 Good afternoon and welcome everyone. I am Maggie Chapman, member of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament, and I would like to welcome you all to the special online edition of the Festival of Politics 2021 in partnership with the Parliament's think tank, Scottish Futures Forum, of which I am a board member. This afternoon's panel is titled, Is the North to Blame for the Climate Crisis, and is held in partnership with the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. We are delighted that so many people are able to join us today, and I look forward to hearing comments and questions from you as we get into our discussion. A recent Goldsmiths University report put the global north as responsible for 92% of excess global carbon emissions. Though North America and Europe are now experiencing floods and wildfires on a new scale, it is the southern hemisphere that is bearing the brunt of flooding, droughts, famine, migration and the political unrest that comes with this. Should the North pay reparations to the climate vulnerable countries for decades of the developed worlds over consumption, and where do we stand on consumption based emissions, where largely western countries outsource production to high emitting China and India? What are the ethical and realistic financial impacts of the inequalities of the climate crisis? This panel aims to address all of these questions and much more, I'm sure, in the next hour or so, so please do stay with us. We are delighted that you are all able to join us to take part, and I would encourage you all to please use the event chat function to introduce yourselves, state in your name and your geographical location, and also to use that event chat function to pose any questions you would like the panel to respond to. We're having a little technical issue with the Q&A panel, so make sure it is the event chat panel. I would now like to introduce our three panellists. We have Dr Tijel Kanetkar, who is the Associate Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru, India. We have Mike Robinson, Chief Executive of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and Danai Kiriokku Polu, Senior Policy Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. Welcome all three. Just to set the scene a little bit, we'll have an opportunity to hear from each of our three panellists. Panellist, you will have the opportunity to speak for a few moments, and then our online audience can put questions and views to the panel throughout the event. If you would like to make a contribution, please put them into the event chat. Make sure you state your first name and where you are from this afternoon, and we'll get through as many of you as possible. I would also like to begin by asking each of our panellists what they see are the priority issues when it comes to the ethical and realistic financial impacts on the inequalities of the climate crisis. I will come first to you, Tijel, if that's okay, and then to Mike, then Danai. Tijel, over to you, please, if you would outline your thoughts. Thank you very much. Let me just very briefly speak about, I hope I'm clear. Let me just very, I think I'm having some issues with my internet, but I hope they get sorted out as this goes on. But let me just very briefly first outline an example answer to the question, is the North to blame for the climate crisis? And of course, it's very easy to give a short answer to that and say yes, but not in some sort of bizarre, conspiratorial kind of manner that is often spoken of in out liabilities like that. But even if we look at, for example, at the time of industrialization, the benefits of access to natural resources, the use of natural resources without any environmental constraints other than perhaps technological constraints that were overcome from time to time. The global north has had the opportunity to access these resources and use them without constraint and therefore has benefited from this. However, the global south has not. The process of industrialization, the out of primary sectors of production has been delayed in the global south and it still is ongoing in many parts of many countries of the global south. And so when we talk about a transition in this context today, why does the transition for the global north, for the global south, it really isn't a transition in that sense. We are transitioning, we are still in the process of the first transition into a developed modernized society. And so therefore I think in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change it was very, it was enshrined the principle of differentiation between developed and developed developing countries. The principle of common differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities is very much a part of that entire document of the convention and developed countries realize that they have to take the lead and therefore do something. But since even after this recognition and after a consensus on this recognition in the convention, there has been very little action from the global north on climate change. And this I think is where the responsibility, you know, even, even though they've had historical, they've had historical benefits of access to resources. Since 1990 when we've acknowledged the problem of climate change, even after that the action has not forthcoming. And what we've seen in the last 30 years of the climate change negotiations, constant attempt to keep pushing the goalposts further and further, you know, you have every time it is clear that the global north is not meeting its many targets, the targets are pushed further into the field. Now we have this new target of net neutrality by 2050, which is 30 years into the future and what lies behind us is the history of inaction from the global north. So yes, in that sense, I think the global north is responsible for the crisis that is there and more importantly I think is responsible for the stalemate that we are facing in terms of meaningful action for the future. So I think I missed when you said how much time we can take for our initial opening comments. So perhaps I'll stop with that this year at this point. Thank you very much T-Shell and I'm sure we'll pick up on some of those points over the next hour or so. Can I go to Mike then? Mike, what are your opening remarks, your first few minutes on this? Thanks, Maggie. Again, just for the sake of not saying yes and moving on, there's a sort of yes and no in my head in a way. I don't particularly like this principle of blame because I'm trying to focus interest on solutions but I do fully appreciate that in terms of climate justice it's very difficult not to blame the global north. Of course, I mean if you go far enough north that doesn't