where we're going and our ways forward. And I'll get on to some of those different technical areas that Felicia is just outlined for you. And first of all, Christine Orton from our School of Finance and Management will talk about mitigation of greenhouse gases and the net net low to net zero carbon strategies, particularly focusing on low and middle income country context so feel free to share your screen Christine. Thank you, Tom. Thank you very much. So my talks about innovation for low and zero net carbon, focusing in particular low middle income countries I'm going to talk about targets and instruments progress to target to date. The use of non market regulatory instruments and the implications of that for cop and and beyond. So the targets in the Paris agreements that we see in a set in terms of global temperature targets. And so they're not under the control of any individual country that under control of us all collectively. And there's another target there which is that developed economies for climate justice have to deliver 100 billion pounds per animal finance to develop economy economies from 2025 to 2020 to 2025. What are the instruments, the instruments the nationally determined contributions each country has to say how much is going to contribute to limiting reducing greenhouse gases. There's also the finance instruments which is based on climate justice and the polluter pays principle. So that is important in order to allow GDP to rise in low and middle income countries and preserve reducing equality and party. There's also two articles that have not really been used articles 6.8 and 6.9 that focus on non market instruments. So what's our progress to date on these targets. Well, we've missed them in terms of you look at the latest analysis of the nationally determined contributions. We've missed the targets that have been that have been set in terms of temperature, but also miss as we've just seen the finance target as well we're about 20 billion short. Now we just say that most of this finances in the form of loans and Oxfam have estimated that 40% of these loans are non concessional rates that market rates are above. In article six, particularly these two articles paragraph 6.8 and 6.9. There's been virtually no progress. And my view is that the 1.5 preferred target is unlikely to be met without regulatory spur to innovation and technological diffusion via mission standards. And I think that on the 6.8 6.9 is probably going to be a lot of talk about in the cop. They need wings they need to start being utilized in a way that they haven't been utilized to date. If we think about the value of these instruments it goes back to the tragedy of the commons you know if we all behave individually we're not going to get anywhere we need collective solutions. There's a nice picture there from my holiday in Scotland this year in the during the common pasture lands where those cattle will on that land for four hours so it is possible to come to these agreements. There's another instrument that we can use, which is the portal hypothesis, and Porter argued that properly constructed regulatory standards, encouraged companies to re engineer their technology, and results in progress, and that these strict regulations prod companies into innovating and to produce better products. Now, can we do this. Well, there is an example from the Montreal protocol. There's no way away in terms of language from the Paris agreement but I think we need to try and find a common language between these two, these two UN instruments. The Montreal protocol set binding targets to cut CFC gases by 50% in 10 years in actual fact. We achieved this in three years, despite the fact that companies like DuPont said this was impossible. If we hadn't done it would take two decades to get new products. The developing economies were given longer to adjust that's the blue line, but we achieved it. What about greenhouse gas emissions can we do the same. We do have cleaner transport technologies. And the question is why aren't they diffused more quickly. One reason is that we don't have what we had in Montreal we don't have a binding target and commitment to restrict them. We need to combine these market and non market instruments. And just to illustrate that point as a chapter wrote in this book innovation for low carbon economy. On can the car maker save the planet and we just can't do this not by themselves they would need some form of binding regulation to diffuse hybrid technology. So what happened with hybrid electric vehicles. This is the situation in the US. The market share is combined of all of those three types of vehicles is is 7.6% now it's taken us 20 years to get there. The economy has done much better because it's got much tougher regulations. China has done quite well but China's share of electric vehicles is still below 5% and in most developing countries it's below 1%. And if we look at the country that's done best. Norway has used a whole range of instruments but in 2017 it set a target to get to for electric vehicles that has acted as that spur to innovation. And I just wonder is it significant that Norway also did that at a time when they had a woman prime minister, and just to build on something that Tom was saying about the role of gender you do women make a difference in these negotiations. There was a paper been published in environmental politics that said that male and female legislators expressed the same concern but women were much more likely to legislate. And progress has been made on that in terms of getting more women into the meetings, but the speaking time for men and women their contributions is still very unequal. And that's something that we would need to bear in mind and try and address in future. Of course, one woman who has written extensively on the need for collective action and rules and governing the commons common for resources like the atmosphere is Eleanor Ostrom and there's a lot in her work that I think we could learn from. So where does this leave us in terms of policy. So there's a lot of investments and standards can catalyze innovation, but there is a regional innovation paradox which is that low income regions that need to innovate more to catch up, actually find it harder to do so. Even when the money is offered as public subsidy so we need regional innovation strategies. That's where rich countries and low income countries have worked together in order to encourage that locally developed innovation in low income regions. So come to the end of my time. Thank you for listening. Many thanks Christine. That's really, really insightful and thank you also for keeping the time. It's fantastic. Everyone's keeping us keeping us on schedule. So retaining the theme around mitigation. Thank you to Justina Cicilliano, who is a lecturer in the Centre for Environment Development and Policy in the Department of Development Studies. And her research focuses on how some of these transitions that Christine's talked about touched on in the energy sector in particular need to interrelate to social justice issues. Juicy go ahead and share. Thanks Tom. I'm showing the presentation. We can but it's not on slideshow yet. Yeah, brilliant. Thanks. It takes a little bit of time. Sorry. It's uploading. Can you see it now? We can see the PowerPoint but it hasn't gone to slideshow format just yet. Yeah. Okay, so you should see it. So good morning everyone. As Tom said, I'm a lecturer in sustainable development at the Centre for Development Development and Policy. And today I'm going to talk about just transitions and in particular just energy transitions with a specific focus on the new energy infrastructure. So I'm going to start my presentation with providing with different definitions of energy transition from different perspectives. The just transition concept was introduced by the International Labor Organization 2015 and this the definition makes a clear reference to pillars of sustainable development and but also issues of inclusive inclusiveness and participation, eradication of poverty and importance of ensuring decent works for all. And the same sustainable and socially inclusive transition is also mentioned in international climate climate policies and strategies such