 Welcome to all our participants from around the world. It's great that people are sharing in the chat where they're from so that we can see who's represented here today. We will come back to your remarks and questions after we've heard our expert presentations which we will continue to now. We are so fortunate as to have four distinguished speakers with us here today and we will hear from different perspectives both from people who are closely involved in Paris Agreement negotiations and at UN level in activities around climate change and from practitioners in parliaments who are themselves part of the current discussions around parliamentary action for climate change and also from representatives from academia. So we are going to have a treat here today so with no further due I would like to pass the floor to our first panelist Mr Luis Alfonso de Alba, Mexican diplomat for decades but also and particularly with regards to today's topic. Mr de Alba was the special envoy of the United Nations Secretary General for the 2019 Climate Summit so Ambassador Alba we are so pleased to have you with us today. The floor is yours. Thank you, thank you very much Christine. Let me start by recognizing how well the discussion has been framed by Professor Sacks and Gabriela Cuevas and I would like to concentrate and focus on the preparation of COP26. Can you hear me? Yes we can hear you. Oh sorry I lost the the image. As I was saying I think preparation for COP26 is quite important and even though I fully agree with what has been said so far I think it is important for parliamentarians to recognize not only that the level of commitment until today shown by the national determined contribution is still very low but there are also countries which may not reach the commitments or they may not comply with with the commitment they have made in Paris and in any case we will need a level of commitment that will need to be multiplied at least by three four times from the level that it was expressed in Paris so the urgency of action in regard to the to the NDC is much higher than than we expected. We have lost one year because of the pandemic and certainly we have seen through the period especially after the the summit in 2019 that the action is coming mainly by the private sector and other stakeholders local governments etc but national governments are lagging behind and therefore I would say that the first priority in COP26 for parliamentarians would be to find the way to put pressure on governments and there are many ways of doing that but the the most effective one I would say is to interact with the governments in during the COP itself and in preparing for the COP obviously in preparing for the COP at the national level and in Glasgow by interacting with all governments. Governments need to feel the pressure because as I was saying some are not showing very good results some are even backtracking and the second point I wanted to make is in relation to the COP itself you need to be aware that the process is in a very bad shape it's one of the worst negotiating exercises within the UN. I've been saying this for the last 10-12 years since Copenhagen, Cancun, Paris because the system has shown very little flexibility to reflect the urgency and the gravity of the of the problem when it comes to negotiations. They follow some understandings because they are not formally rules that allow every single delegation to block and to obstruct a decision and therefore a number of exercises a number of alliances and groups have risen and they are developing a strategy to put pressure into the into the process. I think parliamentarians should do the same they should understand that many of the things that are going to be relevant at the COP the main contributions that can be brought to the COP will need to be worked out with countries and parliamentarians from countries that share the same values and work in a parallel manner to a large extent if you just wait for Glasgow to try to build understandings it would be too late. It's going to be as it has been the case in Madrid a process on which you will see many actors engaged fully into the process the actors from different constituencies women indigenous groups Jew etc and you may be as we were in Madrid disappointed with the end result only because a group of countries block a particular point in the negotiation in Madrid it was the case with the negotiations of Article 6 and we lost the impetus that we have gained at the summit in 2019 to a large extent we need to avoid that in Glasgow we cannot ignore the importance of those negotiations particularly those spending negotiations but at the same time we need to find ways of solving those problems outside of the meeting rooms building coalitions of the willing has been a problem for many member states until today but it has worked and I think there is no other solution unless we change the way the COP's work but it will take a huge effort and I don't see the the willingness neither within the secretariat the level at the highest level to do that nor at the at the governmental side so there is a big challenge to do that let me also highlight something which is quite important in terms of having an influence into the decision-making process during the COP itself which is to choose very carefully how parliamentarians want to to be accredited to the COP there are two ways one of them is as parliamentarians why is one of the constituencies that has been recognized and is well organized but it will have a consultative or observer status with that kind of accreditation parliamentarians will not be able to participate in many meetings the second way which I will recommend very much also to some parliamentarians not necessarily all is to be part of their national delegations by being part of those delegations you will have access to all meetings and you will have the possibility also to participate in internal meetings of the delegations on which you can seek with more precision and clarity what are the challenges what are the the obstacles what are the countries or the negotiators because sometimes it's not only the country it's the person which is blocking an understanding or a decision on a particular issue let me also end with with a comment in terms of what is going to be needed from other