 Welcome everybody, welcome online and those around the world. We are here on a Friday morning in New York after a very long week of New York Climate Week and we certainly have congratulated everybody on the resilience of being through to a Friday morning in New York Climate Week so I know how tough it is. So in this event the hidden handbrakes exposing the unseen blockers of climate and social action. It's a campaign that IID is launching in partnership and support with the Generation Foundation at which Grace is here from Generation Foundation. Thank you very much. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about hidden handbrakes and what it means and why we're using it. And I know for a US audience may not use the word handbrake, you might use emergency brake or parking brake or so, but you get the idea this is something that is holding back action on climate change that we don't necessarily see or talk about very much, but it's like deep code in rules or legal structures or practices that we all know in our day-to-day lives that are holding back climate action but we don't normally talk about. I want to give some examples and we're going to be using our discussion with the panel today to talk about that. So we know that the world is not on track for 1.5. I think that's really been a key feature of this week. The latest calculations, depending on who you look at, we're talking about 2.7 or 2.5 or certainly a number that threatens humanity. So we need to look at and answer the question of, well, why aren't we going fast enough in tackling climate change? Why are the emissions coming down? And are we sure that we're doing everything that we can to remove the blockers? And I want to just give some examples of those blockers which would suggest we're probably not. So I'm not necessarily sure how many people are aware of investor-state dispute settlements, for example. So there are over 2,500 trade treaties around the world that give protection to investors in fossil fuels. These are bilateral trade treaties or multilateral trade treaties. And so this idea, for example, of stranded assets that we've tended to talk about over the years is really undermined by the fact that the investors in coal, for example, or in other fossil fuels, have their investments protected by legal agreements that there are in many, many countries. So the stranded assets component really doesn't exist quite the way that we were hoping. So just to give you a sense of the scale of that, there's about 340 billion US dollars of exposure for a country around the world if you were to put ambitious climate policies in place because the investors claim that their assets and asset value is being undermined. And the reality is now that you see fossil fuel companies and fossil fuel investors taking governments to court because the value of their investments has been undermined by ambitious climate policy. So we know for a fact that governments are saying, well, why are we really doing this if we know that we're going to spend time in court and have to pay our billions of dollars. So we don't necessarily talk about this a lot, but actually if you're a government wanting to put in ambitious climate policies in place, this is a real hidden handbrake. And just a few others, you know, we don't actually talk very much about subsidies beyond fossil fuels. Lots of people know about the debate about fossil fuel subsidies, but there are over a trillion in subsidies supporting climate bad action in other areas. And here we're talking about materials, we're talking about agriculture and so on. Some of them for very good reasons to support production and support and help people in poverty, but actually, are we really right in getting that balance correct of that level of support to subsidies? All the fact that the kind of bureaucracy that we have around permitting and procurement rules often means that innovations that we have towards net zero can't get into reality or scale for a decade. And that this really lengthy legal and procurement process is creating a significant blocker. And then we're going to be talking to John Paul later about the sovereign debt crisis. And I know there's a lot of people talking about sovereign debt now, but in the period between 2016 and 2020, small island developing states received 1.5 billion US dollars to help tackle climate change. And at the same time, they paid 26.6 billion dollars in debt service repayments. And so you're in a situation where the countries that are really on the front line of climate action are paying way more back to rich countries and to banks, many in the U.S. or in Europe than they're receiving an action on climate change. Is this really right? And I think we would say in this process of unveiling hidden handbrakes, we need to talk about these things. We need to unearth them. We need to be ready to act on them. But if we don't know them and they're not widely discussed then, that is easy. So that's really the goal of this campaign. I don't come on too long. I want to just, before we move on to the panel discussions, just say that we're launching the platform for hidden handbrakes today. You have postcards on your screen that allows you to also go to the platform anybody can come on, talk about their experience of a hidden handbrake. You can also search for hidden handbrakes by region, category or impact area. And then we can begin discussions together about how to unearth them and tackle. So please do use this opportunity to share information with your friends and your networks and say, look, if you've got these hidden handbrakes and you know about them in your professional life, please, can we begin to talk about it? Some of them may be tricky. Some of them may be deeply boring. But nonetheless, these are the really things that are maturing now. Right. Over to the panel. And we hope our online audience can hear us clearly. Please let us know. All good. Excellent. So I have the pleasure