 So, a very warm welcome to everyone joining for this year's Gordon Goodman seminar, organized by the Stockholm Environment Institute, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Stockholm University. I'm Osa Peton. I'm a research director and deputy director of SEI. Who would have thought we'd be here only six months ago in a global health crisis, much of the world still in lockdown and with multiple spillover effects on issues like hunger, poverty, education, and violation of human rights. Effects that together combine to further drive inequalities existing in many parts of the world. And of course the pandemic is also a major disruption for the global climate agenda, which we know is now entering a critical decade of action. Undoubtedly Gordon Goodman, a scientific pioneer connecting environment and development, would have had many thoughts and ideas how to deal with these multiple crises. On the upside though, we have of course moved many conversations from the physical, sometimes locked rooms to these virtual and more inclusive rooms. So we're very pleased that we could shift this seminar from a physical event in Stockholm to this virtual event. We are so excited that many of you were now able to join us. I cannot think of a more interesting speaker for this year, Gordon Goodman, seminar then professor Jojita Gupta, who has worked on climate and equity throughout her long academic career in international environmental law and policy. And recently she also chaired the major sixth global environment outlook for UNEP. She will be followed by a stellar panel of scientific and policy experts and leaders. And we hope that they will open our eyes to some of the unfolding consequences of the pandemic, but also of accelerating climate change and of the need to drastically cut our fossil fuel use. How can this nexus of issues be addressed in an equitable way? Before I hand over to Professor Gupta, we will first hear some brief opening remarks also from our partners, Jöran Kohansson, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Johan Kylen Kjärna, Senior Advisor and Adjunct Professor at Stockholm University. So Jöran, over to you. Thank you also, and hello everyone. You're very welcome to this year's Gordon Goodman Memorial Lecture. I usually have the privilege of welcoming you to the academy's lecture hall for this occasion. But this year is different, and we will have to rely on video technology due to the pandemic. And nevertheless, we are of course all looking forward to Dr. Gupta's lecture on fossil fuel and pandemics, a very timely topic indeed. But before we move on to the lecture, let me tell you a few words about Gordon Goodman, whose memory we honor with this lecture. Now Gordon Goodman was a British Ecologist and Professor of Applied Biology in London. And in 1977, he became the founding director of the Bayer Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Bayer Institute is focused on ecology and issues of environment. And here in Stockholm, Gordon Goodman made important contributions to problems of energy supply, pollution, acidification, how to solve them, just to mention some of his research interests. And he also realized that environmental, particularly climate issues, have political solutions, and that scientists need to convince political leaders to act on these issues. Therefore, together with that boolean and others, Gordon Goodman organized a series of meetings that led to the establishment of the IPCC in the mid-80s. At the same time, Dr. Goodman worked for the Bröntland Commission, wrote the energy chapter of his report, and helped establishing the term sustainable development. When the Swedish government then set up the Stockholm Environment Institute, Dr. Goodman was asked to be its director and he moved there in 1989 and continued work on energy related topics, sustainable urban culture, biotechnology, and much else. He stepped down as director in 1991 and later moved back to England and he passed away 12 years ago. Now Gordon Goodman combined a profound knowledge of biology and chemistry and environmental science with the drive to help making the world a better place. Of course, we need people like him more than ever and it's crucial, as also mentioned, that this kind of work continues also in these difficult times when mankind is afflicted by a pandemic. Now it's very appropriate that this year's Gordon Goodman lecturers, Dr. Juji Taguta, because with her commitment to global climate issues and her work with the IPCC, she plays a similar role today as Dr. Goodman did in the 1980s. We are very happy that she accepted our invitation, that she continues the legacy of Dr. Goodman, and we of course all look forward very much to a lecture today. Thank you. Thank you very much, Åsa and Jöran. I'm also very pleased to welcome you to the Gordon Goodman lecture and seminar on behalf of the Stockholm University. Maybe a bit in the shadow of the pandemic, 2020 is actually heading to become one of the top three in terms of the hottest years since 1880. It continues a trend with 19 of the 20 warmest years occurring since 2000 and we know if we are to limit the worst effects of climate change global emissions will need to reach net zero by the middle of this century. For decades we have talked about the significant investment gap that remains to bridge national commitments with emissions reductions needed. Now we have a new situation unfolding with the pandemic that has led to a global crisis of multiple dimensions as Åsa mentioned. As a response governments are unlashing unprecedented financial emergency and investment packages to tackle the socioeconomic effects of the pandemic. One can maybe reflect how this situation has mobilized financial resources that we could only dream of six months ago and in terms of investment when we talked about climate change. It is therefore important to focus on how we can move from just a short time crisis response and enable more long-term investment opportunities. Is it possible to steer investments to both respond to the immediate crisis from the pandemic while at the same time driving low carbon development and maximizing benefits to society at large. The pandemic has further accentuated a number of worrying economic, political and social trends that are also important to consider from a climate change driven transition point of view. Increasing political tensions within and between countries, stressed public balance sheets, social unrest, populism just to mention a few. These examples demonstrate why the question on how to combine the development of a low carbon economy with the goals of the welfare state is more important than ever. It gives me also therefore great pleasure to hand over now to Dr Jujita Gupta, Professor in Environment and Development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam. She will deliver the 2020 Gordon Goodman lecture with the title Tackling Tough Trade-offs While Leaving No One Behind on Foster Fuels and Pandemics. I'll leave over to you Professor Gupta. Thank you. Dear online viewers, as a tribute to Gordon Goodman, I will focus on tough trade-offs. I will discuss Leaving No One Behind. Can we move to the next sheet? Leaving No One Behind, win-win versus tough trade-offs and you're probably wondering what I mean by win-win. Well, in a world where we focus on the possible politics or the politics of the possible, we tend to focus much more on win-win rather than on tackling tough trade-offs. While I'll introduce that, then I'll talk about climate change and focus a little bit on the question of how do we leave fossil fuels underground. Then I look at broader environmental challenges. I look at the opportunities that COVID-19 provide and then draw some conclusions. So one of the silver linings that we have is Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. This is because it calls for leaving no one behind and, in fact, even helping the furthest behind first. This basically calls for redistribution of resources and wealth. Well, we live in a complicated world. We have limited land, water, strategic minerals, fertile soils. We even have limited sinks. We cannot keep polluting our oceans, our lands, and our air. We have planetary boundaries and face tipping points. All this basically means that we have limited environmental utilization space or limited eco space. And in fact, this limited eco space might even be shrinking. At the same time, we have rising demand. And this basically implies that we will have to redistribute this limited eco space amongst the different users and demanders. Now, we also live in a changing world with persistent inequality problems. From a North-South perspective, during the colonial era, the North wanted the resources of the South