equate, you've got all the Inuit communities that suffer many of the same issues that the global south does too. So I think sometimes what we forget, I mean climate change to me isn't optional nor is working towards transition at home nor is helping others towards a low carbon trajectory and it's inconceivable to me that we shouldn't help those most impacted by climate change. Especially because the global north is still causing the majority of it and has historically of course and particularly since 1979 is the day I would sort of pin down as the first the world's first climate conference and so from that moment on would it felt like we were doing it on purpose at least until then we had the slight excuse that perhaps we didn't know any better. So for me, I guess the issue though is is to sort of get a bit deeper into the root of what is really the problem. I mean I'd love to say that some of it was just a lack of imagination and sort of habitual use of business as usual. But it's sort of the wrong obsessions, it's the wrong priorities and value systems over emphasising single measures, single metrics like GDP at the expense of everything else and that clearly is not very clever. It worries me how slow we are to react. I think the closest similarity to climate change is actually smog. I mean it took a very serious incident in London before the Clean Air Act, even that was four years after the incident in 1956. But smog wasn't a new issue. It had been around for centuries and if you need the evidence, if you think about where all the poor parts of cities are in the UK, they're all in the east because that was the prevailing wind direction. So if you had the money, you moved west. This was well understood to the extent that it dictated the shape of our towns and cities. So it wasn't a new phenomenon and yet it took a huge, huge effort and a disaster before something was really properly done about it. I think where we're going though, that's interesting, is not only is there sort of moral and ethical responsibility of course to tackle this, but I think there's an inevitability to around issues like litigation. You're seeing campaigns like ecocide starting to step up, which are starting to give actual teeth, legal teeth to the environment and some of the sort of points of this inequality. And I think that that means that I hope that that's sort of a wake-up bell to realise that we really need to tackle this at scale and quickly because inevitably there's going to be a future of all sorts of litigation and other issues too. So where we've got to, I think, is an inability to listen to the science, but it's also fundamentally about wealth and it's not necessarily purely about geography. There are plenty of poor people within the global north that haven't done a huge amount to bring this about. And so it is very closely correlated with wealth and the wealthiest 10% consume plenty times what the poorest 10% do and for me it is that unsustainability. And I think the other issue I'd just like to sort of put on the table is that in my view inequality is unsustainable. It's just, it's imbalancing, it isn't something that can persist in the long term and shouldn't be allowed to. And I think actually it's in everybody's best interests to tackle inequality because it's one facet of unsustainability. Thank you very much, Mike. And could I turn now to Danai? Danai, would you like to give us your initial thoughts on this? Thank you, Maggie, and thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure to be here. I think the question is, as previous speakers have highlighted, simplistic and can be answered very quickly with a yes answer. But I think in terms of going beyond that, I think we can have a more nuanced understanding of what we mean by blame because it's not a simple north-south divide, as others have highlighted. Yes, it is perhaps the biggest one and the distinction between developing and developed economies is very helpful in that sense and has been part of the convention and part of the cop language. But also we should think of it as an intergenerational issue as well. So generations, younger generations in the global north also have no responsibility of this. Perhaps they are, they have benefited by having greater economic opportunities than younger generations in the global south have. So there is an inequality there. But I think we should also see it in that way and also within country inequalities that are very strong in developed economies. So it's not just about north and south. And we should think about it in a more nuanced way. I think number two is that, yes, if there is a more responsibility and a moral responsibility by the global south because of this historic overweight in terms of having access to an economic model that has not internalised environmental cost and climate effect. Yes, there may be a moral imperative for greater action by developed economies. But there is also an economic imperative because climate change is a global issue. And we should not forget that the global south or developing economies are not only the ones least responsible for what is happening in the climate crisis, but they're also the ones least equipped to address it. And if we take a more forward looking approach and a more solutions focus approaches that the previous speaker was highlighting, then that is what should be concerning us more rather than the historic responsibility. Because if there is no support from those who have access to it and who have more resources to address it to those who don't, then there is a very high risk that these economies, these communities, these groups will resort to the same easy form of growth that the developed world has gone through to develop and to industrialise in the past. So small communities that may not have access to sustainable development opportunities may go for taking advantage of their natural resources in an unsustainable way. And that in turn is bad for everyone because it will contribute to higher emissions and the whole world will lose out of that. So it is in the economic interest of those who have those resources to support those who don't. I think it's also important to say that, yes, it is about blame that there is a cost to addressing this, but it is also an opportunity. And I think it's very much an opportunity for developing economies who are able to in a way leapfrog by designing their economic models and their growth models in a more sustainable way that they have not gone through the same development process. As the countries who are polluting and have now to mitigate their effects on climate change and their levels of emission. So they start more with a cleaner start, let's say, and I think that is an opportunity. It's also an