Episode 47: What happened at COP29? Chaos, climate finance and coughs

Food systems contribute to around a third of global emissions and have a substantial impact on a range of other areas too, including biodiversity and human health. Transforming food systems is critical for meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. But how should this be done in practice? To find out, Anna and Ruth speak to Emma Williams (Head of the Secretariat of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation, ACF) and Richard King (Senior Research Fellow in the Environment and Society Centre of Chatham House). To learn more about food systems transformation and related areas, please see the following Chatham House outputs: The research paper ‘Aligning food systems with climate and biodiversity targets’, available here. The report ‘The emerging global crisis of land use’, available here. 

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).

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.

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.

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

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?

Chatham House's Environment and Society Centre reassembles to discuss the outcomes of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, what this means for climate finance and multilateralism, and how Ben’s Christmas jumper sums up the interconnected challenges developed countries face in balancing global resilience with domestic obligations. With Chris Aylett, Richard King and Ruth Townend, and special guest host Ben Horton. 

As COP29 kicks off in Baku, Chatham House's Environment and Society Centre assembles on the airwaves. The team talk Azerbaijan's climate leadership, World Leader vibes, prospects for the conference, and why working on climate change makes you a terrible dinner party guest. Special guest hosted by Climate Briefing Alumnus, Ben Horton. 

Coming fresh from a discussion of how private finance might close the climate finance gap, Ruth Townend is joined by Dr Nicola Ranger, Director of the Resilient Planet Finance Lab at Oxford University, and Professor Patrick Bolton, professor of finance and economics at Imperial College London. In the run up to COP29, we explore how public international finance might be deployed to most effectively mobilise private finance, why so much private finance is still going to hydrocarbon-intensive energy investments, and the destiny of the World Bank.

Migration is top of mind and front of rhetoric in many countries, particularly as elections approach and geopolitical trends of increasing polarisation take hold. Ruth Townend is joined by Professor Ian Goldin, author of ‘The Shortest History of Migration’, and by Shelterbox CEO Sanj Srikanthan to discuss personal histories of migration, global trends, and the future of migration in the face of increasing pressure from climate change.