as the price agreement, for example, the agenda for sustainable development to the EU Green New Deal and it also represents one of the main goals of COP26, which is to ensure just transition towards a climate neutral society. The first environmental and climate justice movements introduced for the first time in the community perspective of the energy decision making process. In the view just transition needs to be democratic and give decision making powers to those most effective but negative facts of the transitions. That's where a complete shift from an exactive economy based on capital accumulation natural resources at exploitation top down decision decision to regenerate the economy, in which deep democracy cooperation social cohesion and regeneration are the basis of the transition. But what is the commitment for the transition we have we have heard from previous presentations that the main commitment is to keep one point one point five degrees within within wage. And this can be achieved that reducing global carbon emissions to net zero by 2015 which requires actually the complete transformation of the energy sector. In fact, as we will see in the next slide slide, the energy sector is the source of more than 70% of global gas emissions. As we can see here 70 in 2019 73.2% of global gas emissions comes from different energy sectors. So if this is a very change the energy sector is a very challenging, also because as you can see from this graph, 84.3% of global energy comes from fossil fuels at the moment. Only 15.7% from a new comes it comes from low carbon sources of which 11.4% from renewables these are data referred to 2019. However, the good news is that it's that actually the year to year percentage change in primary energy consumption. We can see an increase in solar solar energy consumption winds and other renewables, but also is increasing gas and oil gas and oil consumption, which is a gas and oil consumption but less than renewables. According to the dominant energy transition narrative actions to achieve net zero requires the development of large scale infrastructure a centralized energy production as well as top down decision and its decision based on with efficiency technological changes and cheaper technology which is a technocratic approach to the transition. And the energy from infrastructures play a key role in this narrative. Investment in clean energy and energy infrastructure has more than triple by 2030 and that your power wind and solar energy need to increase the gigawatts addition tremendously. So far it's a lot of cooperation and strong strong collaborations at the global level between nations, North South cooperation South South corporations for the next 510 years for the development of large infrastructures upgrade of infrastructure modernization and expansion. It's also important to say that the position to the construction of the new energy constructions, for example, and energy projects are also increasing all over the world. Recently 150 NGOs have as have signed a manifesto to stop the construction of new other power plants in Europe, and local communities call for community decision powers when it comes to energy transitions in contrast to the dominant approach. Moreover response to the technocratic approach to energy transition energy justice justice movement emerge in 2010 which is closest related to environmental and climate justice. The main goals are achieving energy 70 ensure access to economic benefits of energy decision and access to clean and affordable energy for all from an from an academic point of view. Justice is framed based on the classical to tenants of justice which are distributional justice procedural justice and condition justice but it's also important to take into consideration restorative justice which means to provide quantum assessment of the impacts of energy transitions and mitigation strategies. According to the research I've carried out in the global south on the human energy infrastructures, the negative impacts on local communities have found that the negative impacts on local communities are also exacerbated by an equal power relations differences in energy for the ability and experiences of distribution and inequality between different geographical areas such as urban areas. Therefore, I think that the holistic framework is required which includes a consideration of power relations. These are quasi combination of a harder and financial training with justice concerns offer the solution inclusiveness and the consideration differentiated needs and priorities in society. In conclusion, just incisions should be analyzed as a high political decision and not only using it a kind of tactic approach, which is the one that's made used by globally at the moment, mainly, and the adoption of an energy justice approach can issue for energy access and distribution, high point assessments and often provide provide more sustainable solutions. Therefore, to achieve just incisions COP26 should champion equity center energy decisions in international negotiations also give greater consideration to community based renewable energy solutions in international debates. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you. You can find my publications if you're interested in my research and I saw stuff. Thanks very much to see fantastic. Well, the many people who are in the audience now will have strong interest in climate justice and particularly justice around energy transitions. I find it fascinating that just the just transition approach has been taken up on by politicians who recognize, you know this is a major block to some creating some of these changes we're seeing it currently in the USA obviously with Democrats from from coal mining regions seeking to block the package of measures there. It's, you know, it's more than just a casual concern. Thanks very much to see. So let's move from mitigation concerns to adaptation concerns. We're lucky to have an Andy Newsom in the Department of Development Studies who's been an adaptation expert for many years, and he's going to talk to us a little bit about what some of those adaptation issues are within COP26 expanding a little bit on that excellent introduction from Felicia. So, Andy, floor is yours. We can't hear you. Sorry, can you see my first slide? Sorry about that. Can you see the slide? We can all good. Thank you. Awesome. Okay, right. So we're going to be talking about climate change at COP26 in the context of the global adaptation goal loss, damage and responsibility. Is there any change by itself then the slide? If it's, if it's set the transitions then yes, but you're welcome to use your back and forth if it's not. Right. Okay, I'm not sure it is but I'll try and keep to 20 seconds per slide. Okay, so the global goal on adaptation was something that was agreed as part of COP 21. In 2015 part of the Paris Agreement and it was about ensuring an adaptation, an adequate adaptation response in the context of the goal of holding average global warming well below two degrees C and pursuing efforts to hold it below 1.5 degrees C. And what in effect the global goal on adaptation requires us to do is to enhance adaptive capacity and resilience and to reduce vulnerability with a view to contributing to sustainable development. So that's the in a broad as possible terms what this COP26 is trying to do on adaptation. So it's as I say about protecting and restoring ecosystems about building defences, warning systems and resilient infrastructure and agriculture to avoid loss and of homes, livelihoods and even lives of course that's the overall kind of steer that we're getting from this particular COP26. So, there's a question about how, how we're doing that one part is about the finance which we've heard about. And I don't want to say too much about this ahead of what he's going to tell us later. But the idea is to, you know, mobilize at least $100 billion a year, you know, ideally by last year we're not quite doing that just yet. To put this in context, G20 countries provided more than 2.4 trillion US dollars in subsidies for fossil fuels between 2015 and 2019. So there's something about kind of not just looking at the gap in adaptation and funding itself and finance for