opportunity if you think about it geographically in terms of the opportunities for renewable energy generation, for example, for building more sustainable transport systems and developed economy, private sector capital as well as development finance can make a lot of returns out of this. So it is also in their interest in that way to support mitigation efforts in that that take advantage of resources in developing economies. We should of course not also forget about the adaptation finance that is needed because even in the best case scenario of a 1.5 degree temperature increase. A lot of the communities in the global south will have to adapt will have to have will have to face higher frequency and more intense natural disasters, for example. So we can talk about that as well because it's not just about mitigation. And then I think the next question and perhaps we can move into that in the discussion is if we agree among ourselves here in the panel that yes, there is this moral and economic responsibility, then what form does this take and it can take many forms. Reparations is something that has been suggested in the event description, but there is also other formats and forms of finance that are already on the agenda that are already on the table. The climate finance support through multilateral development banks, the 100 billion commitment for climate finance that was made and has not yet been acted on, but should be. So we should also think about what is on the table and what form this should take. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dan. Thank you all for those opening thoughts. You all talked a little bit about that tension, I suppose, between blame and responsibility. And I wonder, Tishall, could you say a little bit more about, from your perspective, how do we balance those things, that distinction, because yes, there is overwhelming evidence of the disproportionate impact that the global north has had. But as Mike has said as well, blame sometimes isn't very helpful. Tishall, from your experience, how do we tease out that distinction between blame, responsibility and, I suppose, accountability? Well, I think sometimes, you know, I'm glad that this panel has much wider scope in terms of what we're here to discuss. And I agree with a lot of the things that Mike Hedlopan has said. But if you look at the general literature on climate change, unfortunately, sometimes I think we are reinventing the wheel, not looking at the entire literature on redistributive justice, et cetera, that has gone before the climate crisis was really as big as it is now. So we are not necessarily talking in terms of reparations and liability or ways when we speak of justice, right? Tire emotional leaders of justice does go much beyond simply assigning blame and asking for reparations from individual, you know, entities. And so here, and I think why I brought up the convention is because I think that balancing that you're asking about is in some sense, there's a very good intent in the convention, because you're not necessarily saying that people pay reparations, but you're saying that the global knot takes the lead. Takes the lead in what way it mitigates much faster, moves to cleaner energy systems much faster, provides support, more financial and technological support to the global south so that it can perhaps not, you know, leapfrog as the title used in the term. Leapfrog to technologies where possible. It's not always possible in my opinion. There's various reasons that I'll speak about that. But that is what it is. The language is very different from the language of blame is a language of distributive justice. I think that that is something that we need to keep at the center of understanding this. Because as much as we do, I think, realize and agree that there is, of course, inequality within nation. We also have inequality between generations, but it does matter where you are at work. The inequality between nations between the global north is overwhelmingly more than inter-country inequality. And this is shown by a lot of studies that are out there. If you take simple metric of access inequality, et cetera, within countries also, we see that north-south inequality is overwhelmed the inter-country quality. And so it does matter where you are rich. It does matter where you are poor. That is not the thing. And this inequality gets reproduced across generations that I also pointed out. So there is a reason why we have a particular manner of differentiation between developed and developing countries. And why we think about, there is a, we have also written, I have also written, for example, of net. And we think of what it means in terms of monetizing this carbon net. It is, it's not all of the carbon emission of the global north that constitute a carbon net. It is over and above a particular amount that has been produced by the global north. And this is of course, you know, it is mediated by which emissions do you consider? Like Mike said, from 1990 onwards, we've acknowledged this. I mean, before that, we had an excuse, but from 1990 onwards, it's been acknowledged that this is a problem. And so then what do you do about it from 1990 onwards? And the answer is of course nothing. And so then do we assign liability for what has happened since 1990? And at least, if not for before that. And so that becomes a question that we need to answer. And I just wonder, just, you know, one of the things that I think going forward, at least that we should check is that we do not, and I agree that this is an economic issue. When we speak of leapfrogging and new technologies to address this and the global north providing that support, it is not private capital in the global north that should profiteer from this climate crisis. And this is what will happen if we say that private capital should see this as opportunity to also help developing countries sort of leapfrog to new technologies. Because then what that means is that developing countries, citizens, consumers pay private capital in the global north to mitigate a problem that is largely responsible for. And then you have a new situation of potentially green debt because climate finance as we all know right now, a lot of it is private equity. And we do wonder whether going forward here, we are going to be faced in the global south, we are going to be faced with conditions of debt. And being beholden to technologies and royalties that we need to pay to private capital in the global north for technologies that they support, that should theoretically be in the open to. We've seen this with the vaccines that have this issue with the vaccines right now during the pandemic. How do we avoid that going forward? So more than blame, I think, can we at least check