of welcoming Grace Eddie, who is the director of the Generation Foundation. Previously, Grace worked for JP Morgan, one of those banks, frankly, that is part of the problem in holding the debt. But we'll come on to talk about that. John Paul Adam, director of policy monitoring and advocacy at the office of the special advisor on Africa at the United Nations Secretariat, but has held a whole wide variety of positions, including very senior within the Republic of the Seychelles and has been very active on managing sovereign debt. And also to Elena Pavese, who is leading on environment for Susano. And for those of you who don't know Susano, one of the world's biggest paper and pulp companies, the biggest in Latin America. But very curiously for me, you were also the director of the World Animal Protection in Brazil and also director of Corporate Relations for Conservation International. So really curious to see from the perspective of sustainability in a big paper and pulp company what your experience is of the handbrakes holding back the climate action. So Grace, let me start with you. What about this hidden handbrakes notion resonates with you and why is the Generation Foundation being key to partner with us? I'm sorry, I should have done this. I don't know how well anything knows the Generation Foundation, but we are with the philanthropic arm of Generation Investment Management, which is a pure place, sustainable investment manager that was established by Al Gore and David Blood in 2004. And the Foundation was set up at the same time with the goal of tackling climate change and issues of inequality, but using the investment system as a lever for that change and creating a sustainable economic system. And we've done that in various ways through time, but you mentioned deeply boring. And one of the things that we have the luxury of doing is funding some of the stuff that's really not particularly sexy or exciting because we don't have to fundraise to get the benefit of being funded by the profitability of the asset manager. And we could go and fund exciting stuff, but our sense is that there is a lot of funding and support to things that are kind of in the public eye. This really resonated with us because our sense is also that some of the things that are most important are not the things that get the most light or the most kind of attention. And so identifying those kind of systematically and democratizing this process as well, you know, reaching out to people who are experts in their field to tell us, you know, what is the thing that's kind of standing in the way is really hugely valuable because it gives us a chance to identify what we might want to fund in the future or what we want to highlight or want to highlight to other funders, which may not get any attention that it deserves. So we're hugely supportive of the amazing work you guys have been doing so far. I'm really excited to see, I guess, the handbrake that everybody else comes out with as well. Great. Thank you very much, John Paul. Let me turn to you. You are somebody within your career has worked on the issues of debt extensively and still do. I wonder if you can just give us some insights as to what you see as some of the key fund breaks in terms of that. Well, absolutely. And I think the debt has obviously been thrown a lot and working currently in the development space, you know, some of you have been here before, trying to solve it behind the issue for a country that's highly indebted for countries where there's some debt, right? We're still back at square one, right? Or some people will say square one. And I think one of the fundamental reasons for that is the climate crisis, because countries are, you know, are some issues sometimes in the borrowing in terms of how that's managed, but overall countries are having to spend more, and particularly vulnerable countries, countries in Africa, small and developing states, I mean, to spend more just to keep the lights on, just to essentially operate on a current basis and unnecessary investing for the future. So in one of my immediate previous role, I was working in the Economic Commission for Africa based on that, et cetera. And we saw that when an African country is hit by a natural disaster, they will often be spending 10, 15% of their budgets, just on one reaction to a natural disaster. And on climate, the cost of climate change annually is expected on average to be 5% of GDP for African countries by 2030. But for some countries, particularly those in the Sahel, which are almost already at one degree of war and warming is not equal, so certain areas that are really vulnerable at the Sahel, they already have one degree of war above pre-industrial averages. And that translates into better costs. Their cost of climate on GDP is 15%. So all of this spending that's having to be done directly on climate is not investment, it's reaction. And at the same time, African countries, 57% of African countries are spending more on debt than they are on cost care, for example. So the debt payments are one of the biggest barriers for countries to be able to actually mobilize their own resources to invest in climate action. And there are some solutions that are being pulled forward. One of the main ones would be climate resilience causes, sometimes called hurricane causes, which would allow debt to be frozen in the event of a disaster. We've also been advocating, for example, for countries to be able to do debt swaps, where they swap their existing debt, and either have some of that debt annulled or canceled, and in return, they agree to use what they would be investing in, or they refuse to use the pay-the-debt to invest in climate action. Thank you very much, Jopor. Elena, let me turn to you. You've been leading efforts then in a big corporate to tackle climate change. And I wonder what you're seeing as some of the barriers to faster action, some of maybe the hidden handbrakes from your