 If you're just joining, you're listening to The Climate Debt Crisis. My name is Conor Goodwin and I'm an events associate with ProPublica. For those new to us, ProPublica is a non-profit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism. This discussion is brought to you in partnership with Living on Earth, a weekly environmental news program broadcast on public radio stations throughout the country. Today's conversation will focus on an urgent but unreported problem in the climate crisis, rising sovereign debt. ProPublica reporter Abram Loosgarden went to Barbados to better understand how policies by the world's largest financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank can stand in the way of climate investments. If you haven't already, I encourage you to check out Abram's story, which will serve as a starting point for today's conversation. And joining us today are actually two people Abram interviewed in the course of his reporting. I'll introduce them and then share a link to the story in a second. For our speakers, first up is Avinash Persaud. He is a leading thinker on development finance and chairman of the Commission on the Economy for the Caribbean Community, an intergovernmental organization of Caribbean nations. Colin Young is the executive director of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, which works on effective solutions to combat the environmental impact of climate change. And lastly is Abram Loosgarden, an environmental reporter for ProPublica, focusing on the intersection of business, climate, and energy. Our moderator today is Living on Earth host Steve Kerwood. And before I hand it off, I just want to note that we've saved set-asides of time at the end for audience questions. And to ask a question at any point, just click the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen and type it there. All right, I'll let Steve take it from here. Well, thank you, Connor. And we're really glad to be doing this event with ProPublica today. Abram's reporting has really stepped into an extremely important area when it comes to dealing with climate disruption. We have a global north and south divide. And just a bit of history, when the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change got going, there was a decision back in 1995 that those countries which had done the least to contribute to climate disruption would follow the lead of the industrialized countries. I mean, even to this day, the United States has more historic CO2 emissions than any other country. But along the way, a blockage went up, particularly from this country saying, no, no, no, no, no, the developing countries, they have to do something as much as we do. And yet, of course, the global north has far more resources and far more responsibility for this. So we've been in a difficult spot over these last, let's get to be 30 years, because of feeling and developing countries of being betrayed by the north and the global north feeling that developing countries aren't pulling their fair share or the share that they should pull. So, and yet, as we just have seen in the Caribbean, I don't know which there's a choice here in our crowd, which way it goes. These storms can rip through this part of the of the world with ridiculous ferocity. I mean Fiona chopped up Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic and and Ian had its way with Cuba before it came to Florida. And I think in the last six or seven years, most years we've seen some kind of a storm or another hit the Caribbean. So with that, I'm going to turn to Abram, what drew you to the Caribbean, Abram and, and Barbados in particular, aside from the statue of Lord Nelson, which is, I think, coming down. Thank you so much, Steve. You know, it's a big picture, as you said, and we have a fundamentally unfair system evolving as we see the impacts of climate change around the world. And, you know, one element of that fundamental unfairness is that we're just coming to fully grapple with is the extraordinary cost of climate change, the cost of repairing for damages, the cost of adapting and being more resilient to it in the future, the cost of paying down debt and so forth. And so, you know, globally there's this crunch, there's rising unprecedented debt with small countries developing countries. The poorest countries in the world are more and more indebted that debt is rising stratospherically and it's making it more difficult for them to afford any of these costs associated with climate change. I focused on the Caribbean because it's right in our backyard. I came to this project out of a project on global migration related to climate change. And so when I think about, you know, vulnerable populations right on America's doorstep. There's a very significant population in the Caribbean about 40 million people and one of the implications of not being able to sort out the problems that we're talking about today are that those people will need to seek a new location that they might migrate to Central America, South America and to the United States. But it's also true that the Caribbean is among the most climate imperiled places on the planet and it's not just the storms that we're seeing, although those storms are unbelievably important. The global rise is rising faster in the Caribbean than almost anywhere else on the planet. Water scarcity is becoming an increasingly critical issue. Droughts are plaguing each of these islands with the droughts comes increasing risk of wildfire. Their ability to produce their own food agriculture is threatened in the process. The reefs are are in danger and the health of the sea life and the fish communities they rely on are, you know, tangentially affected as well and that list goes on and on and on. So, you know, the Caribbean is an obvious place to look at the perils of climate change affecting countries right now, not in the future but what's going to happen what is happening already. And they also happen to be collectively among the most indebted group of countries in the world. So, depending on which nation you look at it really is sort of the perfect confluence of all of these issues. And then, you know, as my story focuses on Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley. And conveniently for me she happens to be a valiant spokesperson on on this issue really one of the most profound