 Good morning and welcome to the Scottish Parliament. My name is Faisal Chaudhry. I'm the member of the Scottish Parliament, also the chair of the cross-party group of Bangladesh. We are gathered here today for the 19th Festival of Politics. Thank you for joining us. The urgency of climate change and justice in vulnerable, low-lying countries ahead of COP28, parallel in partnership with CPG Bangladesh. There is no question that climate change is happening at unprecedented rates. Our modern lifestyles are unsustainable and are impacting the vulnerable nations in an unimaginable way. Earlier this year, the CPG on Bangladesh addressed in meeting the climate emergency if global warming raises by 1.5 centigrade. Low-lying nations have been pleading their cases to the international country for years. The damage will be irreparable. If no action is taken now, these are the dilemmas we are here to address today. I want to first start by introducing Dr. Liz Chris, senior lecturer in political theory at the University of Edinburgh. Her most recent book is titled Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care. Then we have Ben Wilson, the advocacy manager at the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund. Ben told me he's a doctor as well. He's done PhD. So he didn't put in his title in case someone asked him to do some research. So you never know. We might be doing that later on today. Then I have Jelena Rahman, who is a solicitor, practice at JR Solicitors in Glasgow, specialist in human rights, family, and immigration legal advice. Finally, we have Professor Salim Hock. I hope he's online with us, isn't he? We've been struggling, but I'm sure Nibal, do we have Professor Salim Hock? If you want to give it to you, who will be joining us live? Sadly, we are going to have the High Commissioner of Bangladesh, but had an emergency this morning, so apologies from her. So the first thing I'm going to do is to set the scene and make you all have something afoot for thought. I'm going to ask a question. That will be, of course, towards my panel. At the same time, if any of you want to get in, I will be happy to listen to you. There will be an opportunity for the audience to get involved and ask questions. But of course, before that, I will be wanting to get the presentation from my panel. COP26 took place in Glasgow almost two years ago. Many promises and goals were made unset. In a few words, what do you think the biggest achievement since then? And we have fallen short. So my question to all of you is that I have been attending a lot of events in Glasgow during COP26 with my team. And I have met officials from Africa, from Asia, and I've heard the stories, the horror stories from them. And I know the difficulty their country is going to be facing. And what they have been telling me is that the COP's been happening, but they cannot see any changes, all the promises. So my question to all of you and to the panel. So first of all, I would like to now ask Dr. Elizabeth Cress to start your presentation. At the same time, the question I've already asked, if you can touch on that too, please. So I think globally it's encouraging. It's important that we have, so from a mitigation point of view, but there is a new administration in Brazil. I think that's going to make a very big difference in terms of mitigation. From a loss and damage adaptation point of view, obviously the loss and damage fund that was agreed at COP27 is hugely important. More locally, the commitment that Scotland has made as part of that is deeply important. I think it shows leadership. And I actually also find it very encouraging that there has been a rise in climate activism. So obviously it's discouraging, which is still needed, but the fact that more and more citizens are recognizing this is fundamentally important. But we're still a long way behind. We're far behind on both mitigation and adaptation. If you think about the nationally determined contributions, the commitments that states have made through the Paris framework to commit to reduce their carbon emissions, we're still behind on achieving a limiting rise to 1.5 degrees C on that, let alone the actual policies that have been put in place. We're still seeing new coal, oil, gas projects going ahead, and that's despite the International Energy Agency having said that we just cannot have any more of these projects if we're going to achieve net zero. In the UK, we still don't know what's going to happen with Rose Bank, even though that is just incompatible with leadership on climate change. And we need a lot more commitment globally in terms of loss and damage. That needs a huge amount more funding. So why do you think the global action has been slow? And even after all the preaching for the Lord nations, so where do you think we're lacking on? So yes, as you rightly say, the countries and the communities that are most impacted by climate change have been saying for a very long time that we need action, including low-lying states, small island states. And I think the sort of quick answer is because the people who have the decision-making power aren't listening to them. So climate change is an injustice in a huge number of ways. It's an injustice because human rights are being violated, people are losing their homes, their lives, their health, their livelihood because of climate change. It's a distributional injustice because if you look at the people who are benefiting from the processes that cause climate change, they're not the ones who are paying the costs. But it's also a participatory injustice because we're all entitled to a say in the decisions that determine how we can live our lives, especially when it comes to something as fundamental as this, which determines whether we can live a healthy life at all going forward. And if you think about the way in which decisions are made about climate, whether we're talking at a national or a global level, it's not necessarily those who are most impacted who actually have a say. So if you think even within states, it tends to be more marginalised communities, often indigenous communities who feel the effects most and they tend to be underrepresented at decision-making. And in terms of the global process, what's needed for this to be just would be a really transparent representative process where the most vulnerable communities, often poor estates, actually have a real meaningful seat at the decision-making table with equal, perhaps even entitled to more weight in decision-making. But what actually happens is that we have a process of diplomatic negotiations is very far from transparent. A lot of it happens kind of behind closed doors and it tends to be the rich estates who walk away with the decisions in their favour and that's not just. And I think it's also worth pointing out but actually the corporations, the fossil fuel companies, have a disproportionate say in decision-making. So if we think about the 2022 conference of parties, the oil and gas companies have more than 600 representatives at the negotiations. So that was more than twice the representation, the delegation of indigenous communities. So we're talking here about the corporations who are essentially doing the damage, having much more influence, presence at these key international negotiations than the frontline communities, the marginalised groups who actually have most at stake here who are losing their homes and livelihoods. If we look forward to the next COP, the president is the head of an oil company. That doesn't look like participatory justice to me and I think that's your explanation. That's why they haven't been listened to in terms of decision-making. Thank you, Dr May. Next question. APPLAUSE Climate change is currently the centre to human rights-related discussion. For low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, the climate emergency has pintered issues across the economy and agriculture, creating inequalities of food, water and sanitisation. How can we approach climate change as a human rights issue? So I think you're absolutely right. This is a human rights issue and I think it can actually be very helpful to put it in those terms. I mean, as a moral philosopher, I don't think we have to. We can just say this is a matter of serious harm. But human rights is an idea, has kind of international recognition, it's recognised in international law. And I think if we put it in these terms, it reminds us of what's really going on here. Some people, rich people, rich countries and institutions are acting in a way which is killing other people. We don't like saying it like that, but that's the bottom line. And I think we need to recognise that. If we recognise this as a human rights violation that it is, then we can kind of get in before rich countries start crying unfairness and saying they shouldn't have to do anything at all or say that contributing to loss and damage is a matter of charity or something, a superrogatory. If we put it in those terms, it reminds us that this is actually a basic injustice that we're talking about here. And these, they're not controversial human rights, right? We're talking here about life, we're talking about food, we're talking about health, we're talking about shelter. We're talking about the kind of rock bottom basics that we owe each other as human beings. So if we're going to have any human rights at all, we should have the rights to these things. We should certainly have the right not to be deprived of them by the action of other people and institutions. So I think equally uncontroversially, we can say, well, there's a lot of complex debates about what exactly it would mean for our global institutions or our countries to be just. We can say they are unjust if they are violating people's human rights rather than protecting them. And that's what's happening with climate change. So I think, yeah, we need to start here, recognize that, and then we can say this shouldn't be a matter of kind of party politics, which has become in a lot of countries, certainly in the US, even to some extent in the UK. This shouldn't be about your political ideology. This is about, you know, basic human rights, a matter of fundamental justice, and then it should just go straight to the top of the global agenda. Thank you. My last question to yourself is, countries that contributed the list to the climate change are the ones that are now being largely affected by climate changes, devastating impacts. So is it better to character climate justice as a moral obligation or a political responsibility of the West? So I think it's both. I mean the bottom line is, as I said, that this isn't political in being a matter of it's, you know, what political ideology you happen to have whether you should think this is important, but it's something that political institutions have a fundamental responsibility to do because it's about basic justice and it's also about basic morality. And I think you point to a really important fact which we touched on before, which is that these human rights violations, they're not happening at random. They're happening to communities who have already been marginalised, who are often the victims of past injustices. So we're talking about