and even humans for the slave trade. In the post-colonial era, trade agreements often disenfranchised the South. When China became rich, President Trump even argued that free trade was not in line with America first. Today, issues of equitable sharing of resources, for example, how do we share the right to use fossil fuels, the equitable sharing of risks, how do we share the risks of climate impacts, equitable sharing of responsibilities, who is liable and who is responsible, are not so much discussed at the international level. And instead, we end up with a de facto inequitable sharing of these rights, responsibilities and risks. We have not discussed who can use the remaining fossil fuels. And as the bulk of the remaining fossil fuels are in the global south, the burden of not using the resource falls on them. And Northern countries tend to avoid this redistribution discussion. Of course, some countries in the South may join the North. Some Northern countries may become Southern. And the boundary may change between these two. But history affects future discussions. And this will affect the relationship between North and South. Of course, there are rich people in the South and there are poor people in the North. If you look at the rich, well, 2000 billionaires own more than 4.6 billion people. If you look at the poor, well, more than half the world lives on less than $5.5 per day. As Leonard Cohen says, the rich have their channels in the bedrooms of the poor. The rich tend to shift their profits to avoid paying taxes. Apparently, $500 billion are free. They also have around $21 to $30 billion held in offshore accounts. So, from a rich poor perspective, there are four key issues. The rich avoid paying taxes, which impoverishes the state. The rich want deregulation, which reduces the power of the state. The rich want to privatize and commodify nature and public services, which expropriate resources and disempowers the poor. And the rich increasingly try to substitute labor through mechanization and algorithms. And they use specification strategies. Today, in terms of North-South relations, we also have four different kinds of relationships. First, climate impacts will have more existential effects on the global South. Rules have been changed worldwide, which lead to more land, water and resource grabbing from people in the global North or rich people in the global South in relation to others in the global South. We also have the problem of stranded resources. We now tell the South they can't use their forests. We are going to tell them in the future they can't use their fossil fuels. And we will also be telling them probably that they can't eat meat or even sell meat. And this is not a joke. I remember that when we were discussing with policymakers from the global South, the policymakers summary for the global environment outlook, there was a sentence that said that in order to address environmental problems, we would have to encourage the rich countries to eat less meat. And Southern negotiators protested because that would have an impact on their exports. And another big problem that we have in the North-South context is the problem of growing debt. In the North, we don't have that many options to spend our money. And as a result, even interest rates have become negative for most of us. But when we lend money to the global South, we charge higher interest rates. And often we use this money for fossil fuel investments. And so you are seeing that national governments in the global North are using export credit to finance fossil fuel projects in the global South, which helps Northern industry export more or less obsolete technology to the global South. But this leads them into a technology lock-in. It leads them into greater debt towards the global North. And it will also make it very, very difficult for them to actually develop. And this is perhaps a form of new colonialism. And I have this currency note in front of me, which you can see in the sheet, which basically says that the history of colonialism goes in parallel with the creation of new commodities, slavery, sugar, tea, coffee, oil, and carbon. And if you look at the bottom of the sheet, it basically says that this bill is solely for the purpose of increasing corporate profits and not really for solving problems like climate change. So viewers, we live in an unequal world with limited or shrinking eco space. And when you have such limits, how do you redistribute? You can redistribute using markets, but then only the rich can benefit. Only they can buy. Sometimes governments will redistribute by saying they are going to focus on permanent sovereignty, as agenda 20 says, 2030 says. Also, you can also talk about, for example, the idea of polycentricity, which allows for multiple governance options at multiple levels of governance. But this also doesn't really tackle the redistribution issue. And finally, you have agenda 2030 and the SDGs, which talk of reducing poverty and reducing inequality, actually operationalize how this is going to happen. And so this brings me to the politics of the possible, the politics of small wins and nudges. Policymakers have limited resources, so they want to solve problems using win-win approaches. But this obscures trade-offs. It obscures the fact that there are people who lose. The policy, the politics of the possible focuses on symptoms, not systemic causes, incrementalism, not structural change, creative ambiguity, not parity of victory, lean government, not accountable government, public-private partnerships, not partnership with the poor. And they use a pro-poor policy that hides a pro-rich strategy. The politics of the possible generates huge non-decisions and de facto allocates resources, risks and responsibilities. And this basically means that the less powerful tend to lose. So what are then all these tough trade-offs? Let us talk about the clouds of climate change. Climate change can be seen as a systemic problem, a problem of neoliberal capitalism, of even perhaps sustainable development. The system then has drivers, production, consumption, investment, rate, demographic drivers. These drivers then lead to emissions from greenhouse gas sources from the energy sector, the transport sector buildings, industry, and land use. These sources then add up to concentrations. And these concentrations then lead to global warming, which has impacts, and such impacts will have residual impacts. Now, when negotiators focus on a win-win narrative, they tend to focus only on symptoms, the greenhouse gas sources, energy transport buildings, etc. And this is a challenge because as a consequence of this, they avoid discussing the drivers and the system. So what you see is that even though the climate change regime talks about sustainable development, it does not show whether this is compatible with growth on neoliberal capitalism. And even though the Paris Agreement does talk about enhancing coherence in financial investment and financial patterns, it doesn't go far enough in actually addressing the issue. And after 25 years of discussion, we finally have a temperature target, but we didn't translate that into how much fossil fuel can be actually used. And all our discussions are equitable distribution of emission targets have finally given up in favor of what countries are actually willing to do. We have not discussed who is allowed to use the remaining fossil fuels. And big financial actors have remained under the radar. Now, if you want to solve climate change, then clearly you have to leave 80% of the fossil fuels underground. And this will have huge consequences. Such fossil fuels and the entire fossil fuel enterprise is probably worth something up to 300 trillion US dollars. Current global GDP last year was something to the effect of 85, 86, 87 trillion dollars. So this is significantly more. Now, if you want to achieve 1.5 to 2 degrees, you might lose up to 185 trillion US dollars. Who is going to pay for this? Who is going to strand these assets? Who is going to leave these fossil fuels underground? This overvaluation is referred to as the carbon bubble. Now, suppose you and I have shares in fossil fuels, we are locked up in a prisoner's dilemma. If large investors announce that they will sell their shares, the price of these shares of fossil fuels will fall. And so they have to do it quietly and pretend they're not selling. And people will buy because they think that the global divestment movement has not yet started. But this brings me to a tough question. Will we write off this fossil fuel shares or should we divest? After all, someone will have to pay. Now, multinationals with fossil fuel assets, they obviously want to use these fossil fuels before they move on to renewable