voices globally in talking about everything that we're talking about today and so all of those things came together to be, you know, the reason for for my reporting to focus on the Caribbean. I mean, I think he's, you've been teed up here. Obviously, we're talking about Barbados here but I mean this is a big deal for much of the developing world and especially the Caribbean where I think abroad it's fair to say that temperatures are also rising disproportionately in the Caribbean. Absolutely, compared to the rest of the world so it's like, if there's anything go wrong related to the climate whether it's debt or storms or temperatures or floods or drought. The Caribbean is in trouble. Well, look, the first thing to say is that we have removed the statue of Nelson. It's no standing but it's no longer in the center of Bridgetown. Look, I think that, you know, I'm an economist by training and we often start off rightly or wrongly. I think about why is something good, not happening. Why is something good and obvious, not happening. And it's not because people don't understand the science. Maybe people don't understand the science but it's not really that it's the political economy. It's the geography of the political economy. There are countries that contributed the most to global warming, and that contribution is not about current emissions. It's as you said Steve, the stock of emissions because I mean why do we global warming is because carbon dioxide doesn't diffuse once it goes up in the atmosphere. It stays there for hundreds of years, thousands sometimes. And so the stock of greenhouse gases. As you said the largest contributor is the US, the second largest is Europe. China, even though it's the largest emitted today, and India, you know, up there in the top three or four in terms of the contribution to the stock of greenhouse gases. So, and indeed you can correlate the wealth of countries which you could also consider to be the ability of countries to respond to climate change to do something about it. The wealth of countries is directly related to the amount of greenhouse gases they put up there. But here's the problem. The wealth of countries are not actually being impacted very heavily. The activists like to think that the world as a whole is imperiled, and it is. But there's a time delay. There is a frontline to climate change and a backline and the wealthiest countries that contributed the most, they're in the backline. America's had a summer of floods. Europe has had a scorching summer but you know what, when you look back at the GDP figures for 2022, you won't notice a thing. Pakistan now, with 30 million homeless people, they will notice the impact of climate change. As you said, Stephen Abram, when hurricanes hit the Caribbean, these countries lose not 2% of GDP, they lose 200% of GDP in about four hours. So there's a frontline to climate change. The countries that can do the most in the backline, they may even benefit initially from climate change. But even English wine grower, English wine production has increased almost 10-fold in the last few years as a result of climate change. So we have this problem that the countries that can do something about it, who've contributed the most, and that's why they can do something about it, are actually not being impacted the most. The countries that are being impacted the most are unable to do it. And let me finally end this point about debt. The countries that are being impacted the most, they're having to deal with this loss and damage, about 50% of the increase in debt in small island states is caused by mopping up after natural disasters, 50%. And the reason given by the international financial institutions is it's because they're corrupt. It's because they're spent through 50% is caused by global warming and other natural disasters. And so the climate crisis means for us, the debt crisis, and that's why we're campaigning heavily, that we need to invest in resilience, and that requires boring concessional funding to invest in resilience. That's the $3 we spend today. We save $6 or $7 in the future. The problem is, middle income countries, the only countries that can get concessional funding are countries whose income per head is less than $1,253 per year, not per month per year. 75% of the world's poor don't live in those countries. And so these countries need to be investing in climate resilience. They can't afford it. It's creating these loss and damage, creating these debts. And we're arguing that one of the things we want, one of the three main things we want, is that they should have access to concessional funding to invest in climate resilience to avoid the loss and damage. My Prime Minister famously says that giving us money after the event is like paying for the undertaker. We want investment now to avoid the loss of lives and loss of livelihoods in the future. So Colin, what kinds of investments should these international organizations be making? Of course I'm thinking of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which seemed to be a little slow on the uptake here, to put it mildly. What sort of investment should they be making? And frankly, how much of this should be credit and how much of it should be in grants given the responsibility of the rich part of the world for the loss and damage that's occurring right now? Thank you. And I think Abraham and Avi both set this up quite nicely by giving an overview of what are those primary climate change challenges that are impacting the region. And obviously the investments then will have to follow what those disasters and impacts are. So you heard Abraham talk about the fact that sea level rise is a serious issue in the region where more than half of the population in the Caribbean live within the coastal zone. And so any level of sea level rise is looking at seriously jeopardizing not only housing infrastructure and resorts and critical energy infrastructure and schools and so on. But, you know, one or two meters sea level rises will be catastrophic for the region. And so right off we will need investments in how to keep out the sea from rising. Not only is that tearing apart our beaches causing our beaches to disappear, but it's also salinizing our freshwater systems. And as you hear Avi just mentioned earlier, the Caribbean has seven of the most water scarce countries in the world. The