indigenous communities, communities of colour, we're often talking about women, feel more of the effects of climate change than men. And we, so that's why activists tend to say, well look, this is about the climate justice, it's also about race justice, it's also about gender justice, recognising that these harms, they affect different people much, much worse than others. And we see that at the global level as well. We've seen obviously significant impacts already even in richer countries, so wildfires in California and Australia. We've seen floods in the UK, but that's not to the extent that they've already seen the impact in countries like Bangladesh who have been suffering with the effects of this for decades and have been already having to deal with it. And who have done least to cause it. So the carbon emissions of Bangladesh, I looked them up this morning. The carbon footprint in 2021 was 0.55 tonnes per person compared with 5.15 here. So we're in the situation where in the West we should be doing this because our governments are responsible for a lot of these harms. They're responsible for enabling the fossil fuel companies, often by subsidising fossil fuel, that have caused them, and continuing to do that despite clear warnings of scientists, of the International Energy Agency and so on. But I think we should also say well we should be doing this anyway because we have a basic moral responsibility to each other as human beings to protect each other's human rights. So even if in the West we weren't responsible for these harms, which we are, we should be doing this because we can. We should also be doing this with the resources and ability. That doesn't mean we should be making over decisions. I think quite the reverse is true. It should be the countries and the communities who are worst impacted, who are listened to here, who make decisions but we should be prepared to put up the money, we should be prepared to change our way of life. And we should be prepared to set the tough net-zero goals naturally to stick to that. I think thanks for that answer What we are hearing is that the countries, the poorer countries, who contributes less to the climate change are getting highlighted and affected most, but whereas the richer nations contribute a big number, but they're not getting mentioned anywhere, or I think the message is that the richer country should be characterized and should be paying for for it more than the poorer countries, and that's what's your opinion on that one, do you think that should be identified as well? I think it's, yeah, I mean as a more philosopher it's pretty clear cut here, I mean whether you look at the fact that it's a richer countries who are more responsible for harm, or you look at the fact that we have benefited most from climate change, or you look at the fact that we are in a position to pay these costs without suffering ourselves which is not the case for poorer countries, all of those just kind of coalescing saying it should be rich countries in the global north, countries like this one who should be prepared to bear the cost. Thank you Dr. Elizabeth Crisp, obviously the audience will have an opportunity to ask you questions later on, but now I'm going to turn on to Ben, Dr. Ben Wilson. Dr, obviously I did ask an opening questions where I mean if you want to start with that then I'll go to my second question. So I mean on the question of what progress we've made since COP26, I think I would be being generous to say it's a mixed bag, I mean on one side in terms of mitigation, reducing our emissions to tackle climate change, it's been terrible and in particular there's been huge failures on fossil fuels, so COP26 believe it or not, the 26th meeting of the COP was the first to explicitly mention the F word, fossil fuels and the decision text, and they did it in a really weak way, so the reference to fossil fuels and the decision text was to phase down, not to phase out, but to phase down unabated coal and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, leaving really the door open for people to continue subsidizing fossil fuels on the basis that they're efficient, not inefficient. And we saw that language repeated again at COP27, so there's been huge failures, but I would say on the positive side, I was there in COP27 in Charmille Shake and left that COP for the first time ever, it was my fourth or fifth COP I attended, for the first time ever with a feeling of positivity and that was about the agreement to establish the fund on loss and damage, because although that fund, the details of which have not been agreed yet, there's no money in that fund yet, it touched on something really fundamental, it got to the heart of the injustice of climate change and gives a little bit of hope that when the countries, in particular the countries of the global south working together with civil society across the world, that when they come together that they can sort of make a breakthrough on these big crux issues like that, and we really hope for significant progress on loss and damage at COP28. Thank you, my first question to you is with a multi-level structure of climate governance, how can local and regional actors be supported and best engaged in decisions making process? Thank you, that's, it's a really interesting question, a very difficult one, I received the question in advance and I was thinking about it a lot last night, I mean this, I think the way that I would answer this is, I mean when you think about climate change, it's often feels very big and very far away, you know, so when you talk about the science for example, you know that people will talk about 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees and you know, it feels kind of alien and foreign and big and far away and kind of hard to grapple with, but also the politics of climate change is really far away and hard to grapple with, like that example that I just gave now of phased down, unabated coal and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, what does that actually mean to regular people? It might not mean very much, but in the space of climate diplomacy at the global level at the COP it means a great deal and it's very important and people stay up all night long arguing over this word or that word in the final decision text on the basis that that actually does then trickle down through every level of climate governance to actually mean something for regular people. So, and then alongside that I suppose I would say that there's a real moral principle there around subsidiarity, that's what we as my organisation is informed by Catholic social teaching and this is a very important concept to Catholic social teaching because it's based on the idea that the decisions should be taken at as local a level as possible, they should be taken as close to the people as possible. Now sometimes decisions do need to be made at the global level, sometimes the national level and sometimes at the local level but you need to really get that right and that's about achieving good outcomes but it's also about a moral priority, making sure that people have authority to decide their own lives and so the question relating to multi layers levels of governance and climate change to me is actually sounds very technical but it comes down to something very fundamental that climate change and the responses to climate change need to work for people, they need to be understood by people and the experiences that they have of climate change and that those people need to have the means and the information and the ability to shape those interventions as much as possible to make sure that it really works for them and it means something to them be that changing your behaviours which is a priority here in countries like Scotland or be that adapting to the impacts of climate change which is a real priority for people in countries like Bangladesh. Thank you. Should there be accountability measure put in place for countries failing to meet the climate addiction requirements? Yes, so it's absolutely vital that there are accountability measures in place, there are some and I'll talk a bit about them and I think that they need to be better and to be stronger but I suppose I might finish my response to this question with a bit of a question to the audience because basically so we have the Paris agreement now right and so the way that the Paris agreement is enforced it's a nationally determined process so it's not top-down the Kyoto protocol which was predates the Paris agreement was top-down and a number of countries weren't happy about that especially the US and it was kind of doomed to fail from the beginning as a result of that lack of support so the Paris agreement is bottom-up and so that means that there's a general agreement about what needs to happen so we need to reduce global average temperatures within the two degrees or ideally the 1.5 degree limit that's an agreement there's also a global goal on adaptation they've not actually agreed what that means yet maybe Salim will talk a bit more about that later but there is a goal on that and then now we're starting to see more agreements on on loss and damage but the way that countries then are expected to say how they are meeting that global agreement is it's up to them it's a nationally determined process so they will submit their nationally determined contributions every five years they submit adaptation communications and there's a particular obligation under Paris for countries like the UK and others to to provide finance and means of implementation and capacity building and technology to the global south to help them to grow low carbon economies and adapt to and recover from the impacts of climate change but the only accountability measure really when people are when countries are submitting their nationally determined contributions and they're not good enough which is what we're seeing now there isn't really a mechanism there's no fine you know they don't have any financial incentive to meet it and there is no sort of legal restrictions because again it's this nationally determined process so the Paris agreement relies upon peer pressure between states relies on diplomatic processes it relies on this kind of soft notion that at least countries will be brought together by some sort of common endeavour they will have their own self-interest but they should at least have some sense of of common endeavor which will lead them to do what they need to do in order to meet those global agreements there are ways that that can improve that transparency and accountability process and and we need to do that that's by like agreeing really strict rules you know on what you need to put in your nationally determined contributions we can do that that might help with the accountability process transparency is another big thing you know you having a uniform way of reporting your greenhouse gas emissions and reporting your progress towards adaptation these are really important things and then there needs to be some more progress on transparency and on having common rules etc in order to really make sure that that solve the accountability process can work but just to conclude I suppose I would say that it