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This transcript was created with speech popularity software. Although it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the audio of the episode before quoting this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes. com if you have any questions.
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From the New York Times, I’m Sabrina Tavernise. And it’s The Daily.
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COP27, the collection to combat climate change, has begun in Egypt.
Last month, the global accumulated in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27.
Sharm el-Sheikh is a vital step for measure, duty and focus.
And finally, after years of stampede.
Exaltation in a compensation agreement.
Leaders at the COP27 weather summit in Egypt said they had reached a historic deal for vulnerable countries.
Renew the fund for the next countries to cope with the effects of climate change.
The world’s rich nations, the biggest culprits for the emissions that have caused climate change, have agreed to contribute to a fund to help deficient nations, which suffer the most from the effects of climate change.
It is a fundamental advance that the fund is already here.
But at heart, an even more significant plan is taking shape, an initiative led through the small island country of Barbados.
There may be a restructuring of the architecture of foreign finance, for example, that may inspire personal capital to participate in the war on climate change.
Today, weather journalist David Gelles talks about the plan that could remake the way the world of finance deals with climate change.
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It’s Friday, December 2.
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So, David, from what I understand, the COP, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, is a bit like the Super Bowl for climate scientists. But instead of helping their team, they are all meant to be there to help the world, to save the planet. Am I right?
yes, that’s it.
I’ll tell you something, it’s a beautiful day here in the Sinai Peninsula right now.
So, in early November, Daily Michael manufacturer Simon Johnson and I went to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
It’s Monday morning, the first day of COP27.
We still found our way to the convention hall, and within minutes we started getting a first glimpse of what the convention would look like.
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Is that here? Wow. Yes.
It’s a huge complex.
Like a campus, actually.
The conference itself was massive. It was the length of several interconnected mass conference centers. And some parts were inside. Some portions were outside. There are very large delegations here from a really varied diversity of countries.
Yes, it is.
Some 44,000 people from all over the world had gathered. And there were world leaders. There were activists. There was PDG. They were founding leaders. There were politicians.
I love that they only have things that say “adaptation” and “energy. “This one says “kind” and has a lot of people’s hands. [LAUGHS]
And in addition to all the big meeting spaces where other people gathered, there were those conference rooms.
Wow. It’s like an industry show.
It’s a United Nations industry show, which is pretty strange. Where other countries had erected some kind of flags.
IT IS OK. is from Israel.
Where Israel, for example, talked about how it adapts to climate change.
Where is the United States?
I think it’s here. Where the United States promotes its new carbon trading program.
[LAUGHS]: It’s like a Delta Sky Lounge. No offense, guys.
And next to him, the country of Nigeria explained how it seeks to maintain its forests, for example.
Spain, South Africa, Indonesia.
And it went on forever.
Indonesia is stylized to resemble a kind of jungle.
Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Germany. Oh, Germany is very beautiful. They have many plants.
Sometimes you saw a head of state, a president or a prime minister pass by with their security guards, and the next minute you may only see an activist dressed as a polar bear. Sorry. Here we have a giant polar bear dress. to take a picture of. Try to make the case for nuclear power.
So, in particular, it’s not just a polar bear fighting climate change. It is pro-nuclear.
It is pro-nuclear –
Pro-nuclear polar bear.
It was absolutely a scene.
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And it was clear from the start that one of the main objectives this time was to get rich nations to agree to put tons of cash into a fund to help poor countries cope with the effects of climate change. The argument, of course, is that since rich countries, such as the United States and many countries in Europe, are the ones that have mainly caused climate change, it is they who pay for the effects.
Correct, compensation.
Some other people communicate about “weather repairs” or “loss and damage. “And this concept has been debatable for a long time, yet it seemed that this year, anything in that sense was going to happen. And we knew it was going to be a great situation for the convention and it was.
Yes, the headlines were about those historic climate damage fund projects that countries were going to push so that poor countries could just adapt.
Droit. Et is a big deal. But there was also this other story that we had followed. It was one that, in the end, could be even bigger than the loss and damage fund that was announced at the end of the event. And this story had a lot to do with the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley. Mia Mottley is the current Prime Minister of Barbados. Es the first woman to hold this position. And Barbados is that idyllic jewel of a Caribbean island nation. It’s also where I was lucky enough to be able to finish much of the first year of the pandemic.
Did you do it?
I did it.
Oh, my God.
And for the past two years, Premier Mottley has a big star globally when it comes to climate change.
We come to Glasgow with a global ambition, to save our other people and save our planet.
Especially after an impassioned speech he gave last year at the United Nations climate change convention in Scotland. And in that speech, he made an ethical argument, saying it was the duty of rich nations to help deficient countries adapt to climate change.
What do we say to our frontline people in the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America, the Pacific?What excuse do we give for failure?
She, of course, presides over a country that is incredibly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Barbados is a small island in the Caribbean. It is in a community that has been hit by hurricanes. And Prime Minister Mottley has made his plan to speak on behalf not only of Barbados, but also of other countries like his that are bearing the brunt of more excessive weather.
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From Egypt, cradle of civilization, from Sinai, blessed land, welcome to COP27.
And he’s become such a big star in that verbal exchange that, on the first day of the COP, he led alongside other people, like former Vice President Al Gore, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the head of the African Union, other people like that.
And now, register to welcome me to Ms. Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados.
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Then Prime Minister Mottley rises.
Excellencies, illustrious and gentlemen.
And it’s in this speech that he delivers what I think is the big story that emerges from COP27 and, in fact, it’s one of the most important stories in the verbal exchange on climate right now.