issue with coastal defenses, however, is that they're public goods and they're critical to our adaptation strategies, but you can't get a rate of return in investing in some of these adaptation initiatives. So those are obviously going to be grants or very highly concessional loans that Avi spoke about. The other area is in water. We absolutely need to build up the water infrastructure and the resilience to water. When you look at the projections areas will become even more dry. And obviously this now impacts not only just the availability of water but it impacts food security, it impacts health. And so we have to look at how do we look at recharging our aquifer systems we improve rainwater collection. We look at how do we solid waste management and treatment so we can reuse those waters for agriculture and in recharging our aquifers. Again, this is an area where grants and highly concessional loans will make the most sense because again they're public goods. Infrastructure, our housing stocks or the fact that most of the infrastructure we have in the region, which is you rightly said is one of the most climate vulnerable in the world was not built to accommodate the kind of deluge that we're seeing in rainfall patterns across the region. And so we're starting to see some incredible amount of rainfall where in 12 hours we're talking about two, three feet of feet of rain. So obviously our drainage will not be able to accommodate this amount of water. And so how deeper do you build your drains how why did you build your drains. Again, another public good infrastructure that requires grants and highly concessional loans to deal with. And then obviously energy. We are one of the most inefficient users of energy we rely heavily on fossil fuels to run our economies in the region and we see what happens when there are energy price shocks across the region. We do need to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, a whole number of different technology wind solar ocean thermal and so on. And that is now one area in which the private sector can play a fundamental role in helping countries to the transition. So what you have what you have here is that countries have incurred a significant amount of loss and damage from climate change in. Avi told you about 50% in Dominica it's 85% of the debt is linked to hurricanes in believes you're talking about 7% each year of losses and damages of its GDP that is lost to to climate related disasters. So what has happened is the countries don't have the fiscal space to be able to then invest in rebuilding. And let me say one other point before I end this this this section here. We, we don't want to think of these disasters as sequential events, because they happen they're happening in parallel. Right you might have a drought that is ongoing for multiple years, and then you have a significant rain event that may not be a hurricane that can cause 80% damage to your GDP like what happened with tropical storm Erica in the in the in Dominica and then a few few years later, you had Maria, and then you have these multiple in parallel disasters that are absolutely absolutely a strangle hold on the economies of the region. The money is that we are getting from the international financial mechanism. They're often too small to too slow to get. Every time you do get them, you can count multiple major disasters that would have happened between the time you applied and when you got those financing. So obviously, to end by saying, surely the IMF the World Bank, and the other financial mechanisms under the convention like the adaptation fund the Green Climate Fund, and so on. Certainly, they have to redesign the architecture so that these funds flow in a much faster rate and at a higher scale so that they can be adaptation for the increasing impacts that we'll see from climate change. Well, yes, and the the UN facilities, the $100 billion a year that was supposed to be coming from we haven't seen that money yet. No, no, no, we, you know, we haven't seen that money yet. No, so a brown. Um, what, what has changed in terms of the evolution of, you know, the old established we're talking about IMF and World Bank and then the efforts to have this UN facility address this. How much have they started to move things forward I mean to what extent is our climate risks and and and loss and damage now appearing in their calculations. Yeah, you know, I'll be able to have a swing at this after me I'm sure. But you know the short answer is they haven't moved it forward. You know there've been moments of hope. Um, the agreement like you mentioned to to raise $100 billion for, you know, to fund transitions in climate stress countries I think at last time I checked that something around 19 billion had been spent and that agreements from 2015. And if all of that money had been spent, it would just be a pittance compared to what's needed. We see, you know, a need of something like $50 trillion to help these come these countries transition into, you know, a more climate safe, you know, future and that money can fall in a whole lot of buckets you're talking about loss and damages which is just literally the cash to recover from storms like Ian or Fiona. We're talking about investments in, in, you know, in resilience or sustainability which is the hard infrastructure that that Collins talking about and then there's mitigation and it's like how do we all stop, you know, emitting more carbon and making the problem worse. Each of those are are, you know, enormously expensive and can be tackled in different ways but you hear, you get a sense of the sentiment of where the world is, you know, in the comments of people like, you know, John Kerry a couple weeks ago in New York who dismissed outright the notion that the United States the wealthiest country in the world would pay loss and damages for for climate distressed countries. And we're going to the COP conference in Egypt in just a couple of weeks and this is going to be the top of the conversation. So we're going to focus on loss and damages but, but the bigger financial need is is so much greater and I think you get, you know, the answer your question is that you know that brought the barometer of the world's intent is, you know, is right there in in Kerry's comments it's an expensive problem. No one wants to spend that money. It's not clear where all of that money could come from. There are some really smart ideas on how we can start to get some of it the IMF is getting more engaged in, you know, and contributing some of it as is the World Bank but none of it really adds up to a very substantial portion of what's needed. I just want to, if I can just while I have the floor of just back up for one second and make this connection for why we're talking about debt in the first place because I think it seems obvious that, you know, debt we all carry, you know, some credit card debt and it's a burden. But the investments that Colin is describing that need to be made that need to be paid for have to come out of each of these nations budgets and, you know, just to throw a couple of statistics out there about what debt does to these budgets. 