is failing I mean the the nationally determined contributions which countries had to bring is to COP26 actually by 2020 the initial date for COP26 were not good enough to get us on track to the the agreed goals of the Paris agreement we will see more nationally determined contributions submitted in 2025 and this year there's what's called the global stock take to take stock on where we're at and that is going to conclude that we are not on track it is not working and so I suppose the question I would pose to the audience because I don't know the answer maybe my fellow panelists do maybe Salim does he knows most thing and as you know how can we make this system more robust so that it actually functions because at the moment it is not quite functioning as it should thank you I hope we can get Salim back on last as well oh he's with us but I'm not coming to you yet but my last question to you is how should responsibility for loss and damage be shared among developed nation in order to move towards the climate justice so yeah it's a really important question so as as many of you will know already and as has been mentioned before the loss and damage fund was established at COP 27 and there's talks going on right now about what exactly that fund will look like and they will make the transitional committee in charge of that will make recommendations to COP 28 and hopefully get that fund up and running but the amount of money needed and who's actually going to meet that cost has not been decided and again will be subject to tense discussions and I have a great fear that it will not in fact a strong expectation that the level of finance required for that fund will not be reached quickly but hopefully we will get some progress towards it in terms of how that money should be divided up between countries who are responsible for this I mean there's a few different approaches there's one approach which is quite interesting it's really been focused on mitigation in recent years as the fair shares approach and so a number of organizations support this which basically looks at the remaining atmospheric space to emit more carbon into the atmosphere it looks at the historical amount of carbon that countries have emitted and it looks at the capacity of that country to act and the right of that country to develop especially relevant to countries in global south and then it makes a calculation based on that how much more it would be fair for a particular country to emit into the atmosphere and this calculation says that the UK needs to reach net zero not by 2050 it's current target but by 2030 and pay a trillion dollars to invest in the reduction of emissions in countries outside of the UK especially in the global south and that that would be the UK's fair share so obviously we're getting astronomical terms here in terms of loss and damage specifically it's quite difficult to to put a particular number on how much money is kind of owed for this issue because to do that you would have to calculate the difference between a sort of normal extreme weather events which would happen without climate change the intensity and frequency of those extreme weather events as a result of climate change and then the difference between them and what the economic cost of that is so it's kind of hard to do that calculation some organisations are coalescing around a figure of 400 billion dollars per year for the loss and damage fund now you might remember there's a hundred billion dollar a year target which already exists and that's for emissions reductions and for adaptation for mitigation for adaptation and that's not been met so this 400 billion a year goal is indeed ambitious and yet it is exactly what is owed we could so in terms of how it should be divided up we could use a fair shares approach I guess with the Paris agreement and the way that it operates as I've suggested before it would more likely be nationally determined and therefore it would be the onus would be on countries in the global north to decide how much they would commit to that separate to that though there is a lot of work happening at the moment on possible international mechanisms to raise money towards this target so international shipping and aviation levies financial transaction tax which has been sort of talked about and certainly by NGOs and activists for a lot of years and maybe debt swaps you know there's a whole number of different financial options at the global level as well as within national budgets which could be explored to fund that loss and damage fund but again I suppose I'll just wrap up I mean it does kind of leave me feeling a bit hopeless you know we've failed to reach that hundred billion a year target which was set in 2009 in 2009 Hillary Clinton first started talking about this and they were supposed to meet it by 2020 it was a big thing UK government were dying to meet that target by COP26 and Glasgow and they couldn't do it and then they still haven't done it and maybe they'll get there next year but it's still made up mostly of loans not grants and yet we know that that is not even nearly enough and there's going to be a huge bigger huge a much bigger bill for loss and damage coming down the line that needs to be met so it's a challenge but a suppose it should be a challenge to all of us as people who are interested in this issue for academics and politicians and everyone else who's working on it to sort of strengthen our resolve because the only way it will happen and we agreed it should happen as with us being active and calling on our political leaders to do the right thing and to to build the world which is based on justice rather than the current one which is shaped so much by injustice. Thank you Dr Ben. I mean you've said in your last answer that the UK have a target as well do you think we are in in line with the target at the moment or if we are not what do you think we need to do or what we can do to pressure? So the I mean the UK target I'm actually not up to speed on where they're at and the Scottish target stronger and they've missed eight out of the last 12 so Scottish Government have missed eight out of the last 12 annual targets on their climate change reductions there is a new climate change plan due to be published by the end of this year from the Scottish Government and it's really important I think if we're going to get that okay we need technological advancements we need innovation and we need investment all of that stuff but I think fundamentally what we need here is political will and political drive and ambition. We've seen as as Liz mentioned before how green policies are becoming political football in the UK between Labour and the Conservatives especially in the Uxbridge by-election which many of you might have seen. We cannot allow that to happen in Scotland we need to all of us collectively show that this is something which pulls well which it does it's something which is good for our economy it's good for our health it's better to have a greener country and ultimately it's something that we will support the government to take the bold steps that they need to take in order to get to those targets. I did promise you that I won't be asking you difficult questions or political questions but I'm sure audience audience didn't but thank you very much for your answer next I'm going to go on to Jelena Berlu Rahman who is a solicitor plus have Bangladeshi background and quite a lot of family members still living in Bangladesh and will be affected with the with the climate change happening and I do have the the consul general of India here as well recent India went through flood so obviously I will give you an opportunity to say a few things at the end thank you my first question to yourself Jelena is of course the very first question asked everyone if you want to say a few things on that one before I go to the questions I have lined up for you. Thank you Vaisal I think I concur with what my fellow panellists have already said but what I want to touch upon is a lot of people think why COP why do we need it and for me it's a venue a place an international forum an international think tank and I do believe that having COP it has encouraged companies to look at themselves and the the beauty of it is is hitting globally and you have the media the social media people are tweeting about it and so it has created as Liz has already pointed out a climate activists are you know it's a rising climate activists and I think that's extremely important because you have the younger generation rising up and the younger generation have a right to rise up because it's about their future and that is a that is why I think it needs to continue some people think that's just a lot of heads of state coming together and leaving but I do believe whilst it's a little progress some people might see as little progress but you have to understand these are there are a lot of chiefs coming together here a lot of chiefs making decisions and a lot of people showing their you know heads of power and everybody wants to make decisions and so yes there will be slow progress but there is progress and I truly believe there is also in terms of my area of the law I've seen a lot of litigation there are claiming actions that being raised by individuals against huge oil companies and that there's been law legal presidents being set in many different countries against big oil companies and that must continue and that can only continue when a forums like the COP allows us to come together and share ideas and put the ideas together and tell people what is happening and what case law is going on and that can only be done in that setting so I do think it's a positive venue and I will speak positive about it as well as there are negatives it is slow it could it could be faster yes there was talks in COP 27 and now finally we have the loss and damage being determined and we have issues now and who is going to determine the amount that Ben has already been touched upon and then you have the additional issue of who's going to manage this money where's this money going to go which bank accounts it's going to go who's how are we going to set up trustees I mean this is huge huge you know this is going to be what another year who's going to be lead who's going to be analysing the money who's going to count the money so whilst funds might go into an account there will be a lot of people wanting to have access to it and a lot of world leaders will want to have access to it so all these things need to be ironed out so and I hope they are ironed out soon thank you the first question to yourself is it is estimated that with just a one meter raise in the sea level around 15 million people in Bangladesh would be affected and 30 percent of the country's total land mass would be underwater are the international community prepared to take on this level of climate-related migrations okay so our first off start off I am a human rights lawyer and I call a lefty lawyer as a conservative Soela Breverman calls me okay that's what I am right so I've been immigration asylum lawyer for 20 years I've seen war-torn you know asylum seekers coming from war-torn countries I've seen the impacts of this so I'll start off with