I come from a small island state that has a big ambition but can’t achieve that big ambition because the global business strategy we have is flawed. Our ability to access electric cars or our ability to access batteries or photovoltaic panels is limited across countries. that they have a dominant presence and can produce by themselves. But the Global South remains at the mercy of the Global North on those issues.
It was in this speech that he laid out his vision of how the world’s rich nations could fundamentally replace the way they face this challenge of helping deficient nations adapt to climate change.
This global still looks a lot like what it was when it was part of an imperialist empire. The Global North borrows between 1% and 4% interest. The countries of the South account for 14 per cent. We have a plan.
We can create a climate replacement mitigation accepted as true that will unlock $5 trillion in personal sector savings. We also know that the time has come to introduce herbal crisis and pandemic clauses into our debt instruments. The progression banks want to reform. Yes, it’s time for us to revisit Bretton Woods. Yes
Here, in particular, she calls on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, those banking establishments that were created decades ago in this assembly called “Bretton Woods” and that are still at the center of the formula that, according to her, is totally lost in the coming countries.
So I ask the other people of the world and not just the leaders to hold us accountable and act on their behalf to save this Earth and save the other people of this Earth. Thank you.
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So, with this speech, she proposes a rather gigantic overhaul of the workings of some of the world’s largest monetary institutions.
Well, can you know why what she says is so important?
So let’s break it down. He spoke of Bretton Woods and the need for a new Bretton Woods. And what he’s talking about is this convention that took place in the last days of World War II.
In Retton Woods, New Hampshire, delegates from allied and allied countries arrived for the opening of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference.
The finance ministers, for the most part, met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, at the Mount Washington Hotel.
They will work on the isolation of this White Mountain resort.
And he tried to make a comic strip of what a built-in postwar global economic formula would look like.
The world stand is part skyscraper and part rubble.
And so, the World Bank was created to give loans basically to European countries hoping to get out of the war because that war had devastated nations around the world.
We discussed our plans to stabilize global currencies.
And then the IMF was created to help stabilize currencies and economies and make sure that sovereign states didn’t fail and were reliable players globally and didn’t create those formula shocks that would have accidental consequences that could throw the whole global economic formula into confusion.
And to create the foundations for lasting peace.
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Thus, during the 1970s, most of the countries destroyed by war were usually rebuilt. But in an increasingly globalized world, the World Bank has replaced its approach.
Last week, the aid took the form of an $85 million loan from the World Bank.
There were all those other countries to get out of poverty.
Since 1980, it has nearly tripled the amount of cash it lends to countries in economic distress, such as Ethiopia.
In Africa, Asia, South America, the World Bank has provided loans to these countries with the explicit objective of seeking to create new economic opportunities that will help others escape poverty and become middle class.
The case worked. In one generation, according to the World Bank, China has lifted 500 million people out of poverty.
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And that’s pretty much where things are today. But what Prime Minister Mottley is saying now is that those establishments simply don’t work anymore. The World Bank and IMF, which were created to help rebuild the post-war world and then lift countries out of poverty, are simply not supplied to deal with the specific demanding situations that deficient countries face today when it comes to things like climate replacement and the repeated devastation that comes from those droughts. floods, fires and storms. In short, he says those facilities, which were designed to help lift poor countries out of poverty, are now, in fact, assisting him.
But how? How would they do it?
IT IS OK. So when one of those storms, for example, hits a small country, it takes many millions of dollars or, infrequently, billions of dollars to recover. And it’s effective that most of those countries don’t just have to drag. For example, some countries, the poorest of the poor, obtain foreign assistance from other countries and non-governmental organizations. But most countries are forced to borrow when those big mistakes happen, yet that’s not the kind of investment that top classic banks are very comfortable with. doing.
Instead, they are perceived as relatively risky investments, risky not only because those countries are on a financially fragile floor to begin with and may not have the highest GDP, but also because they are spaces where storms are strong and worsening. And even if they can effectively recover from a storm, it may also be only a matter of time before another disaster strikes, creating more havoc and making it even harder for those countries to repay that initial loan. And so for this reason, personal lenders rate those massive interest rates.
Yes, a smart choice for those countries.
Droit. Et option is to turn to the World Bank and the IMF.
So how does borrowing from those institutions work?
Well, the World Bank and IMF give higher rates than countries could place in the personal market. But those rates can still be quite high and come with conditions.
What does this mean
This means that when a country takes out one of those big loans, it will essentially have to promise to tighten its belt. And often, what happens to accommodate this is that governments cut spending on things like schools, hospitals, police.
But why? Why do you make this request?
Because in this formula of financing and external debt, the establishments that lend the cash concentrate on paying, even if they lend cash for the recovery of a storm. Once that cash comes out, their first, moment, and 3rd fear is to make sure that the countries they’ve lent to will be able to pay it off someday. And that means forcing countries that have accepted that cash to limit how they can spend the cash they have.
What does all this mean almost for a country like Barbados?
This means that countries like Barbados are trapped in this cycle of debt and disaster. Storms arrive with greater intensity and frequency. They borrow money and then have more and more debts that they have to pay. And they are forced to pay their debt, they seek to recover from a typhoon and never have a chance to prepare for the next typhoon, let alone expand their economy in any way that affects the lives of their people.
So a country takes on all this debt after a typhoon, recovers slightly before another typhoon hits, and can never invest to become resilient in the face of those typhoons. They also can’t invest in their economy because they have to pay off all those loans first. That’s what he means when he talks about the cycle of debt and catastrophe.
