Episode 52: What’s next for the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage?
Increasingly severe climate change impacts are wreaking destruction across the world, with disastrous implications for human health, wellbeing, livelihoods, culture and security. How to deal with ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change was for long a controversial topic within the UN climate negotiations, but at COP27 in 2022 governments agreed to establish a dedicated fund to assist developing countries in responding to the challenge. In this episode of the Climate Briefing, Anna Aberg and Nina Jeffs (standing in for Ruth Townend) speak to Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, the Executive Director of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, about what progress that has been made in operationalizing the fund, what lies ahead, what some of the main challenges are and how the fund interacts with the wider economic architecture. To learn more about how loss and damage finance has featured in the climate negotiations, please see the Chatham House research paper ‘Loss and damage finance in the climate negotiations: key challenges and next steps’ (available here) and the expert comment ‘The historic loss and damage fund’ (available here).
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Episode 51: The geopolitics of critical raw materials
Critical raw materials - like rare earths, cobalt and lithium - play a central role in the energy transition and profoundly influence geopolitical dynamics. Their extraction may also amplify conflict and fragility risks in host countries. In this episode of the Climate Briefing, Ruth and Anna speak to Olivia Lazard (Fellow at Carnegie Europe) and Sophia Kalantzakos (Global Distinguished Professor, Environmental Studies and Public Policy, NYU Abu Dhabi) about the interlinkages between critical raw materials and geopolitics, the challenges associated with extraction, and what a ‘good’ strategy for securing future access might look like.
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Episode 50: In conversation with Ana Toni, the CEO of COP30
Brazil is presiding over the next UN climate change conference, COP30. In this episode, Anna and Ruth are joined by the Chief Executive Officer of COP30, Ana Toni, to discuss what the aims of the conference are, what Brazil’s COP30 diplomatic strategy looks like, and what the UNFCCC's post-negotiation phase’ means.
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Episode 49: China’s role in international climate diplomacy and action
China is the world’s largest emitter and dominates the production of low-carbon technologies worldwide. It thus plays a key role in global efforts to address the climate crisis. How has China obtained its leading position in the production of green technologies? What role does China play in international climate negotiations? How important has the US-China relationship been in global efforts to reduce emissions, and what will happen now when Donald Trump is back in the White House? To discuss this and more, Ruth and Anna are joined by Li Shuo (Director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute) and Chris Aylett (Research Fellow at the Environment and Society Centre at Chatham House). To read Chris Aylett’s report on UK-China cooperation on climate, please click here
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Episode 48: The 2025 international climate agenda
Former US Climate Envoy Todd Stern and Director of Chatham House's Environment and Society Centre Ana Yang join hosts Ruth Townend and Anna Aberg to talk about prospects for climate action in 2025. Following Trump's inauguration, what are the likely consequences for climate diplomacy, and how will Brazil balance domestic demands against international obligations as COP30 and BRICS president this year?
Climate change and geopolitics meet in The Climate Briefing, assembling experts, scientists and leaders to tackle some of the thorniest challenges in sustainability.
Hosts Ruth Townend and Anna Åberg bring brilliant guests and big questions to Chatham House from around the world.
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