giving a bit of background to Bangladesh and what we're talking about Bangladesh here I mean Bangladesh is a country where climate change is not an abstract notion the effects are already there and the impact of climate change is visible so whilst countries while we can sit here Kushdi as we hear in the UK and other countries the countries like Bangladesh they're already seen the impact of climate change and just to go from the give a bit of history and I apologize if I'm saying things that you already know but as we know from the industrial revolution it started off at 1.1 and rise to 1.3 degrees and this is called caused by the historical polluters and who are historical polluters mostly the West and so for decades debates have been ongoing this is not a new phenomena this has been going on for decades and decades and as Liz has pointed out we have companies big companies with their big fat checks being able to stop the debates going further because they're able to they were trying to argue that this was not a human phenomena this was something that was just happening and finally in 2007 we had the IPCC producing the fourth assessment we finally said this is a human phenomenon this is created by humans and something must be done so let's just go back to Bangladesh and the population we have roughly 165 million people in Bangladesh at the moment one of the most densely populated I apologize for that 180 but I was looking at so 180 I'm being corrected by the audience here and one of the most densely populated countries in the world so what happens with migration once you have once the coastal areas are being flooded most people start heading to the cities now Dhaka is hugely densely populated already and this migration to Dhaka is having a huge effect on the social structure the economic economic structure everything so these are the things that are happening in Bangladesh 400,000 people are moving on an annual basis into Dhaka so you've got to understand you have to put it you know you have to picture how many people are moving in living in slum conditions and again Liz touched upon this this is inhumane and degrading conditions we're talking about slum conditions these people don't want to move they talk about land they you know had fruit trees they had houses they had everything and now they've been migrated into places of a a small shack where they are now all the possessions in one room and it's very difficult for them but it's not just Bangladesh we keep thinking oh this is just happening in the poor countries we've already witnessed what's happening in USA in Louisiana and also in Germany where we had the flash floods where they thought the structural you know we're the west we have the structures in place we'll be able to cope with it but what happened the structures couldn't cope with the flash floods and this made the west realize what climate change impact was doing and most recently we're reading the news at the moment we have the in Portugal in Greece the fire the wildfires that have been it's there and people are seeing that there are dangerous level of temperature rise of 45 degrees so the government are now finally waking up globally but are we too late what people keep thinking is just about floods and the actual structure but why will explain to you what the increase of the temperature does because I did some research and actually it shocked me after I did this research and I'm glad Defaisal for allowing me to sit here and do this research in Dhaka it's getting hotter by 0.5 degrees and there is what's called a wet bulb temperature now what's a wet bulb temperature a wet bulb temperature is where the heat and humidity if it reaches 100% a human body cannot cope a human body shuts down our body can only cope with 35 degrees and believe it or not in Pakistan and another Arab country which I forgot to note it has already reached that wet bulb temperature because why the human body cannot cope is because it cannot cool down your inside body cannot cool down because of the outside the heat and humidity so we are faced in a situation where people are going to be dying in front of us from the heat and we've seen this people are already reporting this and this is caused by climate change so these are the things these are the factors we need to take into consideration and going back to the question we need to enter into dialogue now we need to do planning now the topic that I'm touching upon is not a most politicians want to ignore it's not fashionable or it's not sexy it's not something they want to touch upon why? because of the rhetoric that the government have already put out there by Swela Breverman the home sexual estate calling asylum seekers and making comments about the asylum seekers and refugee crisis at the moment so when it comes to migration and environmental migration and refugee environmental refugees nobody wants to talk about that or make plans or make decisions why? because it costs money put it into perspective in Louisiana there were floods and the US government made a presidented step to the federal state funded $15 million to house 100 families for the first time and relocate them that's for 100 families do your calculations it's not going to be possible to do that for when you have a population in Bangladesh of there's going to be I think it's 11% in my notes that I have that's 15 million people that will be displaced we need to start the talks now we need to start planning now politicians need to talk and I think we all are saying the same thing this is a global collective planning planning preparation and it needs to be started slowly by shortly because it's more effective if we do it in that manner then suddenly have a huge rise in population of large migration shifting and we've already seen migration shifting in Bangladesh into 400,000 and this is why we need to push our politicians to start agreements I understand there are talks of agreement but very similar to the loss and damage it's just talks we need to see things on paper thank you I mean you know Bangladesh has given the shelter to Rohingyas of course bringing in extra pressure on the country so do you think that the rich countries are supporting countries like poor nations where they are giving their home for the neighbouring country how do you think that the support can be provided by the richer nations well it goes it's very difficult to support in terms of as the population increases and where Bangladesh has taken I think it's two million Rohingyas refugees and they're also in camps and this is no criticism of Bangladesh it's a poor country that is dealing with two million refugees and they're in camps and they're doing their best and they're international aid workers and international organisations helping but because and it's interesting it's because there are international aid work organisations are taking over it's quite easily to forget well they're dealing with it we don't need to deal with it but this is something that it's once again it's coming together planning and discussing it's very similar to what I have said earlier that if we don't sit down and discuss a plan and a route of how this matter is going to be dealt with we're going to end up with a very catastrophic situation as we've heard 180 million in a most densely populated country it's going to cause internal civil unrest you have to remember there are a lot of uneducated people that don't understand what's going on and it fuels politics it fuels anger it fuels it fuels violence and resources are very scarce as it is so I think the only way that international government can help is helping with resources helping with funds putting infrastructure there providing better sanitation better homes giving a better education explaining to people what's happening education is key here because there's a lot of people that don't understand what is happening the resulting situation places gender minorities and vulnerable communities at a significantly greater risk what can be done to mitigate this well having worked in asylum law for 20 years I've seen firsthand what war-torn countries can do and the most impacted is the most vulnerable are the women children and that result in human trafficking and they're the ones that are left behind so a lot of people question why are the men here why are there so many men male refugees thinking that this is just a job opportunity it's not it's very difficult for women to leave the men go out in front to find out because they take their lives and they know that it's very dangerous route to flee somewhere leaving the women behind until they find a safe route then they will take the women with them and the women are left behind in a situation where they're extremely vulnerable and majority have their children or babies you can't uplift a family imagine having a baby in one arm your breastfeeding you're doing a toddler it's very very difficult you're only going to expose yourself and these are the ones that we need to protect and how we need to protect them is that we do need to set up an employment plan and I believe there are talks of that and I've read again this has allowed me to read into this that there is structure to address gender inequality but these are just plans these are just talks again there's data that has been collected data is very important because without data we're not going to know who are being affected how they've been affected what resources are required and the data will highlight what genders are affected by the climate change and what policies can be implemented to help as I said earlier education we need to educate people to make them understand and also train the government staff on the gender inclusion and climate crisis women children vulnerable disabled elderly all need to be included in this climate change climate change plan and what needs to be done to protect the vulnerable we need to empower these people we need to have an empowerment program we need to sit there and we need to plan an empowerment program to empower them somehow and this is something again that will need to be put into a paper of some sort which can then be implemented with policies and procedures for each government that are facing this crisis and once this gender action plan is put in place we could create a gender advisory committees within the government organizations to protect the vulnerable this is the only way to do it go back to the local go back to each nation provide them with the guidelines but work collectively globally to do that sharing the data sharing the information providing as much as we can to protect the most vulnerable thank you very much I'm looking at the time but I do have another question for you I mean if you if you see the the the crisis in the world UK is home to quite a lot of Ukrainian refugees we've been home for for Syrians and Afghans and but how do you think that developed countries can support countries like Bangladesh if special the refugees do you think that the these countries are ready or do you think what measures should be taken okay in respect to the climate change question Bangladesh has an impressive economic growth at the moment and it's been backed by by decades of systematic