perspective. Sure. Just before I introduce myself and Susan, so you know where I'm coming from and in the elements I bring to this discussion. So I'm from Brazil, and I'm based in Brazil. Susan is the world leader on hardwood pope. So basically, we grow our characters to produce pope and paper, and our products reach over 2 million people in the world. So if you've been to the toilet today and you use toilet paper, there's a 40% chance that it was produced from our pope. So we are global. And there's a lot of misconception in the forestry sector that we're chopping the Amazon to produce paper. That's not true. We plant every tree that we harvest. So there's one of the hidden breaks for the sectors, those misconceptions, you know, how business operate. And coming from a country that was so dynamic and so complex reality, there are a lot of challenges that we face on the ground. So one of them, for instance, is that there is a lot of, we still need to close the enforcement gap. And we still need to deal with lack of political willingness to fight climate change or fight deforestation in countries like Brazil. When you go to the ground as like in Brazil, there's a really good legislation. It's one of the most advanced in the country. But when you go to the ground and you go to places where there is deforestation happening, there's the total absence of institutions there. You know, it's really difficult to enforce. It's a huge country. It's a continental country. And a lot of that happens because of a lack of political willingness. So in previous governments, the budget for the environment minister was the smallest in the past 21 years. So it was not prioritized. And then it's not reaching the ground. So this is one of the challenges that all the stakeholders that operate in the country face. The other thing is how we can bring communities to the table, you know. We operate in very rural areas, very small cities and communities. And we need to bring those stakeholders to the table because they play a role in protecting forests and protecting climate. And their role is still not well understood. And we need to help incentivizing them to really act as stewards of nature. But as we say in Brazil, those people are selling lunch to buy dinner, you know. They're really struggling. So how can we incentivize those communities? And I'll give you an example of how we're doing that. We have a target, a long-term target, at Suzana that we're building an ecological corridor of 500,000 hectares. So it's three biomes, three, you know, most threatened biomes. Amazon, Atlantic Forest and Cerrado. We're connecting 9,000 fragments of forest. And we cannot do this alone. So we are bringing these local communities to the table to work with us as an implementing, you know, agents of these corridors. And by doing that, we are lifting these people out of poverty and meeting our other targets that we have. That's to lift 200s. Yeah. It's to lift 200,000 people out of poverty. So businesses need to work with those stakeholders to really tackle, you know, climate crisis, environmental crisis, and to do our work. And to finalize a reflection for all of us. And this is not just, you know, a challenge that business faced by I think everyone as a global community, they're really trying to deal with the crisis. How do we make sure that everything that we're discussing here reach the people that are outside this group? You know, this is like a small group of people that are aware of the problem and are trying to find solutions. But without the engagement of people that are outside this group, everywhere in the world, we will not be able to achieve that. So the platform we're launching today is really welcome because we really need this type of campaigns to really communicate the problem to people outside this group and sensibilize them so they can really take action. Thank you. And the point about finding a way to reach the kind of wider community is very much why we're launching the hidden handbrakes. And I think even looking at those who've registered to be part of the online audience, the breadth of people coming from different parts of the world, different stakeholder sets, and general public being part of this is really important to see. And one of the big departures, I think, from events that we've had during New York Climate Week to have that sense of breadth, but the question comes, I'm going to go back to Grace a little bit on the investment side, is how is it that we can actively communicate something like the balance between fiduciary duty and the kind of risk management dimensions associated with pension funds and the need to be able to take risks in the climate space and so on. But I know this is something that you work on a little bit. Can you just reflect on how you can communicate something that is in some ways quite so arcane and deep within financial regulations with a global audience that says, well, hold on a minute, are we really sure those financial regulations are now working for us? Yeah, and I don't think... I think that question of how to communicate it effectively is when we are 100% still grappling with, you know, it is hard to get people excited. Sorry. It is hard to get people excited about fiduciary duty. I have been trying for a good few years now, but in order to get what we have seen actually recently and in this climate week especially, we wrote a 600-page paper on the legal framework for impact, which is about mainstreaming impact investments. So understanding of impact for not just small, little organizations, but for the mainstream sources of capital around the world. And surprisingly, not a huge number of people read that paper. And we were shocked about that, and we did a lot of policy work on the follow-up, but I thought investors will get this is so important. And then we started, we realized that, no, perhaps we need to do a bit more work on it. But in the last year because of the headwinds in terms of the