it, but also looking at where the money and what it's being spent on instead. And it's this kind of missing of targets and focusing our energies elsewhere which has led to the idea of this thing called loss and damage. This is the idea that adaptation and mitigation are not going to be enough to prevent negative impacts from climate change, loss and damage is inevitable and that we need some kind of international response to this via, you know, there's now the the international war saw mechanism that we've been established. And but that we need to do something about the fact that there will actually be damage. And what does that, what does that look like in general terms well it's about deteriorating livelihoods and loss of territory, or extreme floods, loss of lives and property, heat waves, sea level rise, a lot of the kinds of things that we've we've we've heard quite a lot about, you know, over the years, and I want to flesh it out by giving us a more specific example of what loss and loss and damage looks like right now if you look at the way the climate change has already changed in the climate has already changed in Namibia. It has already ranked as one of the top 20 countries in the world that's most affected by extreme weather, and regions have experienced between three to six bad rainfall seasons from 2014 to 2019 alone and this has a lot to do with the fact that the data. The most recent data is suggesting there's been a structural break in the rainfall that is to say that there is, on average, less rainfall as a pronounced drying trend since the 1980s. The rainy season has shortened by 30 days on average that's a huge thing to happen if you're a farmer. There's a decrease in the consecutive level of rainfall days. There's, there's a more chance of there being up to 20 days in a row with no impacts of other which are crucial parts in, in, for example, harvesting a growing a crop is is potentially going to damage the crop and if you look at something like tobacco production, which is something that has been seeing as a root out of poverty in Zimbabwe, because it's a cash crop and lots of people are going into it right now. It's actually become harder to farm tobacco under rain fed production systems this is partly because when you transfer tobacco plants from the nursery into the ground and you know from away from the seed beds. You need for there to be a sufficient amount of rain to come at the right time and that is increasingly not happening. The erratic rainfall of carrot of a rainfall reported across there. I feel types of some research that myself and some Zimbabwe colleagues have been doing which is just come out and put a reference for it on this slide. I can share it later. It's basically leading to people to abandon tobacco production. It's a reduction also in the quality of the crop so that when you, if you are able to sell it you're getting less for it. So, I hope that really, you know, gives us a sort of grounded context for some of these, these ideas because loss and damage is an issue that we have to deal with but it's also tricky, tricky because it's difficult to attribute anthropogenic climate change as a cause of specific extreme events and sometimes along the term trends there's been some progress towards this but it's still quite difficult to do and it has an implication for thinking through loss and damage which is how do we know what loss and damage is attributable. How do we know how to calculate the levels of loss and damage from particular places. And how are we going to target the money. There are different views on doing this. There's a North Centre view, which is that it requires us to improve adaptation to reduce and humanitarian efforts to tackle losses. And look at, you know, how particular mechanisms like, you know, insurance or social protection might be better employed. But there's a sudden view if you like that because this is, you know, beyond what we, you know, what's been proposed in terms of adaptation and won't be dealt with by that there needs to be extra money on top of that to address this some form of compensation, reparation even to use a term that's used in some other debates. And I wanted to link this to the question of responsibility because ultimately loss and damage is something that's of concern because some people are held historically responsible for it and there are different ways of calculating this. And quite often we think of China as being the world's biggest emitter, which it is but if you look at it in terms of its share of the atmospheric commons, if you like, about where its debate where its contribution comes in, relative to a much more understanding of, you know, of emissions and also looking at consumption based data as much as possible, you get a much different picture you know China is kind of still up there but it's nothing in relation to what European and you know North American countries historically have done. And of course, going back to this historical kind of you know framing and taking it right back that the concern is always that well we didn't know that we were doing that. According to some commentators such as Jason Hickel, one way of thinking about this is you know the excusable ignorance is limited to the extent that carbon emissions are but one manifestation of a process that has had a wide range of long known harms and he turned this sort of atmospheric colonization, putting greenhouse gas emissions into the broader project of European imperial expansion and the globalization of trade relations that came through that over the last, you know, few centuries basically. So if we start to think about responsibility like that, then loss and damage becomes legible perhaps in terms like reparations which we have for other areas of historical injustice around slavery so perhaps that's one fruitful thing to think about in terms of how we sought out loss and damage going forward. That's all from me Tom. Thanks again and very very clear slides so we'll forgive the lack of auto progression. Thank you. Thank you so much. So taking another that covers a lot of those adaptation loss and damage issues and taking another major chunk of the issues that they presented and will be looming large at COP as you've heard from Andy there at the end as well is about financing First of all, you know how how we finance climate change action full stop, but also the debates around that within COP itself. We're lucky to have a center for sustainable finance, full of amazing academics and partners within so many of us. And to two such people, Janice, the fairness and the results will lead us off with their presentation and they're doing a double hander so even more. Congratulations and thanks to you guys for for sharing a petricutia presentation which may be a global first over to you. Thank you Tom. So Janice and I will talk about climate action financing climate action and so talk is cheap. We need to put money where our mouse is, and it's going far beyond the hundred billion that were mentioned before. So article 21 C or the Paris agreement sets out the goal of making finance flows consistent the pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate resilient development. And that has to be the goal. And for this to happen. We need to things to take place first, we need to rapidly face out financing of actions that are undermining the climate and also other sustainability goals. And secondly, we need to massively ramp up investment in climate action. And that has to involve both adaptation and mitigation. For the time being, the finance sector is really being part of the problem. So you can see that actually global fossil fuel financing, since the Paris agreement has expanded. So we need to rapidly face out this because this is destroying the planet, the climate. But markets alone will not fix the problem. We need firm guidance from the authorities that govern the financial sector central banks and supervisors to make sure that environmental risks are properly priced in and accounted for. So, but one big problem is that even if financial institutions start to price in climate risk and so on, who's going to pay the price. And the answer unfortunately is that the countries at the most vulnerable to climate