It’s true.
And that’s what Mia Mottley is talking about when she says that this total formula helps keep emerging countries at their lowest point.
Exactly.
IT IS OK. So how do you approach this problem?
So they made a plan and that’s what she talked about at COP26. And it’s called the “Bridgetown Initiative,” named after Barbados’ capital, Bridgetown. And it’s essentially 3 things.
IT IS OK.
First, they need to have much more cash. They say those establishments can simply lend much more cash. And they need to make a series of technical adjustments that would necessarily unlock a lot of cash that they say is in a position there but still on the sidelines, not just for crisis reaction for preparedness work, to help countries become more resilient and, say, a hospital and make sure it’s fit for the next big typhoon to hit a small island.
The next thing they need to do is replace some of the situations in which that debt is issued. That is, they must ensure that, when a crisis strikes, countries do not intend to continue paying that debt when they have to deal with other people who are on the streets because they have just lost their homes. So this concept of a hurricane clause or herbal crisis clause would essentially make it less difficult for countries that have taken on this debt to pay it off.
Right.
And the third big thing they need to do is use the cash they think is already there in those systems to seed new ones accepted as true that would tap into the cash of the personal sector. The concept is that this new lot of personal cash, which can be worth trillions of dollars, would fund things like renewable energy projects in deficient countries and help them move away from fossil fuels.
IT IS OK. Therefore, they are not asking, for example, to abolish the World Bank and the IMF. What they’re saying is that those establishments want to be replaced, but they want to be replaced very broadly. And they want to have more cash on hand. They must, when they make it available effectively, make it much more flexible in terms of how countries themselves spend it, right?And finally, it turns out that they are proposing to act as a kind of guarantor of the security deposit for everyone. those larger and much more extensive personal investments. And that would unlock all that extra money they could protect themselves with.
It’s true. They do not say they will abolish the World Bank and the IMF. They say we love them more than ever. But we want them to act in a fundamentally different way to deal with a fundamentally new and unprecedented crisis facing the world’s emerging countries in the form of climate replacement. And here is the most significant component in this regard. It’s not just cash that comes directly from rich countries. They are not the ones simply asking rich countries to donate trillions of dollars every year to cover up the mistakes caused by climate change in other parts of the world. This is capitalism.
Right.
And that’s why many other people say that this can not only affect paintings, but can also have much more effect than weather repairs.
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And the explanation for why the Bridgetown Initiative is like this, the explanation for why it deviates from this long-standing strategy of asking rich countries for climate reparations, is largely due to its chief architect, a guy named Avinash Persaud.
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‘Ll.
So what do we want to know about Avinash Persaud, the guy from the Bridgetown Initiative?
Well, there’s kind of a remarkable backstory that explains what it’s like in the middle of this.
AV.
Hello.
How are you?
I am fine. How are you?
So Avinash Persaud, some call him “Avi,” is a guy who worked in the highest grades of finance in London but is from Barbados.
Well, I was born in Barbade. Je I didn’t have a circle of relatives there. My parents moved to Barbados. They lived in Guyana.
He attended the prestigious London School of Economics.
A LSE, 18 years.
There he meets a Barbadian colleague, named Mia Mottley.
Mia, even then, Mia holding the court.
They must hang out in the same social circles at the London School of Economics.
Mia was in this student apartment on Golders Green, lying on a kind of couch with the remote in her hand and a cigarette in the other, zapping on the canals and talking to everyone. And I’m kind of captivated through this user because she was like a queen, even at 18. And other people came here to pay their respects. It was like a stopover on the court.
But after school, their paths part. Mia Mottley returns to Barbados. She comes from a political circle of relatives there and begins to climb the political ladder. In 1994, she became the youngest Barbadian elected to parliament. Meanwhile, Avi is pursuing what becomes a fairly ordinary career in finance, running for JP Morgan, State Street and, indeed, emerging to the heights of foreign finance. And finally, Mia convinces Avi to return to Barbados, where he might need her help. She knows foreign economics well, and it’s a valuable skill set that she needs to develop. And so, around 2007, he repacked his circle of relatives and left.
And as of 2007, I write every single budget she makes and every single budget response.
And so Avi is racing with Mottley now. And then, in 2017, a couple of devastating hurricanes hit the Caribbean.
So, in 2017, we had the worst hurricane season in the Caribbean, two category five hurricanes. This ends with Dominica. They lose two hundred. . .
And one of the hardest hit is the neighboring island of Dominica.
I get a call from Mia. Mia says, you have to pass them.
And Mia asks Avi to stop by and see how he can help.
And I learned that Dominica, a small country, the global one will be Dominica in five days. How can we save them from ting Dominica in five days?I believe that in a few weeks there will be a serious turn of fate in Pakistan. Nobody remembers Dominica. So I think –
And Avi walked away and decided to try to see what he could do to make countries like Dominica and Barbados more prepared to deal with those disasters, to deal with the effects of terrible storms, even after the eyes of the global had changed.
Then Avi realizes that any plan he proposes will have to have two vital characteristics. First, you cannot simply beg, charity from rich countries, to get out of this cycle.
Because the Caribbean loves to beg, but it has a predetermined position. We are in a horrible place. We are on the front line. You have to help us. Because you caused it, you have to help us. And you know what? It hits you, but no one follows it. What they will do is send the leftovers.
And you don’t need it to be Mia Mottley to ask for leftovers.
Several other people have done emotional things, but the difference is that they have never had a solution. His story was, woe to me, it’s terrible. You have to do something about it. And the world doesn’t start begging.