investment community acting on climate, especially in the U.S., but all around the world, we actually have seen an uptick in inbound interest. We started to get, you know, we've had an event kind of double over-subscribed talking about fiduciary duties. At climate week, and I think as we start to see these challenges really, these people head on and affect their real jobs and affect their personal lives, people are more open to talking about the less sexy stuff. And that gives me a lot of hope because I would be interested if there are ways to make this interesting to the broad audience that we're not thinking about, but certainly putting out a paper and just leaving it there. Difficult. Grace, can I challenge you to say, we work on my audience of people, general public as well and most around the world, coming into this topic, you maybe. Can you try and describe to them what fiduciary duty is why it's so important for us? I can certainly try. So investors have an obligation to act on the best interests of their beneficiaries. And so fiduciary duty used to be used, you know, 10 years ago, it used to be used as the reason why investors couldn't think, don't need to think about climate change. My investors need to think about climate change. Investors would say, oh, that's really nice. I would love to talk about that, but unfortunately, I've got a fiduciary duty to my clients and so I can't think about climate. I can't consider these things. I have to focus just on what's material. And ultimately, we were able to turn that on its head because investors have to consider all the material risks and opportunities in their investment process. And in doing so, they cannot just exclude environmental and social and governance factors because they seem kind of ethical and out there. You know, they are material risks to their investment process and so not only is it an argument that doesn't work, to say you can't consider it, they have a legal duty to do so. And so that was proven and has been kind of borne out. The US is a special case and it's challenging here, but everywhere in the world this has been not just proven, but embedded into legal frameworks over the last 10 years. And the work we're doing now is to try to step up one level beyond that, right, and to help people recognize that they need to incorporate not just the effect of sustainability factors on their investments, but the impact of their investments on the world at large. And so that's the work that we're doing now. And there is a great 300 HP birthday. Great, John Paul, let me come to you again. And we know that the sovereign debt, a lot of sovereign debt is part of multilateral development banks. It's related to bilateral debt that may have been a hangover from some colonial history and so on. But also there's a lot of debt that countries are holding that is the creditors are big banks. They're big banks in the US and in the UK or in Europe and also significantly now in China. But what is it then about the banking system that is essentially acknowledging that those debts are preventing the kind of things, the action on climate change? And I think we can do to influence those banks in actually being able to either be struck to the debt or change that and so on, when this is not something that necessarily is high up on their agenda. Great, thanks. And maybe just to build on the question of, an entry point for the point of fiduciary, I'm not next but on this one. I haven't yet read the 600 page paper, but the UN also produces many 600 page reports as well. And I think they're necessary but it's important so that we can summarize them and make them accessible. One of the issues in the context of this sort of, not fiduciary, but in terms of how bankers, both in the private sector and even in the development space is how they use what's called debt sustainability analysis. And one of the biggest issues is the primary aspect and it's related to this issue of fiduciary is the primary entry point is ability to pay and not necessarily overall sustainability of the action. So it's not necessarily how effective, for example, even a loan will be in terms of building kind of resilience, it's how can you pay that loan. And there are even circumstances, countries unfortunately that I prefer not to mention their names, where for example countries restructured their debt, refinanced their debt and their repayments were linked to them exploiting fossil fuel resources. So they knew that at certain points in the future there will be revenues coming in from natural gas or from oil and linking the loan that they are issuing to the revenues that are going to come from those fossil fuels. And it creates a multiple level of challenges in terms of being able to finance, that country being able to finance their development. Now I think in terms of the way banks and other lenders and clean private and also official lenders, I think there's actually a better understanding but like in climate change as well, how you deal with potential credit risk and how you deal with risk of default is actually a mutually beneficial conversation. And what's happened, we've had a number of African, about five African countries have applied on the common framework, essentially they're countries that are expected to default. The largest number of countries that have high credit risk meaning that are likely to default in the next 12 months are mostly African countries. And part of this is as well as that African countries to fill the financing gap because the amount of official development finance was limited. So in the good times and five, six years ago pre-COVID, African countries were doing pretty well. So the countries that were doing a little bit better, they went to the market, they borrowed sometimes at relatively high interest rates but nowhere near as high as now. And those debts are now coming due to a lot of my bullet payments in 2024 and this is the crisis that we now face and these