60% of low income countries around the world are debt distressed the United Nations estimates that their debt has doubled since 2008 so this is stratospherically increasing quickly. The International Monetary Fund estimates that three quarters of emerging market economies will pay a third of their entire budgets in debt service so we're not talking about what you can't spend to build seawalls we're talking about the interest payments that are being sent offshore to to the entities that the debt is owed to your your data European debt nonprofit found that as indebted countries are spending more in their debt service sending these payments off to banks in New York or to the IMF, and so forth they cut what they're spending on their own economies by 22%. So there's a direct relationship there. If you send these payments off to New York to Wall Street, you can spend less to build your seawalls Barbados needs a new drinking water system right now. It loses about 50% of its water in the pipes that run across that island. It's had trouble spending the money to build that system because it sends that money to pay its debts off in, you know, in New York and elsewhere around the world and so that's the really the nexus of why we're talking about what countries over this is what they need to raise to spend. I'll talk to you for just in just a moment, but, but abram. What's the ratio here, how much money is the south paying the north, compared to what the north is paying the south these days. Do you mean in terms of debt service or or it overall cash flow in other words in terms of the combination, you know, what's flowing into each area is coffers let's just put it that way economically. So I don't have a number for that and I haven't seen a number for that I think it's a great question but let me try to answer it a slightly different way which is just with a little historical perspective. And then maybe I'll be does have a number for you. But I would just to you to say that historically, the southern half of the world has supported the economic growth of the northern half of the world, and this goes back centuries right this is, you know, this is colonization this is the extraction of, of resources of minerals of coal of metals of human capital of slavery. You know, so, going back many, many years, the, the capital in all of those forms, you know, has been flowing south to north. Historically, that's the way the world has been built and that's, you know, largely responsible for the wealth that we in the United States or in Europe or in the north have accumulated. Steve, floor is yours now there's several points to respond on. You know, when you sit in the south. We're burning up and we're drowning. And one thing that does is focuses the mind on practical solutions. We don't want righteous solutions that don't happen. We want righteous solutions, but we want solutions that happen. And I think there are two things that's very important for your listeners to appreciate. One is, there's a scale problem. The entire global aid budget, aid for everything, aid for clean drinking water for education for health, everything is $160 billion per year and it's not going up, it's going down. It's being redirected to foreign policy, sending in stuff to Ukraine has been counting his aid. So, you know, that number is 160 billion. We need a few trillions a year. We need at least $3 trillion a year to mitigate the climate. We need half a trillion dollars a year to adapt to the countries that are vulnerable to adapt themselves. We need $250 billion a year to deal with loss and damage and that's in the most extreme loss and damage as opposed to all loss and damage. That's a scale problem. And the reality is, no one's giving us grants, no one's writing us a check for that kind of money. We would like them to have a moral duty to, they should do. They're not even taking responsibility for it. Yeah, that's not going to happen. So, we're very very focused. We think you can engage the global private sector to do some things. We say we're being throbbed off with three solutions. We're being told, oh, don't worry, technology is going to come to your rescue. There's going to be some new fangled science that's going to allow us to suck up the carbon and you can just wait back, you can sit back and technology will be your rescue. Or, we're told, hey, you guys, you know, your problem is you're just not insured enough. What about taking out some insurance? And the third thing we're told is the private sector will come and they will give you all the funding you need. Don't worry. Don't come to us. Don't call us. We'll call you so that we're being throbbed off with those three things. None of those things are going to happen. The private sector can get involved because a lot of climate mitigation, what we mean by mitigation so, you know, moving from coal fire power stations to solar power stations. The private sector is prepared to do that because there's money in it for them. There's great rates of return in the low carbon transition into energy, transport, agriculture. So we need to use that lever to the full because we don't, you know, we have a shortage of money. But you know what, as Colin said, they're not going to fund seawall defences. They're not going to fund a new drainage system because there's no money in it for them. They repair our leaking taps. There's no money in it for them. They will love to win the contracts, but they're not going to fund it on their balance sheet. And so that's where we need concessional money. By concessional money, we mean the kind of