 Good afternoon everybody. Thank you for taking your seats and being prompt. Thank you all for joining us today. Those of you who are here in the room and those of you who are viewing online. I'm Paul Butler. I'm the president and chief transformation officer here at New America. Through our work here at New America, we hope to respond to global forces of demographic, technological and social change and we focus our work in five broad clusters of work. Democracy, education, technology, family well-being and global security. Today's event is hosted by our Planetary Politics initiative. Planetary Politics is the brainchild of a few folks, our CEO Ann Marie Slaughter, members of our international security and our political reform teams. It was launched a year ago under the leadership of Candice Rondeau as a call to action for reimagining a world order that is inclusive and responsive to the challenges of our time. We saw the problem then as one that was simple enough to name but super hard to solve. Our international institutions were built for another era and we need to find ways to revitalize them to secure the rights of all people and to protect the planet. Over the past year Planetary Politics has focused its work in two domains, digital technology and climate change and both of those will feature heavily in the conversations that we're going to have today. Our goal is to help stakeholders understand the new and evolving geopolitics of digitization and decarbonization. Alongside many university and non-profit partners, we have produced critical research, most recently a report titled governing the digital future. We've been convening workshops and task forces to bring global perspectives and novel thinking to these challenges and like today, we have been convening global leaders and practitioners around these critical issues. We've gathered an amazing group of them here today. We're going to begin the afternoon with a fireside chat on the call for a new global governance and before I introduce our distinguished guest, I'll first introduce our moderator. Bina Venkatraman is a former New America fellow. She's a science and technology policy expert. She was senior advisor for climate change innovation in the Obama White House. She's a columnist for the Washington Post, focusing on the future and is an author of the acclaimed book, The Optimist Telescope, Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age. Thank you, Bina, for joining us. And on behalf of New America, it is our distinct privilege and honor to also recognize and welcome Nobel Laureate and former Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She has come all the way from her home country on the heels of an election to help us explore critical issues at the intersection of global governance, equity and transformation. She was Africa's first democratically elected female head of state, serving as president of Liberia for two terms from 2006 to 2018. Taking office shortly after the decade long civil war, she steered Liberia through reconciliation and recovery as well as the Ebola crisis. Her achievements in acting economic, social and political changed and earned her international acclaim, including a Nobel Prize for Peace in 2011, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award, the Grand Croix, the Légion d'Honneur, France's highest public distinction. President Sirleaf has also served in various regional and international leadership positions, including co-chair of the UN Secretary General High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the POST 2015 Development Agenda, chairperson of the Economic Community of West African States and most recently co-chair of the UN Secretary General's High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism. She is a tireless promoter of freedom, peace, justice, women's empowerment and democratic rule. We are honored to host her here at New America. Thank you for joining us, Bina, over to you. Thanks so much, Paul. Welcome, Madam President. Thank you so much for being here for this conversation and for traveling all the way. Good to be here, Bina. Thank you, Paul, for this initiation to have this session today. And thanks to everyone for being here for an important conversation on a critical topic, which of course is planetary politics and global governance. So I think it won't be a sort of controversial thing to say in this room that there are many global crises underway right now. There are slow-burning crises like climate change, which is becoming more and more urgent and the problems and challenges that arise from artificial intelligence, the war in Ukraine, the war now in the Middle East. Problems that imply that we need transboundary global multilateral solutions. But at the same time, it seems there's a growing skepticism and maybe even cynicism that we have the kind of international institutions, and you heard it in Paul's welcome remarks, that could actually help us deal with these kinds of challenges. And I just want to start by asking, what's your take? Are our international institutions, are they up to this task? Well, you know you mentioned the different crisis, global crisis that we face. But I think we need to first look at what's happened that led to those crises. The fact that there's been a crawl toward a fracturing of global governance structures, effective multilateralism, global cooperation, have all been undermined over the past decade and the fact that we've not had this cooperation, we find that different countries are beginning to find different paths, staying away from the international order of peace and democracy, pursuing in some cases different political systems or being able to defend their own differences. So those crises of having weakened effective multilateralism and cooperation has led to the other crisis that we now face. So do you diagnose the problem as fractures and problems within countries that are undermining already strong global governance structures? Or are you diagnosing the problem as global structures that aren't adapting to the changes that are happening in society? It's a bit of both. In one case, the fractures within nations, within countries themselves, the failure for inclusion to allow people to have or say to participate in those decisions that will affect their lives, that's part of it. But also global cooperation because of the geopolitics, people being able to have their own spheres of influence, particularly as it relates to countries in the global south. This has led to some tensions and led to, as I say, taking away from a compliance with a general world order to which one realize that this was for the betterment of all society. And the fact that people, people who are affected by all decisions, national or international, don't have a say at a time when our nations, our entire global community is now full of young people, young people who are demanding leadership, women who have been left behind, who are also demanding that they have equity and equal opportunity. It's a world that's changing and the crisis is severe. And something needs to be done about it. So groups like these that will have a say in identifying some of the root causes of these problems and what can we do. But more importantly, leadership, leadership in both countries as well as in international organizations that can see the value and the advantage of coming together as it used to be two decades ago. I want to get back to that question of how we include these different groups that you see as gaining more voice and needing to have more voice in these institutions and in our global system. But before we get to that and talk about leadership, right before we came on stage, you said to me, you might not like my answer if you asked me about how the UN General Assembly went and being a journalist, that was like the juiciest thing that you could possibly say. So I have to ask you, how was last month's UN General Assembly? What's your assessment of how that went? I'm sorry, it's just my job. Well, that's one thing. I like to be truthful and I take it that this is a really fine group. No, because I've been in international public service for so long, I've participated in general assembly too many times as an official in the United Nations and also 12 years as president. And so I thought this year I would be well off if I didn't listen to mostly the talks. That lead to no action. So I thought it was more important to do something. And I had a good alternative, more importantly. It was to sit in on a board meeting to talk about a foundation that is focusing on Africa and African development. So was I kind enough in that response? That was kind. It's pretty diplomatic. I would expect nothing less. I think it's interesting because we lacked sort of four of the five permanent Security Council members, heads of state, you know, Britain, France, we're missing, China, Russia, the heads of state, we're missing from the UN General Assembly last month. And people were criticizing that as sort of an indication of the UN losing its power and its ability to effect change. But you're saying something actually, which is I think something a general public kind of has is an impression of the UN, which is that there's a lot of talking happening even with the heads of state who do come and not enough action that's resulting from that. And I want to ask you, you've done some thinking about institutions other than the UN, which are more sort of multilateral institutions in the financial sector and that are working on global finance. And what's your diagnosis there? Is there more hope about getting those institutions to do the right thing? Let me say that I'm so glad that the CEO of New America is Amory Slutter. She was one of those, you know, working on the UN Secretary General, New Global Agenda, the Common Agenda, leading to what was going to be a summit of the future. I see David, he's sitting there. He was the mean coordinator of what we did now. I think the real encompassing message is that the world needs to change. The entire global architecture requires reform. Institutions that were established at a time much, much, much before today still use the same practices, essentially the policies, reflecting conditions of old. Times have changed and all of the new threats faced by the global community need to be addressed through this reform. And this is why there was a group, a very dispersed group, wide group representing all of the regions of the world that came together on the Secretary General's mandate to work on the aspects, the changes that need to be made. Do you want us to go through that? Okay, let me just go through that and then you can come in. Well, I know one of those changes and this relates to something you were saying earlier just to give you a little area of focus for that. Is your high level, I think you're talking about co-chairing the high level board on effective multilateralism for the UN Secretary General. And one of the insights that came from that group under your leadership was that we need institutions, international institutions to be more inclusive. Can you say how do we go about making that happen? It sounds like something that almost everyone would agree with, but how do you get from here to there? All right, well, let's take the global financial architecture. The two prominent international financial institutions, international financial institutions that have really guided financial policies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They are owned and their leadership come from the major powers of the world as they were established after World War II. Clearly, we need some changes in that. And that means bringing into their leadership more representation of countries of the world. They also, through their processes, control the allocation of financial resources. Again, we think that changes would mean that some allocation, some partnership arrangement should be made with financial institutions in the global south, for example, development finance banks that have responsibility also for financial flows to support development. We believe that some of the long standing arrangements of conditionalities, what countries have to do to be able to benefit from these financial flows, need to be rethought. Are we going to, the size of the financial envelope has not provided the scale required for transformation in poor countries. So they find themselves like in the issue of debt, being able to get debt relief through arrangements and for COVID-19, send them all back into debt. And so that scale of resources, being able to give to build capacities for stronger domestic resource mobilization. And if I may say that one of the major reform that we need in the international financial architecture is the role of private sector, private capital, private capital that will be able to address the constraints that countries face to improve their economies, to have value added to some of their primary resources. Now admittedly there's an issue there because private sector, you know, profit seeking institutions, which is the right thing for what the way they are structured. And so that would mean if we're going to make sure that we find a means for private sector to also be a part of the flows to development countries, then there have to be means to minimize the risks that they would face. So de-risking options would have to be determined to enable that to happen. We need more representation on a discussion that I held in G20. You know where the major better performing countries in the world sit down to discuss financial policies, financial allocation of resources. There are groups like finance ministers that are invited to some of those sessions, but they don't have real decision making powers. Should we not have a chance to reform G20? And they have been talking about inviting the African Union to have a seat in G20. The same applies to G7, where the seven major powers of the world are the ones that make the real policies that relate to issues affecting development, affecting the world particularly in the area of finance. How do you think this would apply to a specific area, for example, with climate finance, which has been both a really critical part of global negotiations on addressing climate change, but also a bit of an issue of disparity and an issue of conflict between countries in the developed and developing world. If you had a scenario where you had more inclusion of countries that would be beneficiaries of climate finance, whether from governments, international banks, and financial institutions, and also the private sector, how could you see that playing out differently than sort of the scheme of climate finance we have now? Well, I don't think we've yet seen a full determination on climate finance. I think we've seen many, you know, cop, how many cops we've had. And we haven't yet seen a delivery of the resources that were committed, even though there's some talks on a bilateral partnership arrangements, there are certain amounts that are being given to deal with it. And I think maybe the latest meeting on that in Margarita is just something you might see, something different will come up. And I think the countries of the global south have been those that are affected most by climate change. And those that have led to the problems of climate change are those in the north. So I guess if one were saying that we all now are part of a global amphitheater, then we have to see some of the resources held by the global north be directed into the global south to be able to address the major effects of climate change so that we have a more equitable world. And a more equitable world will lead to a better economically performing world that would benefit all. I don't think those decisions have yet been made in a very comprehensive way and a very structured way that one designs the allocation of resources based on certain criteria, the criteria of not only those that need it most, but those that are willing to do more for themselves, you know. And those discussions are ongoing in different fora. I am not sure we've found the right approaches or the right policies that will deal in a way that will be fair to all. And how does that relate to your point about conditionality of finance to the developing world? So your point is very well taken that the rich nations of the world have contributed much more to the problem of climate change while the poor nations of the world have suffered the brunt of the impacts thus far, though we see disasters related to climate change now affecting the entire world. Given that we know that that injustice and that asymmetry exists, but that we also know that we need all of the nations of the world to be developing in a clean way and reducing emissions, if not bringing them to zero, as soon as possible. How does that relate to what kind of conditionality there should be on climate finance going towards poorer nations, nations that are less wealthy, nations that have contributed less to the climate crisis? I think most times conditionality is set forth by primary financial institutions or under partnership arrangements. Tend to be more one-size-fits-all and