all the problems that we've had in the last 30 years? Can we check that those don't repeat and reproduce inequalities in the future? That is the least that we can do. Thank you, Tijel. Mike, I wonder if I could come to you. In your opening remarks you talked about the increased litigation discussion around ecocide and deaking litigious justice routes, I suppose. What is your view about the balance between those approaches to try and take account of the inequalities that we've been talking about and economic pressures that you've all alluded to? How do we navigate that tension? Thanks, Maggie. I think that there's a lot of answers to that, really. The first is that we, of course, overfix hate on very narrow measures often, and they are very narrow, as they keep reminding people, as I'm sure it's not news. GDP is a terrible measure, even Simon Cusnets, who invented GDP, thought that it was a bad measure of prosperity, and yet we haven't got rid of it. It's partly because it's easy to count, but the thing that people forget is what it doesn't do. What it doesn't do is it doesn't count the damage that you've created to build it. You can build GDP, but if you've ignored everything that you've done to get there, you're being very, very blinkered. I think that there's a huge pressure that comes back to this issue about systemic change and the need for quite serious value system shifts, I think. GDP is a very narrow part of the economy, which is a narrow part of society, which is a small part of the whole of the world. Yet we've turned that on its head. One of the issues is that it's far too easy to externalise the damage that we do, which basically means not be responsible for it and ignore it. I just think that if we're trying to be sustainable, and I don't think that we've ever been sustainable as a species before, so we're learning this now, but in order to be sustainable, you cannot externalise the damage that you do. You just can't. It's crazy. If you're digging a massive hole to create a mound over here at some point, you've got a really, really big hole. I do think that some of the answer to this is that systemic move away from just counting very, very narrow measures and thinking more broadly. In the litigation terms, I also think that it's just inevitable that, as things become scarcer, as we create more overt and obvious damage, there is a need to put a framework around the environment and the protection of our communities, because they're one of those externalities up until now. I think that there's going to be that inevitable pressure, which will lead ultimately undoubtedly to litigation. I think that that's actually a vehicle now that people need to wake up to. If they're going to consciously pursue what we know to be unsustainable ends, it makes absolute sense that not in the best interest to humanity, so why wouldn't there be some sort of legal reparation? It may be one of the things that we do that allows us to start fueling and funding some of this other change. I think that picking up a little bit on what Tegel was saying as well, one of the other things I'm very keen that we do see more of is shared knowledge and free flowing knowledge across between north and south and all the different parties in here. I think that there's huge opportunities. One of the very exciting solutions and projects that we've been working with recently is around geopolymer cement. Cement is 7 per cent of global emissions. The industry isn't really doing anything to sort this out. It's sort of waiting on carbon capture and storage to come along. Actually, there are alternatives. The thing that's fantastic about geopolymer is that every community in the world is within 50 miles of a source of geopolymer cement. Some of the solutions in here that I'm keen to see accelerated and they need to be advantaged economically to allow that to take place, they actually make communities and societies more self-reliant, which has to be a positive thing too. So, hopefully that answers your question. Thank you, Mike. Before I bring Danai in, can I just remind everybody please do put your questions in the event chat. We're keen to hear different perspectives or challenges from where you are. Please do pop things in the event chat as we go. Danai, you spoke quite a lot about inequality, particularly geographic inequality, but also intergenerational equality and the complexities within that, how wealthy people in the global south are maybe more responsible than very poor people in the global north, young people differentially responsible for climate emissions in different parts of the world. How can we really balance that class analysis, if you like, that class nature of environmental degradation of climate change with the geographical nature of its impact? I think what is coming out quite strongly in the discussion is that we need to rethink really the fundamentals. What Mike was talking about in terms of how we measure progress, how we measure sustainable growth, we really need to think the economic model. I think also now that we are planning a recovery from another economic crisis related to the pandemic, that is an opportunity to not just build back better, to build forwards, to rethink the way that our economies are structured. And I think at the heart of that needs to be that we do not replicate these inequalities in this new economic system. And Tija also made that point very convincingly in terms of we need to make sure in that the new economy, which the green transition is the growth story of the 21st century, will create a lot of jobs. But we need to make sure that there is also more equality, that the transition is not just a green one, but also a just transition. And that does not just mean leave no one behind. It does not just mean that everyone is able to participate in it and that the technologies and so on are also shared by countries more equally. And it does not mean that we have jobs for those who are part in industries that are no longer a part of the new economy. But it means that these jobs also need to be good jobs. They need to be remerated well. They need to be secure. We need to have structures in place for people who lose their jobs in old sectors to transition into new ones, to not face barriers in entering those new sectors. And I think that applies across generations as well in terms of people who may not have access to the same opportunities to be able to take advantage of those that come with this new economy. And I think that is very important and that applies to within country inequalities, but also to a cross country in terms of making sure that everyone can participate in that transition. And we see that very much in terms of the movements that we are seeing in the climate