energy. Bench-in funds and other shareholders have huge resources, lots of power, but they don't know whether to write off or divest because they are also facing the prisoner's dilemma. And most fossil fuel assets are in the hands of states. And this brings me to the north-south aspects of the fossil fuel discussion. What we find is that as most remaining fossil fuel resources are in the global south, if we are to phase it out, basically the south will have to face the opportunity cost of such phase out. When we sell our shares in the fossil fuel industry, we're basically also shifting these shares to the global south because most of the time it is southern investors that are purchasing these shares. And since so much knowledge and technology exists in the global north, global north governments are using aid, export credit and investments in loans to support their own industry to sell this technology to the global south. And this basically means that the global south will have to eventually get rid of all these fossil fuels and it has a dilemma. If it gets rid of these fossil fuels, how will it pay back all the loans it has taken from the global north? And if it doesn't phase out the fossil fuels, well, they're at the receiving end of climate change. So they will have greater existential challenges in the future. But it's also in our interest to make sure that these countries do not get stronger vested interests in keeping this fossil fuel story alive. And this basically is a challenge. It's a cloud on the horizon. But there is hope. There is a silver lining. Worldwide, we are finding that there are increasing numbers of court cases on climate change and CO2 emissions. And if you look at the global south, then you find that in democratic countries, there are increasing numbers of court cases being used by social movements to try to make governments and fossil fuel producers and users aware of this problem. So I think that where legislatures and executives worldwide have become paralyzed, there is some hope as people are using the judiciary. Let's now discuss broader environment and development issues. In 2019, UNEP produced the Healthy Planet Healthy People Report. This report concludes that a healthy planet enables healthy humans. The planet is becoming increasingly unhealthy. An unhealthy planet affects our health. The structural causes of an unhealthy planet therefore need to be addressed. And a healthy planet and healthy people are synergistic. Now, if you look at how an unhealthy planet affects our health, we see a large number of statistics that are available. Can you move to the next sheet, please? For example, 25% of all health impacts can be related to environmental pollution. And disasters have killed 0.7 million people between 2005 and 2015, affecting 1.7 billion people and costing about $1.4 trillion US dollars. And in 2016 environmental disasters displaced 26.2 million people, three times more than other conflict causes. Air pollution has killed 7 million people annually, with a welfare loss of 5 trillion US dollars. Land degradation affects 3.2 billion people with a welfare loss of 4 to 20 trillion dollars. 1.4 million people die annually because of water pollution. And 90% of disasters are slow onset disasters caused, for example, by drought or antibiotic resistance. Healthy planets and healthy oceans provide 3.1 billion people with 20% of their protein needs. Pollinators which are valued at about $200 billion per annum are declining and this decline is affecting food security. Our report also shows that zoonotic disease is 60% of all infectious disease. COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease. What you're seeing is that we need to address the health of humans by addressing the health of the planet. And the GEO identifies the pursuit of economic growth and related production and consumption patterns as well as technologies as keen drivers of ecological degradation. Addressing these structural drivers is therefore critical. The data in the report also can be used to show that the privileged contribute much more to the drivers and pressures of environmental degradation than the marginalized too. And I'm not just talking about how the privileged produce and consume, but also how they invest, how their pensions are used for investing in these drivers and pressures. And at the same time, the privileged suffer much less in existential terms than the marginalized. They suffer in dollar terms more, but in existential terms, they suffer much less. And this basically brings us to a tough question, which is how are the rich going to compensate or are they going to participate in the poor? After all, someone has to pay. Now, the rich are completely fixated by the idea that economic growth is necessary. And then they also don't want to pay compensation. So they move from compensation to pacification and use a pro poor policy to hide the poor pro rich strategy. Let me explain by building upon the growth narratives. And let me look at sustainable development. Well, sustainable development is supposed to help us find the happy medium between the social, the economic and the logical. But only the economic is actually valued in monetary terms. And so every time we try to apply sustainable development and practice, we end up prioritizing the economy over social and ecological aspects. If you look at the concept of inclusive growth, which is let's focus on growth and then do a little bit of inclusion, and we do that inclusion through poor, poor strategies, then we find that this doesn't work either because the growth takes place very often at the top of the poor. If you look at green growth, well, green growth tries to say let me growing, but make sure that the growth is green. And the idea is that you can somehow de-link economic growth from pollution or from resource use. And this can be done through this idea of circular economy. But if our world consists of three main systems, the energy system, the food system, and the resource and waste system, then we find that the energy system cannot really be subject to a circular economy because energy dissipates. The food system cannot be subject to a circular economy because we digested. I mean, it's a long shot to really get that circular. And the resource and waste economy is also difficult to make circular. So this is also a challenge. I think that we really have to revisit the concept of what is green. I think that if we want to leave no one behind, we need to go beyond pro-poor policy and move towards systemic change for social and ecological inclusion. And not only that, we will have to redistribute. But if those in power are doing the redistribution, they're unlikely to do anything else than pro-poor policy. So basically, we need to find social movements and try to encourage them to participate more actively in this entire debate. And this basically means that any social, ecological, and relational inclusiveness process implies that we have to redefine what development is. In the meanwhile, the global governance system is paralyzed. The legal system is paralyzed. International private law is much more important in many ways than international public law. For example, if you have a contract, a long-term contract with a fossil fuel company, it's going to be very difficult to actually phase out the use of fossil fuels because you'll have to compensate that company for not using the fossil fuel. And international public law seems to be very incremental, moving towards limited sovereignty. But it's sort of reversing back now towards permanent sovereignty. It's not moving forward really on the no harm principle or the equity principle. And public environmental law is quite effective to the US reluctance to do anything serious on environmental issues. And I'm not just talking about the last government in the United States, but for a long time the US has been reluctant on this issue. International law is just not able to deal with the transformation that we need. In this PowerPoint, I show you what the DEO has in its report, a slight modification. Basically, what we see is that current governance trends are not going to lead to more sustainability. We're having more and more unsustainable trends in our future. To get to a sustainable world, we actually need systemic change, structural change. The blue line shows you the structural change that can lead to living within planetary boundaries. And the other line I had in that diagram was to emphasize the fact that we also need to think about a safe and just planet. And this translates into different development paths for different countries as the next slide shows. So essentially, we can't have developing countries develop in a linear progression towards becoming an