change have to pay already now a climate risk premium. And the report for the UN we showed that climate vulnerable countries have to pay a higher cost on their debt because of their climate vulnerability with controlled for all the kind of other macroeconomic factors. And our estimates suggested that for every $10 pay to interest by developing countries, they have to pay an additional dollar due to their climate vulnerability. And that is of course deeply unjust. And Adam at the beginning highlighted the importance of climate justice and so developing countries are already punished by being more climate vulnerable and the physical impacts, but also for a higher cost of debt. And this extends both to governments and firms, and it undermines their capacity to invest in climate adaptation and resilience, which is really holding back their development prospects, and countries, climate vulnerable countries are facing a vicious circle where they already are very vulnerable. They're facing climate risk premiums and capital markets, and the higher cost of capital, provide them less fiscal space to undertake the crucial investment in resilience. And the question is, can we set off a virtuous cycle where we increase investment in climate adaptation measures that help to lower climate risk premiums, lower cost of capital, and provide more room for fiscal resilience. And the answer is that for all the truth is for many vulnerable countries they won't have enough fiscal space. So thank you, Oli. I'm going to say now how climate finance is defined within the UN Framework Convention, and as it has already been highlighted, we have that climate finance refers both to mitigation and adaptation, and crucially the UN Framework Convention recognizes that we have different responsibilities. So this is why we have seen all these discussions in Kyoto, in Paris about the need for developed countries to provide financial assistance to developing countries. And financial assistance can come from different types of sources, both public and private. So if we actually look at the beneficiaries of climate finance so far, we will see that we have that Asian countries have received a significant part of this climate finance flows, a bit less than 50%. And then we have that about 25% has gone to countries in Africa, and basically Latin America has received about 15%. The source of climate finance are basically four, we have this distinction between bilateral public finance and multilateral public finance that has to do with finance that for instance comes from multilateral development banks and multilateral climate funds. We have finance provided by the export credit agencies, and crucially we have private finance which refers to finance that comes from private sources but has been mobilized by public sources at the same time. And as already been highlighted, we have this target of 100 billion US dollars per year. This was a target that was set in 2009, we haven't achieved this target so far, but the expectation is that this will be achieved in 2020. As we can see in this graph, the main source of finance is related with public, so most of finance so far has come from public sources, much less from private sources. Now if we look at the instruments that have been used in the case of public finance, as Christine pointed out before, most of it is in the form of loans. We have less finance in the form of grants and this is crucial because it means that when this finance is provided, we have that the debt commitments of countries go up and this can create financial fragility. As it has already been pointed out, we have that most of climate finance has concentrated on mitigation. We have much less finance for adaptation and one of the targets in the coming years is for this to increase. So if we think about what should be done right now, there's a lot of discussion about the need to increase the amount of climate finance and I think this is necessary, but we also need to pay much more attention to the composition of climate finance. We need to increase grants, and we need to increase finance for adaptation. Now there is also discussion about the role of private finance and that's really pointed out before it's very important to start reducing dirty finance is not enough to just increase green finance. And if private finance plays now a more important role, we need to make sure that we regulate private finance because private finance might not always do what is necessary in order to achieve climate justice for instance. We don't have to forget about debt relief programs we need to design a business debt relief programs in order to deal with issues of climate justice. Thank you. Thank you very much, Janice and Dolly as well. It's a very very quick run through but some of it's some really central issues there do look. If you're listening and watching do look up the work of the Centre for Sustainable Finance and so as there's a lot of different research dreams going on and plenty of additional reading and talks to see that. We now start to get into some more sectoral and interdisciplinary issues. One area within the cops that's emerged particularly with the change towards the Paris Agreement of a more voluntary approach and recognizing that governments aren't necessarily the ones who are going to do all the work or even best place to do all the work. The role of cities has really come up the agenda and a lot of cities have really taken centre stage, even when their national governments aren't taking, taking up the mantle. We're looking to have Leo Horn Pathanatai from the World Resources Institute and a professor of practice with us at SOAS, who's going to speak to us about the role of cities within cop Leo. Feel free to share your screen. Thank you Tom. Bear with me as I figure out how to do this. Can you see my screen. Oh, yeah. Just need to put on presentation. Can you see my presentation. We can just need to put on presentation mode and we're good. All right. Clicking. Okay. So full disclosure. I come to this topic with a giant bias. I'm very fond of cities spent my whole life in these six magnificent cities that you see displayed here. And I'm also a, an environmentalist and nature lover. And I feel very blessed to be in a position where I'm bringing these two passions together. The relationship between cities and our climate is story. It's complicated and it's inescapably linked in the climate story. But our villains, they are victims. They're also heroes and I would say that they're exactly the kind of heroes that we need. Cities epitomize the extractive and ecocidal tendencies of our industrial civilization wedded to fossil fuels and divorced from nature. And these are veritable externality machines and indeed climate change is an externality of the economic growth that our cities have been driving. But I don't want to dwell too much on the toxic part of this relationship. It's plain to see that when you consider that cities that only account for 3% of the Earth's surface and how just over half of the world's population drive economic output and 70% of economic output and about as much in terms of energy emissions. So as cities go, so does the climate. And there's been a lot of commentary with a pandemic about urban regression. So I just wanted to put in perspective that this trend of urbanization is not abating. The reality is that by mid-century two thirds of the global population will be living in cities representing an increment of about 2.5 billion people. And cities are also climate victims, you know, the suffering from the effects of this climate problem that they're creating, 70% of them are grappling with effects currently. And 90% of urban population is in coastal areas and low-lying Delta regions directly vulnerable to climate. We're dealing with a real taking time bomb is not just violent weather that we need to be worried about its access to food. Hundreds of millions of people live in cities that are vulnerable to food shortages in the next decade or so. So cities have a real stake in solving this problem. What gives me hope though is that this relationship is not a deterministic one. It's going to be where we are as a result of choices and paradigms of open development that are changeable. And