agenda. Climate is an issue that unites young generations across borders, people who have suffered from long standing and historical inequalities across borders as well. But also this question of responsibility to build a system that is more equal. Super. Thank you, Dan. Just to reiterate, if anybody has any points they would like to make, please pop those into the event chat as well. I just want to pick up on this point about system change. Broadly speaking, you are certainly not going to get any argument from me that we need a radically different economic system to be able to ensure equality not only within countries but globally as well. Can we use some of the measures that we currently use? Mike, you have already talked about the problems associated with things like GDP. But if we are talking about carbon accounting or measuring and attributing carbon in effective ways, do we need to think differently about how we do that? If we are saying that the system that we have is in and of itself problematic, how do we then continue to use that same system or the measurements and the structures within that system to account for emissions, to account for full carbon costing in supply chains, those kinds of things, do we need to be thinking about different things even in those areas? Mike, do you want to... Sorry, Dan, do you want to come in on that? I can come in with some points about the economic and financial system where I come from because I think it goes both ways in terms of both expanding the toolkit that we have but also rethinking it and using the existing tools that we have in different ways. So, for example, in economic modelling, there is work to incorporate long-term variables and tipping points, crossing of thresholds that are associated with climate, which have not traditionally been part of economic models that have been more focused on the short and medium term, which have not had such variables be part of them. Similarly, in terms of, for example, central banking and regulation, where we have tools such as economic stress test to check whether banks are resilient in a number of economic scenarios. Now, these are being adapted in the form of climate stresses to look at whether in different climate scenarios the banking system can be resilient, needs to have more capital to address those. In terms of financial instruments as well, these are being adapted to align more with what is needed for the climate transition. We have a lot of innovation, for example, with green bonds or blue bonds or sustainability link bonds as well. International financial institutions are also rethinking and expanding their toolkits to channel more finance towards the green transition. We are seeing considerations, for example, at the International Monetary Fund, about redeploying the special drawing rights, the contributions that members of the IMF are making for climate or climate for debt swaps, and tying repayments of debt to progress on climate targets, for example. There is also financing mechanisms that multilateral development banks have that can be redeployed and expanded to address the climate objectives. So, in the financial system, we are seeing more of a tweaking, but also expansion of the toolkit in that direction. But in terms of system change, I think we need to use the actors and the players that we already have on the system. A lot of the multilateral development banks have a lot of experience in that area in terms of supporting development sustainably. The European Investment Bank was the first to issue a green bond back in 2007, so it has been doing a lot of work in this space for quite some time. We need to make sure that every existing actor in the system is deployed to their best abilities for this goal. We also need to see the emergence of new markets and new players, and we need to get system change in that way as well. There are a lot of things that I would agree with. I echo a lot of that. In my experience, one of the things that I find quite disappointing is the conservative nature of existing financial systems. I am deeply conservative. I remember having a conversation with pension funds a number of years ago, and there were guaranteed returns on wind energy for 25 years. They still viewed that as too high-risk and therefore did not want to invest. The likelihood of getting investment in things like tidal energy was non-existent from the private sector. Another conversation that I had with international financiers not that long ago, within the last two years, they were talking about £9 trillion of disinvested funds on the international market. That in itself seems like a good thing, but there is a danger that if it is channeled in the wrong direction, it is not helpful. A lot of it currently looks like it is being channeled into offsetting effectively, which should be the last port of coal, not the first. Suddenly, there is a huge demand for land and places to plunk trees. It is already impacting in the UK. First of all, it should not be the first thing that you do. As I say, it would preferably be the last one. The other thing that was really shocking about this conversation with these financiers was that they said to me—and this is two years ago—that there was a general sense of shock among the conference that they were at in Paris, that coal had gone from being stable of any investment portfolio to uninvestable in the space of three years. I thought that that was really telling. In fact, I thought that it was so shocking that that is why I worked with two universities—the Institute of Directors—to establish a climate understanding force. I suddenly realised that those finance people were not keeping up with the science, and not even within the last 15 or 20 years, that coal was predictably in decline as an investment opportunity. It should be so. We need to accelerate the process by which the things that are not good fall out of favour. We need to find real money quickly to support a lot of this transition. I remember a very famous quote that said that you can judge a Government's commitments by its budget, and very few budgets genuinely bear any scrutiny if you are looking at climate. There are some really obvious things that we can do there, but the other one, of course, is that if we are talking about system change, one of the very obvious principles around fairness is the idea of giving people some sort of a capital quarter of carbon credit. That is instantly redistributive. It is immediately effectively creating an alternative currency into all intents and purposes. There are some interesting ideas out there. I am not sure that we have worked all out yet by any stretch of the imagination, but there are certainly some really interesting radical ideas that could