industrialized country. All countries, whether poor or rich, have to move towards lower environmental degradation, lower resource views, while trying to enhance development for everybody. And I'm not talking growth. So this basically brings me to the next issue, which is the silver lining. And that is the fact that social movements have been putting pressure on governments to stop investing in public-private partnerships or even the privatization of water services and instead go back to remunercialization of water services. And we are seeing this also in the developed world. So it is time to take back some of these public goods into public hands and ensure that these services are provided by the state. This brings me now to my other silver lining, which is COVID-19, which is clearly a cloud, but there's a silver lining. Let me show you what I mean. COVID-19 has already punctured the carbon bubble, with share prices coming down, shareholder equity coming down, companies closing, capital expenditure reduced. So basically, we are seeing that COVID-19 can have an impact on climate change and can pass on the transition to renewables. COVID-19 is also leading to a fall in the GDP. And we know that governments will spend probably 10 to 20% of their GDP for the recovery process. And the question is, will they focus this recovery process on a vicious cycle or on a virtuous cycle? Let me explain. Will governments now use this 10 to 20% of their budget for emphasizing growth over well-being, health and ecosystem, emphasizing the lean state and commodifying and privatizing the environment and health? Will they focus on state growth with this China and World Health Organization with respect to the COVID-19 crisis? Will they focus on only issues that the rich can do such as social distancing, which is not possible in a slum? Will they focus on sovereignty and securitization and lifeboat ethics, and not share the drugs that eventually get developed for addressing COVID-19? Will they use up their fossil fuels so that there's nothing left for the South to use? Or will they use this money to emphasize the health of the planet and the health of the people? Will they use it for treating health and environment as merit and public goods? Will they focus on the structural and systemic pressures, the causes of zoonosis, land use change, the causes of climate change? Will they focus on the state and impact and address the vulnerabilities of the poor, not by pro-poor policy, but by actually redistributing resources? And will they focus on global solidarity to address this global problem? And that brings me to my conclusion. The world has focused for a long time on easy solutions, win-win solutions, incremental change, but this postpones the needed decisions and the day factor transfers risk to the global poor. The longer the world focuses on win-win, the higher the lock-in, the greater the damage to the poor, the more expensive it will be to resolve these problems. Social movements and academics must play a critical role in balancing the power of the great and large investors. COVID-19 provides this opportunity. This opportunity is very brief. We may have only one or two years in which to do it, but it is a very large opportunity because it has 10 to 20 percent of the global GDP. This is the moment for action and we must act now because if we are, as academics and social movements, passive, the recovery process will reproduce past injustices. We must not build back better. We must catalyze climate resilient change. We must avoid further environmental degradation and inequality lock-in. Thank you for your attention. Joyita, thank you so much for a fascinating lecture and for covering so many different topics that make us think really critically. I think we have a really exciting panel lined up that can discuss some of the things that you mentioned. I think I should introduce myself first. My name is May the Zin Al and I'm a research fellow at SEI Asia in Bangkok. I do a number of different research topics, but mainly I work on energy transitions and water resources management. I'd like to introduce the panel first, but afterwards I'd like to talk a little bit about how we can engage more in this panel discussion through a poll. First I'd like to introduce Ulrika Modier. Ulrika is an assistant secretary general and director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy at UNDP. She leads the UNDP's strategic partnerships with government, civil society and other key partners and has a vital role in leading UNDP's communications and advocacy in over 170 countries. In Sweden, she has been instrumental in reshaping Sweden's international development corporation to support the achievement of the 2030 agenda. So thank you very much. Next I'd like to introduce Nonette Rojo. Nonette is the executive director of the tenure facility. She's a lawyer, activist and author specializing in the land rights of Indigenous people and community-based natural resources management. In the past two decades, Nonette has pioneered civil society initiatives in public interest law and environmental justice in Philippines, Indonesia and mainland Southeast Asia. So thank you very much for joining Nonette. Next I'd like to introduce Jonas and Eddison. He is a professor of environmental law, the former dean of the faculty of law and director of Stockholm Environmental Law and Policy Center at Stockholm University. He is also the chair of the compliance committee to the UN Economic Commission for Europe, our host convention on participatory rights in environmental matters. His research focuses on trans-boundary dimensions of environmental law and he is currently co-editing a comprehensive volume on agenda 2030 for SDGs and the international law. So we very much look forward to your book. And last but not least, we have SEI's very own Chyvon Kartha, who is from SEI US. He's a senior scientist focusing on economic, political and ethical dimensions of fairly sharing the effort on an ambitious global climate action. He has worked with a wide range of international institutions and civil society organizations and served as a coordinating lead author for IPCC's fifth assessment report, co-leading the chapter on equity and sustainable development. He is now and also for the forthcoming sixth assessment report. So we're very excited to have such a wonderful lineup of panelists. So I have some questions prepared for them, but before we dive into the discussion, I'd like to establish some house rules. So some of you have already been engaged in the Q&A section. There on the right, you can please post your Q&A Q&A's. When you do post, please state your name, organization, and country. And the questions will not be posted automatically. We will review them before we publish them. And in case you do miss part of this lecture, we have been reporting it so that will be available to you afterwards. So you'll see on the screen that there is an audience poll. That is your way to engage with us on some of the important topics that Jojita has raised. So if you go to menti.com, I suggest that you use your phone or any other electronic device that you can access the website menti.com. So enter in this code 6033828 and you will be presented with a list of questions for a poll. And the question is, what type of solutions should we focus on in tackling complex global socio-ecological challenges in a post-COVID era? Should we focus on the possible, the small wins and the nudges, or the win-win solutions, or addressing the tough trade-offs, or a mixture of the above? So we will come back to these questions after we've had a round of discussion with the panelists. Okay, so let me jump straight into it. Siobhan, I know you're an expert on these matters and Jojita discussed the question of equity around the sharing of fossil fuels and the necessity of leaving 80% of fossil fuels in the ground if we seriously want to tackle climate change. And so what to you, what are the key considerations in ensuring the equitable use of fossil fuels to tackle climate change? Thank you, Mae. And, Jojita, thank you very much. I mean, I think in some ways you answered this question even better than I could having been working on this. You did a brilliant job, Jojita, of laying out the scale of the challenge of phasing out fossil fuels and the stakes, $185 trillion in fossil fuel assets that would need to be stranded more than twice the current gross roll product. So the importance of doing it equitably really can't be overstated. There is a question to be asked, is it possible? Well, it's just as possible to scale down fossil fuel production at the necessary rate as it is to reduce emissions. There are plenty of analyses looking at the technical issues and the economic