not really recognized in the specificities of countries. Their endowment, their capacity, even their culture. And those conditionalities then some well intended, but if they don't fit the conditions and the time frame to be able to achieve the results anticipated, then they don't work and you find the countries again slipping back. And I think we have so many examples of that. So if we're going to have reform, we need to again, we change institutions that would change policies and approaches and measures. One might see things like that, sometimes the conditionalities don't fit the problem at hand. That also leads to some of the tensions in the major powers arrangements. Those who may see human rights as a major trigger for development, quite rightly so for some. For others, they might not see that as being significant in achieving the level of support that they would like to give to countries. So that may leave again to differences and lead to some tensions in the partnership arrangements that we're not subscribing to the same ideals. That says that one needs to also recognize differences. You hear people talk about Africa, what Africa needs, what Africa should do. Africa is 53 countries with different endowment, different culture, different tradition. So if you're doing support for Africa, you may have to look at it with all these kinds of different specificities and see how you can tailor the response and support to the real situation at that patience. You're raising more complexity than our current institutions are capable of dealing with, so I am going to ask you at some point maybe to elaborate on how we kind of get there. But I do want to ask you about democracy because when we think about problems like the climate crisis and we look at the ways that democracies including this one that we're in right now have struggled to take to come together and take strident action on climate change. I think there's some doubt being sowed about how and whether democracies can respond by sufficiently marshaling investment in clean energy, sufficiently cutting emissions. You rebuilt a democracy, you built a democracy from the ground up and I presume you're still a proponent of it as a system of government. And so I want to ask you what gives you confidence, does anything give you confidence that democracies are capable of addressing this problem? My first answer is yes, but let me expand on that a little bit. I believe it's clear from an African perspective that democracy has worked for us. It has enabled many countries to be able to achieve a level of development they have even if insufficient for the achievement of their overall national goals. The slippage today that has led to five coup d'etats in Africa again has its roots into the global geopolitical environment, again the fracturing of leadership at the global level. But democracy I think is it. In Africa we still have one or two variations of democracy. We have places where they are managed succession, anticipating who's going to take over so you don't have, you still find that in places like Botswana and Namibia, some of these South African countries. But by and large I think the people of Africa believe democracy is the way to go. We've had military rule, we still have authoritarianism, but democracy is what has enabled us to achieve what most countries have. I think there's one thing I must say, whether we're dealing with conditionalities or we're dealing with the allocation, again in Africa it is clear that primary responsibility for the development of Africa rests on Africa. And African leaders, and African leaders must be the ones to take responsibility. So in forging conditionalities we should build into that package the fact that only leaders who do all the things we say we want to see done by others are done by themselves. We're going to open it up to questions in a few moments and I hope someone can give me a time check if possible. But the question I want to ask you before we do that is about that. So you've talked about the responsibility of leaders in Africa and of African nations including some of the smallest countries in the world. What is the responsibility that these countries have when it comes to some of our big global challenges? What are the actions that from your perspective need to be taken by even small nations when it comes to these bigger planetary problems? I think first of all we need leaders who lead with strong commitment to the development of their country. With the participation of the people in the different governance structures that exist at all levels. We need particular emphasis on certain things like education to create the capacity to govern effectively, health to ensure the safety of people to be able to work. We need integrity in governance to ensure the allocation of domestic resources used properly for the achievement of national goals. So I think those are those are the things that we do find a certain level of that in certain countries. And we also need a regular peaceful transfer of power so that we don't have too long we need we need change and we need changing people too. Those are all some of the basics that those are discussions that are ongoing now. And that's what might lead to change in the global but we have to change first, right? Thank you. I want to invite people to come up and ask questions of the president. Hi Richard Ponziow from the Stimson Center here in Washington. Congratulations on the new high level advisory board report. As a think tanker I think many from the policy advocacy community be keen to hear two of your favorite proposals from the with the COP 28 around the corner and climate broader environmental governance. What is something that we should be thinking about maybe championing in the run up to the summit of the future next year. And then similarly started talking about it today the section on development financing and the momentum we're seeing around the Bridgetown initiative on changes in the global financial architecture. One final related point why should our government here in Washington the United States get excited and focused on this agenda especially with a big presidential election coming up next year. Okay three questions in one. One at a time would be ideal. Just I'll throw that out there just on behalf of the interlocutor here. Well let's take it one by one. I think on the entire financial agenda we believe that much of what's in the Bridgetown initiative is one that talks about the blending. The scaling the blending the private sector the insurance of a proper allocation. It also reflects the same things about decision making a financial institution participation of some of the other institutions from the south. So all of the rest of the measures to improve the financial global financial architecture I think are well stated. It goes beyond the Bridgetown initiative but the Bridgetown initiative is the core of all of that. And then what was the other one. The first was what were your sort of one or two sort of favorite or priority recommendations from the high level advisory board on effective multilateralism looking towards next year's summit on the future. Well that number one priority has to do with the global financial architecture. They change of that change in the structure of the World Bank and the IMF bringing participation of the multilateral development banks being able to have the allocation of resources made in such a manner that they address the major causes. Being able to make countries and able through their endowment to get the domestic resources to develop their own country. So that for me a number one. Number two the whole global security architecture. We haven't talked about that. But that that means that work changes have to be taken at the Security Council. Today we have a Moribund Security Council. And it's been going that way. It's been that way for the past several years because of the fracturing of global political something. And I think that relates to the final. That sets the basis for why we're saying democracy is slipping. And we have coup d'etats and you have and you have these wars today. I mean and with the existing situation in Ukraine. Now Palestine and Israel. It's going to to bring more pressure. More pressure on finding the right solution to these. At the same time granting groups like terrorism. Granting groups that would like to see military regime train that feel that they can get away with it. Because there's not a body so again how do we bring better representation. If I may also talk about the on pandemics and health. I can say that we had a group. I was co-chair of a group with with Helen Clark. Former Prime Minister of New Zealand. That worked on a whole measure of trying to make WHO a stronger and better finance institution. International health regulation being set up for reform. And we've been on advocacy for the past year or so talking about international health threat council. And we haven't succeeded in getting any focus on that. So here we are going to go into another global agenda. People on the planet in the report effective multilateralism. You're going to be talking about that. How many global agendas will we have. Until we see the political will to make them happen to make some of them happen. I think that's the challenge to everybody. Hi my name is Steve. I work and study here in the city. Thank you very much for today's forum. I appreciate it. Madam President for a number of us who were young producers. One of the last times that you came through the city. We really appreciated your comments and your interaction with members of the Hill. Chris Coons, Ron Klain. Could you amid today's sort of fractured political environment. And that's probably being charitable. Could you give us an overview of your last interactions with members of Congress during the Ebola crisis. And my other question is. Is there a great game for Africa. Wagner group comes to mind some private military. Outfits resource extraction that sort of thing and the PRC's efforts in China also. So thank you very much. Okay. So just so we the second question. Can you sum it up in a sentence? A renewed great game game. Great game. For Africa. Great game. Okay. I'm not sure I understand the question either. I understand the question. Okay. I think the question is. Is Africa up for grabs yet again. Between China and Russia. Yes. Okay. Right. Is there a game for Africa? Not. You know I've heard talk about. Yes. That's not true. Very. I mean Africa's past the stage of being a place you can just come and pick what you want and. You know. And run with it. Now we've gone past that fun. Yes. Longstanding historical and traditional relationship to exist. Maybe to our own disadvantage. That we haven't built a stronger. Union among ourselves. And have a common agenda. We call the Africa's Africa 2063 the Africa we want. We've put it forward by so aspirational that we haven't moved it from aspirations. To activism. And so in that respect. But. There will be no recolonization of Africa. In terms of either soft power influence of China or resource. Even just resource ownership or of. Foreign companies. Do you have any concerns about that. Yes. Like I said there's geopolitical intervention. And sometimes is driven by greed. Greed for resources. Sometimes is driven. Internally by again. My power. And you know. Self. Self gain and what not corruption and all and all of that. So that sometimes part of it and that existing. Within countries and existing partnership. Between countries. But I mean we have to take responsibility on. Why. Why we have not grown up in such a way that. We don't need. We don't need a French military. Support. Let's let's support the development of our own armies. You know that's where we need to support. I mean but not so much armies that build the economies first. So we don't have to have too much money spent on armies. And did you. Did you want to share anything about. Your experience is talking with members of the U.S. Congress about the Ebola crisis or since then. Well let me say that I'm proud to have had a very strong bipartisan relationship. We want to hear the juicy stuff. Right. We want to hear it all. I'm very serious about that. That we've had that it has enabled me to have the kind of cooperation that we were able to get for Liberia through legislative support because of that. And so and I think all all our countries should. Should work in that manner when it comes to China because there's always the question about you know China. China has a different approach to development. China's China has the the step approach you know big big football arena football stadiums big big it. Yeah they do they do really benefit everybody. They believe in big infrastructure to build the rate rules and the schools and all those have a place also in development is needed. That's why you see countries still want it. On the other hand we do know that when it comes to the social services like health education I mean those are the bedrock anyway of improvement in any society. And so those things are not quick fixes. China has quick fixes. Five years you may get a big railway. You need 20 years to get quality education. And so how can we plan the approaches and the assets of both instead of seeing it as as. Well we get into a situation where there's so opposite as a fight for that and I don't. I know just imagine just imagine if we could get the major powers of the world to agree that they'll have a cooperative endeavor when it comes to development in the south. And that the resources could be pulled from each into a common pool with the right conditionalities and the allocation that's fair and just to the need and the and the abilities of the country's own effort. Just think if we had that how much we could develop. We could develop the infrastructure in Africa that we enable something. You know 800 million people in Africa don't have electricity. How we how we how we're going to how we're going to respond to that is very difficult. So this is why we really need to get we need to get back. We need to get them back back this cooperation to find a way to get it back. We need political will on the part of everybody. We need political will that's can you hear me OK. Yes. Yes. Jill Shooker I'm a counselor for UNESCO here in the U.S. and I'm going to try a trifecta which hopefully will be quick. First on the technology piece on A.I. I'm curious if you have thoughts as to whether you think the question of international leadership and institutions. That can be led by the U.N. successfully or should there be a different kind of institution that can reach the digitalization that's needed in Africa. Your comments on democracy and global security. The issue of coups that are taking place seemingly frequently right now in Africa. I'm just wondering what your perspective is on why that seems to be happening with more frequency almost back to the 60s. And with that the third question is you were saying you Africans need to be able to I believe you said to focus more on themselves in terms of security. And I'm wondering what you think about the force that's going to Haiti. And whether you think that's appropriate. Thank you so much. I'm going to help you with those questions. That's my best. Yes. So the first was about A.I. and whether the U.N. is an appropriate international institution to deal with the challenges of A.I. globally or if we need a different kind of global institution. I really don't know. Well I know that I don't know much about A.I. I don't feature intelligence. I don't. And I wonder if if we all in the world know enough about it except those that are who technically strong in A.I. As a matter of fact I see some fear in the growth of A.I. as I see it take away from the human endeavor. So but will we need a specialized invitation to respond to it? Maybe so. But I do hope we will see the institutions we have now re-energize themselves and reinvent themselves and come back to the area where they are cooperating to be excess the existential threats that we face now. That many of the less developed countries have no capacity to understand or to be able to manage it. This sort of relates to your earlier point about inclusion and then I think we'll take a final question because we're leading to the end here. But you talked about more people being able to express their voices in these international institutions. And I think part of the challenge right now and part of the reason there's a lot of skepticism about institutions responding to problems like artificial intelligence, like the United Nations responding to artificial intelligence is that people see some of the harms and they see some of these problems very up close and personal in their lives and they see something like the UN is very far away from their lives. Is there something in your recommendations that would help bridge the gap between people and these larger international institutions? I think inclusion of people at the national level would need to move away from the centralized power and authority into building on the periphery, you know, at the mayor level, at community levels. And we're really, those are really the front, the