And he doesn’t even think this technique works to solve the problem.
So the moment you tell other people that I constitute a small emerging island state, what others do is take you in their heads and put you in the box of irrelevance. Because the “small island emerging states,” all of that tells them, if you communicate with America and say, I’m a small island approaching the state, America is already beyond your head, like, who am I going to communicate to now?Because this user is not afraid of me.
In fact, it had to be bigger.
And the way I’ve tried to bring it home to the other Caribbean island people is that I say, you go up the population of all the SIDS in the world, you get less than 1% of the global population. The world is not going to replace its foreign monetary architecture for the 1% of the population. So I created a new coalition, and then the term “front line” is something I proposed two years ago.
I needed to think of a broader plan that would be applicable and applicable to countries around the world experiencing disasters. Basically, it sees all of the tropics as the front line of the existing climate crisis.
And we say that the front line is between the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. Now, what I’m doing here is saying that I don’t constitute 1% of the world’s population. I am 3. 3 billion people, or 40% of the world’s population, are all in the same group. And now Mia is not fighting for a small island of 14 to 22 miles with 300,000 people, but for 3. 3 billion people.
And so it is with those two big concepts in mind, not just asking for cash and not just making small island nations, that he’s helping expand what will be the Bridgetown Initiative.
So essentially it says that you can’t ask rich countries to invest tons of cash in the deficient small countries, although it is true that they are the ones that have caused the most climate change, which is just a strategy of waste.
Right.
So, in this plan, he discovers a way to use the same old banking system, loans, not charity. And it speaks of a much larger component of the global in a way that rich countries cannot ignore.
It’s true. And to put the main points of that plan on paper, Avinash convened an assembly last summer in Bridgetown with the most sensible economists, senior executives, senior United Nations officials, himself and Prime Minister Mottley and divided it.
IT IS OK. So who do they have to do to make this happen?
Well, you might think that the other people you’d like to convince are the directors of those institutions, other people like David Malpass, the president of the World Bank. And David Malpass has been in the news a lot in recent months, largely in part because of an interview I did with him in September. In that interview, I asked him if he believed in the fundamental facts of meteorological science. And his answer was, I’m not a scientist.
Oh-oh
Ouais. Il, therefore, it would be wise to embark it. But the fact is that the other people who matter most here are the shareholders of the World Bank, the United States, Japan, China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. And finally, if these basic primary reforms are to be adopted, it is those countries that will have to be convinced. And that’s why Prime Minister Mottley was at COP27 with all those countries piled up there, looking to convince the other people that they intend to adopt this wonderful systemic reform.
So, how is it going?
In fact, she will be at 4:00 p. m.
[MISCELLANEOUS NON-ENGLISH] 1:00 now and there are 36 presidents who have to speak.
Decidedly.
Therefore, on this first day of COP27, he gave this wonderful speech in which he makes his presentation to the world. But even then, as we heard, it is not transparent how he won through other world leaders.
Me where they went.
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I mean, I suspect they possibly would have done it just for launch.
We don’t know how he felt about it or what was happening on the sidelines or in the scenes.
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So we were desperately looking to succeed with her and Avi, and we spent a lot of time searching to locate them.
Japan, South Africa, India, Qatar, Korea, Canada.
And so we ran through this huge, expanding network of convention centers to see if we could reach it there.
Scotland, right? There’s Scotland.
Hey, here we go. IT IS OK. We are in the Scottish pavilion, where Mia Mottley will talk to other people in about 20 minutes.
And so, despite everything, we support it in the Scottish pavilion.
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Thank you, Mariana.
And we have front-row seats. She’s there on this super-tough panel, and she’s explaining in more detail what she’s contemplating with the Bridgetown Initiative. And we’re a little worried sitting there, hoping we can sign up later to ask him how it’s going.
Our public servant has a return rate for the. . .
It’s a crowd scene with other people looking to corner her and take pictures with her, communicate with her, and hand her business cards.
It’s an absolute scrum right now, as everyone is looking to snap a picture of this high-profile women’s panel we just heard.
And at first we were a little shocked. But finally, we secured ourselves together with her and Avi. And we can walk with them as they headed to their next appointment and, despite everything, they had the opportunity to talk one-on-one to face with Prime Minister Mottley. Good morning, Prime Minister Mottley. David Gelles of the New York Times. How is he?
Not bad.
I a bumper. Me there because of the pandemic.
Yes. In Barbados?
Yes, indeed. So I appreciate very much –
So when do you come back?
We’re back.
Yes. But when do you come to live?
As soon as I can. I asked Premier Mottley how she thought her message was being received. Is this something you think is gaining ground regardless?
I guess. I think we are calmly confident. We get a lot of positive feedback and will continue to make the binding commitments.
Are demanding situations active resistance or more akin to passivity and apathy?
No, I wouldn’t say active resistance. I think we’re just looking to bring as many other people together as we can imagine and really see what the potential obstacles might be. Because so much of what we put into it is so basic, I’m sorry to say, and it doesn’t make unusual sense. That for them to be rejected at this level makes no sense when the opposite or the consequences of rejecting it will, in fact, be the loss of lives and livelihoods. That is, the global cannot be in this moment of polycrisis and we cannot locate a way to finance our exit.
We don’t ask for cash to do trivial things. We ask for cash so that we can make sure that we can recover from the climate crisis, that we can build resilience to climate crises, that we can better prepare for the next pandemic. , that we can invest in education and health. Those of us who suffer from the climate crisis cannot continue to displace the entire area we have on our balance sheet just to prepare for something we do not cause.