actors in terms of arriving to a successful outcome not only at the COP 26 but as it was mentioned to reach the level of ambition that we all want by 2013 and certainly by 2050 we need to understand that every day the action by other stakeholders not only national government is very very important and I would like to highlight the importance of local governments and particularly if we are talking about parliamentarians and we know that there are many local parliamentarians also working I think it would be important to extend the invitation to participate into this process to those local authorities in many countries and it is the case in my own country local authorities are taking the lead in the fight against climate change and are showing by action their commitment not only by by speeches not only by general commitments and therefore it is important it is also important to take into account the specific contribution that other constituencies particularly from civil society and and certainly also by the private sector can can make both at the national regional and global level it's the only way that we will be able to to achieve I would be very happy to to get into more details while once we enter into the discussion and particularly about the challenges of this process that I already characterize as as one of the worst within the UN and I'm talking about 40 years of experience participating in multilateral meetings and climate negotiations are really in a very bad shape we we will need to talk more about that later it's probably not time today thank you very much thank you very much Ambassador de Elba for your insightful remarks and also to for being frank about how the process is and how parliamentarians can perhaps be be more actively involved I think this is the question here how we can have a parliamentary track at COP26 that is actually meaningful for parliamentarians to participate in and how they can also work going up to the COP and be an active part of the preparation so thank you so much for your insights and as Ambassador de Elba mentioned we will come back also to our panelists at the end so if you have questions please make sure to either put them in the chat or raise your hand once we get to the Q&A session so do take note of the questions that you have for our panelists as we go along thank you so much Ambassador and it is now my great pleasure to introduce our next panelist Miss Lawrence Tubiana who is currently serving as the CEO of European Climate Foundation but before joining the ECF Miss Tubiana was the Climate Change Ambassador for France and particularly involved in the Paris Agreement Negotiations the special representative for COP21 so Miss Tubiana has a lot of insights around the Paris negotiations and Miss Tubiana we're very pleased to have you with us today the floor is yours thank you and thank you for the invitation and for the great speeches that are being listened in carefully I'm very happy to have that discussion with all of you as I am advising the British government to prepare COP26 and trying to draw the lessons of how we succeed in Paris and the ways we did it and how this can be used in COP26 but there is first maybe a big difference in this COP and in the future for all conference of the parties until then and Paris was was a landmark the issue was to agree on a collective commitment to reduce a mission and if you read carefully and correctly Paris Agreement it's no more about incremental changes like it was in 1997 and the Kyoto Protocol or even before at the origin of the convention of the UNF triple C so Paris was about everyone acting to reduce a mission consistent with a global goal which meant to stay well below two degrees C and protecting the capacity to limit temperature at 1.5 degree compared to pre-industrial temperature that was of course to be net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 or soon after so now COP26 is five years after Paris is a moment of implementation in Paris it was clear that on one side we had to decide on the agreement itself and its rules and its mechanisms and on the other side that was a moment before Paris Agreement actually to for all countries to present climate plans and we knew at that time that the climate plans were not enough presented before the the beginning of the conference of COP21 so the mechanism in Paris was anyway in these next five years because the the agreement of Paris is enforced and put into place in 2020 that was the decision and till then there was of course other processes in place but starting from 2020 the countries has to revise their climate plan which were intended in 2015 and now has to be the formal and the formal commitment that countries have to take and that's why why is was so just to use these five years in a way to make countries more working on that because most of the climate plans presented in 2015 were not really worked very well it was not a whole government effort most of the time connected to mainly the Minister of Environment and there was no clear pathways so the the challenge for COP26 again it's not more a negotiation there are some elements still to negotiate but they are very very little but it is a COP about implementation and that's why I think there is good chances now to have these processes focused on the implementation of this deep decarbonization the deep reduction of greenhouse gases that Jeffrey Sachs was mentioning mentioning that finally even if everyone has to define its development pathway well there are a number of things that every country has to to in a way execute and in particular dropping the use of fossil fuel, coal or oil and even gas very soon vis-à-vis and in favor of other zero carbon sources of energy if it's so COP26 and that the trick has to revise this climate plan that with the national determined contribution that the formal the formal commitments for 2030 first and for the moment there is no direct link between these commitments and the global goal of Paris so these commitments for 2030 are typically bottom up meaning the expression of country's decision but they are not linked to the and consistent with the temperature we are aiming to maintain and that's why there is a a progress to be made at COP26 if we are ambitious enough is not only to ask countries to increase their indices but