front responders in the health. That's what we find of community health workers. COVID-19 it was community workers. They're not given sufficient support, sufficient compensation, sufficient recognition. Being able to build the places where people can have town hall discussion, not just when there's campaign, in the campaign you get a lot of town hall discussion. But as a regular means of understanding, UN decisions, African Union and other regional institutions decisions, being able to have places where people understand them and know them so that when you ask about a UN institution, most persons in the community, particularly in rural areas, will not even know about it. You know, because there's not enough opportunity to involve them, to know what it is for them to, even if they cannot make the decisions because they don't have the capacity and understanding to make the decision. But with that knowledge, they can have more ownership and more ownership will bring more self endeavor. You know, because talk about the coup d'etat as was mentioned. The coup d'etat became because it started through terrorism was not responded to. Insecurity arrangements, it is not the security decision, the security council that can really prevent something from happening. You've got to have security bodies that are equipped, that are empowered at the regional level to be able to deal with that. Representation at the global level, yes, is good because more voices with diversity in knowledge, diversity in action is good. Being able to shift from peacekeeping forces to forces of conflict prevention so that you don't have to spend so much money responding to crisis if you can use less money preventing crisis. So it's trying to reframe, reframe the whole global agenda. I think that we need to spend more time on. Just a small task and I'm going to give the final question to you here and please tell us your name. So I'm Ben Dalton, I work here at New America. We have some online questions that are coming in. So I'll just keep this very brief. So one question is, are most of the reforms and changes that are being discussed here, do they rely on good governance and competent leaders? And if that's not the case, are you not essentially throwing good money after bad? That's correct. It's true, it's true, no it's true, there's no denying that, it's true. We've reached the end of our, but I do want to ask, I want to just abuse the moderator role for a second and ask you to tell us, I think you've given us a lot of areas of concern in terms of the state of the world order and I think many of us wake up if not struggle to fall asleep because of our concerns about current global affairs. What's the single most hopeful thing that you see happening in terms of world changing responses to these challenges? Five letters, W-O-M-E-N. No, seriously, I do believe women and youths have been the marginalized groups in society, simply because that way it's always been that things are dominated by men, you know, so I think you see a movement toward more opportunities, more equity for women, more educated, more knowledge, more demands and things for women and for youth. And I think unless we turn that around so that we find these two groups are allowed much more of a say in decision making at both national and international level. And I ask you to just look at the, you know, look at the results and the reports that we get and see where, where, when women lead, women have a little bit of a different approach, preservation of human life, empathy for others, trying to find means for bridging differences, you know, I think. But that's not to say that one wants to say women will rule the world. I wish it would happen, but it won't. But I think if we have more women participation in every aspect of national and global decisions and they have a say in leadership, not just as tokenism, you know, but in leadership that I think you'll find a more peaceful and a more balanced world. Thank you. You've certainly blazed a trail there, not just for Africa, but for the world. And thank you so much for being here for this conversation and traveling all the way from Liberia to share your insights with us today. Thank you everyone for being here. Thank you. For the information, privacy violations, cyber attacks, and the worsening of inequalities, we have yet to develop global frameworks to govern digital technology. It's clear greater stewardship of cyberspace is needed to ensure the digital revolution promotes human security, equity, and prosperity. But what should global tech governance look like? Who should write the rules? And how? Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Gordon LeForge. I am a senior policy analyst with the Planetary Politics Initiative here at New America. As that video just suggested, our next discussion is going to focus on global digital governance. This is a subject that we think about a lot here at New America and Planetary Politics, and we've been working on a lot. As Paul mentioned in his opening remarks, we've just published a report entitled, Governing the Digital Future, that's on our website. I encourage you all to check it out. This panel is titled, Adjust an Equitable Digital Future. And to introduce our panelists and steer us through this conversation, it is my pleasure to introduce our moderator, Candace Rondo. Candace is the senior director of both Planetary Politics and the Future Frontlines program here at New America. She's also a professor of practice with the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University, and she is a leading expert on the Wagner Group. Candace is an award-winning, for which she's been getting a lot of attention recently. You may have seen her on TV. Candace is an award-winning investigative journalist, and previously, before coming to New America, she held positions at the International Crisis Group, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and she was Washington Post's bureau chief in Kabul, Afghanistan, for a stint. She is and always has been a very sharp observer of how digital technologies shape conflict, sovereignty, and human rights. So with that, I will turn it over to Candace. Thank you. Thank you, Gordon, for that very warm and kind of scary introduction. First, let me also just say, Madam President, thank you again. You've really honored us by being here. I hope we get a selfie before we leave. That's the most important part of my day. My mother will kill me if it doesn't happen. You don't want that on your head. I'm just so pleased to be here. It's been a long journey for our team, for Gordon, for Patricia Gruver, the co-author of the report that we released very recently. Hila Rasul Ayub, our director who works on Power Reimagined, looks at climate change. All of our panelists here today, the entire team has worked so hard to get to this moment. And in fact, the conversation about global disruption is something that we've been having for a long time, but really started for me, for Anne-Marie, during the pandemic, when we were stuck at home with not much to do other than panic. And this is the idea that we came up with, is that we need to have this conversation, that the conversations that we're having about global security today have to be much more inclusive. We have to ask very hard questions and challenge the kind of status quo, as Madam President just did. You know, the last decade and in the last few days, let's just talk about the last few days, we have seen a major war, the beginnings of a major war unfold on our cell phones, on tablets, on laptops. And it's the second time around in the last 18 months that we've seen massive conflict unfold on digital devices. Twelve years ago, we were talking about Web 2.0, and we were worried about our kids and family members getting sucked into Facebook. Now, we're worried about the singularity and what will happen with artificial intelligence. How will it reshape human communities and human society? And these are the questions that we've been grappling with over the last little while through our Digital Futures Task Force. And a gathering of individuals, which includes, of course, Alejandro and several others, who've been really asking hard questions about the way digital technology is changing our idea of sovereignty. In a world where we used to think about it as, you know, territory and boundaries and lines on maps, you can't do that in the virtual world. And it's scrambling the way we think about norms and rights and power, most importantly. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Let me introduce our panelists. Alejandro Pesante is not only one of my favorites. Don't get jealous, guys. He's also one of the shining lights of our Digital Futures Task Force. He is the Director General for Academic Computing Services of the National University of Mexico in Mexico City. He served the community as a member of the ICANN Board of Directors. Those are the people that name domains and keep registry information. He's educated in Mexico, and Alejandro does not play. Let me tell you. He knows a lot about science. He has degrees in chemistry, physical chemistry. He spent time as a research scholar at the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Research on the Solid State in Stuttgart, Germany. That's one of my favorite countries, and Stuttgart's one of my favorite cities. His career has been bound up with computing since 1972. We won't ask your age with networks and the internet since the late 1980s. In other words, Alejandro knows what he is talking about. The other person on this panel who knows what she's talking about is Nanjira Sambuli. She is another kick butt, digital warrior, and her accomplishments are so outsized. I'm not really sure I really should be sitting on this stage. Nanjira is a four-global fellow. She is also a board member of the New Humanitarian Development Gateway and Digital Impact Alliance. She also advises Carnegie Council's AI and Equality Initiative and the Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms. She's a member of the Gender Advisory Board at the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development. Is if that weren't enough? She also really leads all the advocacy efforts on digital equality at the World Wide Web Foundation. Well, you used to. She's worked at iHub, Nairobi, where she provided strategic guidance for growth on technology and innovation research in the East Africa region. Thank you for coming. My God, what a biography. Our third panelist, Rohinton Madura, is no less distinguished and he soon will be my favorite. Rohinton is a distinguished fellow and former president of the Center for International Governance and Innovation. CG, if you guys don't know it, you should. Everyone apparently loves having Rohinton on the board because he is the chair of a lot of boards. He's a chair of the board on the Institute for New Economic Thinking, vice chair at the McLuhan Foundation, board member of the Partnership for Economic Policy, and he is on the advisory boards of the WTO chairs program at UN Merit and Global Health Center. He is also a professor of practice at McGill University's Institute for Study and International Development. Rohinton also sits on a commission on global economic transformation. He knows the most famous guy in the world on soft power, Joseph Stieglitz, and many, many, many other things. Welcome all three of you. Thank you for joining us. So we're touching on this sort of challenge that we have now with the way digital technologies, particularly AI, are really transforming everything from conflict to sort of crisis management. And there are some good things too. Let's talk about, you know, MNRA. Without artificial intelligence, we would not have had a pandemic, I think, relief ultimately. But there's been a lot of inaction on regulating digital technologies, which have let platform companies like Meta and others do a lot of damage in communities that are particularly vulnerable. We can think of the crisis with the Rohingya genocide. We can think of many different instances. Given that history and background, I'm going to turn to you, Alejandro, first, because you are my favorite. Really, where are we going to go next? I mean, we've got inaction, a history of inaction, but any chance of that shifting for AI? Do we see any kind of activism happening? Take a deep breath. Okay. No, first, I'm very happy to thank Candace Rundall, Gordon Aforge, Patricia Gruber, Riley Rogers for this invitation. I take it especially as a big honor because you already know me, so you already saw me in action in this same room for the Task Force, and that was a fantastic experience, which I thank you for. I'm also in awe of the convening power of this organization for many years. I visited over here more than a decade ago, and I'm very glad to tell you there's someone in this room who really knows this stuff. That's Dr. Steve Crocker, who's sitting down there. He's the former chair of ICANN. He's among many other merits, the person who invented the request for comments, procedure for standardizing the Internet in the Internet and Generic Task Force. And many, many other towering achievements and still very, very active in these fields. And there's David Olive from ICANN office, and Ilya Puyoza, who comes from the DFR project. This is, for me, an additional sign of convening power, and I'm very honored to be sitting on the same days that Madam Johnson Sirleaf was. I'm aware of your work in Liberia since it was happening, I mean, from the news, and in absolute awe of those achievements and what you're now charged with that may shape the digital world as well in many ways. So, now that I have that out of my chest. So, there is action and inaction. It's not only inaction. What we have to realize, I think, I've got straight to this. Today's panic will be tomorrow's platform. A few centuries ago, Plato was scared and very disgusted that people were resorting to writing. And he thought that would damage the use of memory forever. And we have had the same type of concern when radio was going to intrude into our kitchens with voices from outside the house, whether it was going to be good music and constructive education or propaganda, no one knew at that time. And of course, both things happened. And it's all the way, you know, every new media. The thing is that maybe these disruptions were happening once every millennium then once every half millennium and now we have 20 of them a year. So, we are always chasing the past. We're fighting the last war, so to speak. What I think that's happening more importantly now is that we have to realize that the platforms, the panics, the changes, Web 2.0, artificial intelligence, what have you, are shedding light on what humans actually do to each other. Individually or through institutions or through organizations. Organizations that maybe, you know, virtues like the Wikipedia or evil like terrorist groups or criminal gangs, the whole criminal ecosystem. The cyber criminal ecosystem is an exact map of the classic, physical ecosystem. It goes by segmentation, need to know basis, cells, hiding information, hiding identity. It's very amplified by the internet. We have talked sometimes, I see six factors to map these things from what we know offline to what happens online. The first of them is of course a hyperscale of the internet, the speed with which things can happen. You know, flare ups can happen in a few hours. That would take a couple of years, 50 years ago. We have the question of identity, which the internet doesn't really give you any identity except your IP address, which is very fickle. And people can hide behind the internet for crime or they can hide behind the internet for whistle blowing and for starting a rebellion against an oppressor team. So these are two blades, two sided knives. Then we have the global reach of the internet, which means we are always crossing jurisdictional borders, which may be for the hood to spread sexual health education to young women in religious oppressive regimes. And there are many religions that are like that, at least locally, or to organize crime. And we have lowering of barriers to start things, to start organizations, companies, NGOs, or criminal gangs. We have a friction reduction, which means things happen very fast with a click off a button, and sometimes we have to manage against that speed so that you won't transfer your whole heritage to someone who tells you that he is the heir of General Taylor from Liberia who holds, you know, tons of gold. And for a modicum of $50,000, he'll transfer everything to you. And that was the first news people have about Taylor outside the people who read the news. It's amazing. And the final one is a huge probe of memory. So now what we have for AI is we have to look at it in this same way. What is it doing? Who is doing what? And then see how it's changed by the technology, dissect and then reassemble. But then you know what remedies will have to be for people. Laws will not work about technology. The object of the law is behavior. People are collectivities or governments, but the law will not fix steel. It will fix using twisted steel to open locks outside