Thank you, Prime Minister.
Thank you so much.
Gracias.
And of course, together with Prime Minister Mottley Avi. Avi, can we walk and communicate with you on your way?
IT IS OK. Yes.
How do you think the message was received?Do you feel like the other right people hear it?
I guess. I think there is indeed great potential, genuine potential. I plan to place other people who say that there has never been such momentum around a set of ideas before. Package correct, but I think there is a pretty strong view that there has never been so much consensus and momentum around a set of ideas. And I think it’s because we were. . .
And it turns out that he also thinks this is breaking through.
And do you think it’s true that it’s breaking through?Do you feel this is the case?
Well obviously harsh weather replaces activists for what they heard.
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We will have to reconvene Bretton Woods and completely reorganize and reform the World Bank formula and give emerging countries access to personal capital.
But as the week progressed, we began to receive information that other people, such as French President Macron, were also on board.
[SPEAKS NON-ENGLISH]
France is one of the largest shareholders of the World Bank, so it was an endorsement that mattered. And then we think, wait, maybe this is spreading. And then, on Wednesday, I met with the IMF director and asked her what would be a basic replacement for her own institution. From your perspective, is there momentum among shareholders, who ultimately make the decisions, to make the adjustments they will make:
There’s. There’s.
And she said yes.
And then use it for large-scale personal financing.
I mean, it’s like the Bridgetown agenda.
That is precisely what it is.
So, do you have the British agenda?
Yes, I can do anything. Everything we can do.
And what is more surprising, even the most important members of the monetary sector appear in this project.
We want to get those banks of multilateral progression. And they are very different. Some are more aggressive, others less aggressive, to use their capital, much more capital.
Including the CEO of Bank of America.
Prime Minister Mottley led the charge. We will consult a little later in the day with President Macron on this, but the concept has circulated. Now is the time for governments, the shareholders of those institutions, to replace their bylaws, to allow them to help. Sector will come right behind. They are fair –
And that kind of approval is literally an issue because those are the establishments where other people expect them to invest more of their money. And we said, this turns out to be gaining ground. In fact, it can happen.
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And then at the end of the week, John Kerry, President Biden’s special weather envoy, said he was also on board.
Surely we want the reform of the progressive multilateral banks. We want to do that through next spring’s bank assembly. And if that happens, then we have about $400 billion or $500 billion that can then be used as leverage. That’s true. It’s starting to happen. The reform of the MDBs is undoubtedly essential.
And that’s a big challenge because the U. S. is the largest shareholder of the World Bank. And without the participation of the US. In the U. S. , none of those reforms will be carried out.
But hey, okay, you don’t hear any of them at a weather convention say that they oppose this very horny weather plan. Everyone must agree with that, right?What happens once the cameras are off and time passes and we get business?When rubber hits the road, what will others say?
Well, so far, the genuine opposition turns out to be inertia and bureaucracy. These are decades-old establishments that are very consistent in their habits. I have not yet discovered anyone, not any of the main shareholders or even any of the leaders of the establishments themselves, who have declared themselves against these projects. And Avi would tell you that the genius of this plan is that no country has to shell out more money.
So, in his narrative, there are a lot of downsides to all of this. But as we mentioned, there are more risks. All of this means potentially riskier loans. And all of this makes it a potentially very complicated sale in the end, even for shareholders who are saying right now that they agree with those reforms. So let’s see. But seriously, I don’t hear any opposition and that means a lot.
David, I feel like it’s a very position because what you’re saying is that things can be repositioned quite significantly. And, honestly, it sounds pretty funny. Because when I think about climate replenishment, it’s just this incredibly complicated and stuck challenge facing the world that, frankly, doesn’t seem so positive to me.
I’m listening. But I think the explanation for why this plan is breaking through is that it is employing the existing global monetary formula to try to solve this crisis that, for so long, has seemed so intractable. These are not weather repairs. It is not a fund for loss and damage.
It’s the market, what makes the world flow, is that?And they rely on him instead of fighting him.
That’s right.
David, how do you think the global one would be replaced if this happened?What would that look look like?
Well, let’s be clear. Even if everything we communicated happened, it would possibly not solve the climate crisis. It won’t avoid carbon emissions in a short time, and it possibly won’t prevent the planet from warming anytime soon. But at the end of the day, they communicate about cash here.
What it would mean if those reforms took a stand is that poor and vulnerable countries would have more budget at their disposal and more budget to use to recover from storms, fires and floods, more budget to prepare for long-term mistakes through construction things like or preparing their schools and hospitals and making them more resilient to large and unpredictable weather events.
And it would also mean that the poor countries that have been caught in this cycle of debt and disaster would possibly have lost some of the tension when it came time to pay off that debt, that they might not have had to worry about paying their debts. creditors before they did things like take care of the other people who were displaced by the last hurricane. And Prime Minister Mottley and Avi and all those who are beating the drum about those reforms are quick to point out that it’s in the interest of countries like the United States, which is in the interest of France and Germany.
And the explanation for why is that, if those poor and vulnerable countries continue to be trapped in this cycle of debt and catastrophe and continue to struggle so hard to lift themselves out of poverty, it will create even more cascading economic disorder for those countries that still have to be addressed a day later. Whether it’s through crisis relief or more debt or unpredictable geopolitical consequences from more and more countries destabilized through the climate crisis.