money that we gave Germany, and we gave Britain after World War Two. The kind of money America gave Germany. America gave Germany. It was this was 30 year money. This was an interesting contract where Germany didn't have to repay if they didn't have an export surplus. And so any year they didn't have an export surplus, they didn't have to repay anything. And then the amount they had to repay was capped at three and a half percent of their export earnings, three and a half percent of their export earnings. Many developing countries are paying 20, 30% of their surpluses. So we need concessional money to invest today for adaptation. It's got to come from the World Bank, from the multilateral development banks. The IMF is a balance of aims crisis vehicle. It's not so much involved in that long term funding, but the development banks need to come to the table. At the moment they're saying, no, we're not doing concessional money to you because you've got too much money because your income per heads over $1,253 a year. And then the third thing is we need money for loss and damage, but we need to limit it. If we ask for money for cash for grants for everything, we're going to get nothing. So what we're saying is, look, we're not asking for everything. We're asking it, not for mitigation. We'll get the private sector to help us build solar farms. We're not asking for adaptation. We'll get the World Bank, if you give us concession money, to make us a stronger, more resilient place. But when a hurricane has come through and rector economies and has made a third of the country homeless, then we need cash and grants and we're talking about maybe this is a levies on fossil fuel consumption. Now, we're in a cost of living crisis to find a point at make. So one of the things we're proposing is that, okay, don't add to fossil fuels, but for that, when fossil fuel prices are going to fall back after this crisis. They're going to fall back after the Russian invasion, they're going to fall back at some point after COVID disruptions. For every 10 percentage points, the fossil fuels fall back, the oil price comes back, the gas price comes back. Take one of those 10 and put it in to a reconstruction fund for when crisis happens in the frontline states. For every 10 put one. That's because we do need grants for loss and damage. We're not going to get grants for everything. We need concessional money for adaptation, and we need to engage the private sector, but the scale of the problem. Many people don't understand. And the final thing is, and developing countries. Abraham says, we don't have the, the, the fiscal space we don't have the balance sheet to take. If you gave us all the debt in the world on concessional terms, we'd go bust. We don't have that space. And so we're arguing that we need other sources and one of the things we're arguing is that we need to create an entirely new balance sheet and entirely new space. That's not our governments, not development banks. It is a global space, a global fiscal fund to fund global public goods backed by global currency, which is the special drawing rights that can be issued by the IMF. We're asking for a new issuance of a special drawing rights to try and fund that so they are solutions. There's a recognition that they're not going to write as a check. We've been asking them to write a check and take responsibility. They're not doing it. We keep on asking more people ask should keep on asking for the realities we need alternative solutions, because we're burning up and drowning. So, Colin, there's, there's the challenge. What is, what are the, what are the economic arguments for SDR so special drawing rights and that sort of thing to deal with infrastructure preparedness that that seawall that it is that it's so important. How do we get from where we are now to there. How do we make the argument. How possible is it to make that argument. I think Abby is perhaps the best person to respond to the whole issue of using SDRs as a as a financial instrument to fund some of the, the trillions of dollars that we will need, not only in the region but but within small island developing states globally to fund climate resilience work. Obviously, I think I've made the point quite clearly that relying on grants alone will not get us to where we need because the scale is way too small. Develop countries had promised since 2015 a measly $100 billion a year, measly, look at how much money has flowed to the Ukraine, albeit that is a disastrous own right within months. And the entire developed set of developed countries have been unable to mobilize even 100 billion since 2015. In fact, by the time they meet it, which they promised to in 2023, we would be in deficit by 90 billion because we're roughly 70 billion a year is what's flowing from north to south. And that's that's with a very liberal definition of what is called climate finance because as you know one of the issues in the negotiations is that a number of countries developed countries continue to block the definition of what constitutes climate finance. And once you don't define it, it's hard to actually track what it is. So you need SDRs, you need innovative instruments like that for climate swaps, blue bonds, green bonds, concessional financing, conservation credits. We have to find a way to to crowd in additional financing that would help our countries mobilize the amount of money that is required to build climate resilience. The other side of this coin and I think Abraham hit on this quite clearly, because there is a disaster happening already. If we look at Central America and the dry corridor in Central America, and the areas where there's massive droughts where people can feed their families and feed their kids. There's not many things that cause people to pack up and leave drought and not being able to grow food is one of them. Those people will end up in the north. The people from the Caribbean when we start losing our land to sea level rises, and we are projecting a 80% increase under some scenarios of category four and five hurricanes to be hitting our region. There's going to be a disaster zone and people will have to move and this issue of migration. There is a tremendous cost, not only to our economies in the region, but to the country, the countries where those people will be ending up. So we also have to look at factoring in those