issues and showing where energy services can be provided from. So it can be done, can be done equitably. And I think a strong case can be made that given energy markets as they function today and given politics as usual, it wouldn't happen equitably. That the COVID crisis and the energy price wars that were occurring in the lead up to the COVID crisis showed us a glimpse of the scale of disruption that would happen if fossil fuels were scaled down rapidly in a manner that didn't rely on any kind of cooperation that was purely every country for itself and every region for itself. But it can be done much, much more equitably than that. It can be done in a way that isn't based solely on minimizing unit energy costs and that looks at the transition costs. What are the various types of disruption or social disruption that could happen if fossil fuel production was scaled down at the rate that would be needed to keep warming below two degrees or one and a half degrees with a high level of certainty. It can be done much more equitably if we recognize that just as when we talk about mitigation, countries differ phenomenally that there is a wide range of countries with respect to their reliance on fossil fuel production. And that range can I think it can best be characterized in terms of two key features. And one is what is the scale of this disruption that a country would undergo if it needed to rapidly phase down fossil fuel production. How entrenched is the fossil fuel production sector and linked sectors to the economy as a whole, to the generation of employment, to the securing of people's livelihoods, to the provision of government revenue to provide public services. Some countries are much more dependent than others are. Countries like the US and Canada and the UK rely for fossil fuel revenues about a negligible few percent, a couple percent of their government revenue. Whereas other countries like Timor-Leste and DR Congo, Angola rely on revenues for more than half of their government revenue. In Iraq it's approaching 90 percent of government revenue. And it's that government revenue that provides basic social services like healthcare and education and disaster response. And in the time of COVID those resources are being especially heavily relied upon. So a rapid phase out would be extremely disruptive. But another dimension of differences is sort of the way of squaring that circle and resolving the problem about the extreme differences and the scale of the challenge. And that's the wherewithal, the financial and technological wherewithal, the resources that countries have to deal with a rapid and potentially disruptive transition. And obviously some are much more well equipped to deal with a rapid transition like that. And just as with on the greenhouse gas emissions side, the way of squaring that circle between these vast differences in the scale of the challenge for different countries is precisely through the vast differences in the resources that are available in different countries. It really comes down to a matter of international cooperation. As Joyita said, there aren't really going alone lifeboat type solutions to the common shared sustainability crisis that we face. That the solutions that would actually get us to the other side are solutions that rely on cooperation and solidarity. And while they may seem in the near term to be zero-sum solutions, they in the long term are win-win solutions. It leaves us with healthy environment that could actually sustain human society. So I'll leave it at that for now, May, but there's certainly much more that could be said about that. And one place where this can be found is in the upcoming second volume of the production gap report that SEI in collaboration with a number of other institutes will be issuing in a matter of a few months. Thank you so much, Shivan. And I think we'll be able to talk more about the importance of cooperation in the second part of the discussion. So now I have a question for Nanette and Jonas. Joyita emphasises the importance of legal assistance in ensuring that no one is left behind and gave some examples of regimes and institutions that are maybe not working so well, but also mentioned how court cases are rising. And if you think it is a positive step to keeping states accountable. So I'd like to hear from your perspective, first Jonas and Nanette, Nanette, your different perspectives on working at the international level and also at the national level. So Jonas, I'll start with you first. Thank you, May, and thank you, Joyita, for your inspiring lecture. I agree with the concerns you raise and also mostly with your description of the state of play. I was asked to comment on the legal dimension and I will only address a few such points. And in doing so, there are three important starting points also indicated by Professor Gupta. First, while I focus on the law, power structures and imbalances, often among states and corporations, and politics choices are of course essential for governance of these issues. And the law may work to allow or curb such structures. Second, the tough trade-offs, the ambition of leaving no one behind, and the concerns for justice mentioned play in at different levels and scales simultaneously. That is, these issues must be addressed both at the global scale and in global context and in national and even local context in parallel. Third, international law works in different ways. In some cases, it promotes unsustainable activities in action, whether by states or non-state actors. In other cases, while not promoting certain actions with adverse impact, international law allows unsustainable actions, which can be problematic enough. In some cases, international law prevents unsustainable actions and measures. Finally, in some instances, international law prevents measures intended to promote environment and health protection and policies to promote sustainable development. And depending on how law stands, of course, it triggers different kind of problems. Many of the examples mentioned by Professor Gupta refers to situations where international law is not necessarily directing or forcing in the wrong way, but rather where international law is ambiguous or allows actors to act in ways that should be avoided because they are unfair or unsustainable. This, of course, could be a reason for reforming international law. In many cases, though, international law also allows actions that would be more sustainable and fair within the same legal framework. Professor Gupta argued that the global legal system is paralyzed. On this point, I both agree and disagree. Increasing private transnational investments show that international law is not paralyzed, but may be abused so as to move in the wrong direction, which is, of course, problematic. International law does not prevent transnational private investments. Rather the contrary, what we don't see enough of, however, is that host states put strong enough conditions on these new investments or prevents them if they so wish. Conditions on climate change, environment protection, labor standards and human health. International law would not prevent that, but states do not make use of the rights always, and there is not strong enough public pressure to do so. There are certain legal structures that could make it difficult, but generally speaking, such possibilities are there for the states. At the same time, I agree with Professor Gupta about international law being, in a way, paralyzed. In many ways international law would need to be changed to reach what she was asking for, but in many cases international law is not used to the extent possible to ensure that no one is left behind. For instance, neither the principle of no harm mentioned or the principle of common but differentiated responsibility is absolute. They are still part of the law, rather what is missing is that too few states or other actors invoke these principles in legal and political context. I will give three specific examples to illustrate how international law work and how it may work with a bearing on redistribution of resources, options, etc. The first is that of multilateralism in international law. International law is complex, it's a system based on uncoordinated treaty regimes, agreed concepts and principles, and accepted and respected customary law sometimes reflected in the used providence of courts. It applies in asymmetrical ways, in some cases with treaty regimes of 200 states, in other cases with only two parties. I think multilateralism is key to address Professor Gupta's concern. Not only can power imbalances be addressed more effectively and fairly through multilateralism, it also promotes the legitimacy of international law. So now when some major