David, if all of this comes to fruition, feels a bit like we’re living in a kind of third era of global economic cooperation. The first global combination after World War II. The time when the global union to lift deficiencies Nations out of poverty. And the third would be this progression of a formula that fully integrates climate replacement into global finance, as a sustainable way to pay for all this.
And that would be the first thing. For decades, countries have understood that climate updating is real. And for decades, they’ve been trying those fragmented, sporadic, ad hoc approaches to dealing with those disasters. There has never been a coordinated and unified effort to try to channel the response. Global powers and all the cash they have to countries that want it to the max to make the world more climate-resilient replace as a whole.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
If all of those reforms come to fruition, if you set aside piles of billions or trillions of dollars and start using them for some of those projects, according to the estimates of many long-time climate replacement experts, it would constitute one of the ultimate basic and historic efforts to combat the climate, replace and help others who want it to the fullest to do so. in the face of an unprecedented threat.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
David, thank you
Gracias.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
‘Ll.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Here’s what you know today. In China, several cities have announced easing of lockdown restrictions and testing requirements. In G-uangzhou, citizens returned to work Thursday for the first time in weeks since COVID-19 lockdowns were lifted. In Chongqing, some citizens were no longer needed to take normal COVID tests. These advances suggest that the ruling Communist Party is possibly beginning to backtrack on its unpopular zero-COVID policy, following one of the country’s largest rounds of protests in decades.
Today’s episode was produced by Michael Simon Johnson, Rachelle Bonja and Mary Wilson with assistance from Asthaa Chaturvedi. Edited by Paige Cowett and Liz O. Baylen, verified by Susan Lee, it includes original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell and designed by Chris Wood. Our theme song is through Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk from Wonderly.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
That’s it for The Daily. Mi is Sabrina Tavernise. See you on Monday.
[FADEN MUSIC]
transcript
This transcript was created with speech popularity software. Although it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the audio of the episode before quoting this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes. com if you have any questions.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
From the New York Times, I’m Sabrina Tavernise. And it’s The Daily.
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COP27, the collection to combat climate change, has begun in Egypt.
Last month, the global accumulated in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27.
Sharm el-Sheikh is a vital step for measure, duty and focus.
And finally, after years of stampede.
Exaltation in a compensation agreement.
Leaders at the COP27 weather summit in Egypt said they had reached a historic deal for vulnerable countries.
Renew the fund for the next countries to cope with the effects of climate change.
The world’s rich nations, the biggest culprits for the emissions that have caused climate change, have agreed to contribute to a fund to help deficient nations, which suffer the most from the effects of climate change.
It is a fundamental advance that the fund is already here.
But at heart, an even more significant plan is taking shape, an initiative led through the small island country of Barbados.
There may be a restructuring of the architecture of foreign finance, for example, that may inspire personal capital to participate in the war on climate change.
Today, weather journalist David Gelles talks about the plan that could remake the way the world of finance deals with climate change.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
It’s Friday, December 2.
[FADEN MUSIC]
So, David, from what I understand, the COP, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, is a bit like the Super Bowl for climate scientists. But instead of helping their team, they are all meant to be there to help the world, to save the planet. Am I right?
yes, that’s it.
I’ll tell you something, it’s a beautiful day here in the Sinai Peninsula right now.
So, in early November, Daily Michael manufacturer Simon Johnson and I went to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
It’s Monday morning, the first day of COP27.
We still found our way to the convention hall, and within minutes we started getting a first glimpse of what the convention would look like.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Is that here? Wow. Yes.
It’s a huge complex.
Like a campus, actually.
The conference itself was massive. It was the length of several interconnected mass conference centers. And some parts were inside. Some portions were outside. There are very large delegations here from a really varied diversity of countries.
Yes, it is.
Some 44,000 people from all over the world had gathered. And there were world leaders. There were activists. There was PDG. They were founding leaders. There were politicians.
I love that they only have things that say “adaptation” and “energy. “This one says “kind” and has a lot of people’s hands. [LAUGHS]
And in addition to all the wonderful meeting spaces where other people gathered, there were those conference rooms.
Wow. It’s like an industry show.
It’s a United Nations industry show, which is pretty strange. Where other countries had erected some kind of flags.
IT IS OK. is from Israel.
Where Israel, for example, talked about how it adapts to climate change.
Where is the United States?
I think it’s here. Where the United States promotes its new carbon trading program.
[LAUGHS]: It’s like a Delta Sky Lounge. No offense, guys.
And next to him, the country of Nigeria explained how it seeks to maintain its forests, for example.
Spain, South Africa, Indonesia.
And it went on forever.
Indonesia is stylized to resemble a kind of jungle.
Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Germany. Oh, Germany is very beautiful. They have many plants.
Sometimes you saw a head of state, a president or a prime minister pass by with their security guards, and the next minute you may only see an activist dressed as a polar bear. Sorry. Here we have a giant polar bear dress. to take a picture of. Try to make the case for nuclear power.
So, in particular, it’s not just a polar bear fighting climate change. It is pro-nuclear.
It is pro-nuclear –
Pro-nuclear polar bear.
It was absolutely a scene.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
And it was clear from the start that one of the main objectives this time was to get rich nations to agree to put tons of cash into a fund to help poor countries cope with the effects of climate change. The argument, of course, is that since rich countries, such as the United States and many countries in Europe, are the ones that have mainly caused climate change, it is they who pay for the effects.
Correct, compensation.
Some other people communicate about “weather repairs” or “loss and damage. “And this concept has been debatable for a long time, yet it seemed that this year, anything in that sense was going to happen. And we knew it was going to be a great situation for the convention and it was.