to consider seriously and before 2023 where we will do a a wrap up of all the efforts and try to aggregate them that what we call the global stock take every country should look at its own contribution from 2030 and ask if finally they are consistent with the global goal and of course most of them some of them are now more or less consistent I think about for example the EU emission reduction target of minus 55 percent by 2030 was just but not overly but just enough to reach net zero emission by 2050 which is a commitment that the European Union has taken as well so maybe the challenge for COP26 if I may say so is of course to get these countries to all countries to present more ambitious climate plans for 2030 committing to long-term strategies that are consistent with Paris goal meaning aiming at net zero by 2050 or soon after but in a way writing in the text in the decision they have to in a way negotiate that it is an individual commitment it's not only an aggregate an aggregated one it's an individual one and that's important because again from COP26 onwards the mechanism of these cops will be about peer pressure it will be about tracking it will be about really speaking the truth and not in a way greenwashing and again sharing experiences of course and trying to really bring supports to each other but with a demand and seriousness into the implementation so in my view the first thing for parliamentarians is to consider that you are a body in each of our country or your countries and together as a in a way consciousness a testimony of how real these efforts are how serious they are so that's the first the monitoring and in a way the the guardian of the spirit of Paris should be one of your role in my view and of course trying to get in COP26 not only general commitments on the NDCs but insist on the consistency with the global goal we are pursuing because again we are late into really implementing the second element is your relation of all of you with your own societies and all this deep transformation is about a huge transformation in the way we live in the way we feed ourselves in the way we use land in the way we change we we make all this economy which was essentially based on fossil fuel since now more than two centuries moving to this transition and this transition of course has a lot of impacts economic impacts some negative some very very positive overall anyway positive because in the long term there is no possibility of economic growth with climate change but at the same time as well social impact because the people the territories were highly dependent on the job of the fossil fuel industry or connected to has to transit to other activities and this is about how the social compact the social contract is operated is every country but to allow this social contract to embed in that that we have to pursue social justice at the same time as ecological transition and this is something where nobody knows exactly how to do it but there is a concern for every country whatever culture development in a way thinking is there the third element where I see enormous role for the parliamentarian beyond again trying to bridge this question of social justice together with ecological transition beyond this oversight activities I was mentioning in the beginning is a way to connect with citizen and empower citizen you are whatever the regime you are working in and the constraint you are the you speak the language of democracy and people representation the people who are delegated that sovereignty is a power to you you are accountable of course in front of them but at the same time you understand that the future of democracies in a moment where the social transformation will is and will be very very deep and important has to embark citizen so the agency the power of citizen is key to develop this ecological transition with the social justice at the same time and empowering citizen is a way to work on the mechanism where democracy is working in and how finally the voices of citizen whether they it's on the on the role of consumers the way they can pressure on governments where they express their preferences or innovate in their own in their own power that is a way as current violence you can you can defend that capacity of citizen to get hold I've been participating to a fascinating experience in France chairing the citizen assembly for climate change where 100 citizen 150 citizen have worked during more than a year to propose a major law to to to really be able for the French economy to reach this minus 40 percent of emission reduction which was the initial commitment of France in 2015 citizen can express willingness to change that seems much deeper than normally the government would would dare to and that again is a story of ambition showing vision showing a collective endeavor and that's why in your political role which is your central role it's really important to not only combat vested interests that blocks this transformation but help make space in your own countries to the voice of citizen and finally again try to understand the potential contradiction and trade-off between all these objectives and of course when we add else and all the SDGs we have a number of objectives that has to be articulated together and not cannot implement easily all in the same time so I would say and and really recommend that you play this full role of discussion the social contract around ecological transition and in my view in COP26 if these voices of people are heard and your voice is heard I think we will be a much better track than it's only a bureaucratic discussion within the new FTPC. Thank you. Thank you so much Mr. Tugiani and for your last point I couldn't agree more and thank you for pointing out sort of the dual or triple role of parliamentarians but definitely as the link to citizens and the voice of citizens and the responsibility that each parliamentarian carries as that link between the very global agenda and the local livelihoods of citizens so incredibly important there. Thank you so much for your remarks and I hope you all took note of questions to Mr. Tugiani we'll return to that. Moving on to our next panelist it is my great pleasure to introduce my dear colleague from the Danish parliament Mr. Rasmus Nordquist who is to me known as a true champion of