countries don't have the money to pay. But creditors, so these five countries that have gone to the common framework right now, essentially they don't have any money to invest in domestic climate action. These countries also, while during this period of negotiation they're being paid, but at what cost to the country? Whereas if you had climate resilient debt clauses that were in every contract, you'd have an orderly manner when, for example, an event happens, Libya has just been hit, it's terrible. Flats, for example, and you have a pause in repayments. And often you will get back to normality in terms of being able to start repayment better because it's steadily moving. Also in terms of the opportunity for debt swaps, it's a way that countries could avoid default because sometimes countries need that space now and once you're allowed for that investment to happen, they can actually unleash much better, unlock more capacity to repay in the long-term by investing, I mean, one particular energy to invest in energy, you actually create an accelerator for your economy and therefore the ability to repay will be vastly improved. So we're at a particular moment where debt is a big barrier and unless we can reduce debts now, then the ability to repay in the future will be further gone. Thank you. So one of those hidden handbrakes then becomes essentially the way debt sustainability analysis is currently done and currently structured, which again is one of those really kind of, you know, deeply technical things, but fundamentally is really linked to the ability to start all of our assets. Basically climate change is inadequately reflected in that sustainability analysis, correct me? Okay, thank you. And then before we turn to questions for the audience in the room or online, coming very soon, I want to just ask you, I mean, Elena, you know, we see a lot of companies now saying that well, we're going to sign up to science-based targets or we've just been accepted onto the science-based target scheme and so on, but I know a lot of companies that are not on that scheme or equally have been trying hard, but I wonder from your perspective, what you see is some of the breaks that there are in being able to be aligned with science-based targets. Yeah, science-based targets and all the other initiatives that are coming globally like TNFT and all of the others. We have privileged that we are part of the global community and we can follow those trends and we can participate in those initiatives. So for instance, we are a member of the TNFT task force, so we'll be following these initiatives closely. But other companies that are on the ground, they are owned by these countries, particularly the developing countries, they don't have this possibility. So understanding how they can translate all those initiatives, all those metrics into their business and getting appropriate data to comply is a challenge. So they operate in a really vast territory and it's a very complex scenario, as I said. So having access to data and understanding how can they reflect everything they are doing to those metrics is a big challenge for companies. So in our case, we are working really hard with our supply chain to help other companies that work together with Susan or are part of providing services to us to educate them and to transfer all the knowledge we are gaining from being part of those initiatives to the supply chain. But this is a big challenge for companies in developing countries how they can understand what's required and have the data and have the knowledge to comply. Thank you. Should we go to questions? I wonder if we can see them up on the screen here. Here we go. Okay. Let's see what we can pick out. So these questions are coming in from the room and from around the world. Let's see what we can find. John Paul, you've mentioned debt swaps and pauses in repayments. Are they still just concepts for solutions or have you actually seen them? Oh, well, the good news is they actually are moving. So, for example, on climate and Brazilian debt clauses and we say the UK government is actually taking the lead. They have said that in their bilateral debt they include them. The World Bank have said they would do so in certain instances, particularly from mobile countries. France is moving in that direction. But the challenge remains. So these clauses came about from this idea what was called hurricane clauses. Now, hurricanes are easy to deal with in debt because they're very clear when they happen. But there are a lot of other climate events that are harder to measure in the financial space, things like droughts. And there is still a conversation happening on precisely the type of legal language and maybe a little more harmonization around the language for all of those issues. And there are there is still a very low number of partners that are involved in debt that are using them. And there is still a very low number of partners that are involved in debt that are using them. So we need in my opinion the leadings to be taken by the IMF by the World Bank. If they come across the board I think there will be a follow-up from other development minded landers and hopefully the private sector will follow. And I think there is scope for the private sector to do so. Debt swaps, there's a lot of good examples. So when I was in the session of government I did a debt swap in 2015 and we bought back a portion of our debt which was about 7% interest. We financed it at less than 2% and used the savings to put it to a fund for marine conservation and Seychelles now has 30% of its marine space under protection. And it's the largest in the ocean so it's had quite a very positive impact. And those funds are guaranteed up until 2035 so it's significant funding over a period of time. More recently you had very large scale debt swaps Ecuador did a debt swap for over a billion US dollars creating funding for the Granthagos Islands and there are in Africa Gabon