Yes, the headlines were about those historic climate damage fund projects that countries were going to push so that poor countries could just adapt.
Droit. Et is a big deal. But there was also this other story that we had followed. It was one that, in the end, could be even bigger than the loss and damage fund that was announced at the end of the event. And this story had a lot to do with the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley. Mia Mottley is the current Prime Minister of Barbados. Es the first woman to hold this position. And Barbados is that idyllic jewel of a Caribbean island nation. It’s also where I was lucky enough to be able to finish much of the first year of the pandemic.
Did you do it?
I did it.
Oh, my God.
And for the past two years, Premier Mottley has a big star globally when it comes to climate change.
We come to Glasgow with a global ambition, to save our other people and save our planet.
Especially after an impassioned speech he gave last year at the United Nations climate change convention in Scotland. And in that speech, he made an ethical argument, saying it was the duty of rich nations to help deficient countries adapt to climate change.
What do we say to our frontline people in the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America, the Pacific?What excuse do we give for failure?
She, of course, presides over a country that is incredibly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Barbados is a small island in the Caribbean. It is in a community that has been hit by hurricanes. And Prime Minister Mottley has made his plan to speak on behalf not only of Barbados, but also of other countries like his that are bearing the brunt of more excessive weather.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
From Egypt, cradle of civilization, from Sinai, blessed land, welcome to COP27.
And he’s become such a big star in that verbal exchange that, on the first day of the COP, he led alongside other people, like former Vice President Al Gore, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the head of the African Union, other people like that.
And now, register to welcome me to Ms. Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Then Prime Minister Mottley rises.
Excellencies, illustrious and gentlemen.
And it’s in this speech that he delivers what I think is the big story that emerges from COP27 and, in fact, it’s one of the most important stories in the verbal exchange on climate right now.
I come from a small island state that has a big ambition but can’t achieve that big ambition because the global business strategy we have is flawed. Our ability to access electric cars or our ability to access batteries or photovoltaic panels is limited across countries. that they have a dominant presence and can produce by themselves. But the Global South remains at the mercy of the Global North on those issues.
It was in this speech that he laid out his vision of how the world’s rich nations could fundamentally replace the way they face this challenge of helping deficient nations adapt to climate change.
This global still looks a lot like it did when it was part of an imperialist empire. The Global North borrows between 1% and 4% interest. The countries of the South represent 14%. We have a plan.
We can create a climate replacement mitigation accepted as true that will unlock $5 trillion in personal sector savings. We also know that the time has come to introduce herbal crisis and pandemic clauses into our debt instruments. The progression banks want to reform. Yes, it’s time for us to revisit Bretton Woods. Yes
Here, in particular, she calls on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, those banking establishments that were created decades ago in this assembly called “Bretton Woods” and that are still at the center of the formula that, according to her, is totally lost in the coming countries.
So I ask the other people of the world and not just the leaders to hold us accountable and act on their behalf to save this Earth and save the other people of this Earth. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
So, with this speech, she proposes a rather gigantic overhaul of the workings of some of the world’s largest monetary institutions.
Well, can you know why what she says is so important?
So let’s break it down. He spoke of Bretton Woods and the need for a new Bretton Woods. And what he’s talking about is this convention that took place in the last days of World War II.
In Retton Woods, New Hampshire, delegates from allied and allied countries arrived for the opening of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference.
The finance ministers, for the most part, met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, at the Mount Washington Hotel.
They will work on the isolation of this White Mountain resort.
And he tried to make a comic strip of what a built-in postwar global economic formula would look like.
The world stand is part skyscraper and part rubble.
And so, the World Bank was created to give loans basically to European countries hoping to get out of the war because that war had devastated nations around the world.
We discussed our plans to stabilize global currencies.
And then the IMF was created to help stabilize currencies and economies and make sure that sovereign states didn’t fail and were reliable players globally and didn’t create those formula shocks that would have accidental consequences that could throw the whole global economic formula into confusion.
And to create the foundations for lasting peace.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Thus, during the 1970s, most of the countries destroyed by war were usually rebuilt. But in an increasingly globalized world, the World Bank has replaced its approach.
Last week, the aid took the form of an $85 million loan from the World Bank.
There were all those other countries to get out of poverty.
Since 1980, it has nearly tripled the amount of cash it lends to countries in economic distress, such as Ethiopia.
In Africa, Asia, South America, the World Bank has provided loans to these countries with the explicit objective of seeking to create new economic opportunities that will help others escape poverty and become middle class.
The case worked. In one generation, according to the World Bank, China has lifted 500 million people out of poverty.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
And that’s pretty much where things are today. But what Prime Minister Mottley is saying now is that those establishments simply don’t work anymore. The World Bank and IMF, which were created to help rebuild the post-war world and then lift countries out of poverty, are simply not supplied to deal with the specific demanding situations that deficient countries face today when it comes to things like climate replacement and the repeated devastation that comes from those droughts. floods, fires and storms. In short, he says those facilities, which were designed to help lift poor countries out of poverty, are now, in fact, assisting him.
But how? How would they do it?
IT IS OK. So when one of those storms, for example, hits a small country, it takes many millions of dollars or, infrequently, billions of dollars to recover. And it’s effective that most of those countries don’t just have to drag. For example, some countries, the poorest of the poor, obtain foreign assistance from other countries and non-governmental organizations. But most countries are forced to borrow when those big mistakes happen, yet that’s not the kind of investment that top classic banks are very comfortable with. doing.