climate action and will give us the perspective from the floor of the parliament as an example of from someone who's participated in climate negotiations both on a national level and an international level for years. Rasmus it is a great pleasure to welcome you and the floor is yours. Well thank you very much Kirsten and thank you to all the organisers and the very inspiring speakers who came before me. I'm very happy to be able to talk here today and I will touch two things. First of all I will talk a bit about the climate law we adapted in Denmark last year and how the role of parliamentarians is within this law and secondly of course how to to to to participate and work at the meetings. Last year in Denmark we passed a new climate law. First of all an important law which has a 70% reduction target in 2030. I think that was a huge success that we got that into the law. A law that was adapted with great majority almost all parties in parliament actually participated in negotiating and voting through this law. But what was actually the most important part of this law as I see it is the whole programming we put into the law that we actually made a yearly plan for climate policy in Denmark. This means that the government every year in autumn has to come up with a new climate program showing the way towards the 70% reduction target in 2030. That every law we have to pay every year based on this program we have discussion in parliament where we can all all be heard and come in with inputs to the program but also we we we established with this law independent climate council which then takes the program analyze it and come up with their view on it whether it's it's enough action or not. After this then the parliamentarians again can come come come in the process and say okay we could hear from the climate council that that that the action from the government is not enough to to clearly show the way to the 70% reduction targets in 2030. So we call upon the government with with with the the need to do more action. So so what we established with this law was actually forcing the government into having a year-round discussion with parliament and not just working in their own offices on climate policy. It also of course ask of us to to to to engage in this and come up with solutions and not just not just do the scrutiny and and and the questions but actually come up with solutions into how to to meet our targets. The second part of of of the law was was about the engagement of civil society and citizens and and as Miss to be honest I was saying this is as important if we have to to to to to meet the targets and and do the work we need to do. So so we established a citizen assembly with great inspiration from France and in our climate law. The assembly is working right now of course it was a bit delayed because of the COVID-19 but they're working now online in a process to also come up with solutions that we can we can take forward and then we established a network of civil society organizations that could also all the time be in in in relationship both with government but also with the committee in parliament. It was not an easy process to do this law because of course governments never really like to to to have written so much in words that the the engagement of parliamentarians in the work but I think it was a very very important step we took because it first of all it it it makes us all active in the processes that that that need to be be taking and the steps that need to be taken. And it's also a work I mean we were forcing ourselves into to to being active on all levels both in in in in in conversations with with with citizens our constituents but also civil society but also on an international level and and I think I will will will spend the last of my minutes to speak to to to focus on that how I work with with the COP meetings and how I get involved with that. First of all I think it was an important point that came earlier to to to to get a seat in the delegations be part of the delegations because you have access and it's it's all about access to meet the right people talk to the right people during the COP. I have seen that has been quite important both with with the current government and the government before that that that actually parliamentarians can often play role in getting the contacts to to international civil society organizations parliamentarians from other countries and so forth and take this feedback back to our government and the delegations negotiating in the meetings and actually the government quite often have been quite happy about the role we can play there but the second is to really get into the process of what is being discussed and follow up on that when we can come home from from the meetings and especially I would I would point out that after Katowice where we had some important discussions especially on article nine five we have been following up in parliament closely with the government and how are we actually meeting these these new decisions that was made and I think that is as important one thing is the meetings we're doing and meeting up internationally but follow up and I think that that parliamentarians have a specific role here because we are the ones who are doing the parliamentarian scrutiny we are the ones who can ask questions to the government and they have to answer us and we need to take every decision made at the COP also the COP26 and go back and follow up in the years to come with our governments are they meeting these targets we said are they actually following the rules and decision that was made on on UN level so I think my most important point here both with the Danish climate law and with the COP meetings is it's about active participations I mean to to just think you can you can lean back and see the meetings it's not an option if we have to meet the climate crisis and have to to fight it it needs to be done in active work and that's also from from from our our side and and we only do that by by forcing the governments to to to involve us in this work so we can involve the rest of society I think that should be my my opening remarks Kirsten and then I look forward also to to to the discussion afterwards thank you dear Rasmus great to hear both your perspectives practical experience from the COP and how