your house. The behavior. It's all, I mean, you know, policy that focuses on behavior is rare lately. But Nanjir, I know you have something to say about this, but let me add an additional kind of nuance to the question, which is, you know, we have seen a lot of big names in artificial intelligence come out. Some of the people you know. But the conversation is pretty limited right now in terms of, like, who's at the table? What's your take on that? Yeah. I agree. It's not that there's been in action so much as the kinds of action we need from power holders are insufficient in the sense that with technology, especially in the last two decades, the harms, whether it's from the era of Facebook and other social media as sort of the rate of diffusion of technology has become faster, the warning signs have almost always come from the developing world. So the adverse uses we started to see from Myanmar right off the bat in 2013 when these platforms started to sort of proliferate across societies. Those were ignored. My favorite example here is usually Cambridge Analytica and how it's spoken about here in the U.S. But before they got here, they cut their teeth in operations in Kenya, in Nigeria, in South Africa and elsewhere. As those warnings were being sent out, they weren't being heard. So there's also a lot about where sites that are centered for crisis, for these issues to be taken seriously. And it's the same thing we're seeing with artificial intelligence now. The language around safety, the language around the moratorium and other calls for action, center very specific viewpoints and not everybody's. So for one, there's an interesting sense of creating fear and this fear is also obfuscating the need for governance and in this sense the need for state actors to set the rules of the road that these powerful players can then heed to. So they want to create a panic and then tell us that they're the ones who know how best to govern themselves. You all just don't worry. You just stay panicked. We're going to figure this thing out on the back end here and we'll come back to you with more technology rather than fixing the impulses that are driving whether it's AI being deployed prematurely without the right measures and continuing adverse practices like relying on underpaid labor to train the models that then we're all experimenting with. So it really in a sense is technologies have shown us to build on Alejandra's point. They've been a mirror and we're not liking what we're seeing in the mirror and we're running off panicking rather than looking deeply and staring deeply into what is being reflected for us to fix. So that remains a challenge whether we're talking about those days of Facebook or now artificial general intelligence as our friends in San Francisco want us to frame the conversation. Our friends in San Francisco. So powerful, Ro Hinton. What's your take? So first thank you for having me as your least favorite panelist. I love you, I still love you. And I'd make I guess two points on AI concentration and action and enact. The first is that I like to think of AI as having broadly three streams of impact. One is on the nexus of issues around security, human rights, privacy, surveillance. The second is on economy and jobs and what it does to labor markets. And then the third is the most of science fiction like singularity. What happens when AI outwits us all? And if you think of action and inaction I'd say there's been some not enough and I'll come to that in a second action on that first sense. I mean we all understand the security and so on dimensions as you all pointed out. But values are different. On the second stream jobs and so on I think there's been almost no action. I mean we talk about taxing robots so that governments can produce or fund public goods for the citizens or not there. And there's nothing that I have seen that suggests that we're going to deal with that anytime soon. And then on singularity I mean there's no I mean we have evidence from biotech and other kinds of advanced sciences that there are ways for societies to grapple with nuclear technology. We haven't really come anywhere near that. There's a debate about whether you can cut off computing power but it's still at that stage. My second point where there has been action think of the range that we're seeing. The draft EU legislation on AI is risk based. My country's Canada's is too. China's is kind of based on technologies. And what these countries do is they talk about low risk and high risk AI. And in the EU legislation for example high risk AI is something like social scoring or the use of facial recognition technology in public places is banned. It's just not good. In China that is exactly what AI is used for in the public good. And there's a genuine sense there that some of this like going through airports or dealing with COVID this technology has worked and we are going to use facial recognition technology in public. How do you square those? So I guess I'm saying there has been action at the national and sometimes regional level globally and I know you'll come to that making these different perspectives talk to each other in a way that we have a global chapeau which I thought your report did quite well given how impossible the situation is were some ways from it. So let me I'm really a big fan of going off script and my team knows this very well but I want to unpack something that you just mentioned Rohinton. It's something that we've been kind of debating about a little bit is the impacts of artificial intelligence on the workforce. Two things happened over the summer. We saw the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild go on strike because really A, the technology of streaming on the internet yet another technological kind of defining moment has totally reshaped the industry beyond recognition. Now people receive pennies sometimes they get like a check for 20 cents on their residuals. This was the big conundrum for the Screen Actors Guild and also for the Writers Guild but there's also the additional piece of artificial intelligence. The use of artificial intelligence for voiceover for creating characters even writing scripts and a parallel here is the UAW right now on strike. The biggest union at least one of the most powerful in the country and what are they asking about? They're asking about two things. One, you are stripping down the machine that we've been building for a couple of centuries now into parts that essentially will take away jobs. We'll eliminate jobs from the line but two, you're also using artificial intelligence. You're creating potentially barriers for us to get skilled up and one of my big bug bears when I hear here in Washington on the hill we can just artificial intelligence we can just re-skill everybody. It's going to be good. Let's talk a little bit about the workforce impact of AI not just in the United States I really like globally. What can we expect to see from that? I'm going to go to Nanjira and then you Rohinton and Alejandro. I think it's going to be a mixed bag. If I may focus on how we're seeing it at least with the conversations on the future of work or the present of work in Africa. Before we even talk about the artificial intelligence side of it it is just workforce precarity exists as it were. Younger and younger populations that are not easily absorbed into the economies as they are structured what do you do with that workforce? And then they're also the source of cheap labor to power the data labeling and the sort of the concept of data genitorialism has come up because this work is being outsourced to the Kenyans and other space in Morocco and elsewhere to train Chad's UPD and other models on this is an image of a human and this is not. And then you know at the end of the day you can't even see yourself represented in the outcome. There's a story just this week about the generative AI refusing to generate an image of an African doctor with patients. It just could not. It could not consider an African doctor. It could only consider a doctor to be a white person. And then at some point when probed further it preferred to show a giraffe with children rather than an African doctor with children. So you've worked on this end to train these models and then they're not even seeing you. They're not representative of you. There's that aspect of just the long chain of injustice that is unfolding. There is the question about creativity and where skilling comes in because a lot of what people are starting to... consensus is starting to generate is that on technical jobs, just everyday paper punching, pushing there could be ways where artificial intelligence does better, quote-unquote, but that's a question of where those people will be taking those who have those jobs. So I think the fact that that's a conversation and a concern around the world means that for the first time in a long time we'll have to go back to the books on what labor and worker rights have been. All these things we've written through ILO, International Labor Organization and other spheres. What will that mean? And that will call for planetary solidarity because the worker who's precariously suffering a UAW and the construction worker down in the continent who's trying to get that to sustain them as a living, but I don't know, development money brings you a robot to build your infrastructure there. There's something that ties them. In that future, the fear that we don't know where people are going to have sustainable jobs at least allows us not to see it as old AI domerism but to start speaking about what will solidarity look like in saying whether it's re-skilling of workers or whether it's ensuring that the pace at which these technologies are introduced does not upset systems. It makes us at least have room for a new conversation. I mean, Rohinton, does that scare you? Because it scares me because when you think about the folks who are in charge of regulation, people that you've dealt with, you continue to deal with, are they ready for what was just described here? Since the Industrial Revolution, the path to prosperity and development has been to move from agriculture to low-end manufacturers and then up that value chain. That's how Britain, Germany and France did it. That's how the Tigers in East Asia did it. And that's how the current, you know, that's how Vietnam sees its future in Burma. Now think about that. Suppose you're Kazakhstan or Ethiopia or Tunisia, where you haven't even reached that middle stage and more and more of the tasks are being automated at the low end. Some of us think about 40% of them have. So that entry level and that middle level step that you need to become something else just isn't going to be available. It's already not been available. Now we're not supposed to bring slides and I'm not a PowerPoint fan, but there's one I like to show, which is the photo of, I think it's Nike that reopened its first plant in Europe some years ago after moving all these operations to Asia over the years. And it's the photo of the shop floor. And all it is, is robots. I mean, so you can, you know, you can reshore and all of that, but it's just not going to be like it used to be. So the employment absorption, and then the question becomes, as you were saying, well, are we going to revisit the labor-leisure trade-off? Will jobs look different? Will we work less? All of the above in countries that have the social systems and the humanities to not just retrain people technically, but to actually have people think about digital literacy and what it means to think in a different era. But there's a large part of the world, one-fifth of the world, does not have meaningful or any privacy or data legislation. So the soft infrastructure that we need to deal with all of this change just isn't there. And so I think this worries me a lot. And I don't think it's enough to assume a way that, I mean, I have great sympathy for the strike in Hollywood, but that's just a microcosm of what others are going to face. And I don't think, as some of my economist colleagues do, one can assume this away by saying, all of this wealth can be created. If we can simply redistribute it, we'll all be doing other funkier things. I think we have to have that conversation in a more granular way. And it will happen, but it's not happening quite yet. Other funkier things. Thoughts? Well, I mean, I agree we have a huge problem, and I think that putting a few drops of skepticism on some of the grand statements can help us reanalyze these things without denying the seriousness of the problem. Actually, it may even underline how bad it is. So are these two very simple guidelines? One of them, about 30 years ago, Peter Cowhing, who was a professor at UCSD and Jonathan Aronson in, I think, UCLA, did a lot of very good work on the trends in technology and its governance. And one thing that they remarked, many others in technology actually know this by heart, is what happens. There's a huge trend to miniaturization and modularization and stuff. And that's been a long, long term, and that's what for Hinton was already mentioning. You know, first you replaced humans with machines, then machines became bigger, and then at some point machines, and I mean steel mills broke down and you had smaller steel mills substituting for them, and you could now place them in more countries and so forth. So that's a trend that it's made by humans. Humans have decision power over it, but so far it has worked more like tectonic plates. All the humans have been able to make a decision. They've made decisions that go in this trend. We didn't see in Hollywood a camera person strike, camera operators or photographers strike against Apple when they introduced a smartphone. Yet it was, and it may have taken a lot of camera jobs away, but it also produced a huge world of short films, films made with a single camera on a small tripod, remotely controlled from a laptop or with another similar camera. These are trends that suddenly are hitting, and I'll say this tongue in cheek because we are that, hitting the manifesto writing class. So our manifestos are now going to be written by artificial intelligence, and they are going to be read by an artificial intelligence. My favorite take on this whole LLM Revolution chat GPT is guys in one room saying, I have a script that I tell them one word and it writes a beautiful email. And the guys in the other room are saying, I have a script that gets this huge, worthy email and tells me in one word what it means. And that's, you know, again, it's illuminating. It's throwing light on how we are doing, how we are working. Writing blurbs for ads is a huge waste of intelligence in the sense that you can have 99% of the words in the blurb. They are written by a machine. So what's the genius there? Maybe just distilling it into one picture now. So the other guideline for me, and it comes together, is the cost of not doing. And this goes especially for developing countries, developing economies. We have legislators feverishly writing laws against or for regulating artificial intelligence. In the Mexican legislature alone, there are already 13 initiatives for cybersecurity and this semester we are seeing already 15 or so for artificial intelligence. Why aren't these legislators? Why weren't? Where were these legislators when they could have allotted 5% instead of 0.1% of the national budget for educational research? We are paying the cost of not having done the job that we should have done or that our people in government should have done 20 or 50 years ago to level the playing field. We have very smart people from every developing country doing fantastic work in artificial intelligence in Google, in Meta, or in Alibaba. Not in country. So that's actually, so you bring me to the next question which is on Scripps. But related to this, of course, you know, Ian Bremmer wrote this fantastic piece in Foreign Affairs, I guess it was last year, talking about sort of our technopolar moment. And I think we can all sort of acknowledge that Meta and Alibaba alphabet, these are not countries, they are not corporations. These are becoming empires. And that own whole parts of the virtual world but also whole parts of the earth. And with that high over-concentration of power, we see challenges with data access, control, you know, bringing value from your own data. In Nigeria, you were just sort of referring to that. We've talked a little bit in our Digital Futures Task Force about how to break through the challenge of the Global South in particular, gaining more control over data access for fending against internet shutdowns. Any answers? One, any answers in the form of an institutional or coalition-building response beyond just sort of like, oh, I think it would be better if it was good. What can we do institutionally or in some sort of coalition format to sort of respond to this inequality of data access and data control? I'll let anybody jump in. On the inequality of data access and control, there's two ways I like to think of it. There's this moment now where these models are learning faster, what they can learn based on a very limited archive of which they're being