a different urban future is not just possible, but needed. And indeed, we are seeing across the world growing examples of cities breaking that cycle. And I'll illustrate this point with reference to cities I know very well. In London, once infamous for its fog is now so green, it's been designated as a national park and is leading the way in the fight against climate change, having successfully decoupled growth from emissions. Beijing on the other hand has gone from being a cycling haven, heaven to a car clogged city and within my lifetime. So where are we today. In the news, the city is stepping up all over the world over 11,000 cities have made commitments to climate change to climate action, of which 1000 have stepped up under the race to zero to deliver act decarbonization in line with the Paris goals. So much more visibly at the table globally and international processes, their crucial roles is recognized and enshrined in the goals and languages of the Paris agreement, the SDGs. And of course the new urban agenda is very explicit about their role in addressing global challenges. We are in a good position of knowing what is needed. The IPCC report, special report on 1.5 revealed that all cities need to be carbon neutral by 2050. And, thankfully, it also says points out that cities with their concentration of people, economic activity and infrastructure are systems that can decarbonize and be made resilient fast enough. And actually, although it's a total order we've done the math, and their actions that can deliver 90% of reductions in cities by 2050. And here's the best part though, doing this will generate tremendous benefits that not only far outweigh the costs in pure financial terms, but also result in an economic savings tremendous economic savings I'll let you look at the numbers on the slide. And as well as creating jobs and economic opportunities for millions of people. So this is an opportunity agenda that we're looking at. Of course cities already have their hands full on dealing with a lot of other problems. 70% of city dwellers lack access to reliable core services like electricity transport housing, and almost a billion people live in informal environments. So here's the trick. Climate action won't stand a chance. If it's seen as just another competing demand on limited city resources. What we are talking about and I think this should be clear by now is nothing short of than a transformation of cities with climate action integrated as a cross cutting concern and underlying driver of urban transformation. We know what that looks like in practice, and in very practical terms, cities can be made compact clean and connected through investments in clean transport and improved building efficiency, better waste management, and all this deal tremendous economic opportunities and savings, while springing emissions way down. By making equity the entry point for for for this transformation, everybody gains. In fact, transforming cities by making them more equal is the single most effective tool that countries have at the disposal for transforming their economies, creating jobs and improving quality of life for the citizens. So here are some slides just very quickly on cop. I could do a whole picket picture just on on this, but these are the three must have at cop. There's a little play of words here the three must get here's ambition resilience finance cities are essential to deliver the success across all of these pillars. And finally, we have a lot of attention on Glasgow, but Glasgow is a successful going to be just a kickoff for a decade of action. That's where we need to see urban transformation and this will not just deliver us from the climate crisis but will give us cities that work better for all. Thank you. Many thanks Leo. That's that gives us a very positive vision and leads us into more positive affirmative action from activist activities and particularly those within the Student Union and give a chance for Ella Spence to who is the co-president for welfare and campaigns within the SOA Student Union. Talk a little bit about what, what the union's been up to, what activities and their perspectives on climate justice. Ella over to you. Thank you Tom. Okay, just bear with me. I've stopped sharing right now. Yeah, good. That working. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, perfect. All right, so yeah, like Tom said, I'm Ella. I'm the co-president for welfare and campaigns this year so I'm just here to give you a little brief overview about the kind of history and current context of the Student Union organizing around climate justice and how people can get involved if they're interested. So that's you has always been a very key way for students that saw us to mobilize around different issues including climate justice and also to hold the institution to account or push the institution when it's being a bit slow. I think that relates nicely to what Tom said about not always be able to rely on our governments or necessarily our institutions to take the necessary action. So some of the ways that we've done this in the past is bypassing you to union general motion so we declared a climate emergency in 2019 and I'll go into a little bit more of the details about this later. We passed one in support of solar so as in 2014. Also, we had a campaign called fossil free so as in 2014. And that was also passed as a union general motion. And then in 2019 20 we had the militarized so as campaign and we passed the union general motion in support of that as well. And then we looked a little bit more about what those campaigns looked like. So, so was was born out of a campaign called so as energy and climate justice society, and they wanted to launch a project around renewable energy. And the idea was that it would be like a project with multiple stakeholders who would invest in solar panels to use up the space on the roofs of so as. So it ended up being a crowd funded thing rather than the stakeholder format, but there are now 29.6 kilowatts of solar panels on the roof of the so as old building. And this generates energy and also and that energy is used to generate a yearly green fund of 2000 pounds. So this is, which can be used by anyone in the south community who wants to do a like climate justice or environment related project so if anyone is interested in applying for that. Please look out for you can type it in on the SU other, I think probably saw us website and it will come up. So I had the yeah fossil free sauce campaign in 2014, which, which made sauce be the first London University to divest from fossil fuels. Part of that was implementing a divestment plan with an ethical investment criteria, which was added to the sauce is ethical investment policy, and used to like check their investments basically. In 2019 20 we had the demilitarized sauce campaign, as I mentioned, and that emphasize the climate justice angle, as well as kind of neocolonial and imperial analysis, and kind of looking at the military as one of the most ecologically destructive forces globally. And I'm pleased to say that so I've actually not renewed their contract with the Ministry of Defense this year. There was a climate emergency motion in 2014, and that declared yeah climate and ecological emergency. And the framing of that was to acknowledge and recognize the complicity of academic institutions and producing the conditions that like enable climate change. So that's something that we're more centrally put climate justice more centrally into the SU's policy and campaigning. So that's something that we're always looking to be like held to account for ourselves as well. Let me just see. There we go those look at those other you GM Russians. So in terms of where we are now, and things that people can get involved with now we have an environment officer in as one of our 16 part time positions we're running elections at the moment so if any of your students and you would like to run for that position please do. And if not then you can contact them in future if you have projects that you want to get involved with. We also have the common ground community garden which is a communal growing space at the back of dimwitty house which is one of the main halls of residence at