investment and I think Professor Hock will be touching upon that and Bangladesh is actually in my opinion at the forefront of climate change and is doing and it's been preparing for climate change they have reduced cyclone related deaths by a hundred fold since the 1970 and today is recognized as a global leading climate change adaptation in disaster preparedness now Bangladesh is not saying here we want you to take 15 million refugees off our hand no that's not what they're saying what Bangladesh is saying is you need to take action against your mission you need to do you need to assist us with adaptation you need to assist us with loss and damage we will deal with if you assist us with this we will be able to manage our country we do not have the funds to do so you have benefited from all the decades hundreds of years of industrial revolution and we want and we want to you know we take response you know we want that fund so that they they don't need the other countries to take any refugees that's not what it's about it's about assisting Bangladesh with adaptation so how are we going to do that there's some ideas that I know other countries are looking into and I know Japan have already looked into some of the ideas they've been talking about floating islands they're talking about architects coming in to have houses on stilts they've been talking about structures to help the some of the land what do about look what Dubai has done look at reclaimed land all that is reclaimed the Palm Islands people are forgetting that that's with billions and billions of dollars it's possible people forget that that's with reclaimed land and that's just and that is possible so it is possible the technology the ideas the research is all out there it's just money thank you very much Zalina Dr. Hawk the spotlight is on you so my first question to yourself which I have asked every other panelist is that I don't know if you've caught it because we didn't have you in line when I asked the first question that COP26 happened in Glasgow we are looking ahead of COP28 have we how far have we gone have we kept the promises we made in 26 I'm skipping 27 I'm looking forward for 28 so where do we think we are and obviously the time is running out as well so if you can make your answers short as well please thank you very much Faisal and apologies for joining late I had technology problems so first of all let me give you a bit of a reflection on COP26 in Glasgow where I had the good fortune to be there with many of your panelists in in Glasgow we had unfortunately not a very good result in the UNFCC COP26 inside the the venue of the COP but I would say in contrast when we came out of the venue the COP venue and we spent time in Glasgow City and in Scotland we got a very very different reception and that was reflected in the fact that at that time First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government were the first country in the world to put forward a million pounds initially which she'd then doubled to two million pounds as a new loss and damage fund accepting the responsibility of paying reparations to the victims of climate change she was the first leader in the whole world to make that statement and put some money on the table now million pounds or two million pounds isn't a great deal in the scheme of things but it was the first million and the first two million that any leader had given us and it wasn't just her and her party it was actually the people of Scotland that we got tremendous amount of support from academics working on climate justice issues angels like Ben and his colleagues working on these issues in developing countries for many many years and so I would say the first thing I would say is that one of the things that is the most significant of COP26 is not the COP itself but what Scotland did Scotland stepped up on the issue of loss and damage in a way that no other country did and you started the ball rolling following Scotland we got the province of Wallonia in Belgium put in a million euros we got a number of philanthropies to put some money on the table so by the time we left COP26 in Glasgow there was about 10 million or so outside the UNFCC the UNFCC did not make any progress but outside it we did make progress under Scotland's leadership and since then in COP27 as Ben has mentioned we may have bigger breakthrough with an agreement in the UNFCC to set up a fund and a number of other countries have committed funds so the commitments for loss and damage funding is in the order of several hundred million outside the UNFCC at the moment but if we have a UNFCC fund then that will come into that fund as well so those are major breakthroughs that Scotland should be very proud of having made now going forward I think is a very important point for us to remember which is that we have just crossed a major climate change threshold in the last month the month of July 2023 was the hottest month in over a hundred thousand years and that is the threshold we have now crossed into impacts of human induced climate change happening and losses and damages attributable to human induced climate change happening at scale in fact I'm speaking to you from Dhaka where we're having thunderstorms and we've had some very very heavy rainfall in Chittagong and Poxa Bazaar area and people have been flooded and there have been a number of landslides that have killed people in the last 24 hours and this is not normal rains are normal at the scale of the rainfall is abnormal and it is attributable to the fact that global temperature is above 1.1 1.2 degrees so we have entered what the Secretary General of the UN now calls climate boiling not just climate change but climate boiling you know in a reference to the proverb of frogs being boiled in water very slowly so that they don't realize that they're being boiled until they die human beings can make a difference between that and July 2023 is a wake-up call we need to get out of the boiling part and we need to do something and let me conclude by saying that I think Scotland and Bangladesh my country we have a lot in common we can do things together not just leaders but people academics researchers NGOs civil society lawyers there are many many different ways in which we can collaborate with each other and I'd be very very happy to continue to explore how we might be able to do that I'll stop there for now if you want to have the questions I'm happy to answer Yes, yes professors I do have a couple more questions for you thank you and since you've touched on that the commitment Scotland has done the my question is Scotland has set a net zero target for 2045 and became one of the first countries as you said in the world to introduce comprehensive legislation on climate adoption in 2019 how can other countries follow suit absolutely so I think Scotland is certainly a global leader both on the emission targets which unfortunately aren't always met as Ben has mentioned but they are good targets and they need to be adhered to also on adaptation Scotland is not immune to the impacts of climate change and you're going to have to adapt in fact that's one area where you might even learn from Bangladesh how to adapt to the impacts of climate change because we have a lot of experience on adaptation particularly to floods and cyclones and then I think you know the issue of loss and damage in my mind now that we have crossed this threshold that entered what the secretary general calls the era of climate boiling I call it the era of loss and damage we have now entered it's happening and it's attributable to human induced climate change so to me that becomes the number one responsibility of every single one of us we have to help the victims they did not cause the problem we caused the problem we are responsible we must take moral responsibility to help them and Scotland has stepped up you have done it the people of Scotland have done that and I feel that that's something that the people of Scotland together with other vulnerable countries particularly Bangladesh we'd be very happy to collaborate to actually take this forward as a as a global citizenry attacking the climate problem not just waiting for leaders to do the right thing because they have failed us time and time again at COP 27 we saw importance important progress on mobilizing climate adoption plants a new pledge totaling more than 230 million US dollars however the the goal for developed countries to jointly meet 100 billion US dollars by 2020 for adoption was not met how can we better encourage states to mobilize commitment to this scale well this is happening so one of the good outcomes in Glasgow was an acknowledgement by the developed countries the rich countries that the funding that they were providing the hundred billion that they promised but were not getting to even within the amounts that they were providing they had a very skewed proportion 80 percent of what they were providing was going for mitigation reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and only 20 percent was going to adaptation in the most vulnerable developing countries and that's something that all of us raised there and they acknowledge that they need to do better and they promise to double the amount of funding that they were giving for adaptation so to go from 20 percent to 40 percent we had asked for 50 percent but they agreed to go to 40 percent and many of them have been putting money in to do that they haven't reached that target yet so you know promises are made but promises are not kept when it comes to money but nevertheless it is moving forward now one of the key issues in using money which is a very important one from our point of view is that there has been evidence research done on adaptation funds that have been provided in many different countries and one of the results of the research which was published in the latest IPCC report is that in many cases the funds were given for adaptation but they didn't actually work they didn't result in any reduction of vulnerability and the reason why that was so it varies from place to place but the generic reason is that these were done in a very top down manner the funders from you know the global funders arrived with their plans and they told us what to do and then we did it and it didn't work and they never bothered to ask us they never bothered to ask the local people and so what we are promoting very strongly is the notion of what we now call locally led adaptation listen to the people who are being impacted whether it's in the U.S. or in Scotland or in Bangladesh doesn't matter local people who are being impacted know the problem they know what should be done about the problem and if you want to go and help them and provide them with assistance you have to help them do what they think is best and then support them in doing it themselves rather than going and telling them now this is what you have to do particularly when you go and tell them you're going to have to move they don't want to move they want to stay where they are they want to be protected and so we are making progress it's slow it's not fast enough but we are making good progress on learning how to do adaptation more effectively and getting the funding