did one and I think this includes one. There is a need however for this to be better framed within the development architecture. The debt swaps are still seen as one of opportunities here and there whereas in my view they could systematically be a policy instrument that are used by development institutions how countries manage their debt. Thank you and I think one of the notes that we had in something to talk about is hand breaks as people coming forward and talking about their experiences of hand breaks and one that resonated was the way software and credit rating were set and I know everybody here probably knows about credit ratings and it has a significant impact if you want to get out of mortgage or you want to loan the same with countries and the issue there is of course if you're a poorer country or considered to be more risky then your credit rating goes down and the amount that you can borrow or the level that you can borrow is up and one of the hidden hand breaks that was raised of course is how that gets set and the actual subjectivity in the system and equally somebody was talking to us about the fact that many of those are set in gentlemen's clubs in London, certainly with cigars saying well what do you think about the risks in this place and so now I'm not going to comment on how true this is but the set is that there is a kind of a white man subjectivity that has a huge impact on the borrowing rates of communities in Africa is one of the things that was raised certainly in the African climate summit but I just wonder whether anybody wants to briefly reflect on that one or should we move on let's move on actually President Ruto in particular emphasized this point and absolutely the issue is the credit rating is very few of them actually have boots on the ground in Africa for example and the solutions that have been put forward obviously and these have been used in the developed world so for example in the EU when a country was seen as more risky when new countries came into the EU credit enhancements were used to encourage investment in those regions you create confidence and then after that you don't need the enhancement and I think that's the way forward very good thank you let's take a few of these others maybe let's highlight where are the cracks or the strains in some of these hamlet breaks that we can exploit and experiment how can we better inform the public around this I suppose the other one I'm interested is have you seen any evidence here during the UNGA or during the climate ambition summit that there's any real sense that we're going to get to grips with some of these things or are we just seeing the status quo being reinforced so as we have several options can I think can I go back to that inform the public please that's something I've been reflecting a lot I've been here in New York for a week I've been walking a lot in the streets and I'm wondering does these people know what's going on you know how can we really inform them and translate all of this to them so you know we have like institutions they're really communicating to the public all the time so companies they reach billions billions of people why don't we use our marketing machines to really communicate to those people what's going on instead of just selling others you know this is a provocation but I really need to think about taking responsibility that we're really interacting with people every day and you know we really need to use that to influence people towards a positive outcome governments as well you know let's have campaigns, communication campaigns and organizations like NGOs to really communicate to the public and not just talk about the problem people are tired of listening to problems they you know don't listen anymore because there's too many problems in the world so let's talk about solutions what can you do as an individual to fight climate change sometimes a very small thing like don't use single use plastics but that makes a difference if we're talking about billions of people so let's talk to those people bringing solutions bringing concrete actions what you can do in your daily life to really change the reality what kind of products you know are really sustainable and just go for them so I think you know we need to use all those institutions to really communicate to the general public because they really lack on information thank you, Grace maybe let me turn to you there and say your experience of new or climate week similar to LA does you know do you get a real feeling that there is breakthrough or is it that you know similar time being having everybody says oh it's been an interesting week it's so frustrating I just wonder what your perspective is I'm going to sound like a Pollyanna because I'm always optimistic maybe in spite of very challenging circumstances but you know I've had to climb a week you know have been going for a very long time and this is the first year where I feel like I've seen I don't know if others have experienced this but there has been so much energy it feels like every minute has been filled with stuff I've seen way more of the investment community than I have in the past you know it used to be kind of I in the foundation at our organization would go to climate week and everyone else was you know kind of busy doing their day jobs and like a huge portion of our organization is here because this is where things are happening people are really motivated you know we're starting to see more but you know when we talk about the general public you know I'm not as convinced that people are engaged with it because it's really stressful and it's really you know these are big complicated challenging issues it feels too big it feels too overwhelming and I think this sort of what's nice about the hidden handbrakes is some of these things are small and sometimes kind of technical and weird but they feel more manageable because it's a barrier that you could conceivably do something