players like the USA are moving towards bilateralism, for instance in trade negotiations, I think it is important that the international community insists and continues to push for multilateral outcomes. Take the case of international trade law, which matters a lot for the issues raised. I can spend a full day criticizing the World Trade Organization. For instance, I find it unacceptable that today under the WTO any state should be able to benefit from principles of free trade and non-discrimination even if their production of goods involves child labour, massive pollution and apparent violations of international human rights law, labour rights or environmental protection. One of the areas and institutions which should be reviewed in light of Professor Gupta's point. Having said that, I don't think the solution would be to move away from multilateralism towards bilateral negotiations, which most often favour the stronger party. My second point is on justice. Professor Gupta argued that equitable distribution of emission targets has been given up in favour of what countries are willing to do. I'm equally concerned about this approach and I think there are a lot of shortcomings in the Paris Agreements. As pointed out by Professor Gupta, it may well obstruct trade-offs and also it shows it's a case of creating ambiguity and so on. However, and I also sympathise with the notions of common differentiated responsibility set up in the previous protocol, the creative protocol. However, I don't think that that approach is a way to go back to build on in the future because it only looked at justice matters on the interstate basis and in some cases it could even promote domestic injustices while allowing certain states not to do very much because there was so unfair distribution of resources and emissions within the campus. If we are moving further on the notion of common but differentiated responsibilities, it must not stop at state borders or be limited to state. It must include also individuals and members of the public. This brings me to my last point. Professor Gupta mentioned the increasing role of national courts also in the South and I think this is an important point. It's not only a sign that judiciaries are stepping in but more importantly of a global movement where non-state actors, not least civil society, use the law and refers also to international law in local and regional settings. This has a huge impact on the law itself because it pushes the legal development and the need to construe legal concepts in light of new circumstances but and one of those issues is for instance to apply human rights law to climate change but and this is my last point I think that the lawsuits may reflect something even more significant than a change of legal thinking. Maybe the lawsuits in parallel to all the climate change manifestations on the streets and other forms of climate change engagement indicate a social or societal tipping point or the reaching of a threshold leading to a fundamental significant and radical change of the views of climate change policy and liability and rights. More generally this reflects what has been described as international law from below. Focusing mainly on local or regional context and on human rights and climate change this is a welcome legal development in addition to the global negotiations. I think that more such actions from below are fundamental to address global matters and international law also in local contexts so that no one is left behind. Thank you. Thank you professor. Nonette do you want to talk about your experiences using local law and customary law just to segue from the point that Jonas talked about. Nonette are you there if you're not available we can come back to you. I am available can you hear me? Yes. Yeah thank you. Thank you professor Jonas for the points that you raised about bottom up legislation and practice that really is the focus of what we do and I've done the last 30 years. Customary law in itself is not standalone it is essentially part and parcel of what the legal basis of our work in protecting and recognizing rights of peoples and particularly indigenous peoples and local communities and their environment and the regimes that they protect and these are landscapes. The areas that we realize are crucial and in my experience has been as an anthropological lawyer is the area of the interface between formal laws and customary indigenous laws and this interface is actually a package of justice systems that in by and large had become the part and parcel of the pillars of what is the silver lining that Professor Yuyita mentioned in our experience and personally in my experience as a practitioner in 30 years back we found the elements of that really is an understanding that formal legal systems are the entry points and that is applicable if and then these are the pillars there is a basic understanding information of an organized polity and that is communities indigenous peoples civil society that is accessible and the accessibility is in a lot of ways in the capacity of people to use the information and to use the laws and the resources to do that so this silver lining does not come on its own in a passive way and this is what we have emphasized as what social movements have to to kick in but over time it also requires not just so it requires the in relationship of people and land big areas right now the last remaining four stands in Asia Africa and Latin America are managed and occupied by people and these are not just ordinary people these are local communities indigenous people their exercise of responsibility toward land even before rights are in place have been seen and now a lot more journals and articles have shown that been seen as crucial to manage and get us over the hump in our challenges in handling climate change nature solutions are one of the most important ones and recognized so what we what we have learned over time is because this is not passive because this requires organizing there needs to be an investment of time and resources to build that capacity to make information much more accessible and to translate the interface so the state responsibility and accountability to respond to this sustainability challenges and protection of its own people and natural resources will and will only be made possible if we the civil society and the people who occupy directly the land not just the advocates take a stand and demand that responsibility and so over time there have been cases so the quick cases are not just happening now over time we have observed this and particularly for the tenure facility right now existing regulations is the entry point but the application of that is relying a lot on customary and informal systems so for example the Caribbean court of justice the highest court in Belize was able to recognize the rights of the Maya people vis-a-vis you know this expansion of fossil fuel exploration in the area and that's the essentially the crossing between decision and implementation the tenure facility for example in this particular case has provided the resources to implement that decision so so it can't they're silver lining the decisions in the courts that is that's yeah that's important as well as the ability for those decisions to be executed and implemented and the resources required for that is continually a challenge so states are responding and yes the international law as professor Jonas had said it is kicking in and supporting the the essentially the the basis for the pressure and the governments are aligning but people is and and people not just by themselves but organized accessing justice formal and informal as well as uh resourced are very important in the process and and it is long term it's not short term and it's not just about the north and the south and which I agree though that they are important but it's not just north and the south slightly the rich and the poor and between that there are layers as well yeah so it is it is um it is a situation that calls for a broader look at what people can do together and understanding that it's not going to be a short short term solution and I think I'll stop there and yeah thank you thank you very much I think you have highlighted a perfect segue into some of the actions that we can take and um I'll ask them I will rica about that so um join me to describe COVID-19 as a possible silver lining for us to take action how do you think we can actually build forward or build back better um that is different from the business as usual solution what is already being done and what else can we do uh thank you so much for that tricky question I must say and let's see if I can provide some ideas for our discussion but first of all it's taking the