to do that still inadequate but at least it's moving in the right direction thank you good to hear that but my last question to you now is how can we better ensure countries in the global south are not being locked out of access to transitioning to renewable energy absolutely I think this is a key issue in fact you know living in the south in the global south this is an internal discussion and debate within our country Bangladesh, India, China what is the best way for us to develop and those of us who believe that the best way for us to develop is to use renewable clean energy rather than the old fossil fuel dirty energy that has been used in the past it is still a struggle because you know the vested interests who want to invest in fossil fuel are very strong they're very powerful both in our country as well as at the global level so we are going to have to fight them and the best way to fight them is to show that the it can be done and it can be cheaper so right now renewables are actually cheaper than coal they will become cheaper than petroleum very quickly and then they'll become cheaper than natural gas after that and they are becoming cheaper by the day and better by the day and more efficient by the day in fact in Bangladesh we just opened a major new renewable energy plant that's about 300 megawatts it's the biggest we've made so far and we've got solar home systems in six million households that's the largest number of households it's solar home systems in the whole world so Bangladesh is actually quite progressive when it comes to renewables but again it's not happening fast enough it needs to happen faster and it needs to be supported by the global community we need a lot more support and resources and investments to do this thank you doctor thank you very much well done before I go to the to the floor and ask to the audience and ask questions to all my panels I have my colleague who joined me just now Sarah Boyack who is the Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Nerd Zero Energy and Justice Transition she's been she visited Bangladesh twice and if you just want to share your thoughts and where we are and what can be done hi well first of all apologies for not being here right at the start I'm missing the start of the speeches Foisal's right I've been to Bangladesh twice but I've also been to Malawi twice and I got very excited at COP26 because the loss and damage principle is not just a really important idea but hopefully it will lead to more action and we can feel proud that we kicked off the idea in Scotland but we really need to do so much more and we need to make sure that money actually gets out to those countries and gets spent because I think we need to do more in sharing knowledge and expertise and resources and one of the things I'm going to pitch to everyone is to get involved yourselves because this is the Scottish Parliament's festival of politics we're in recess but next month we're all going to be back and there's a chance to come and work with us on our cross-party groups for example we've got cross-party groups on Malawi, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan I chair the international development cross-party group and we need to make sure that climate change is actually central to everything we do in the Parliament so it's not just a good talk but it's actually delivering and supporting groups the work that Ben's doing and his groups we support the Disasters Emergency Committee and there's a lot to be optimistic of people do want to work with us when the Disasters Emergency Committee launched their Pakistan flood relief fund it just went way over their expectations but we need to be doing this all the time we need to get our businesses to do more one of the things we're doing in our cross-party group is in the international development is to try and get debt cancelled for developing countries who've built up debts through no fault of their own and it stops them spending money to actually get work done in country to pick up that comment about working with local communities so there is work we can be inspired by but I think there's so much more we need to do and there's supporting other countries and then there's doing stuff in Scotland so we're not meeting our targets we've got some of the most radical targets which again we can be proud of but our homes, our buildings we need to decarbonise them and do it in such a way that people can afford it we need to decarbonise our transport and we need to decarbonise our land and renewables as mentioned we've helped to lead the renewables revolution we should share our technology we should do it ourselves so there's a lot more we can do in Scotland but also work with each other and pass on that experience but not in a one-way direction my lesson from going to Malawi and Bangladesh is it's not just us going to tell other countries here's our great technology it's actually learning from them working with them and supporting them it's a pitch it's great seeing everyone in the room think about getting involved afterwards I recognise a lot of people from local campaigning we can do more if we work together both across the parties but also all the different networks and support all the aid organisations whether it's financially or making the links so I'm looking forward to hearing the discussion my final pitch is on Friday at 3 30 pm we're going to be debating Scotland a good global citizen question mark so if anyone doesn't get a question in today or they don't get their question asked and they want to come and keep getting involved that's my message we've got to do this together because climate change is not a future issue it's a now issue and there are countries where people are losing their education they're losing their jobs they're losing their homes and we need to do everything we can to support them recover but also to be resilient for the future and you know COP26 proved we've got a responsibility yes urgency ahead of COP28 what can we do together thanks very much thank you Sarah yes I think we all agree that we all need to act now things are happening we've seen I can see one of my friends who is the chairman of the Turkish Chamber of Commerce who is here recently Turkey went through natural disaster as well same time I would like to ask Consul General from India I think India has recently been flooded as well so if there is something you want to say Consul General Vijay Salvaraj do you want to come to the front and the mic is thank you MSP Faisal for having me here very briefly you know the experts are on stage they've all spoken can you switch the mobile off please if you don't mind yes so as everyone said climate changes here and we in India feel it more acutely because it's still largely an agrarian society and we depend a lot on the monsoons which is from June to September there's already been a very erratic pattern to the monsoons this year places which normally have good rainfall have got less and places which have less rainfall have gotten more and this analysis over each 10-year period is seeing a shift now if you take over the last 30 years or so I had the pleasure to serve in Bangladesh for three years from 2013 to 16 there's just one word of caution it's that both India and Bangladesh are extremely ambitious countries there is tremendous appetite for growth and people want economic growth and that is going to lead to consumption of resources so some of the solutions that we talk of here for example in Scotland like for example cycling for various reasons that is not going to work in India or in Bangladesh right now we need to look at other ways and India is at the same time looking at other ways of reducing emissions for example the amount of solar capacity installed the amount of wind capacity installed the number of nuclear plants that have been installed and there are a few more that are being commissioned we have the ambitious target of reducing fossil fuel by half in 2030 so that is an extremely ambitious target all our oil and gas companies have been instructed by the government to look for the best ways to do that and in fact between Scotland and India we've had initial discussions with companies in Aberdeen which are into green hydrogen and in that space to look at how best this can benefit India so there is an appetite for technology for advanced technology but there's also a lot that is happening in India to mitigate or reduce the greenhouse emissions but as I said you know given the ambition levels anyone who's travelled to India over the last couple of years would see that one year is not the same as the next year the same with Dhaka it what it was in the 90s as a place where cyclones would literally wipe away thousands of people the amount of effort that's been taken to mitigate human suffering when disaster strikes has been tremendous both in India and in Bangladesh and I think that's something we need to acknowledge and then and not just look at it as an absolutely poor you know desperately in need of help sort of situation there's both ambition but there's also a great realization that we need to do more so any any cooperation with that as the context is what we're looking at thank you thank you thank you very much yes we all agree that we all need to work together now I'm going to give you guys the floor so can I you've raised your hand first one two three four we'll take all the questions at once then obviously we'll take the answers and can I ask everyone to keep the question precise please so my name is Bryce Goodall I'm a disabled climate justice activist I've got I've had a lived experience of what's happening most morning in Fife and I just wanted just to basically bring the global picture to this so I'm a disabled person and then Bangladesh I am approximately 10% of Bangladesh population is disabled that's approximately around about 16.94 million people who are going to be most disproportionately affected by this and yet we've got yet we've got basically the UK government which you've just mentioned Elizabeth which I want to say thank you so much as somebody who's a spokesperson from Stop Rosebank campaign is that we're going to we are basically going to the UK government are trying to approve the Rosebank oil field which is basically the emissions will equate to the the annual CO2 emissions for the lowest 20 income countries combined and I mean the Rosebank has been widely public oppositional oppositional like 700 scientists experts to organisations and political parties and I just think that when I'm looking and I was at COP26 and when I was hearing from people and people who have actually now gone on and actually had to get some counselling and support because of activists in indigenous communities have had to get some support and counselling because they have been so they have been betrayed by the government they're being betrayed by people and they just cannot they cannot imagine the pain and suffering of not have seen a failed system I'd like to ask is how can we get fossil fuel fossil fuel lobbyists out of politics? How do we get them out of politics? How do we ban MSPs for example from meeting fossil fuel lobbyists and actually and ending the corruption that happens and up