sauce. We have a food court, we have a herb society, we have a hiking society, and we have solar sauce as I mentioned and we used to have a cycle co-op which is really great and we want to bring that back. And we also have Jack's role who's in the SU as governments and sustainability coordinator of the student union, and he works alongside a project called Bloomsbury green thing to help make like operational changes it so as and work along so as UK to organize nationally. And you can find out more about that on the link there. Lastly, one of the things that we're looking to launch at the moment is a second divestment campaign that will kind of build on the original fossil free campaign that was it was helped run by a group called people and planet. And so the aim of the divestment campaign this time would be to look more closely at sources investments and people and planet specialist in border industry campaigns and things like to diverse from the border industry understanding that as a ecologically destructive force as well as one that is like very violent and harmful. And so a part of that would be to adopt a publicly available ethical investment policy exclude border industry companies from their investments and fully divest from current investments in border companies within three years. So if you're interested in getting involved with that or finding out other ways of getting involved with the student union, please feel free to reach out to me. And that is a picture of the previous campaign from 2014. And that's all for me I have no idea what the time my timing was like. Thanks a lot Ella and do get to encourage people to look up the student union website to see the different campaigns there and the contacts that she mentioned as well they're all available online. Moving into some more exciting areas, I hope, and one of the things that characterizes so as is its interdisciplinary approaches and multiple disciplines and regional perspectives, as will be presenting tomorrow from some of our regional partners but Angela MP professor in the music department of music here is going to talk to us about green musicology and its relationship with climate change. I will stop that for a minute is it can you can you hear me. Okay. All right. So I'm going to start with a little clip. So this is a clip of African painted read frogs that I recorded many years ago in South Africa, which is my home. And today when I listen to it I'm immediately transported to the light to the smell and the feel of the place and to memories of familiar relationships and to assemblage of random random experiences. And I bring this example here to illustrate how sound is profoundly implicated in the way that we experience our world. Through start those sound is ephemeral intangible. It is its enveloping effective character that makes us especially aware of proximity connectedness context. This is a science at a particular role in our social, economic and political worlds. So in this presentation I address the contribution of environmental arts and humanities to the cop 26 agenda, bringing a cultural angle to our considerations of climate issues, education, public awareness raising, as well as to inclusive climate action, equity, and justice. And I'm not keeping up with my six, my 20 seconds here. So just to go back to the previous one. So environmental humanities for those who don't know is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that brings the insights and approaches of the humanities centered on questions of meaning value and ethics to bear on some of the growing challenges of our time. The field is grounded in the growing recognition that diverse human understandings about and activities in the environment. Oops. Sorry, are critical factors in making sense of and responsibly inhabiting a dynamic more than human world. Visual arts are an important historical chronicle of how people have seen the world and their place in it, whether represented as parts of nature, or simply representing nature as something separate. And art and science were often one in the same in the history, in history, artists were key players in Islamic architecture for instance, and in particular observations and biomimicry of natural forms was instrumental in the development of mathematics and medicine. And we can say the same for European 16th century, 16th century botanical illustrations. Music demonstrates similar tendencies through its history. And the world is full of examples of aesthetic practices based on the sounds of wind animals and insects and sounding out becomes a way to interact with or reflect on or assume nature's power through performance. Two movements on on natural sounds emulate from the biological sciences in the 1960s that are worth mentioning here. Rachel Carson Silent Spring in 1962, which is a study of the harmful effects of synthetic pesticides produced a new way of looking at natural landscapes. Oh, see, sorry. And sound as barometers of environmental health. And the other was Bernie Krause, who was an eco acoustics person. A second thing to consider was this album of some songs of the humpback whale, which became, I'm sorry this is going way too fast for me I might have to stop it. How do I do that. All right, let's just carry on then. So as in 2011, we put on a we hosted an end conference called listening for a change, which marked the beginning of eco musicology in the UK. We looked at species endangerment and its effect on the music in music instruments. We looked at the importance of historical recordings and what that says about people in place and changing environments. We looked at indigenous environmentalisms and the role of music in indigenous movements. And we also looked at action by by musicians and music industry. Since then, there's been a plethora of recordings, excuse me, of publications, articles and conferences on eco musicology with a specific focus on on climate change. And these are brought important case based studies to to our consideration of cultural entanglements between nature and identity. We've also made activism and academic citizenship an important part of what we do and looking at how to make ethnography count and how to ensure that our work flows into policy and practice. Some of the challenges are this idea of kind of epistemic dissonances how to work across disciplines and to find ways to speak across those disciplines. How to how to deal with climate politics and co-produce knowledge in ways that are equitable and how to retain the integrity of our own disciplines while working across across disciplines at the same time. And my own research looks at traditional phenological knowledge, and that is the, the, the knowledge of indigenous people or local peoples of animals and birds in early warning systems. I've been working in Namibia collecting songs language classification systems related to birds and looking at ways in which these operated through through time as early warning systems in ways that people have adapted to hyper arid environments. And I'll give you just a quickly, just a little example of that. All right, so more recently, I've started to collaborate with on ethologists and conservationists to to develop a project that we refer to as remote and intimate sensing. What I'm doing is we can matching ethno on logical knowledge as it's in embodied in songs and stories and rituals with satellite tracking systems of flyways, asking a whole range of questions about how the coalition of that knowledge might lead towards better understanding of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. And one of the things that we do in the department through our cultural industries program is partnering more with the with the public sector. This is impossible. And one of the organizations to be working with is Julie's bicycle, which is a fantastic organization that is that is monitoring the carbon footprint of the music industry in the UK, and has come with up with a toolkit to try and direct public organizations on how to recycle and and manage their companies more effectively. So just finally, I just look forward to the development of environmental humanities that so as we see the beginning of that, and look forward to exploring vigorous interdisciplinary