costs of inaction, because if we don't do and invest in the kinds of things we need to be doing now, the cost is going to quadruple down the road. We're also going to be at issues with political stability and instability in the back door of the US, for example, or in Europe or actually in many places go to South Africa and people are coming from Central Africa, because of what's going on. So, Colin I want to start with you on this. I haven't heard so far in this discussion about a climate debt in the development world is the ability to make some noise about this because this may be starting in the less developed world this may be starting in places like Barbados or Domenico or what the other day we saw the Dominican Republic get ripped and Cuba's got a big bill. The rest of the planet, you know, here in the United States where, you know, you mentioned $160 billion for everything so far that's been spent, well that's, that's going to be possibly the price of what's happened in Florida right now they're saying it's $150 billion I think it's underestimated Katrina was 150 billion and as much as people in this part of the planet want to think that it's not going to be a cataclysmic situation for us. We're not headed in the right direction at all. Colin how can the argument be made how can you make the argument around climate debt that addressing these things now is a smart way to figure out the way to address what pretty much the whole planet is starting to deal with. Shut off my watch. My phone is shut off my watch her that she got all upset somehow. She's not sure about it. I don't know if the entire planet is sure what the heck to do. What a perfect timing right the even series unsure about about how to how to proceed, but, but really I think it comes down to the fact that that investing in climate resilience has a number of really strong financial and economic arguments to go with it. And that is you heard that number that ratio that for every $1 that is invested in climate resilience, you can save as much as $6 in terms of recovery. The issue with that ratio, however, is that who pays for it right who who pays for it because our countries don't have the fiscal space to invest in the kinds of at the scale that we need for those areas that I had identified like in energy in in in water in sea sea wall defenses, and so on. And so this is where we need upfront costs, the upfront funds to be able to invest in climate resilience through a number of different instruments that we have been talking about, because the the cost of not doing anything is obviously going to be a lot greater than if we were to mobilize those resources from a mix of different sources to build climate resilience. And so what we have to think about is that on a country by country basis but also at the regional level is that each country has a nationally determined contribution or a climate strategy or climate adaptation plans. We have to be able to understand what is the envelope of needs that we have. And then once we have that envelope of needs we have to now source the financing to be able to build climate resilience some of that is going to be from grants. Some of that is going to be from loans and we are saying concessional loans in the adaptation space, and then some is going to be from the private sector that is going to be able to drive those those business cases for which you have a rate of return. And so, and obviously there's going to be skin in the game. And so there are going to be resources that countries are putting from their consolidated revenues. And I want to say one quick point here, because for those persons who say that, you know, developing countries aren't doing enough, or cities aren't doing enough. Even though as a region, we are responsible for less than 0.06 of 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions let that sink in 0.6% is what we are responsible for. When you look at a Guyana, when you look at a Suriname, when you look at a Belize, when you look at these countries that are setting aside 20 30% of their forest as protected. In Suriname's case, over 90% of the forest of the country has forests, there are already operating at net zero or below net zero in terms of their per capita GDP. And so we are incurring a tremendous some cost already that is reflected in our balance sheet that that more so per capita than a lot of the developed countries are doing already. And so obviously the issue of the climate justice or climate injustice depending on the lens is real. We are suffering. We're drowning and burning like like what Abby says for because of an issue for which we are not responsible. And as a part of the UN triple C convention, the agreement, the promise was that they would make technology, they would make financing and capacity available to our country so that we can adapt. And this has been happening at snail's pace. We're not getting the money, we're not getting the money at scale, and we're not getting it fast enough. And hence the reason why we can, we cannot continue to rely on this grant business. We have to now start to explore how we can crowd in other innovative financial investments to help reward countries for the actions they're already doing in terms of protecting the environment and coral reefs and see grasses and mangroves and all of those things that provide global benefits. Abram, by the way, what countries have forgiven the most debt to the developing nations? What companies, what countries are in fact stepping up to help address the question of climate debt? I don't have an answer to that. I don't know. You know, the United States has at times forgiven small amounts of debt. I don't know, you know, where they rank. One of the largest, you know, lenders and providers of global aid. So I think it's a question of scale. I don't know how they rank. And I don't think debt forgiveness is necessarily the solution, Steve, because the vast majority of debt is private creditor debt. But it's not official debt. There is official debt, and more could be done on forgiving that or making that more concessional or more or suspending debt service of that. More could be done on the multilateral development banks, making their debt sort of more concessional or whatever but the big debt problem in the world is a private creditor debt problem. So if we default on that, if we demand concessions