in the back doors of politics because this is exactly what the problem is Equinor has met the Scottish Government Equan BP has came in here and had secret talks with MSPs and yet that doesn't make the headlines and yet these are the people who are giving gratuities and giving all these fantastic things to MSPs and to also to political leaders and that is muddy in the water that is causing this corruption causing these causing these agreements which we see at COP26 to be watered down and diluted which is going to affect the 16.4 million disabled people in Bangladesh who are absolutely going to be before going to be the forefront of this who are going to be absolutely going to have to basically like they're not going to be able to migrate properly there's people with autism in that area I've got autism how can they be able to do that that is absolutely important and we need to take action now and we need to take action right here right now and we need the MSPs we need the Labour to be bold and call for a green new deal and we need to basically actually get some action on this right here right now thank you very much thank you very much for the question do you want Doctor do you want to answer that now or do you want to do it all together whichever you prefer say something quickly now I mean I I very much agree with you and thank you for raising the fact that disabled the disabled community is one of the groups who are disproportionately impacted by climate change this is what we call an intersectional injustice so it falls across many different groups who have already been the victims of injustice in the past and it's often those who fall into more than one who are particularly impacted so as you say the disabled community within a country like Bangladesh are really feeling the effect of climate change and often have kept out a decision making process climate anxiety the mental health impacts of climate change we haven't talked about enough today so thanks for raising that it's incredibly important and including among young people and I mean I absolutely agree that there is no way that any kind of commitment to climate justice or climate action can be compatible with Rose Bank it just is impossible so I mean I really would like to see leadership by the Scottish and the UK governments on that and making that clear decision and also completely agree it's incompatible with any kind of participatory justice that corporations and it is fossil fuel companies but it's not just fossil fuel companies it's also a lot of evidence of big meat and dairy companies influencing political decision making and trying to influence public awareness on climate change and we do need I mean perhaps a lawyer or perhaps some of you with NGO background like Ben would be better for me place to say how we do this but it's completely clear that that is a huge part of the problem that this has been allowed to happen do you want to add anything to lead them? I mean maybe briefly yeah I mean I would just yeah likewise I mean thank you for your for your activism and for your commitment to the cause I think it's absolutely necessary we need people like you to be doing things like you're doing but we also need let's say moderates or people who are not people living their everyday lives to be considering this and calling on their political leaders to be taking action on it and we also need people like Foisal and Sarah to take that to the floor of Parliament like you said and put pressure on government to deliver results maybe just quickly on fossil fuels I would say that there is a lot of momentum now growing around something called the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty this is in recognition of the fact that the Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC the Convention on Climate Change have not managed to get results on fossil fuels like I mentioned earlier and I think more growing momentum around that from activists from moderates from opposition politicians could be really strong in terms of really finally putting the nail on the coffin of fossil fuels Yeah, thank you for raising that even that you touched upon autism and people don't realise the impact that this has on many different minorities I just want to say that it's down to the local and you've been the activist and I think Ben's touched upon it the Solomon Islands the president of the Phoenix Island I saw one of his documentaries where he mentioned that whilst you asked other leaders to do certain things you as a leader have to also implement things so it's the leaders and the politicians that need to do something and in that category they were doing a lot of fishing and he implemented he implemented sort of levies on fishing to stop the number of fishes because whilst the island needed the fishing and needed the food he stopped a lot of the fishing so that they could grow so these are the things that as locals we need to do so we need to carry on the activists and is up to the politicians here in the room that need to stop these companies coming in they need to they need to be open and transparency there shouldn't be hidden talks behind closed doors there shouldn't be extra perks you know we're supposed to be leading in this so yeah, thank you thank you Jelena and I totally agree and Ben touched on that we are here to listen my colleagues are here we will be taking it forward as well as I said people like yourself are here to make us make sure that we do our job properly we are here to listen we are listening and we'll make sure that we do what we have to do and I don't know if Sarah wants to say anything on this or as I said whatever questions are getting asked we're listening and we'll do whatever we can do to serve the community yes I'm also climate activist have been for a very long time and I'm speaking on behalf of the Edinburgh Climate Coalition but also just stop oil stroke this is rigged which is now the Scottish element the we climate activists feel very strongly that politicians don't get it basically and everything's happening far too slowly too much in on what what we're saying is politicians should be should be serving the public and not the oil industry the fossil fuel industry that's one point and the other point is these young activists now I'm getting to them I'm not going to myself just I'm far too old but I know these young activists very well now they are superb people and they're treated like jobs and and criminals and put into jail and everything it's much worse in England of course still but they are just so frustrated and now with Rishi Sunak for latest pronouncement about 100 new licenses for new oil fields and gas fields for God's sake you know we just feel incredibly frustrated and the politicians are not doing nearly enough they just haven't got it yet I just get same old garbage from my MSP I wouldn't manage his name he just says you know oh SNP is doing ABCDEFG and we're all sort of bubble in fact the last climate change committee report on Scotland is we are only doing well on renewable energy all the other issues and not being properly dealt with thank you very much I think the the questions are more similar and I guess the answer would be quite similar to and as I said that we are here to listen and we are listening and it will be wrong for of you to put everybody in in one line so we're there is people like us can I touch upon that sorry can I touch upon that I think understand the politics at you the difficulty is here that the politicians have a five-year cycle so they have a five-year plan this is not a five-year plan this is something that and it's very difficult for people to you know to sort of vision something that's going to happen in 2030 2040 2050 because those are the statistics a lot of people are like that's far away but we already seen the impacts in Bangladesh in some states in America in Germany you know you're seeing it around the world it's on the news so politicians have to you know come out this box of the five-year cycle plan what are we going to do what can we do in terms of the local we need to as Sarah had said we need to incorporate climate change in every single plan in education in the hospital anything that is been done has now to be incorporated and I think that I think you're right it needs to change it's a culture or politicians need to change it's very clear we all need to work together rather than pointing finger at each other and we need to work together because it's happening it's something need to be done and we are here to listen and we're listening next question Yeah, well you can just see you're listening the thing is this was so we're not just listening it's full action and that's exactly what we're asking what we're asking for we're asking for climate action because actions speak louder than words Agreed Thank you Faisal it's wonderful that you have bring this issue in service parliament I am Dr. Walito Suruddin I am in Scotland since 1976 and I was UK in 1967 and why I'm working my country, Bangladesh as you said 180 million is more than 180 million we don't count the what is the refugee in the Bangladesh is more than nearly 15 million now and I was in Bangladesh not very long even three months ago then I was last year and the flood in Sillat as you know more than 15 million people such a disaster flood happened in Sillat half of the country was water and it is going very, very dangerous as you know the size of the Bangladesh 180 or 90 million is like Wales and Scotland England and Scotland the size and UK size is 70 million people and you are talking 190 million people you have to think about the word is Dr. Hawks mentioned is we are going very, very dangerous position and I hope that the Bangladesh should be prioritized for the climate changes thank you thank you very much panelists do you want to say something on that one oh right okay you have a question I think there was someone at the back sorry we're not forgetting we're not just going on the I'm just going to take two more questions and then yeah okay as briefly as possible I'm David Coleman I work with Scottish churches on environmental issues I'm again I don't want my comment to be taken as soft but the language you are using suggests that we are the only species on the planet at COP26 there was a lot of talk of nature-based solutions and then the Indigenous folk there called that out and said you know you're not listening to the voice you're not giving rights to essentially other stakeholders in the nature and climate crisis which I think is what we have to carry on doing it can you update your language a little bit if you're listening thank you I'm going to take one more questions then I'm going to come to the panel right at the back right to the back over there and then who's next in this side okay thank you is this on yeah I'm a faculty member at Institute for Global Health and Development at Queen Margaret University and I had a question for the panel about framing and this is harking back to Naomi Klein's this changes everything and I just had three points I was wondering about quickly should we be focusing on countries and just the oil industry or should we be looking also at transnational corporations and how exports are