you can work there in a useful way and particularly of course the follow-up and your role as parliamentary oversight scrutiny incredibly important experience there so thank you for sharing that and we have one more panelists before we open the floor to questions and comments I am very pleased to welcome David Smith who is our last panelist and who is the coordinator of the Institute for Sustainable Development and Director of the Center for Environmental Management at the University of the West Indies. Mr Smith the floor is yours. Thank you very much Kirsten and welcome to everybody to all the parliamentarians and the experts who gathered. I'd like to emphasize a couple of points which I think would be very important leading up to and for COP itself. One of them is the importance of differences. Very often we hear about climate change being expressed as a rise of a certain level of degrees by a certain number of years and it's always expressed as a average. This tends to hide some of the inequalities that exist and I think it's very important for parliamentarians to pay attention to some of those inequalities. We heard at the beginning about the inequalities of the way in which climate for example may affect women or marginalized communities the poor and so on and I think it's going to be come more and more important to recognize those differences not only within countries but also between countries as well and that parliamentarians should be talking to each other but also not just to raise the concerns about inequity between the way in which different countries might be affected but also the way in which their constituents might be affected vis-a-vis the constituents of other people within their own country and this is I think key because as somebody who lives in a small island developing state one of the concerns is that many of the small island states will be affected earlier and in some cases one could argue more severely than other states definitely we need to pay attention to some of the scientific work which shows that countries particularly in the tropical belt will likely be affected by climate change much more quickly than countries which are further away from the equator and that means then that when we are debating how to reach targets and the way in which targets should be met it's very important to understand those differences and that the urgency of some countries may be much much more on the close to the edge than other countries. To do that I think it's important to form alliances and the the SIDS have done this very well in terms of AOSIS for example and the association or that's the Association of Small Island States. Finding other alliances is going to become increasingly important and so finding alliances within countries with other with NGOs for example might be key but also finding alliances between countries to be able to push for some of the more ambitious targets and so for example we we know that there is the the desire to keep emissions up no more than two degrees above historical limits but there is a real need to keep for many countries the limit to 1.5 degrees because of these differentiated effects on different countries while a large continental country may be able to absorb a 1.5 degree change in temperature it's very likely that many of the small island states will not and so the they need in a sense fight harder and also to find allies to help them in that fight. We've heard a lot about how to set and move towards the different levels of ambition that have been discussed I think that's incredibly important but as well to find ways of ensuring that there are good organic links between government and academia and making sure that the policies that are set at the national level at the regional level within countries and between countries are based on good quality science and here I think parliamentarians should definitely try to liaise with academia as much as possible make sure that they have good channels of information in both directions academics very often do need to hear from government in terms of what are the problems you would like us to solve or would like us to face sometimes we may be solving something that's very interesting but not by be as relevant to a parliamentarian as you would like but it requires a flow of information from the parliamentarians I think to academia to help us to understand what are the key things that you find most important. One of the issues I think will be coming up more and more has to do with if it is that developed countries are going to be changing infrastructure and transportation systems and so on does that mean that the redundant or old pieces of transportation systems or old cars that run on internal combustion engines will find their way to developing countries I'm very concerned and I think many of our developing country parliamentarians ought to become concerned about the real possibility of dumping either obsolete or soon to become obsolete infrastructure and equipment from developed countries into developing countries we've seen that happen in the past when emissions standards have been changed for automobiles all of a sudden we see reconditions second-hand cars becoming available in tropical countries we want to be sure that that sort of thing does not happen as a result of the very good ambitions to change the way in which energy is generated and used in the developed countries but we also want to make sure that we are not simply moving obsolete technology to the south and in the end possibly increasing the inequalities and also not really addressing the overall problem the only other thing is let's make sure we focus on damage and loss as well it seems to keep falling off the table and I'll stop there thank you thank you very much mr smith also for giving us that incredibly important perspective from the small island states and the fact that consequences are not evenly distributed of climate change so we really need to take that perspective into account and also for pointing to the science policy nexus which is actually something that we at parliamentarians for the global goals are currently discussing with the the global network the sustainable development solutions network on how we can work together to strengthen that nexus so thank you for pointing out that as well