on that, they're not going to lend to us, which is fine if we don't need funding, but we need funding. So it's not clear that forgiveness is necessarily the solution would be nice, but it's not a long term solution. But you've seen how that private debt can paralyze place. I'm thinking of Puerto Rico, for example, where particular hedge funds just had to be paid back and the place was locked down financially until finally some room was given. This is a little off the topic, but maybe not. What impact do you think that the US climate bill has on this question? What kind of signals does it send to the world that climate investments are a greater priority? As you know, that legislation is primarily built on tax expenditures, on tax credits. Look, we share one climate, so we like the fact that America is moving on climate more than it was moving on climate. That's a good thing to take that box. But is it helped the world deal with some of the debt problems that Abraham has highlighted in his piece? I don't think so. And indeed, the US position, the US holds a key on many of these issues. We can blame the IMF and the World Bank and these players, but you know, I'm not a lawyer, but lawyers will often say there is no corporate. Who stands behind the corporate? They're actual people. And the biggest shareholder who holds the only country that has a veto power on the shareholders of these banks and these institutions is the United States of America. So a key thing we want, which America is blocking, is that middle income countries who are climate vulnerable should be able to get concessional money to invest in climate resilience. Now, we use a term concession. What does that mean for your listeners? Because they're not debt specialists. So if we borrow commercially, Steve, we pay about 10% per year for 10 years. I mean, in case of Barbados, we pay seven, but your average developing country is paying 10%. Each year for 10 years, say, then they got paid all back. If we borrow concessionally, we could borrow at 1% over 20 years. That's a huge difference. That allows us to invest considerably more. And now that is only, there's a rule that the US shareholders of the IMF, the World Bank, are maintaining, which is only giving that to the poorest countries. We're saying the poorest countries should get that, yes, but you need to include climate vulnerable countries. There are lots of poorest because if they can't build resilience, as Colin said, they're just going to have some kind of debt explosion down the road when they hit a crisis. We need that change. That just requires a pen. We need that change. Now, if they make that change, there's more demand for borrowing. We also need to allow these multilateral development banks to lend more. And we think that they can lend $1 trillion more. And it just requires a few things, again, changing the pen. The multilateral development banks can lend $1 trillion more. Climate should get a priority on that. Climate adaptation should get a priority on that. What they need to do is have a bigger risk appetite. Somehow the minute you become a development bank banker, you suddenly think you're a banker and you'll enjoy saying no to poor countries, rather than a conditional yes. We need to change their risk appetite. And secondly, they need to be able to hold special drawing rights and other instruments like guarantees as their capital so they can lend more. So these are some of the things we need to do to really give developing countries more space to make the investments they need, because if they can't make the investments and the climate disasters happen, they're going to have huge problems. Yes, please go ahead. Yeah, if I go ahead. No, it's your call. Just another flip side of what we just mentioned is obviously as small island developing states we are very pleased to see finally some leadership on the part of the US in terms of this inflation reduction act, because should it be successful. We're looking at reducing emissions by 40% below 2025. Sorry, 2005 levels, which is not where it needs to be the science is telling us that you have to call at least 50% by 2030 and that zero by 2050. And it was very difficult to have the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution to be at the table, not being able to demonstrate and show global climate leadership. And with this bill with this act. No, I think that the US can finally gain back some credibility in the international climate change negotiations, and perhaps it can now use that new found momentum to nudge other holdouts other large countries who are holding out for ambitious planning because I want to say something here that is that should be self evident. We cannot adapt or away out of climate change. Okay, that is not possible. So the only way that this is going to work is if on the mitigation side that countries, those larger polluters the G 20 the G sevens cut back emissions. And keep 1.5 within reach, or even at two degrees because we can adapt all we want and we can make those financial instruments that is talking about, and we can flow those as we much as we can. If we don't cut emissions, it's not going to build climate resilience. And so hopefully, when we go to COP 27, we would see some greater action. The US being at the table and trying to push because we left Glasgow with a very disappointing outcome. We left Glasgow on a path to 2.7 degrees, an actual increase of 14% in greenhouse gas emissions, as opposed to a 50% reduction. So I am hopeful, even though we've been here before. I think it's very cautious and optimistic that we might see greater climate ambition from some other countries and so from that point of view. I think this this was an excellent timing. And I also want to say the modality of how it works I think is very interesting in that it's actually not taxing persons to do the actions we want, but it's incentivizing them. Right and incentivizing the private sector to be able to crowd in the types of behaviors and actions that we want to see in the critical areas and I think that can be useful for other countries were trying to get ambitious time at actions on the ground as well. Brian. Yeah, I just want to add you know on the reflection inflation reduction act it's a you know what Colin said but but to reframe it I mean what we do now as a world to cut emissions makes a difference in how