trained. So there's a quest to get more data, so diversify the data sets. So there are to get more languages, more contexts, more realities that haven't been included is happening. But in so doing, it's a very extractive model that's starting to emerge that isn't so much trying to work within the context and actually register those dividends as distributed equally then. It's almost like let's extract them, get them to this center, and then maybe some trickle down aspects will happen. So for example, with trying to get more languages to train CharGPT and others, endangered languages are an interesting one because you can have these tools help redistribute them in the archive or maintain an archive of them to be learned. But there are communities now pushing back and saying those benefits first have to come to us before they go out there, CharGPT, OpenAI, somebody makes all the profits, a new script on a storyline that's a lived reality and bring it back. So there are these interesting conversations about how do you go from the least connected to the overly connected, what's the through-pass there in distributing equitable gains from these technologies rather than waiting for this increasingly unaccountable force that is the private companies that are running this across the board to maybe distribute back through philanthropy or through social enterprises or corporate social responsibility. And even where governments are not the one stepping in, which is the case in most places, that people power this questioning power is a really interesting impulse that for me is less about the big question has been, do we start reforming institutions that are or build new ones? And in between that, before that happens, is where will people be represented either way? Because we tend to ossify things through institutions, but there's the dynamism of who's needing to be represented there that may not be represented in these institutions, whether we start afresh or whether we reform quickly. So there's the thinking of how to govern in agile ways that needs to pair up with the conversation about what are these institutions that are representative planks for us to have global tables, so to speak. But the world isn't waiting for that. People are actually seeking justice and equity now, not in the lifetimes to come. In Africa we used to be told the young people are the future. I'm done being young, I'm still not the future. So the next generation is watching that. There's an urgency. I like to say there's too many people living in the age where the cans that were kicked down the road are right here. So they're not waiting for us to have the need conversation that is ordered about UN reform. It's about right now we are speaking, we are saying this is how we're organizing, we are trying to find ourselves represented. How can they be supported is just as important a conversation as the reform one of these institutions. So I mean here's the irony. You mentioned data inequities and so on. But way more people live in developing countries than in developed countries. Data is set to be the new oil. It's the raw material and people think of it as a fifth factor of production now. It's a raw material for all of these things, AI and digitization that you're talking about. So if the assets and the raw materials are where they are, there's ways to conceive of that institutional response. I think if companies are using data that's generated in the global south, then a small step forward, a very small but at least it's a step forward, is the tax treaty that we've seen the G20 and OECD broker in which big digital platforms have to pay a minimum tax and cannot finagle, legally finagle their accounts to pay taxes in low tax jurisdictions. That's a good start. At CG, which I used to lead as you mentioned, we did a lot of work on what are called data trusts. Just as you put your savings dollars in mutual fund X and not Y because you like its portfolio and its rate of return. Think about all the data that we generate and that belongs to us as individuals. You could think of data trusts as being national or sectoral as Nanjir and I who sat on a Lancet commission on global health proposed, but there are ways to deposit data for uses that you want and then the monetized or non-pecuniary benefits from data trusts go to the shareholders, the people who contributed their data. So there's ways of thinking of this and the final point I'd make is, just as after the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, we recognized that the troika of the World Bank, IMF and WTO was not up to the task of dealing with financial sector instability. That was just not something that could have been conceived of in 1944. We created the Financial Stability Board, which is a multi-stakeholder group that hasn't made financial systems perfect, but it's many steps in the right direction. Again, at CG, we've proposed something called the Digital Stability Board. As an overarching multi-stakeholder, that's one thing we have to get away from national governments only. Inclusivity cannot just mean having more and more small countries. We have to think about science ethicists, consumer groups, industry indeed, coming together in an institution where best practice is exchanged, where there is adjudication of disputes, and some of these inequity issues can actually be dealt with through that as well. So, you know, we're far from it, and as Najira said, it may not happen as fast as some of us would like while we're still young, but that's where the future lies. Alejandro, I see you writing a novel over here. What's happening? I'm taking careful notes, because they give me anchors to build upon what has been said. It's almost as, you know, what you have just said is the paragraph I would like to have quoted before what I'm going to say now. So it's fantastic. Feel free. So, quoting the previous speakers, we have, first, I've heard in many fora, among others, the global partnership for AI and an initiative led by Dr. Paul Tumi, which is called the GIDE, which is a very interesting initiative to look at legislative and other solutions for data control, for individuals regaining data control. The idea of data commons or data trusts has come up. I still have a lot of questions about how they could actually be built and governed. They would have to form a sort of labor union or consumer union. And then you have all the questions about how to build that representation, keep it away from capture, incorporate or governmental capture and so forth. That's an idea that's floating around. At any rate, I think that we have good precedent to look at in the almost 30 years that internet governance has been a field or a thing. What we have been able to build in the internet governance field is organizations, institutions and mechanisms. Governance is not always about written rules that manage these shared resources. ICAN is one example. That's one of the most formalized. It has a dispute resolution procedure that's very detailed and it has a lot of chances for redress of wrongs and so forth. It's fully multi-stakeholder. It really brings together governments. Actually, one of the curious things that bothers some people in ICAN is that the governments sit in an advisory row. They have a government advisory committee. It has special powers. It can stop things. Almost totally cold on the tracks, but it's an advisory committee. Just as an anecdote to tell you how this came to happen, that reform that we made in ICAN in 2003, we offered the government representatives to study a change in the structure where the government advisory committee would actually sit five directors by election in the board of directors of the corporation or three. It took them about 30 minutes to reject the offer. Because they said first, we would become liable for any litigation that this organization goes into. And we as government representatives cannot be part of a litigation in a private, even if non-profit, organization. And the second one was some of them said in very low voice, there's no way we could get 240 governments to agree on five representatives even if it were regional. So this has been a very healthy structure. And what we see is other multi-stakeholder organizations working in the internet governance field. ICAN is very formalized. It has a large budget. It has formal meetings three times a year in different countries. And it has, as I said, all these teeth for things that go wrong with the central part of the domain name system. Everything else is decentralized. You have something called the anti-phishing working group which is a very lightweight organization. It's mostly meetings and communications led by a guy called Peter Cassidy or the FBI accountant kind of person. It brings together police forces, law enforcement. It brings together the banks where the assets are. And now, of course, there are many other non-financial assets like your Netflix account. So everybody that sort of puts together or has to hold a fence against phishing. And the platforms where phishing occurs which is like the large email providers, large messaging providers. That's where the exchanges take place which actually pull out people's resources. It's a very lightweight organization. And it's done a lot of work that we don't see. The way we see that we don't see it is a huge decrease in phishing attempts. You can get through email, for example. And the way you can make them decrease now in other messaging platforms. You can see that kind of stuff working in many ways. And I would not advise to just copy any of these organizations but to learn the lessons from multi-stakeholder organizations or mechanisms in the internet field. And of course, look at the many others like the Financial Stability Board. There's a lot of multi-stakeholder, even if it's not called so explicitly in sports governance, in finance governance, sometimes inside countries, sometimes globally. And that would be a good field to bring in the learning into this other question. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, but on where we are thinking about new global planetary institutions, whether they borrow from the multi-stakeholder model, multilateral model, otherwise, one big thing that is emerging that is clear is it's something that has to get, especially the big powers, on the same table. So you need the U.S. and China as super producers on the same table. So often is there are new formations that are emerging that will almost always sideline one or the other. So you're finding maybe the Chinese group is organizing different stakeholders. The U.S. group is organizing others. There's an interesting divide around digital authoritarianism, digital democracies, which are terminologies that don't fit neatly anyway. That is not going to help us with where we need to be headed, because at the end of the day, both powers in the quest to participate in geopolitical competition, including in technology are rushing for that data. So if they come to a source that says the continent and we have a saying, when two bulls fight, it is the grass that suffers. When your data is still being extracted because they're contending powers, and you're trying to get the resources to develop from either side without getting caught up, I think our policymaker is going to spend a lot more time fighting these little tensions rather than actually pulling resources to work for them. So that's a reality we must not lose sight of and especially here in D.C. That whatever would be proposed as international absolutely has to get the other powers that are creating these technologies in the same room to find some rules of the road. Yeah, I'm so glad you raised this. I mean, at the risk of offending most of Washington, D.C. and most of the White House just down the street over here, I will say I am extremely pleased to see the fading away of that initiative whereby there was this sort of, we are the authoritarian versus the great democracies because obviously we know we're all in trouble, right? I mean, democracy is in trouble everywhere. Authoritarianism is everywhere and it doesn't neatly sort of sit within any particular set of borders as it turns out. We're all struggling with these challenges and they're difficult, I think, to grapple with if we do have this kind of very binary approach. I think we are at a point where questions from the audience would be very welcome and I want to invite you to come up here and make yourself known. Lots of good questions to, I'm sure, ask. While I wait for somebody to step up to the mic, I'm going to just take the prerogative and ask a very quick question. We touched on data sovereignty in our conversations in May and I think that Mr. Drucker's going to address some of this. I just want to touch on a little bit on the data sovereignty question. We've seen China make bids in the ITU, Russia make bids in the ITU. I'll let you answer it and then we'll get to these questions. Right, data sovereignty, what kind of stakeholder format would we need to really address many of the questions that are coming up there? I think there are more questions we have to ask on what we mean by data sovereignty and whether we are resorting back to jurisdictional sovereignty where your national government through data protection or privacy laws necessitates that certain data does not migrate from civil data, for example, is not transferred either through servers or extracted by companies. Is that the form of data sovereignty we're speaking of? Is it individual sovereignty? And how does that fit in a world where rights are not just about individuals but about communities, which is essentially what the African human and people's rights chatter talks about. It tries to balance the fact that you're an individual within a community and that's the kind of corpus we haven't tapped into in finding other solutions. Too much of the focus on individual rights, the way the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has shown us, has limited us from thinking about other ways to do it. So a lot of focus from Europe and elsewhere is about protecting an individual, an individual protecting their data. But am I going to protect it from China, the US, my government, the companies, how much is one individual capable of doing and are we selling ourselves short by still having a legal precedent that is being set through that model when we're talking about a concept as tenuous as data sovereignty? Some might argue we don't even have the sovereignty of that data anyway. It's crossing all over the internet and the cables and all that jazz. But I think it's a term that's being thrown around a lot without really contextualizing what that means without also creating what would be a protectionist dimension. And I think others are also calling for cross-border data flows with trust, which just says there could be a version of it that doesn't have trust, which tells a lot about the fact that we just need to sit more with that question and hear perspectives from different regions on what people are thinking and collectives. So I think there's work there to be done and more work to be done. Always with this quick answer, I like it. All right, questions from the audience, sir? Steve Crocker. I'm going to make an old guy's comment that'll make Alejandro look like a youngster. Fifty years ago and a little bit more I had a job at DARPA writing the checks to support the International Intelligence Research Program. And the challenge at the time as a youngster then was how do I write the justification for the work we're doing, because typically DARPA programs in those days were five-year programs, and I knew for sure that we were in for a 50-year process of trying to build AI. So I look at the current controversies about AI today and I say, yeah, this is great, we got there finally, but as you commented, we're going to go a little bit further, we may go a whole lot further. And so a lot of the commotion of the moment is really of the moment and you haven't seen anything yet in a way. A particular data point or prospective data point, I was talking to Raj Reddy last year about the progress in speech understanding. So this relates to both in a positive and negative way about preservation of languages and so forth and asked what his prediction was about the ability to have real-time translation in language so that we could each speak in our own native languages and be understood in a quality. He had put himself on record a year earlier, so it was two years ago, that in ten years, eight years from now, 100 languages facile real-time translation. Maybe it'll happen in eight years, it'll take a little longer, and it was informed, I can tell you, if you don't know who Raj Reddy is, a very, very well-informed opinion. Let me set that aside and bring in a different aspect. A lot of attention to the displacement of jobs and increase in equity in wealth and control. I'm not an economist, so I'm going to make amateur comments here. Wealth is roughly, in my limited perspective, divided up into what are your skill sets in terms of individual labor? What assets do you control? And related but slightly different what facilities, organizations, and