opportunity to thank the organizers and and Dr Gupta also for your inspiring lecture that is thought provoking and this is I think what we need in these times uh incremental change or disruption win-win or tough trade-offs I mean that's really what we need to discuss also and making use of the platform of United Nations and thank you also Jonas for mentioning that multilateralism matters and that we need multilateral solution to the global challenges even though sometimes it's not even incremental change but we are moving in reverse and I just wanted to remind us as I was thinking about you when you were saying that we live in an unequal world with limited eco space when we took stock of the progress of the sustainable development goals during general assembly last year we could certainly see that the areas where we actually going in reverse are the areas with regard to inequality and environment and climate change and since then of course with the pandemic we are also seeing much more people living in extreme poverty we're talking about 100 million people being pushed into extreme poverty and we also see increasing hunger in the world of today now perhaps also to to say that this is perhaps not only about north and south because when we look at the unequal world we see inequality increasing in all parts of the world and this is certainly a problem when we are to create policies and trust in our societies for the policies to be put into reforms and and legislative changes. UNDP has through our human development report that we presented in December last year looked at inequalities across our economies north south east west and what we see of course is increasing inequalities in in all economies and we have also looked at the major risks with regard to increasing inequalities and we were already then pointing also at the importance of climate change climate justice but also and this has not been mentioned in our discussion the importance on the digital divide and I think that this is certainly something that we have seen also coming as a very strong divider in times of covid where we are as now connected but just looking at our school children across the world in the global south nine out of ten children and you can then just imagine the gender aspects of this are not connected to online schooling as we speak and as the pandemic goes on. The UN has responded through our health response led by WHO the humanitarian response led by OSHA and United Nations Development Programme UNDP has been given responsibility on behalf of the Secretary General to start to line out the socio-economic response and I think that this gives us an opportunity and I would very much like to take also this opportunity to invite all of you listening into this call to be part of it. UNDP has the technical lead but we need to do this in partnership the social economic response should have been there from the very beginning we know that so many economies were suffering and people were suffering already before the virus had started to spread in countries and I think that the response should have started earlier on but then of course as has been said also in this conversation the limited space available for so many countries governments to actually respond adequately was not there and this is also why we see inequalities also being accessed as baited alongside with the development of of the situation in so many economies. UNDP now with regard to the response we have identified four areas that we find are incredibly important for the socio-economic recovery beyond what we do right now towards also the 2030 goals and we have then said and you know UNDP that governance and of course this is very much also part of the discussion that we've had here today with regard to legislation rule of law and so on need to be part of the response right now we need to discuss and UNDP will engage even more in the discussion about the social contract between decision makers and citizens how can we provide new ways of rebuilding that social contract in the midst of times where we see so many countries suffering of populism lack of a fact-based discussion and economies in free fall we have also said that we need to look at social security and we launched and maybe you have seen that if not I'm happy to provide you with a link after our call here today a report where we yeah a report where we discuss temporary basic income and just also to link the discussion one of the possibilities that we see that could actually also provide funding for the building up of social protection and the idea for instance just one of them of temporary basic income is also with the withdrawal of fossil fuel subsidies so we would very much like to be part of a discussion where we start to seriously shift investments from fossil fuel subsidies for instance into social reforms and see if we can actually pull these off building on some of the best practices that we see knowing also then of course how difficult this is the green recovery is certainly enhanced from the outset being part of UNDP's proposal and we do this of course in close coordination with UNEP and other colleagues but also then looking at green jobs and green recovery that can build that inclusive economy that we have discussed and that is so difficult to build and then just also at the end to mention the importance of the digital divide and the need to focus on investments also that can repair this digital divide and make it possible for economies of the global south also to be part of the more sustainable future. We are only in the beginning of the crisis and as I said UNDP would very much like to have a fact-based discussion we want to engage and be that driver of change using the UN platform but then of course bringing in also the IFIs the UN hasn't that much of a money as compared to the IFIs but then of course the larger investment flows and I would also like to invite you and perhaps I can provide the audience also with a link where you can see our newly set up toolbox with regard to investments to bring about a more sustainable future moving us beyond recovery and towards the 2030 goals. A lot more to share and say but thank you so much for the interesting and thoughtful presentations and I'm looking forward to the discussion. Thank you. Thank you so much Ulrika. I think we have a lot to discuss and I see a lot of questions that are related to some of the actions that we can take so let's go to the poll question and see what the results are not ready yet. So we don't have a lot of time remaining so I've merged a number of different questions into two major questions. One essentially is about the reality or the possibility of using win-win solutions and how do we get there? Are multilateral solutions the answer? Are public-private partnerships and corporations some of the solutions that we can take? What are you guys' thoughts on actually making sure that we go beyond win-win solutions and that we start addressing some of the tough questions and the trade-offs that Jojita raised? Would anyone like to take this question Jonas? Well unless Jojita wanted to come in first I think Jojita made a very strong point about certain limits to growth about planetary boundaries about limited resources and I think it is a key point here to make that rather than discussing win-win if we want to achieve these things globally in a legitimate way if we want these measures to be taken certain parties, certain parts of the world, certain segments of society has to do more than other and it may come with a cost for some to the benefit of other but at the end that will I think be very helpful in the ground of global context. I think again that concepts of solidarity in international context is something that should be more frequently referred to and we should be reminded of that that we cannot create we cannot move towards sustainability unless the measures taken are seen as fair in particular from those who are worst affected and who have the least resources and I think that was also as I got it a key message in Jojita's presentation. Jojita would you like to respond to that? Well what I find is that and not just in response to what you just asked because these are thoughts that have been presenting in different places and then somebody told me well actually if you look at the liability for the rich all the north so I'm talking both about rich poor and north south and my rich poor are also within countries. The liability for the rich is so great for the north is so great that why can't we just talk instead about peace and reconciliation let's forgive the past and then start afresh but the problem is you can't keep forgiving the past as part of this win-win narrative and that is very the lack of forgiveness