bad all of the problems we're talking about get so we can't stop the climate from changing now but every ton of carbon that's not emitted means those seas will not rise as much the temperature will not rise as much the problems that Caribbean islands and all the other developing countries and the United States and everywhere else spaces won't be as bad and so there's all sorts of problems that you know us legislation has yet to address, including the power and influence that we have over the IMF and the World Bank but this particular act. It's successful as Colin said, goes a long ways towards making a difference because the United States is responsible for 25% of those global stock emissions and it's our biggest opportunity to change the trajectory of warming. That act doesn't do that yet it's a promise it makes it possible for us to cut those emissions so really you know it's success is determined by what happens now to implement the funding that that act made possible but it's a it's a really great step in the right direction. We're just about out of time but there's a question that's come from a listener a viewer about the law. And you know to what extent are there legal mechanisms and bodies that could enforce some actions on behalf of the small island states, such as the Caribbean islands that are, you know, already in the in the grasp of the climate monster. It will be nice to think so. But ultimately, you're talking about a substantial resource transfer, and it's not happening. We need to keep on pressing for it, arguing for it, operating on multiple fronts. We need to, we need to have all kinds of solutions because no one's writing us checks. No one is taking responsibility. And, and so we need some, we need some alternatives now, you know that there are some chinks let me end with the sort of optimism. You know the IMF is is the bogeyman of the development community, but partly through advocacy of Mia Motley Prime Minister Barbados, we developed an instrument called the resilience and sustainability trust. It's a trust that's funded by special drawing rights so no one had to write a check. They just had to make a commitment that things get into trouble. They will lend their reserves. And that is 20 year money at 1% or near 1%. As opposed to the kind of money we would otherwise have to pay. Now the problem with that trust is it's too small. It's $50 billion permanently total amount. We need 500 billion a year, not 50 billion for the 20 years. So it's a start. It's a good direction. It's great that the IMF has done it because it's kind of typical development banking space. I think the people missing in action of the development banks, they should be coming up with 10 fold of these things, and we've got nothing from them. Colin before we, before we wrap up here is comments on what was just said or really anything if you like we have just a few more moments here that we can talk. I would only add to say that I think as we face the issue of loss and damages and the increasing disasters that we will see from increases in greenhouse gases. More and more we are hearing countries starting to explore the issue of litigation in the international courts. We are seeing in the developed world, young people taking their governments to court to do more because of not jeopardizing their future. We are seeing small island developing states for example there was a commission that was set up by Antigua and Barbuda and Tivoli the prime ministers of both that they're asking small island developing states to join. The fundamental issues at the forefront here is this issue of compensation and liability, judging from how these things have historically played out. We don't think it's going to go. The probability of success in the short term is probably very, very small, but I think it's one of the, it is one of the toolbox, one of the tools in the toolbox that we have to continue to try to press on. And ultimately, fundamentally, we are talking about one of the largest injustices in the history of the world, where a small group of people and small group of countries from the actions that they pursued have resulted in so much fossil fuels and these being burnt and greenhouse gases in the air that has no cause global climate change. And then on the other side of the world, there are all of these people who are on the front lines of the climate crisis, whose lives are being ravaged and turned upside down almost every year and in some cases, multiple times a year because of something they did not cause. And so how do you fix an injustice, one way has to be that we should have access to the international courts. You have the opportunity for the last word here. You know, I would guess I would say that I wish that injustice and morality were reason enough for all of these issues to be fixed but unfortunately become a little more cynical than that. So, you know, you asked a little while back, you know, how we communicate these, you know, the significance of what's happening and how we get that to set in and I guess I want to, the final thought I would leave people with is that this is really about security and global security and the United States and the West, they do have an interest, you know, in what happens with these issues and, you know, for me it comes back to where I started with this sort of question of migration, which is, you know, an issue that Mia Motley herself has raised and that Colin talked about, which is that, you know, as these places, the Caribbean islands, poor countries around the world, just climate impacted countries around the world become unlivable. The people who live there are going to go somewhere else and that's a destabilizing force, or at least it can be for a lot of countries, including the United States and has political implications you see the, you know, the political pushback, you know, on our border issues in the United States you see the political turn, you know, in Italy, which I think has a lot to do with immigration pressures on their borders, you see the turn in the UK towards Brexit which was influenced in part by the immigration into Europe from 2015. That's a destabilizing force that the world will have to reckon with and making investments now and spending some of that money can slow that process, it can help a whole lot of people, it can help communities stay in place where they are.