so forth, what your power structure is. And we're seeing shifts in all of this and but if you stand back and look and I say, well, what's the wealth of a nation? And one can imagine, now moving into sort of semi-science fiction territory, that if instead of valuing what a person can do to create income for himself or herself, what a country or a people can do to create the means of support and prevention of disease and all sorts of things as a community, then you have different ways of approaching how you distribute the benefits of that wealth. And that leads to political issues of do you have capitalism or do you have socialism, et cetera. And I don't want to take a position on which of those needs to be the best. I suspect that there's no perfect answer but the extreme is wrong. But putting that together with my other point is that things are changing and here's the devilish problem. Things are changing at different rates. Westphalian order of things preserved and created a lot of order in the world in a sense and also hardened the interactions so that it made the nation states the primary way of organizing things around the globe. Now we're in a state where a situation where problems are besetting the planet that aren't simply every country should do for itself what's best. There's common things and our institutions aren't naturally set up to create the kind of cooperation and common action that's needed. We have the technology we have rapid changes in computing and AI now and so forth. Things are changing at very different rates here and so that to me is the big challenge and we can have local focused solutions on how we can apply AI, how we can regulate AI for facial recognition or surveillance as well. Not unimportant but from a slightly broader perspective almost a passing challenge that will be overtaken for the long and there's a question in there somewhere. I'm sure there's a question in there and I know that there's a question behind you and we've got about three minutes so what we're going to do is take the two questions and we're going to make you do kind of like quiz show style you get 30 seconds to answer them. Go. So we have a question from the online audience what do the panelists think of the problem of junk data the idea that AI will flood generated low value content which makes it harder to find useful and original information is there a future where only the relatively rich can afford quality data? That's a good question junk data, okay. Hello, I'm from the United Nations University and so AI is a tool and it's up to us to decide how to wield it so it leads to benefits but it also leads to consequences that need to be mitigated. So two questions on that firstly when it comes to the development of AI how can we develop effective public-private partnerships to ensure that the development is in alignment with the values of the international system for instance respecting human rights and the second question which is something that you actually mentioned Andrea which was talking about the need for agile governance and the question of do we stick to existing institutions or create new institutions so any ideas on how we can make these institutions more agile given that you know they're 20th century institutions dealing with 21st century challenges, thank you. Great question. I'm going to summarize as best I can so we can get 30 seconds out of you each. So I think what I heard was one for Mr. Drucker things are moving fast we're not skating to the puck basically how do we skate to the puck? That's number one. Number two is it only the rich people out here who are going to be able to open their email and feel okay about it or is it going to be all the rest of us you know are we going to keep getting junk data, junk email, junk junk junk what's the solution there and last but not least I'm just going to go to the agility part because actually I think that's undervalued and not talked about enough how do we make our response and our institutions more agile when it comes to looking at the artificial intelligence challenge you have exactly 30 seconds go I think that there's just one part of this which is the question about whether old or new institutions I think that it will be solved, it will be answered by first answering what problems plural we can try to solve we may be leaving some problems unsolved in the world that's the history of humankind but define a problem that brings together a group of stakeholders just about public-private partnerships that's exactly what multi-stakeholder means, find the problem find who are the interested parties and if there are harmed parties find a way to bring the harming parties to the table just 5 seconds thanks to the interpreters the sign language interpreters we've made your afternoon very physical indeed they are fierce yeah I think the junk data point speaks to divides and I think we're first approaching a new kind of divide where there will be those of us majority who are connected and those who are disconnected are either those who are never connected or those who can pay their way out so because the vast majority of us are being shepherded into this space where even opening an app that previously is to give you information you have to sift through the junk I was rightfully mentioned to find one gem of insight and the people who are able to afford to pay their way out of these systems it's important to remember that there's also a form of coercion to use these tools where we rely on them reliance has been generated and then Cori Doctor calls it n-certification of these apps where it gives you a service it's a valuable service and then it flips it on you and then keeps you locked in and you don't know how to find your way out easily so they are these divides and they're going to keep shifting up and I out for that figure out some rules before it's too late for everybody not to name names but I feel that way about Gmail go I think DARPA and your space program are shining examples of how public investments generate both public and private wealth and so if we think about technology as being created not by free markets but by public action then the intellectual property that's created by technology should be seen as more of a public good than we currently do our currents of IP regimes and trips and so on take us in the wrong direction and so many of the points you made lead me to think that taxing the profits of the rents that accrue from technology so that governments can provide their citizens the things that they're meant to provide is the future of public policy and on the middle point think of a continuum from data to information to knowledge to wisdom and I don't think there's any algorithm yet that gets us as cleanly to that as the human brain but where the money will be and where the action will be is to sift through the noise and the data and information to knowledge and wisdom and that's what we should be again directing public action at Rohit and you are now my favorite and I'm glad you're all my favorite let's give the panelists a hand here I thought it was an excellent discussion thank you so thank you to Candice Rohit and Alejandro for that excellent conversation our next and final panel is titled climate change and financing adjust transition our moderator is Planetary Politics Director Hila Rasulayou Hila runs Planetary Politics a body of work we call Power Reimagined which focuses on decarbonization and financing adjust energy transition around the world Hila was previously a Foreign Service Officer with USAID where she had extensive experience working with multilateral institutions she held positions such as the Director of Global Engagement on the National Security Council for a while and she was a Director of the Office of Development Coordination at USAID she is a lawyer by training and she worked also as an investigator with the World Bank's Integrity Vice Presidency going after corruption and bad actors in the World Bank system so without further ado I will turn it over to Hila thanks Gordon and welcome everybody we are so glad to have you join us for this all important conversation and discussion on the planetary climate crisis and the need to center historically marginalized frontline communities and climate policy and financing discussions like no other time in recent history have those of us in the global north and wealthier nations face the ravages of the climate crisis in the way that we did this summer the hottest summer recorded in history but frontline communities those communities that have been facing the impact of the climate crisis be it through devastating floods hurricanes drought they've been telling us for a long time that while they are on the front lines right now the crisis will come to us all so as such the discussions and policies that are drawn up need to center those voices and experiences to come up with solutions that will benefit the planet as a whole so it gives me immense pleasure to introduce our incredibly illustrious panelists today next to me we have Dr. Said Muhammad Ali who is a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute lecture at the advanced academic programs at Johns Hopkins he has also done extensive consulting work with the United Nations care international among other international bodies he is a regular contributor to the Express Tribune an affiliate of the New York Times in Pakistan he has taught international affairs international development and anthropology courses in Australia, Pakistan and the United States so welcome Dr. Ali and then we have Heather McTeer Tony I'm very glad to introduce her she is the executive director of Petroleum Chemicals Campaign she is also the author of the book Before the Street Lights come on Black America's urgent call for climate solutions she was also appointed by President Barack Obama within the EPA and has previously served as mayor to a Greenville, Mississippi one of the youngest mayors in the world and she is a member of the Greenville community and I just learned in the green room they have a sister city in Liberia and so that's always wonderful to see and then on the screen here we are very glad to have joined us at Camila Camilo Camila is an activist out of Brazil she is a social entrepreneur a social responsibility strategies within the ESG agenda and initiative focused on climate action after five years of engagement with communities in the Amazon Rainforest as a volunteer on social projects she founded the Creators Academy Brazil a community of content creators who amplify the agenda of protecting Brazilian biomes she is also a contributor to a think tank focused on public and digital security and climate governance also to the Angels of the City Association which has been working with a homeless population addiction issues and restorative justice for 35 years so with that I would like to quickly just jump into some questions I've learned a lot from my boss in terms of going off script so I hope that you all will join me for that ride so we'll begin this discussion with a little bit of scene setting to understand both the depth and the history of the climate crisis for these frontline communities and then we can move to some pathways for solutions and hopefully identify some glimmers of hope so I'll first turn to you Heather in your book Before the Street Lights Come On you draw a clear line between the racist redlining policies which continue to endure to this day and African Americans have increased vulnerability to climate change and climate disasters from your work what are the most pressing climate related challenges faced by frontline communities in the U.S. and how do those challenges intersect with issues of social justice and economic justice thank you so much for that question and thank you all for being here it's certainly an honor and I'm excited that we're having this conversation in a moment that's so critical to both how we think about climate solutions in the future and more importantly how we engage people to be a part of that because the conversation around just transition can't begin until we recognize that we have an unjust system and that unjust system is what has put us in a position where we have communities particularly communities of color and African American communities in southeast that have always existed in a space of being detrimentally and disproportionately impacted by climate and by large oil and gas and petrochemical facilities that have put themselves on the very footprint of plantations and of the enslaved system of the southeast so when you ask the question of what are these biggest challenges they're all intersectional because we cannot silo these impacts to our communities environmental health and the health impacts of people who live under a cloud of pollution quite literally are also a cumulative impact because just as we are experiencing the health impacts of having distressed lungs of seeing our children who have more impacts of asthma and have more experiences of these these very real and present health issues they also overlap with education they also overlap with the ability to sustain infrastructure in our communities they also overlap with the economic development ability in a community so the same experience of someone who is from Greenville, Mississippi or from that Rouge, Louisiana or from Texas who is not able to go to work because they've got kids at home that have had to go to the hospital because they've got asthma attack and people can't work and so if you're at home and you've got sick days and all of these things again are continuing to bundle together there's no reason for us to think that if we continue along that same strain that we can have a just transition to clean energy without addressing these injustices in the past and I'm really excited to think about what those solutions can be and how we do that together well and we talked about this a little bit just now there's the work that you're doing here in the U.S. but there are also opportunities to tie that to work that is being done globally especially in the global south so if you could share some of your experiences in trying to do that and where you see those opportunities bubbling up there have always been connections between people across geopolitical borders we've never been limited by what our governments are doing I was sharing with you when I was mayor of Greenville, Mississippi in Liberia and it was such an honor to know the history that people had between our communities this little town in the Mississippi Delta that had connections overseas but that continues to this day and beyond petrochemicals we're very proud that we get to support frontline communities as they present themselves in the global plastic treaty so we'll be going and supporting them in Nairobi, Kenya when they travel in November and watching how these frontline communities fence line watch in Houston, Texas, Yvette Arriano or the descendants project in St. Paul the Baptist Parrish in Louisiana, Dr. Joy and Joe Banner watching how they are able to on an international stage have deep conversation and share the stories and their real lived experience of what it means to live right underneath of these facilities it bears such resemblance to the exact same experience of people who are living in other countries and it's those stories that is really moving how our governments are deciding where and what we're going to do to reduce plastics globally how plastic pollution should be addressed and then what are the steps to ensure economic viability of our communities globally moving forward it's the people's story that's moving this action that emphasis and put economic development along with that we really begin to see significant change for our future thank you this leads me to your background in this work and especially in Pakistan Dr. Ali looking at global discourse on these topics there have been conversations on how the transition to renewable energy has the potential for and is already leaving behind those in low income or emerging economies in particular that these countries don't have adequate access to financing needed for the transition and that even so the shift to renewables could be detrimental to their human and economic development needs but how do those who are in the seats of power take in that discourse is it being taken in and if not what opportunities are there for these communities to insert themselves well I think that discourse I do agree that we live in a world with unjust systems and I think those discourses are not only not being dealt with adequately within the global south but those discourses also generate largely from the global north as well there is something about these asymmetrical I know we've discussed the idea of international financial institutions earlier but you know there is something about the market mechanism when it intersects with power for instance right or deprivation and it creates these asymmetries right which are not unique which are not rare I mean they happen frequently I mean they happen even in the global north if one looks at the inequities I mean on paper this may be the land of opportunity but we know that social