about and then move on you know rather than less tackle the whole crisis at once so I'm ever optimistic happy to be brought down very good and I wonder then there's a question here about what resources are created by governments and organizations to address hidden blockers and I know Elena has mentioned marketing budgets could be put towards this as well but I also wonder whether it really is in the best interests of some of the richest governments in the world to tackle some of these things because you see in a sense that some of these rules are in place partly to protect the status quo you know they're there that have been built by a current incumbent system to protect itself partly but I wonder John Paul from what you're seeing in Africa and elsewhere do you get a sense that governments are really ready to rip some of these things out and rethink them well I think the Narobi climate summit was a moment of optimism and based on I think some very sound economic theory because if we're going to be where I've had conversations that are difficult it's not an easy topic it's high level and there is a sense of do the individual actions make difference maybe too but even at the level of Africa I think there's a narrative now that has emerged in fossil fuels have not allowed us to develop a speed that we would have liked to and when you look at the resources that are available in Africa most of the resources for critical minerals are used in batteries for example now the whole the whole transition to net zero is predicated on availability of technology in batteries 70% of these critical minerals actually in Africa and if you can put some of these value chains in Africa that's the basis of sustainable industrialization it will create jobs and it will create an acceleration in terms of development and access to many of the other benefits of development including access to energy nutrition water and sanitation all of these are interlinked and completely lost in this development conversation so I think the narrative from Nairobi is that the climate resilient investment is actually the development narrative in Africa and if we look at the history and where this is positive for the global north is that if we look we're at a moment where everyone around the world is seeing less value for the money that they're earning there's inflation, there's many things and the reality is that if we remember when at the point at which there was a big uplift in global income it corresponded with essentially the rise of China it became both a manufacturing hub but also created jobs around the world because people were producing services which was sold there the new demographic bulge is in Africa and if we can unlock that then that's a new era of prosperity that is actually going to be global but it's only going to happen if that investment flows in that direction to get the return on investment it's got to go in that direction in the first place I do sense that maybe I am also a little bit optimistic but I do sense that we are at a point where this could happen I am a little bit worried about the geopolitics but outside of the geopolitics I think in terms of the business environment in terms of what I think more people get it than ever before and more people are willing to invest in that but we do need to deal with these issues that are preventing investment from and I think we see a message up here about COP 28 and let me, I know it's one of those topics where lots of people love to talk about the fact that the COP president is also heavily embedded with a kind of state oil company that we've had COPs now in Egypt big oil producer into UAE, also big oil producer we may, I'm not exactly sure where we are with the next COP but it may be another big oil producer and I just wonder whether equally from the perspective of the kind of hidden handbrakes that we might have in our international system is the fact that we're allowing COP meetings the biggest gatherings on the planet to tackle climate change to be held and guided by countries who fundamentally still are interested in selling the product that they have become and hold them to within their economies I'm going to turn to you Elena because Brazil is on the list to host COP in two years time it's your sense of how can Brazil really break the mold and actually do something here that changes our system rather than just reinforces a status quo yeah, it's COP 30 and it will be in Paris State, we're in the Amazon and we're really looking forward to it Brazil is really preparing because there's a lot of people aiming for COP 30 as in our milestone we are aiming, you know, for a milestone we have a lot of countries that we're going to we're going to delete by 2030 and just to say that this is a nice momentum for Brazil because the environment and climate is back in the agenda we know, you know, it's not been there in the last years and Brazil is really trying to push other countries to really make bold commitments and implement international agreements like Conventional Biodiversity and the UNFCCC framework on the COP 28 this year I'm still digesting the fact that it's going to be in Dubai I think looking at the nice perspective you know, positive perspective it's an oil country that's hosting a climate discussion and hopefully we will engage to learn and we're expecting some commitments there there's a lot of skepticism around that and there's people boycotting saying I'm not going because it doesn't make sense so I'm trying to be positive and hoping to see you know, positive outcomes but let's see we have a few months to figure it out briefly, yeah because I'm from the UN the COP process is part of the UN process and I also need to defend Egypt they're not an oil producer and they were the COP 27 presidency the UN system is around countries so whoever is going to preside is going to be from a country and the question of the presidency the person is defined by the country the COP process