partnerships in embracing and so as is decolonizing impetus to guide our research and teaching on inclusive climate action equity and justice, and to benefiting from networks and contacts to ensure a more effective flow of our knowledge into policy and practice. Sorry. The problem is quite a quite a challenge to race race against the petric. Sorry about that. Yeah. No, no, it was fascinating. I don't I speak for myself certainly that it makes my own research sound rather dry and boring. So it's really inspiring and fascinating. Thank you. Next speaker Palavi Roy is going to works with the anti corruption evidence consortium, a major research consortium in so as it's going to talk a little bit about the governance underpinnings of climate change and of climate action, but also hopefully with a anti corruption lens and what they've learned from their research, linking anti corruption and climate change. Palavi, all yours. We can't hear you. Yes, yes, yes, here we go. I'm sticking but yes this is vineyards from research that we've conducted across sectors and countries, where we actually had to dovetail anti corruption policy with issues of climate justice so that's what we're going to present and for some reason. This is not moving according to petra kucha but we'll just hasn't moved it hasn't moved. It hasn't just right just right right arrow it and kick it kick it forward. Right. Right. Okay. So how is transition linked to the principles of governance. Any transition certainly be the green transition is essentially about changing distributive rights it's about who's winning who's losing, and you have to collate and make trade offs and therefore anything that's about distributive justice anything that's about distribution changing means a distribution means that there is a need for the government mechanism and we're back to Patrick which I thank goodness. This this bit focuses on the work in Nigeria and everybody has heard about you know the Niger Delta problem it's supposed to be intractable. Most aware of the issues of oil spills and excess is committed by the oil big oil in the Niger Delta. But interestingly there is this this industry called artisanal oil refining, which actually is intensely employment generating it's completely legal it's a radar. It's not supported by the government, but despite the terminology artisanal despite it being illegal and under the radar. It actually provides a lot of employment it's very organized and you know even uses some fairly medium technologies. Well, it has to be said, this is extremely polluting it has held externalities all our speakers have spoken about the externalities of climate change, and fossil fuel induced climate change this is this is no exception. The Nigerian government has tried amnesty has tried heavy handed violence, but neither carrot nor stick has worked and why the salaries are extremely high you know the chart was missed but the average artisanal worker on this much as somebody in the Nigerian government that that says a lot. But then why does the community still persist with these kinds of activities around it doesn't benefit the community in any way it's criminalized. But again, community members actually find gainful employment and this is an incredible insight fossil fuels big oil has destroyed traditional livelihoods but the irony here is that the community is now able to find some gainful and no other formal employment is available in these localities through stealing that same fossil fuels fossil fuel is actually linked to their livelihood sustainable or not. This is something that keeps their home fires burning and that's that's that's an important policy inside. So this is what we call network corruption. Everybody benefits from it. Nobody wants to be the whistleblower nobody wants to stop it, because I am not going to monitor someone else because that someone else is also part of my, my network. This is something from so called stealing but it's not, and it fulfills a very important demand in Nigeria is probably the most football crazy country in the world and I want to make sure that my generator and this this photograph shows that my generator is actually able to run and I will buy diesel produced in that so this is a criminal artisan oil refinery fuel for cooking is also a great source of demand also for you know petrol for cars. So it's not something that we can we can stop and completely do away with you can you can criminalize it. You can enforce more on it. So one strategy as we said is to be linked demand solar panels. mitigation mitigation in what sense provide basic health care services for the health pollution air and water externalities that are afforded. And the other is of course provide remunerative livelihood that again dealings from having to work in those a why associated activities. So the insight here is that top down enforcement of more whistle blowing of more enforcement and punishment is not going to work. Decarbonizing criminalizing is actually not doing justice, we need to dovetail this anti corruption and climate justice in the same package and that's that's essentially what our research in the 90 delta showed the Nigerian power sector seems not to mirror some of the issues of climate justice that we might think about, but here's why it does we realize that the issue of corruption is intractable. It actually affects, because there is absolutely no supply in the Nigerian power sector which was recently privatized SMEs are hugely vulnerable, and they're close to the point of shutting down what do they do. They run these large diesel generators with very badly bad quality diesel, but they have to keep running. Now do you then say no more access to diesel. Well, not again, the policy here again was suggestion was dealing from the grid. Let's start 20 mg embedded plants disaggregated the policy architecture exists through CNG now that might not seem conventionally green, but given the baseline Nigeria self generation is one of the highest in the world, and most of it is to very very highly polluting diesel. Given that baseline, even CNG while we wait for solar technology and storage to improve is actually a huge improvement. Now the next step for this research is actually, how do you design the finance and finances at the heart of it, everybody talked about it, but how do you design finance without that getting captured. Some vulnerable countries including Bangladesh have seen the financing portion financing by being cut down because of corruption because donors and convinced that that the finance won't be used for other other reasons and we do have a very excellent framework for finance and it's ambitious, and it's necessary, but we need to develop according to local context, the financing mechanism, and we need to develop in a way that that finance is actually not captured. And that's why this issue of climate justice and the just transition is very very closely linked to anti corruption policy. For instance, the social benefits of creating climate resilient infrastructure is not immediately evident till the extreme event hasn't happened. Till that happens, what actually becomes more popular is I'm going to build infrastructure and provide contracts to my political patrons or I'm going to actually capture. Now one one antidote to that was supposed to be community monitoring, and even that to improve transparency and accountability, and even that isn't very successful because usually it becomes a big box exercise because nobody's interested the community's not interested monitoring doesn't happen very short equality infrastructure for for adaptation actually gets constructed. Our research in Bangladesh on climate change infrastructure actually showed that to do this, you have to involve relatively powerful members of the local community who have incentive to monitor do or use do or use infrastructure as embankments which can be roads, cyclone shelters which can be schools, and then community monitoring is actually effective so you know our research actually addresses some of the key concerns of COP 26 like community involvement finance for adaptation, political prioritization for adaptation, but for policy to be effective in addressing these, we absolutely need to make