bring about quite significant shifts. Super. Thanks, Mike. Tishall, I wonder if I can come to you. You talked about the failure of the target system, of how targets have always been pushed back, and countries have failed repeatedly to meet the targets that they have set. What are your thoughts around how we make sure that we plan for shocks, given that the market seems to be so bad at delivering for us on those targets for a whole range of reasons that we have already been discussing. How can we plan better for the shocks that we are seeing come through, whether they are climate shocks, COVID shocks or others, if it cannot rely on that kind of target-driven approach? One thing is, I think, that we need to really have from the global knot. Answer your question very shortly is from the global knot short-term targets. What do countries plan to do in the next five years? What do they plan to do? I mean, there has to be some long-term strategy, yes, but there are going to be short-term targets. But, you know, I think you've been speaking about this sort of entire idea of system change and economic system also need to change. I really wonder what that means in a system, in a situation of extreme global inequality, right? And there's been a lot of focus on markets and, you know, multilateral agencies, the World Bank, IOS, et cetera. And what they've been doing right now in terms of rating in terms for, you know, for climate rating investment projects, et cetera, I would, in fact, disagree with my fellow panellists and say that this, I think, in my opinion, is extremely unequal, the way in which this sort of seems to a lot of these multilateral developments seem to simply brush aside any questions of equity. In fact, even put aside what has been agreed to in the convention in different documents of the climate negotiations of the UN to sort of come up with their own metrics for how they rate countries or rate different projects in terms of performance. IMF, for example, plans are at the ADB, IMF, et cetera, all of these plans are planning to, they have a problem, they're planning to stop investing in coal and there's a lot of pressure in terms of stopping coal investments. So what are countries of the global south? I mean, forget China and India for right now if you want to, assuming these countries have their own funds to fund their own fossil fuel projects if they want. I don't think China is going to wait for one of the multilateral banks to fund its coal projects, et cetera. But what about other countries, for example in where you don't have gas? And it's important to remember that a lot of the reduction in nuclear energy in the global north has been replaced by dirty fuels. It's not been replaced by renewable energy and the coal reduction has been replaced by gas. It's not been renewable energy. In fact, if you take a look at what India has done for example in terms of renewable energy developments, it's much higher than Germany in the last three years. So the transition in the global north has been to gas. Now you have countries where hydro potentials are low, gas is not available, renewable energy is not domestically produced. So you have a high import dependence here for renewable energy, even if it is available, the technology is available. And so all of these countries are going to be severely import dependent for their renewable energy needs. And then you are basically stopping them from all kinds of funds for. And development banks are supposed to focus on development. So if it is required, in fact, that let's say a country in Africa requires a coal project, that coal project should be funded and offset against reductions in the global north. That's the way in which we should think about reparations and not some sort of blanket ban on coal. I don't think that's going to work. In fact, I think going forward, if we start applying the same metric with the same timelines across countries, what we are going to do is exacerbating the policies. And this is the fear from the global north. And it's a very justified, I think, valid fear that all of us have. That applying the same timelines, the same metrics with a lot of optimistic language of opportunity and investment. What have we seen in terms of this opportunity in the last 30 years? What has happened? Why is it that the global north is fine? So difficult. Transition out of fossil fuels. Is it a matter of, I mean, why is it that they haven't done it? And if it is so easy, if there are so many opportunities, why is it that countries haven't done it yet? And why is it therefore that becomes suddenly an opportunity when it comes to developing countries having to take action, but developed countries don't see it as enough? So bringing that discussion back to the north-south divide, I would say that even when we speak about system change etc. Are we talking about not depending on market then? Is that because system change happens at different levels? We talk about planning, not markets. We talk about technologies in the public domain, no IPR. Is that the level of system change where we agree? Or are we again talking about financial markets and development being interested in and private profit going forward? System change is only so, is okay in so far as we take into consideration climate impacts of GDP growth. That's all we mean when we say system change. But everything else in the system, when you take economic models, private profit maximisation versus utility maximisation, all of those assumptions of how systems work remain the same. Then it's not going to work going forward at least from the perspective of the south. And so we really need something much more concrete on the table and not really very sort of optimistic language and rhetoric, but really backed by no action. Thank you Tijel. I wonder, there's been a question come in from Graham in Dumfries. And I think this links into what you've just been talking about. Graham asks, do we need to move to more localised rather than the current globalised economy? Do we need more localised economies and how do we deal with the different approaches and views on degrowth and obviously the differential impacts that that would have in different parts of the world? Tijel, could you just pick up on that? No, so I think I am a little sceptical, let me say up front, about degrowth arguments. Because I mean we've seen what has happened. Of course it is a very context. In different contexts, its work was different. And if you're talking about the global north, stable economies where really largely the problem is one of redistribution of wealth, of resources, then it's a very different question. Where the focus should be on fossil pure education. There is a significant scope for redistribution. Whereas