from the global south about the way north has worked of the lack of forgiveness of poor about the rich how the rich function whether they're taking away their lands for extractive industries or whether they're taking away their clean air and giving them polluted air back in return this this tension is there and that tension is probably the reason why all these social movements are really building up but I wanted to also come back with I mean I wanted to bring the issue of this the idea that we can keep growth and then just do a little bit of tinkering on the margin that's a challenge for me but the other challenge I have is issue of small government I really think that if you want to protect the rights of people if you want to ensure that everybody has access to proper healthcare or even to the internet or even to clean air clean water you'd need to have a government that is responsible and does it and you cannot privatize these aspects and the whole narrative that has been happening so far is we can do it governments don't have money so let's go private private the governments have no money that the private sector do it and you can see with that green municipalization narrative that it has failed even in the west that the complete privatization of these services does not mean that they will provide these resources for the poor and make it affordable or that they will invest for me the idea of a lean government is also problematic I want to see an accountable government I also want to see much more public health care not commodifying health care for everybody you know that and especially COVID-19 has exposed that because I've just read statistics before COVID-19 that every minute two people in India going to go into public health bills that's before COVID-19 so this entire COVID-19 has exposed the need for proper health care investments and for me I agree completely with you Jonas we can't just have expertise of the border it has to go beyond and that means that we have to move away from a capitalist narrative that really focuses on more and more wealth to the top which is what I meant by pro-poor is used to hide unequal societies we need the tax justice system we need resources we need states that are accountable and also come back to Sivan's point because Sivan talked about disruption I think that the win-win the focus on win-win the whole time has postponed the decisions on fossil fuel so far that whatever we do now is going to be disrupted but there's a very good chance that the disruption will hurt less than it will hurt the southern governments and that for me is a real problem because we're really de facto without making decisions we have pushed the problem to the global south and that those are challenges for me I just want to make one other point that came up I think in Jonas's presentation where he said whole states don't put strong enough rules you're right but if you have lean governments in the global south and if you have corrupt governments because I have a feeling that you have to go beyond once you have a government that is reasonably strong then the government will start investing also in its own accountability we really need to invest in government and maybe move away a little bit from governance and that does not mean Nanette that I don't want to respect the customary rights of the poorest and the indigenous communities I do want to respect them but I want to have a system where I can hold the government accountable what it's doing but I've just looked at export credit and export credit is something that western governments give to developing countries and to develop countries but it's money that they spent to support their own industries abroad and what they do is they try to look at the local national policies and they try to use those national policies to compete so the fact that these governments have lower policies means that they can export projects and proposals that don't meet environment impact assessment standards in the west and that's sort of a dumping that I think is not appropriate so for me it's really important that we focus on this and I also think we should come back to the issue of multilateralism. Multilateralism is really important in my view and my view is also that in the environmental and in the equity world I'm not convinced that the United States is really a serious partner. I think it's really important for Europe to now make better longer term discussions with the G77 and China and to see whether together we can come for better description of how or better understanding of how it's next to be developed. Thank you Joita. I just want to note that the audience poll is ready so I think many of us agree that the poll that got the most vote is addressing the top trade offs and actually I'd like to ask a question starting with Chyvon and people can jump in after. There's a question around the reality of dealing with the trade offs so if economic growth is no longer the pursuit what funds the new paradigm and in relation to that question you mentioned Chyvon the countries like Timor-les where transition is very difficult so there's an audience member from Indonesia who says it is very difficult to transition because of energy security, economic growth, all of those things dependent on that. Do you have any reflections on that Chyvon? The main reflection is simply to agree it is extremely challenging for a country like East Timor. It's energy reliance, it's livelihoods, it's government revenue, it's the social services that derive from the government revenue and that really cannot be seen as a set of challenges that Timor-les can overcome on its own. It would be simply impossible for Timor-les to do that and so if a country such as Timor-les is to forgo the production of fossil fuels and the feeding of markets that are still buying fossil fuels and consuming fossil fuels it will need to be helped to do so. It will need to be helped in the process of diversification, it will need to have the type of support that will allow it to continue to provide and hopefully expand upon the public services it provides. It will need international support to help with expanding its technological capabilities and its human resources and investing in in human capital and that applies to many countries that are poor but important producers Iraq, Nigeria, a number of countries and so if this is to happen, if we're going to have low carbon transition, the only way it can happen is if there is meaningful international support that really has a foundation of true solidarity. What I think of as being extremely encouraging is that when you look at the populations around the world, when you look at students marching or universities divesting or cities declaring themselves on a path to zero carbon, it's clear that there's a lot of support for a real transition and I think that a necessary, an absolutely necessary step in making it a reality is to recognize the power vested interests to pin this very inertial system in place through their own investments in public miseducation and political lobbying and funding of climate skeptics who can really muddy the discourse and so understanding the role that vested interests are playing and taking the steps needed to expand the real democratization of policymaking so that they don't have the disproportionate amount of political power that they have now. I think that that may be a precondition to allowing the broader polity to make the decisions in the in their sort of in the long-term societal best interest that need to be made. Thank you so much, Sivan. Thank you, panelists. It's been such a fascinating discussion and I think that in one night or morning or afternoon, whatever time zone you are, we won't be able to discuss all of the trade-offs and what really are the solutions that we should pursue. So thank you very much for your time and I'll hand over to Osa now to close the session. Thank you very much, Mai. So on behalf of the three organizers of this event, I would like to of course actually start to thank all the viewers. Thank you for joining us today, sending in questions and of course it is a bit frustrating not to be able to have more interaction. But thank you very much. Of course, a warm thank you to Professor Gupta for her critical and thought-provoking talk. Very strong delivery on getting us thinking. And also of course a warm thanks to the excellent panelists who I think also reminded us how we can shift the boundary of that politics of the possible coming up with these concrete solutions through solid good science and analysis, through innovation and through collaboration. So with that, we wrap up this year's annual Gordon Goodman lecture and hope you will join us again next year. Thank you all.