mobility and because of historical reasons and so many other factors that we don't see a level playing field and similarly I think in those parts of the world as well you know there are so in sin for instance with this whole idea of like carbon trading there is you know there is the idea of investing in the mangroves which seems like a great idea but you know that investment when it's done in this you know in this exclusionary sense denies local indigenous communities fish or folk you know access to mangroves because they are initially saplings you know and they have to be looked after so it creates you know further exclusion and then alongside that exclusion I mean you have trawlers now deep sea fishing so you know often in the solutions that one sees unfolding on the ground there seems to be two steps forward but also certainly one step back sure and I know that you know I have discussed you know the new resource curse that is you know being faced especially in the move to renewables so how do you see communities responding to this new resource curse especially those marginalized communities in the global south I think there's some level of agitation but you know even in the politics I mean for Pakistan for instance I mean the last prime minister sort of you know jumped on the bandwagon and rightly so of trying to do forestation big you know the tree tsunami he called it and he got international attention as well but that is also then happening alongside these urban industrial projects which are quite detrimental so trying to build a new you know create this new river front on the Ravi River in the city of Lahore for instance like this huge mega project was quite problematic for a variety of environmental reasons and the dispossession that it was going to cause for the local communities so I think that they you know I mean one can see some project based you know innovation one can see people trying to be resilient in the way that people are because I mean we have a tendency to cope with the circumstances that we find ourselves in but they don't you know I mean we see enough leverage being exercised to be able to kind of push back on these ideas so you know and as a consequence we've seen food hikes coexist and in fact being encouraged by things like you know the move towards biofuels we've seen you know with cobalt what's happening with the mining of cobalt in the DRC we see now in Guyana like Exxon moving in and then Guyana because there's such a financial crunch has to you know is thinking of that as an opportunity to invest in resilience I mean we saw in the cops you know how there's all this emphasis on curbing emission not emphasis on enough emphasis on mitigation on loss and damage I mean that it's come out as a nice term but it hasn't seen you know much action on it thus far and with the new cop and where it's going to be I mean one wonders I mean I'd love to dig into that a little more in a bit but I want to turn to Camila first Camila I hope you can hear us and see us in the room but your work is driven by the recognition that the discussions around global climate policy making has been very technical and quite frankly just inaccessible you have personally walked away from a cop convening feeling disenchanted undervalued and as a young person of color from the global south do you see meaningful pathways for representation and what is lacking in these spaces well um yeah I saw actually I was like feeling in my skin first cough I was there and I was like I wasn't understanding the conversation and it wasn't for lack of education but it wasn't because they chose to talk a language that isn't accessible for people like me so I decided to ask the dumb questions during the sessions and some of those folks there was like oh this is not for you then I come back home and I think ok what is lacking is people like me earn a seat on the table because we are taking these treats I was part of like one or two climate strikes during the cough but when we entered the conference I was like out of the conference like I was there like observing but without any right to really participate and be heard and I think like what we can do especially global north countries they are really committed to a just transition is create more social participation raise collective ambitions like people on the ground they are experiencing and we have like a ton of methodologies to hear their experiences and stories and what they need and also we have already the tools to measure how much money we need to address the solution I've been heard a lot of discussions around mitigation but now we need to face what is happening like we need to adapt and like the global south countries the developing economies I felt that we are we had like this willing to contribute but we need to to be invited for the decision making tables I think many of initiatives led by you they are good to mobilize the society around the issues but they are not providing too much solutions because we don't have the opportunity to work on the solutions together so I think is our is our role now creating the spaces where like people like youth driven projects or grassroots initiatives can be part of the like the big picture plan you know yeah thanks for that Camila and that begs the question you know will you be going to the next cup okay probably I'm working on it but but I'm confused about the next cup a little bit especially well after everything that is happening now it's probably more that this cup we will address different topics then the like phasing out about the fees or probably we're talking more about food systems which is important as well but some of the issues that we need to address now because we are far away from the 2030 metrics and goals so like if we're not discussing phasing out fossil fuels and just transition from the ground like okay we can go to renewable but like how the communities feel when the equipment gets there how their houses are like now so yeah like I think this cup is an opportunity for the global community to step up for a very serious conversation and get out of the probably the corporate interest like we are not against people getting results the first people need to be alive to get results after there's certainly a lot of truth in that slightly shifting gears in a little bit we laid the landscape a little bit in terms of like the direness of the situation when we were talking about our book Heather I enjoyed it thoroughly it was funny it was practical and it's always wonderful having things to read that give outline some concrete solutions your book laid to bear some of the racist policies that were put into place that marginalized black and brown communities in the US I think so often we see the onus pushed on communities entirely but one thing that you do know in your book is that when it comes to climate and environmental issues while humanity is in the same store we're not all on the same types of boats some are on yachts some are not so how do we get maybe if not a yacht but maybe a catamaran I don't think we're ever going to get out of this and maybe clear that everybody is in the same type of situation because that's just our reality on this planet and the analysis that the analogy that I make is yes we always you hear this we're all in the same storm together we should row together I don't think that's quite true we're all in the same storm but we're not in the same kind of boat and there are very privileged people in our world that are sailing on big huge mega yachts and they're able to sail in the same storm while some of us are in little rafts and inflatables and little row boats that are leaking and when you think about that analogy there is something we could do collectively though as we're in this storm together if we have a sense of altruism if we're really concerned about our fellow man and want to make it and survive it makes a difference if there are any people who are water people and have this experience when you have a big boat that's able to block the wave for that smaller boat and so that they're not feeling the impact because that big boat can take on that impact in a way that would toss those smaller boats and that's what I think we have to think about when we're talking about solutions from the perspective of our policy makers and our communities and really get into the realistic elements of what will it take to really stop and protect people from this crisis and my role at Beyond Petrochemicals it's very plain we're looking to stop the expansion of over 120 petrochemical facilities in the United States of America and when you ask yourself well what why, what's a petrochemical petrochemical is just oil so we're in this conference talking about what is a just transition it's not a just transition to more oil it should be a just transition to get out of oil and gas yet we have an industry that is beginning to tell people and convince them that you need more petrochemicals you need more of plastic in order to survive the climate crisis that's again just like the big yacht and the big mega boats telling the people in the small little tow boats we're going to help you if we go way over here off to the side that's not reality well and it's definitely not going to help us to solve a climate crisis and just one more point if you think about this too with petrochemicals and really how we're thinking about reducing carbon emissions throughout all of these industries petrochemicals are responsible for roughly 10% of carbon emissions now and that's growing so if you have an oil and gas industry that knows they're going to have to come out of what they're doing right now and go into something else it is also a natural assessment to understand what that will mean for the emissions and as a result what that continues to do for our climate crisis and we can talk about a little bit later how and what the solutions are particularly for communities of color but I think it's important for us to set the stage and understand what these impacts are and how we're all feeling them now I think that's an important point this is a question for all of the panel this actually is the communications in the PR piece I think research is showing now that the fossil fuel industry in recent years has made a strategic shift away from just outright climate denial and is you know to more nuanced messaging and discourses on climate delay and so they're using these communities and as we talk about just transition as we talk about socio-economic transition the message that is going to these communities is that there's no room for you in the renewable space you're going to be out of jobs so this climate discourse it's really just for the elite but they don't really care about your day to day how do you see how do communities kind of or the people who care about these issues push back on this narrative especially in light of the money the sheer power that is behind this discourse I want to start with that but Heather looks like you've got some thoughts Oh I think to tell the truth we were looking at a chevron chevron hat that came out a few weeks ago promoting a CCS carbon capture sequestration particularly in the southeast in the Louisiana area and the first image that came up after you see the chevron logo is a picture of a black woman and she's running and jogging and it's like she's happy, carefree beautiful, gorgeous dark skinned woman with air pods and natural hair and a great outfit and it just begs the question what in the world does this have to do with protecting people in communities what is this connection here immediately personally I felt it because I think black women are magical but obviously chevron too thinks that we can use an image that is resonating and right now is very powerful in so many different spaces to make people feel either comfortable or that they need to take some type of action and that's not the reality in that particular community it's certainly not the reality for the people who are living in a space where they are inundated with oil and gas facilities but these are the very same facilities that are not putting the jobs in their communities there's a great piece that was done just this past week it appeared on New Orleans radio done by floodlight news that highlighted the fact that with all of the oil and gas industries that are in these areas the percentage of jobs that go to black and brown and indigenous people just pales in comparison to the percentage to people who are not even from the same space so they're giving this message that they're bringing jobs into a community for people that make up 70% of the working population are people of color yet they have less than they have 19% of the high paying jobs people who have the jobs they're bringing from other places and then these same industries have the audacity to say it's because people are not qualified so it doesn't make sense to me why do you want to put a polluting industry into a place that you say is bringing jobs but you're at the same time saying that people are not qualified for the job so you have to bring somebody else in to do it and the people who are living there are getting sick and are poor and are dying and all of this is to say you're transitioning to something good it doesn't make sense and people who live there know it and I think the voices of people these are the folks that are going to a cop that need to be able to share and talk about this message because their experience is the same experience of our friends, our brothers and sisters that are in the global south and while I think the industry is often trying to keep a silo from one another there is significant power in understanding that we have this shared experience we need to talk about this shared experience and then we need to push and advocate for the solutions that will rectify this let's just call a thing a thing no and you know make sure the math math make sure the math math well I mean a lot of this and we've seen this growing up you need to recycle turn off your lights a lot of the conversation and the responsibility has been placed on consumers whereas when you really look at the numbers when you look at the emissions overall globally it doesn't make a difference I can have my plastic straws won't make a difference how do you see this taking shape in the global south especially and I think you know with India's G20 presidency this last year India was in particular very much pushing that you know that model of responsibility on consumers and that shifts the attention away from industrial emitters absolutely I mean an example I like to use in the classroom I must have heard it myself as well is like you know the conscientious consumer and the conscientious consumer is basically exercising conscientiousness through the wallet I mean I can be a very nice person but you know if I don't have the luxury of buying you know a dozen eggs for six dollars then I'll just have to put up with those caged chicken and you know and that's the way it is and I think that this is it hasn't quite got on into you know consumer markets in the global south where initially there's more brand consciousness and you know and then more basic issues like food, adulteration even if it but it does go it has already penetrated there in other ways so things like social entrepreneurship I mean it would be great if the whole world had social entrepreneurship and we didn't see the kind of exorbitant profit making that we do and you know perhaps this idea of balancing multiple bottom lines at the same time but the way that big business will endorse right throw money at social entrepreneurship what it's doing is it's making people who are at the bottom of the battle clean up some of the mess to enable consumerism to exist as it does so for instance like things like I'm several a few years ago something like the plastic bank you know got attention and other models like kabarivala.com etc in India the idea is that you basically using economies of scale with scavengers essentially to capture waste plastic before it goes into the ocean and you monetize them where they get some cash or other kinds of goods for picking up people's plastic and a nice little way of sidestepping this huge plastic problem which is created by these beverage companies I mean in another way if you think of co-option I mean think of feminism co-opted and seduced by these forces you know just because a woman becomes a chief financial officer for a sugary beverage drink doesn't do much for gender empowerment but it's presented as this way of changing the world for the better so I think these are the kinds of issues that are in India now as it's aspiring to become the factory of the world I mean there has been a lot of research coming out talking about the link between this kind of internationalist government and big money and what not this is not only unique to India I mean here in the US or elsewhere I mean it's a ploy used by populace where they deflect attention from the stagnation from the frustration of the ordinary man by pitting him against the other so it's not your frustration as a blue collar worker either you infuse that with a sense of nationalistic pride or