in large parts of the global south, you need some material change for transformational social change. We need to address issues of gender, we need to address issues of the modern forms of exploitation that still exist across various economies of the global south. And this doesn't simply happen off the hat by saying that things will change or we need material change. So we need our productive capacities to change. We need our systems of production to change. For example, in India, we have a huge informal industrial, fragmented industrial production. And this is the basis of a lot of wage exploitation within the country. But however, this is not something that happens, that you see necessarily in large more formalised, capitalised sectors even within the country. But this large informal segment needs a leg up in terms of change and that's not simply going to happen by redistributing. You need to have something to redistribute. And that's something that you need to have. Itself is unavailable in itself. So yes, we need different strategies across. And what we are looking at and coming back to the issue, connecting this to climate change, we are definitely looking at more than 1.5. I know that the co-presidency this time is, the tagline is keeping 1.5 if it tells us alive. But in my opinion, 1.5 is already dead. What the developed countries are doing is also making sure that even 2 degrees Celsius is on its way to a pretty premature death. So if you don't want that to happen, then what we need, what the global south needs is development because that's what we need to adapt. We are going to see more than 1.5 degrees Celsius change. And so are people need housing? Are people need healthcare? Are people need employment and resilience? And that is where we really need to. So I don't know how a narrative of deep growth is going to help the global south. Of course, there is a much more nuanced argument to be made in terms of distribution in both places, both the global south. That is what I would focus on much more. Arguments of deep growth. Okay. Thank you, TGL. Dan, can I bring you in to pick up on some of the points TGL has made, but also Gordon in the chat has asked, linking to those discussions about deep growth and that challenge between local and the globalised economy. Would carbon credits be a way to go? Is there something to be said for a rationing system? Are there other financial or economic things that we need to be thinking about here? Yes, thank you. A very interesting discussion so far and I think it's a big question on whether we see sustainable development and economic development and climate action as fundamentally at odds with each other. I don't think they are because I think we cannot imagine a future where there is economic development if we don't take action on climate change. So there is the question of the cost of inaction and how much worse off everyone will be if we do not address that. So yes, there can be very particular, very difficult decisions if you have a community that does not have an alternative to energy, either energy security or energy generation than non-clean forms of energy. And what do you do in that situation? Because if you prioritise climate action, you may harm economic development, but at the same time if you do not take action on mitigating the effects of the climate crisis then you will very quickly be worse off. And in that sense I think it is an opportunity because the cost of inaction is so immense that everyone will be worse off in that scenario and everyone has to adjust. And as I said earlier, developing economies in the global south is in a much better place in terms of not generating already such high emissions levels. There is much more of a transition that needs to be made in the global north. But at the same time it is not just about the cost of inaction, it is also about the benefits to action and I think there are opportunities there in terms of new jobs, better kinds of jobs in terms of growth. And yes, on the argument of degrowth, again I don't think that they are incompatible. I think that's the only way to have economic growth is by taking climate action. And we are seeing now in this pandemic as well how vulnerable the economy and the financial system can be to factors that are coming outside of it because the financial crisis that we had in 2008 was a crisis that was generated in the financial system and spread to the real economy. And what we are seeing with the pandemic, what we are seeing with the climate crisis is that there are factors that are affecting the economy and we cannot have a healthy economy without a healthy planet without healthy people. So there are opportunities there. It doesn't mean that it's about profit to be made by private capital in the global north but without every actor doing its part and assuming its role in the system that we have and directing resources in that way. Then there are not that many alternative ways to get action done now. The kind of numbers that we need are trillions to get from the 2.1 degree increase which was in the international energy agency's latest projections taking into account Glasgow pledges to 1.5 degrees which is the gap that we have for net zero by 2050. And it does make a lot of difference because as T Joe was saying there will be huge costs to adaptation and the returns there are much more difficult to see because when you're thinking about global capital investing in the global south in the way of mitigation for example investing in renewable energy investing in solutions that will limit temperature increases then that is a benefit that is shared globally. So there is even a selfish let's say incentive or investing in those kind of projects. With adaptation it's less clear because the benefits there are local and even though they are much needed for the development and continued economic growth in those communities it's not something that would be shared in the same way. So flood defences, et cetera, early warning systems, forest management and all those investments in resilience and adaptation energy efficiency in housing that are needed very much. On what individuals can do and carbon markets, et cetera I think there's many models for that as well. We definitely need governments to take action on that front because what we've seen so far is that a lot of the action has gone through the financial system by changing incentives for loans, for investments, et cetera and that's a powerful lever but it cannot be the only one. And I think focusing on what the individuals can do also sometimes shifts the focus away from the real responsibility which does lie with governments with the international financial system, international financial organisations which yes