sure that the finance solution is designed in a way that it's not captured. Now I know there was a huge lot for you to digest and there's a lot on our website, but thanks for listening. I think I'm done here. Stop sharing thanks Tom. Thanks for having brilliant. And again, you know the ace website has all manner of reports but I do, I do commend the one on corruption in climate change projects in Bangladesh. It's a really fascinating read. So, do you hunt that out. So, fantastic timekeeping everyone last but not least, I'll hand over to my colleague Ross Taplan who's going to talk about visual art at the COP she's been engaged in in art and climate change world for many years and over to you Ross. Thanks Tom. I'm Ross Taplan from the Center for Development Environment Policy in the Department for Development Studies that so as area that I'm researching is on artists from around the world who have exhibited in parallel with the climate cops and how they have communicated climate change concerns. Visual art and climate science in the work of artists focused focusing on climate change raises the question. How have the cultural voices of artists of climate cops informed perceptions, communications and knowledge of climate change concerns and knowledge of concerns with regard to their own countries. The slide here shows Argentinian artist Thomas Saraceno's work at Copenhagen's COP 15. For artists who have exhibited at cops, their art is an exploratory and creative intervention into the political and attempt to influence where other paths have been blocked. Nigerian artist Bright Ugo Chukko aka also exhibited at COP 15. As an African artist he is interested in exploring water in ways that examine global human climate change and environmental issues. Gad Will Paris based street artists installation of 140 acrylic colourful animals which sailed up the same for COP 21 was called a Noah's Ark for climate. They're intended as a visible reminder that many species are threatened by climate change. Also at the Paris COP, Danish artist, Danish Icelandic artist, Oliver Eliason in collaboration with many frozen scientists exhibited ice watch outside the pantheon. Ice from Greenland's melting glaciers was transported to the installation. While at the Palais de Tokyo, an American team of artists led by Laura Kurgan staged the immersive installation exit on the unprecedented numbers of migrants forced to leave their home countries with a dynamic presentation of data on climate change. Sharon Loris's deep breathing investigates the climate impacts on Australia's World Heritage List and Great Barrier Reef. In her work, the Sydney based artist explores the potential for or lack of visibility of resuscitating fragile coral ecosystems. For the Madrid COP 25 in 2019, Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn translated his very successful 2017 Venice Biennale work support made up of monumental hands rising from the Venice canal as a visual statement on rising sea level. Another American artist, Jorge Rodriguez Gerardo's mural at COP 25 in Madrid was a Pilda Perez, a Peruvian leader of Andean and Amazonian indigenous women. He chose to symbolize their land stewardship preventing carbon emissions. It was less than two weeks until COP26 starts. The art program from the COP is still evolving for the climate fringe, as artists from around outside the UK seek to find exhibition spaces to show their new work to the audience in Glasgow. Already on show for the COP is a series of paintings dipped in black paint by Glasgow based artist Ian Campbell. They were commissioned for COP26 by Christian Aid, Islamic Relief UK and Tier Fund to shine a spotlight on stories from those most vulnerable to climate change. The College of Art student Wayne Bintis, Polar Zero installation on Antarctic ice, presents air from 1765 embodied in ice cores, the same year that last week and James Watt made improvements to the steam engine and started off an industrial revolution. UK artist Dawn of Stoity documents seed banks from around the world to highlight human dependency on plant diversity for food. The installation Waterworks created by Glasgow artist Gabriella Marcella will greet COP26 attendees arriving at Anderson Drain Station adjacent to the COP. The focus is on extreme rainfall events that Glasgow is facing with climate change. US artist Joseph Rosana's installation on salmon depletion differs from other artists contributions to the upcoming COP as it closely addresses the COP goals. The message is about wild salmon being in jeopardy of extinction across the globe. Artists from Tuvalu, the Maldives and Kiribati may unfortunately not appear at this current COP, but they have drawn attention to their climate change predicaments, both at home and at recent Venice Biennales. My own climate change art practices involved analysis of the political discourse and language associated with policy responses. My recent jamboreen drawings are on the plight of rainforests in Australia and globally and will be exhibited in the climate fringe. Alback and Mangan said in regional environmental change in 2018 about Paris agreement implementation will thus be of crucial importance to raise the profile of climate change issues, not only in the negotiation rooms, but also before the vast public audience. In answer to my question about the impacts of artists cultural voices, they do appear to be contributing more and more in their own way to raising the profile of climate change. Thank you for listening. Many thanks, Ross, and we look forward to your reporting as someone who lives in Glasgow from the COP as the weeks progress. Thanks ever so much. And thank you to all the speakers. I hope you're joining me and thanking them greatly for keeping the time and for presenting their views on COP26. One final poll that I've set up and we'll put up the results too but if you look in the chat box there's a link there to a mentee link to vote on what you consider the most important outcomes of the COP26 meeting. It might not be in the list that's there but that's a that's a place to start. I will put up and share the. Oh, it's already rolling. I will share my screen if it will let me. So it's financing commitments still in the lead. But emissions commitments consistent with 1.5 degrees is moving up on the inside. Will it take the lead it's 1% away. They're neck and neck at 24% is an interesting wide range there obviously people are allowed to vote for up to three of these. And the emissions targets have taken the lead on 25% and climate justice closely following the financial commitments at 20 and 22% as someone who's working on loss and damage issues in in COP26. But to see it's only only 5% there I think it will. It's an issue that will gain traction and an increased impetus within the COP it's been something that's been conversations have been heavily closed down and there's real polarization of views between the, you know this is just about adaptation. And on the other side, this is about reparation and compensation and I think there's a real push and willingness on behalf of different parties to actually find some common ground here at COP and beyond. Okay, so we have mitigation first let's sort the problem at source, but make sure it's in a climate just way and that there's sufficient financing to do so. Just make sure everyone's voices are heard, but also recognising that we need to adapt and take action on on loss and damage to. With that, I shall stop my share and say thank you to all the participants and thank you to everyone listening we will turn these into videos or a long video and hopefully separate videos to and post them and we'll send the link to all the attendees anyone you've registered for this event. And please do come tomorrow morning 10am we have a series of speakers from across the globe, experts in climate change and indeed in COP processes do come along at 10 to the link that you were sent same link I believe. And we'll see you then at 10 o'clock. Thank you to everyone and see you tomorrow. Thanks Tom. Thanks Ray. Thank you. Thanks Tom. Thanks Tom and Ed. Thanks Tom, Ed, Sunil. Oh and Sunil, yes. In the background somewhere. Secretly making it all happen. Thank you so much. And yeah, we'll see you tomorrow too.