is a sovereign thing it's designed that way and I would argue that and I'm not going to defend the COP presidency but just to say that the there's not necessarily less of those interests present in other countries that have organized the COP before it doesn't mean that those interests are less prevalent the key is and I think what civil society is doing very successfully in Africa and elsewhere there's no accountability and that's actually built into the UN process so precisely the fact that people are challenging this is a good thing and that's built into the UN process but I think not to go is a mistake because that means we are putting multilateralism aside and there is no accountability outside of the state system so we have to go, we have to put the pressure to get a result and I would say on the result because any country we don't know so Brazil I think has great credentials to host a COP there may be other countries that have less good credentials in the past that have also hosted but the key is what progress is made Egypt for example at COP 27 we no one expected we would have a particular loss and damage we had it the devil is in the detail there's still a lot of negotiations happening on but the point is that progress is possible but if no one goes or if people are not engaged in the process, progress won't happen okay, thank you point taken, we keep you positive we're going to close in a moment but I want to come to each of you just with one minute please on what would be your greatest message to the community that's here in the room and online in terms of what we could do together in the next few months that would allow us to really start to tackle some of these hidden time breaks I would say keep the momentum I agree with Grace this has been a great week a lot of people really passionate about the discussions here there's a lot of hope that this global community is really going to make a change but we need to go back and keep the momentum and continue working together let's continue interacting and looking for the next milestones to really keep pushing this agenda forward because there's really for those that are not here there's really passionately committed people here discussing solutions and discussing how can we tackle this and we need to continue this engagement and keep the momentum so we can really push the agenda forward thanks, I think for me what I find really interesting is the opportunity to link the blocks or the obstacles in dealing with climate action to real impacts on communities and I think that what I would like to see is to translate these issues that are very much global issues like that but really to make it resonate with everyone what does this mean in terms of providing access to school meals for example in developing countries or what does this mean in terms of access to energy in these countries and really focusing on delivering that and that for me is yes, it's climate action thank you I guess I think what I would hope everyone takes away from this is just a little bit of thinking about holding ourselves to account for the actual impact not just how nice something like this or how much attention it gets or how much praise we might get from whoever our stakeholders are for how exciting something is but actually really being clear that is this the action that is the best use of our resources the best use of our skills, expertise, networks at this moment because we have so little time and the issues we're facing are so urgent that we have to really be focused on the results and I think this is excellent and also just a really I think it's a really creative way of getting us to focus on those results great, thank you very much I'm just going to wrap up but I'm going to make a request to everybody called to action for those in the room and online I think the first is please do use the hashtag hidden handbrakes when you're being involved in the LinkedIn posts whatever the latest term is and because this is a campaign, this is about something that is discussing the things that we haven't been discussing and that needs to be surfaced and so please do that the second is that you've already seen in the room we've got the postcards and online you've got the links to the hidden handbrakes platform that allows you to submit your ideas, your sense of personal professional life experience of hidden handbrakes as well this is only really going to be able to be tackled if we actively surface those hidden handbrakes start to talk about them and start to act on them and that's on everybody because they are they are existing in lots of parts of our daily lives and our professional lives and also talk to your friends and your family about it I remember sitting at the dinner table with my family and my kids and saying what are you seeing as the hidden handbrakes that are stopping us on climate action it's the kind of thing that you can actually talk about around the dinner table as well because it does resonate that language allows everybody to come in including children, young people, old people whoever it might be around the table people have got a sense of what that is I think the last thing I want to encourage everybody to do is to keep staying in touch with us because this is about an opportunity to develop one of those kind of viral things that only really happens if other people take this on so it's an invitation to you, we have communications guides, we've got the opportunity to support you in developing kind of campaigns for yourselves in your countries or in your businesses and so on because this isn't something that IID or the Generation Foundation needs to kind of own and hold for ourselves, this is a platform this is an opportunity for us to take it on and I know we've already worked with Reuters a little bit in the past to help get the message out there but if there are other marketing communications agencies that are ready to help as well we'd love to hear from you.