are not perfect but have really stepped up their role in many directions. And I think some examples are how you make this adjustment as well because you may impose for example carbon taxes but compensate households that are most vulnerable to those changes by giving them rebates or giving them some sort of support and make sure that they are acceptable because otherwise we may face a reversal of these policies which is something that we saw with globalization as well which we haven't mentioned so much in the discussion today but was also a very big process that while it generated net benefits for the global economy the benefits were not equally shared and what we saw there was that because of these inequalities a lot of movements to reverse it were born in my country first type of policies de-globalisation reversal of some of those of some of those directions that had been beneficial for the global economy as a whole and we cannot afford the same with climate because if measures to support climate action hurt certain communities and then we have to reverse on that that would be existential for everyone so we need to make sure that any action also takes into account that development should be at the heart of climate policy and that economic development and climate action should go together and not compromise each other Thank you very much for that Danai we've got just about five minutes left and there are a couple of other questions that have come in from the public but I'm going to use one of them as the final question if that's okay if I could ask you all in between one and two minutes given our time if you could what do you think, what do we need to achieve at COP what is your aim or your ambition for the climate conference in Glasgow next month will the North and South talk frankly to each other how will we manage to get outcomes that actually deliver the change we need to see and that question comes from Isabel in Stirling so if I can move to Mike, then Danai and Tijel and if you use your last 90 seconds to say anything else you'd like to touch on thank you, Mike Thank you, wow everything Tijel made a really important point why have the markets in the North not actually responded significantly and that's a very very big question we are still subsidising the wrong things we've got to stop doing that we must put finance behind this because without the money to do it it's not going to happen and other than that of course I want to see the NDCs that if we've got to move away from them being purely voluntary and whatever people feel like and try to somehow nail that down there's no question in the North that we need to cut consumption we need to re-evaluate how and what we value moving forward what we actually think it's all about I think within COP itself which is not everything it's quite narrow in some ways in its scope I think it's about the financing and it's about those commitments of course but beyond that I hope that and I know there's a lot of talk about this but I would like to see us empower the communities that are more impacted now by climate change and actually get more of their somehow find ways to give them teeth as well as give the environment teeth Thank you, Mike Then I Yes, I think we're getting very close to COP now so it's not about hopes it's mostly about expectations because we've already seen most of the commitments that we are going to see on the government side I mean they're still coming through but we saw quite a bit at the UN General Assembly for example I don't think we are going to see much more at COP I would definitely hope as Mike said to see more clarity around the NDCs this is something that was agreed in Paris already six years ago so it is now about action it is about delivery and we need to see how do we get from A to B because we have a lot of commitments about 2050 and the longer term and most organization governments will have budgets and plans for the next one to years or so but what happens in the middle is less clear so we need to have credible plans about how we get to net zero and I think the second big item on the agenda is the climate finance and the hundred billion commitment to developing economies that developed economies have pledged and I think it's important to also think about the composition of that support because what we've seen so far and the OECD tracks those numbers is that around one fifth of that has gone to adaptation and resilience and around two thirds have gone to mitigation so we should also think about and it's not defeatist to say that we may not need 1.5 degrees I think we need to be realistic about if that's where we're heading we need to invest in adaptation and resilience and that does not mean that we should shift our focus away from still aiming from 1.5 degree because the difference between 1.5 and 2 is really very, very significant in terms of the impacts that it will have on many communities Thank you Dhanay and Tishal Thank you I think going into COP I agree with what you said I think it is this entire focus on net zero is highly inadequate if we want to still keep 1.5 and 2.5 degrees Celsius that we are talking about I think the IPCC report has been very clear that it is the cumulative emission the remaining COP and budget that is key and perhaps some discussion on this if there is forced that it's not enough to declare net zero you need to talk about how you get to net zero I think that is really important if we can get some discussion on that and as we talk about the global stock date that is one of the discussions coming up in the COP and perhaps that is where we have to talk about the science as well as equity because the two things remain alive in article 14 of the Paris Act so if we are going to have a global stock take on those bases then we need to talk about the revolutions the remaining COP and budget and what each of us is going to take from that remaining COP and budget as what is the fair share and what we are actually going to consume that discussion is very essential Great, thank you Tijel we must end there with just on one o'clock thank you all for joining us today and making such a big contribution to our panel brought to you in partnership with the Royal Scottish Geographical Society a huge thanks to Dan Aikirot Coppallu, Mike Robinson and Tijel Kanatkar for giving up your time to take part today may I also take this opportunity to remind you that later on today we have a panel debating the importance of art and culture to human health and wellbeing at 2pm following that our panel on resilient cities and finally the prioritising mental health panel at 6pm I do hope you can join us for all or some of these sessions thank you all again it's been a really interesting discussion and curio