being protected by the World Trade Organization I I haven't really heard that as part of the discussion similarly someone raised economic development and economic growth and I question can you really truly have the economic growth that we've seen in the west around the world without impacting on the environment and without truly impacting on sustainability and that brings up the issue of sustainability as a as being framed from the Bruntland Commission to the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals in a purely anthropocentric manner where we're only looking at the perpetuation of human lives at a certain level whereas as the former person just mentioned we're all really quite connected and with that one focus on on the how we look at who is to to blame or who is is is is the accountability on I also wonder what you think about the whole resilience discourse and the fact that so much funding I work on on resilience funding actually I'm doing research in Bangladesh looking at resilience and yet there's a part of me that also questions by looking at resilience are we actually taking the responsibility off of the government the transnational corporations and essentially placing it on the shoulders of the individuals thank you so much thank you very much I'm going to take one more question then I'm going to get first Ben to respond so the the lady next oh Dr. Hawk sorry thanks chair now I teach at Stratford University I'm in the economic department right although it is now now the point which you have raised particularly Professor Salimul Haq was raising the lead Scotland gave Scotland gave we must maintain the momentum no doubt about it the world is facing what you call an existential threat for a low-lying countries like Bangladesh is a case of life and death 41 million people are going to be displaced so the most important thing these countries are suffering for the irresponsible action of now the industrialized world though so they must pay the loss and damage fund which was agreed in Charmel shake and what we want from politicians like you please please give the lead that even in London the government is delay dealing like like that one the sales we're getting and the previous speaker was mentioning that one that how do we pursue this thing that's most important so politicians like you we want a strong lead thanks a lot thank you very much I think we've got enough questions I'm going to go to the our researcher Dr Ben Wilson first yeah after we've got time I know time is short so I'll just be very quick I mean thank you for the questions I mean I think the point on multinational corporations is really important I think there would be definite questions over how you actually do that but one one aspect of positivity is that the potential global taxes that I mentioned and the innovative sources of finance to try and draw in more money from such institutions was actually explicitly mentioned in the COP 27 text and therefore is something that's being actively considered by the transitional committee on loss and damage that gives me some hope I think on the point about biodiversity and ecology and the anthropocentrism that sometimes dominates this debate I think that I agree however I think that you know that there is you know the sustainable development goals recognise this and it is actually something that I think is perhaps inadequately but it does inspire the SDGs and how they are framed and I think there was some efforts to try and bring together the the UNFCCC process and the Convention of Biodiversity process around COP 26 and I think that probably needs strength and then lastly just to say to our colleagues at the front engage in activism I think that the climate change plan which is forthcoming and the Scottish Government soon is something that we should all as citizens as activists as people concerned about this issue really focus our attention on because you know governments and well you know respond to the cycles of policy that they have to respond to i.e. they are producing this plan now and therefore focusing our energy on that as well as focusing it absolutely on Rose Bank and the developments and the announcements on North Sea Oil and Gas can really help channel all that energy towards something which hopefully for goodness' sake can be a bit more positive than what we've seen thank you Dr. Diori Adion Thank you so much yes really great questions there I'll just try and say three things really quickly so on nature and moving away from a kind of language that just assumes that humans are the priority I would love to talk a lot about more about multi-species justice and eco-feminism but to keep it short there's a huge amount that we could learn from indigenous communities who live in a way that is respectful of the non-human world around us and recognises that we're part of that and that is going to be a key part of any way forward Briefly on Just Stop Oil I mean I think we're at a situation where they are showing completely legitimate civil disobedience the government has failed to do its part of looking of keeping up whatever implicit contract we have protecting the future of younger generations and they are using the means that they can just as the suffragettes did just as the civil rights movement did to say that this is not acceptable and I think that they are doing what's right and on the final on the point that was made at the back yes I think it's key to recognise at the one hand the absolutely crucial importance of listening to and being led by the frontline communities those who are already having to adapt to climate change without just leaving it to them to become resilient on their own this has to be about providing the resources sharing the technology but also listening and giving a genuine seat of a decision-making table to the people who are most affected Thank you Jelena do you want to add something Just based on what you were saying I think yeah we had four minutes to talk and it's very difficult to touch upon the and we can go on and on there is a deforestation that I wanted to touch upon there's you know the issues with the bees at the moment that people have been talking about still not found solution and without pollination people don't actually realise that we will have no crops and that's a big thing and that's a huge topic in itself so I would have loved to touch upon that as well and then the meat the consumption of meat do we start to dictate to people you can't eat meat you know this is you know you've got to think about humans are people's rights and how much are we going to become we have to educate and explain to allow people to start to start understanding and I believe in I think the global taxes that Ben touched upon is something that could assist with that I think everything's already being said so I'm not going to reiterate what's been already said by the panel thank you very much as I said we're running out of time and I know we could have gone on for another hour easily I'm just going to take a last question I can see you had your hand up for a very long time very briefly please yeah thank you I'm also an activist for Fridays for Future and just a poll or this is rigged as it's called and I want to know what your thoughts are on young people using their right to protest as we're seeing now that the government is taking more extreme measures using section 12 and 14 making it more and more difficult for young people to be able to do this so how do you think that we would be able to let the government hear what we want and get them to actually listen to us instead of them just ignoring us and making it more and more difficult thank you Jelena she's the lawyer very simple I'm just going to leave it to you everyone has a freedom of speech and you have a right to have a freedom to protest and it's to an extent of course no violence no peaceful protests are being done and I think that the government are stepping in and it's for us again going back to the lobbyist to have the acts amended so that it allows peaceful protest to carry on because you have a right to protest it's your freedom of speech and you should have a right to protest and I completely agree with it yes so carry on thank you thank you very much I'm really sorry if I haven't given I managed to give you the time as I said that time is very tight but as I said at the beginning and I'm saying it now we are here to listen and if if you have any questions you can write to me you can write to any of my colleagues and I will make sure that we do respond to your emails and we are committed that's why we're here as the panelist and everyone the voice from all of us is that we need to work together we have to work together it's five year four year it's not the plan for any time limit it's happening we can see it all over the world we can see the fire we can see the water we can see the floods things are happening everywhere so we need to take the action so before I finish I'm going to ask all my panelists very shortly I don't know if you she'll have Dr Hawk online that saved us a minute I'm going to start from Jelena and then I'll just to summarize or very briefly climate change is a global phenomena and we created it so we need to resolve it now it is our duty to do it for the future of our children and it can only be done collectively this is a global issue there is no dignity in a slow painful death Dr yes I mean this is about basic justice this we strip away all the political discussions and party politics this is about whether it's acceptable to live in a way which is destroying the lives of our fellow human beings including our own children and grandchildren and I think when we step back and look at it that simply it becomes clear that we have an imperative to act and act now on this The loss and damage fund which you've heard a lot about today would I don't think have been established when it was if it wasn't for the efforts of people of Scotland it was campaigners in Scotland putting pressure on the Scottish Government initially to champion this issue which they then did and then that led to progress at COP 27 so I think that that story should give people a lot of hope actually that with collective activism and a small scale on a country like Scotland that big change can happen thank you thank you to all my panelists all of you have been excellent and of course it would have been possible if all of you have been here or contributed thanks to the staff who have been working and putting up with us thank you all again just before I end I'll tell you that there's events are happening today tomorrow on end Friday and as my colleague said that she'll be chairing on Friday Scotland a global a good global citizen and there is workers right so if you can pick up the leaflets I think they're outside you'll see there's loads of events are happening Scottish Parliament is yours all the parliamentarians are elected by you all we are here to listen to you you know it's it's impossible to answer all the questions at one go but we are trying our level best and we all need to as I said we all need to work together we are here to listen and we're listening thank you very much and thank you panelists again thank you very much