turn it into the fault of someone else in some other country or some migrant who's stolen your job right so I think these are I mean and unfortunately I mean in a town like this as well we still see finger pointing often you know so I mean one thinks that they are enough of these discussions you know when I go to think tanks and you know I work with as well I don't see enough self reflection you know or reflexivity as the anthropologists call it like your own position your positionality so I think there's certainly much more room you know for that I mean before we get to the positive if I may that's such an important point that you're making because it's all it's normalizing this crisis and normalizing things that in effect the industry wants us to normalize so that they can continue to do the bad things that are happening so you know this idea of in the United States having a a touchy feeling about waste pickers because they're picking up plastics and we're saying well why don't you just get rid of all the plastics and pitting people one against the other and I think it's we should all be very careful about that we should all be extremely careful about normalizing these things we saw a report that came out about two weeks ago that showed this a Swedish scientist who had come up as an art installation this way to turn waste plastic into a flavored ice cream now yes your face is exactly like mine was at the time seriously this is what we're doing now but this it really beg the question of how much and how far are people willing to go to normalize some of these issues that are detrimental to our health both physically in humanity but also as a planet and so these are the things that I think we have to talk about it begs the question where is the funding that really needs to come to communities to help us to come up with solutions right we'll talk about the solutions a little bit but we have right now venture capitalists the amount of money that venture capitalists have put into minority communities the black and brown innovators and creators that are coming up with climate solutions again that's a it was two percent of all venture capitalists are funding black and brown inventors that's a number that can change that's a space where private equity private business and dollars and investment can actually go to people who can create in the global south who can create in the language and spaces that they know and the people and the cultural that they know and I think that's one of the things that we really need to look at in terms of creating shift in solutions well I think that's where I would look can I too? yeah please who is trying to come up with that solution I have like my two cents on that um few months ago I was in a room with like over 300 200 advertisers talking to them about regenerative communication because yes the industry they have like the bad products or some but it's the advertisement industry that is responsible for creating the desire for this over consumption behavior so if we don't work on those that understand how the human minds work for the desire of a more sustainable way of living we will continue um with this blaming game to the individuals practice like putting in the individual side the responsibility for save the planet but we need a systemic approach and this like invites corporate governments and everyone but uh when it comes to message I've been seeing especially here in Brazil for example so much advertisers taking place of the technicians to decide ESG strategies it's possible how this is happening now when we have like for example I worked like last year in a project was a very special project around like circularity and the company invest a certain like a certain amount of money and five times more on the campaign to tell the consumers what they do so we know where the money is going the money is going for campaigning greenwashing okay we can go to the venture capital money but also the company has these big accounts of marketing to sell their reputation when they kill it it's like part of these resources to improve the community's work like working on the negative impact they are causing I think this is one thing the other side if we if we do a better stakeholder map considering ICLP IPLC indigenous people in local communities and understand that sometimes they are not prepared they don't have judicial structure they don't have like an institution but they are doing the ground work and is our role working how we can make them access resources that is necessary we can create more modern and accessible ways to help them with their resources and sometimes it's not just money in their hands it's actually giving them back their lands I was in an event last week and it was people talking about regeneration a lot of very people in a land that was indigenous land for over a thousand years but they buy everything and they are talking about a regeneration here and I asked to them are you willing to giving them back you darling silence we need to make room I think my man's solution is who is the people that can hold space for the hard conversations happening and create some circles that we are working together that we will working together until we get some solution because we are like coming back to our rooms with the thoughts about the problem but we are not bringing solutions yeah I think this is what some of my thoughts around this and I really think that the advertisement industry is a key to address especially the individual's behavior thanks and it is beyond the time for those hard conversations but I also want to give some time for our audience here and our online audience for some questions before we close out the session please Anne Anne Florini, Arizona State University and New America I'd like to tie the discussion here back to our opening discussion because Bina asked a really interesting question to the president on the connection between climate and democracy and just as a little plug there will be an event on climate and democracy in this room on November 7th to which you are all invited but I wanted to tie it particularly Madame Mayor to your point about where is the money and why is it not coming but of course right now there's tens of billions of dollars coming out of the federal government 40% of which is supposed to go to the environmentally front line communities under the Justice 40 initiative which is a result of extremely effective political organizing by people from those communities over the last several years in the United States is there any evidence that that is potentially the beginnings of support to the communities that will both at the same time give them the resources that they need but also provide a focal point around which you can get rejuvenation of local democracy itself and for the other panelists is there any evidence that the climate crisis can have positive impacts on bottom up democracy because it's forcing people to come together around a crisis or do we have democracy decay and the climate crisis reinforcing each other in a negative direction So to answer your first question yes, the Justice 40 and funding that came from from Ira from the act that really allowed a lot of funding to go in these communities is absolutely having a tremendous impact already even though it had been and we're still experiencing challenges just to make sure that funding is getting out to community and it's getting out to the right people we certainly understand that the significant weight of EPA and DOE and the Department of Transportation and just the process of trying to do that has been extraordinary and I have to applaud them on the efforts that they've gotten. We're just coming back from New Orleans, Louisiana the HPCU Climate Change Consortium with over 400 people from government agencies and nonprofits and students alike where these are groups that are also benefiting from an EPA Thrive Grant and this is how communities are coming together and having these conversations and bringing in people from all over the country to talk about the solutions that's happening in part because of additional funding that's coming through Justice 40 and we just left and I saw a whole station from NASA that was set up here again in this space that was directly addressing and having these conversations with students on a level that we've never thought of before so that first answer is yes and we should all be empowered by that. The same time we have to be very concerned because it is under attack. Right now we have a representative representative Scalise who is one of the people who is up for a speaker of the house that's coming from a constituency based in Louisiana that is facing extreme environmental challenges there's salt water going up the Mississippi River we just talked about that and so the idea that we could be in a position with a federal government that is already right now an administration that is doing their darkness to be able to live up to the commitment of environmental justice as they stated when they began that's also fighting with a legislative body that doesn't like regulation so these communities need your help they need your support they need this advocacy passing IRA was not enough you can't pass it and don't support the entities and the communities that need to continue to see it done so you know I know there was a lot of celebration after we got that finished but there were folks that were saying okay now we need everybody to get down on the ground with us and keep pushing and keep fighting so that we can continue to have a flow of funding and we can leverage it and we can talk about private investment and we can begin really having I think more a global impact that's the next level in the next space where we are now we have a very large question from our global online audience which is that more and more the world seems to be retreating back into camps or zones of influence which can only make global efforts to tackle problems like the climate crisis more difficult is there any way to reverse this trend or do we have to figure out ways to work within this new system of essentially great power competition I think that there's certainly I mean there is local resistance you know there's agency there's solidarity but it is David and Goliath and I think that that big cruise ship or yacht does need to come to the fore and I think in the geostrategic space what needs to happen and we've been trying to push this through different think tanks you know the idea of China and the US for instance right so I mean there was a time in the Nixonian era where you know that rapprochement happened through Pakistan you know it's a roller coaster relationship I'm you know I'm aware of that as well but there are possibilities in these you know countries to try and green see back for instance right for the US and that would be the interesting possibilities there I think now with the new cop I mean Saudi is China you know has been in discussion with Pakistan to set up a 10 billion dollar oil refinery right so I mean this set you know while it's trying to transition itself you know there is this fear that a lot of this obsolete you know technology gets shipped off elsewhere so I think those are kind of the concerns and also the opportunities where I mean you know in the possibility to leapfrog I mean if that can happen but I mean of course it needs you know it needs resource commitment and it needs a less acrimonious engagement for which they are also vested interests I think we have one more question from our audience and then I think we'll have to close out the session Hi I'm Emily I was one of Sayid Mohammed's previous students at American University so my question is about activist movements like related to debt for climate exchanges from places like the World Bank and IMF there are a lot of people from the global south that are calling for these larger international financing organizations to exchange or relieve debt because of the environmental degradation they have caused so you kind of touched on this with the case of Guyana and they're sort of like because of their debt they're opening up more land for extraction from Exxon you see this with industrial agriculture and Costa Rica and different parts of the world all over and so I guess for all of the panelists when it comes to financing a just transition how do you see these kinds of debt cancellation actions and that would be the most beneficial way to go about it I think you have to look at a body of financing there's not going to be one particular avenue and certainly as in I think we have to look at this with the eyes of a financing perspective because while there's relieving debt there's also making a profit and so with every debt that's relieved that's either coming off of someone's books or it is now giving an opportunity to create profit so really profit is the end game not just the debt relief and when we think about that profit side of it and who is getting the profit and why and what is the purpose of it is it really driving us to a space where again we're getting into a fossil fuel economy and we're moving into a transition of renewable energy I think that has to be a part of this debt relief conversation for some countries and for some spaces absolutely because the debt relief allows them an opportunity to invest in some of the renewable options that they really are seeking to do but in some spaces yes there's definitely a conflict if the debt relief is associated with Exxon taking and getting rid of its old or refinery stuff and then giving it to a space in a country or an opportunity to not not updated or upgraded then we have a bigger problem than what we started with in the first space so I just think that there's a bit more to that question that doesn't only rely in relieving debt but must be married to the point of getting the profit and profit into communities that have historically needed it but also are really looking to drive a renewable economy for themselves debt relief in the sense of multilateral debt which would be it would be a tough sell for the lenders but the possibility of climate debt right so channeling that relief I mean not so a minister can buy a Rolex right but you know for useful stuff and all these historical reasons for it and social justice reasons for it but yeah I know I said last question but I see that President Sterleaf has a question thank you I don't really have a question but I want to make a statement and maybe that might inspire others to respond to that everyone knows that power diversity is concentrated in the global south mainly in the form of forests, large forests forests have been used as a source of livelihood for communities there's been a movement of trying to make sure that the preservation of forests are maintained in response to give some support for community development most times very primary support that will not do any transformation of those communities into self-independence self-sufficient communities we also have a question of many of our countries that rely on fossil fuel that's how they create the domestic revenue to finance their own social goods to finance governance and there's a lot of pressure now coming from partners that says we're going to cut off assistance unless you stop producing fossil fuels the reliance then is on well we're going to get through the COP arrangements there's going to be a flow and we know that there have been so many meetings with the COP and the commitment to provide these level of financing to enable countries just has not come the money has not come and when it comes to forests there's not a big it's like the gold rush now carbon credits all the capital is we're going to do carbon credits and that's we're going to enable you to get well carbon credits it's not well known by the communities where the forests are hardly known to by the governments this is something new and so that's going to be another area that's going to lead to corruption to deals and to all those types of things so maybe now we may have to some of our countries in the global south decide that if the money isn't coming we're going to be very clear about botter arrangements we'll go back to the old days you know if you want me to stop doing fossil fuels then give me a hydraelectric plant or give me a solar plant give me something that I know is substantive is going to lead to financing things that will improve the lives of people climate change is real and the effects of it on many of our countries are very devastating unless we find a means to respond to those by providing a means whereby they can have this transformation to the means of getting the energy that they leave for their development then we'll be talking about this and not really being able to get the effects of making a world as greener a world as better I know that we are over time but if anybody wants to have a very quick one-sentence reaction to that but then we can move from there yes and thank you thank you so much to our panelists this has been a wonderful event I want to thank you madam president for joining us thank our panelists stay tuned conversation is still going on and you're invited thank you