Instead, they are perceived as relatively risky investments, risky not only because those countries are on a financially fragile floor to begin with and may not have the highest GDP, but also because they are spaces where storms are strong and worsening. And even if they are able to recover effectively from a storm, it may also be only a matter of time before another disaster strikes, creating more havoc and making it even harder for those countries to repay that initial loan. And so for this reason, personal lenders rate those massive interest rates.
Yes, a smart choice for those countries.
Droit. Et option is to turn to the World Bank and the IMF.
So how does borrowing from those institutions work?
Well, the World Bank and IMF give higher rates than countries could place in the personal market. But those rates can still be quite high and come with conditions.
What does this mean
This means that when a country takes out one of those big loans, it will essentially have to promise to tighten its belt. And often, what happens to accommodate this is that governments cut spending on things like schools, hospitals, police.
But why? Why do you make this request?
Because in this formula of financing and external debt, the establishments that lend the cash concentrate on paying, even if they lend cash for the recovery of a storm. Once that cash comes out, their first, moment, and 3rd fear is to make sure that the countries they’ve lent to will be able to pay it off someday. And that means forcing countries that have accepted that cash to limit how they can spend the cash they have.
What does all this mean almost for a country like Barbados?
This means that countries like Barbados are trapped in this cycle of debt and disaster. Storms arrive with greater intensity and frequency. They borrow money and then have more and more debts that they have to pay. And they are forced to pay their debt, they seek to recover from a typhoon and never have a chance to prepare for the next typhoon, let alone expand their economy in any way that affects the lives of their people.
So a country takes on all this debt after a typhoon, recovers slightly before another typhoon hits, and can never invest to become resilient in the face of those typhoons. They also can’t invest in their economy because they have to pay off all those loans first. That’s what he means when he talks about the cycle of debt and catastrophe.
It’s true.
And that’s what Mia Mottley is talking about when she says that this total formula helps keep emerging countries at their lowest point.
Exactly.
IT IS OK. So how do you approach this problem?
So they made a plan and that’s what she talked about at COP26. And it’s called the “Bridgetown Initiative,” named after Barbados’ capital, Bridgetown. And it’s essentially 3 things.
IT IS OK.
First, they need to have much more cash. They say those establishments can simply lend much more cash. And they need to make a series of technical adjustments that would necessarily unlock a lot of cash that they say is in a position there but still on the sidelines, not just for crisis reaction for preparedness work, to help countries become more resilient and, say, a hospital and make sure it’s fit for the next big typhoon to hit a small island.
The next thing they need to do is replace some of the situations in which that debt is issued. That is, they must ensure that, when a crisis strikes, countries do not intend to continue paying that debt when they have to deal with other people who are on the streets because they have just lost their homes. So this concept of a hurricane clause or herbal crisis clause would essentially make it less difficult for countries that have taken on this debt to pay it off.
Right.
And the third big thing they need to do is use the cash they think is already there in those systems to seed new ones accepted as true that would tap into the cash of the personal sector. The concept is that this new lot of personal cash, which can be worth trillions of dollars, would fund things like renewable energy projects in deficient countries and help them move away from fossil fuels.
IT IS OK. Therefore, they are not asking, for example, to abolish the World Bank and the IMF. What they’re saying is that those establishments want to be replaced, but they want to be replaced very broadly. And they want to have more cash on hand. They must, when they make it available effectively, make it much more flexible in terms of how countries themselves spend it, right?And finally, it turns out that they are proposing to act as a kind of guarantor of the security deposit for everyone. those larger and much more extensive personal investments. And that would unlock all that extra money they could protect themselves with.
It’s true. They do not say they will abolish the World Bank and the IMF. They say we love them more than ever. But we want them to act in a fundamentally different way to deal with a fundamentally new and unprecedented crisis facing the world’s emerging countries in the form of climate replacement. And here is the most significant component in this regard. It’s not just cash that comes directly from rich countries. They are not the ones simply asking rich countries to donate trillions of dollars every year to cover up the mistakes caused by climate change in other parts of the world. This is capitalism.
Right.
And that’s why many other people say that this can not only affect paintings, but can also have much more effect than weather repairs.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
And the explanation for why the Bridgetown Initiative is like this, the explanation for why it deviates from this long-standing strategy of asking rich countries for climate reparations, is largely due to its chief architect, a guy named Avinash Persaud.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
‘Ll.
So what do we want to know about Avinash Persaud, the guy from the Bridgetown Initiative?
Well, there’s kind of a remarkable backstory that explains what it’s like in the middle of this.
AV.
Hello.
How are you?
I am fine. How are you?
So Avinash Persaud, some call him “Avi,” is a guy who worked in the highest grades of finance in London but is from Barbados.
Well, I was born in Barbade. Je I didn’t have a circle of relatives there. My parents moved to Barbados. They lived in Guyana.
He attended the prestigious London School of Economics.
A LSE, 18 years.
There he meets a Barbadian colleague, named Mia Mottley.
Mia, even then, Mia holding the court.
They must hang out in the same social circles at the London School of Economics.
Mia was in this student apartment on Golders Green, lying on a kind of couch with the remote in her hand and a cigarette in the other, zapping on the canals and talking to everyone. And I’m kind of captivated through this user because she was like a queen, even at 18. And other people came here to pay their respects. It was like a stopover on the court.
But after school, their paths part. Mia Mottley returns to Barbados. She comes from a political circle of relatives there and begins to climb the political ladder. In 1994, she became the youngest Barbadian elected to parliament. Meanwhile, Avi is pursuing what becomes a fairly ordinary career in finance, running for JP Morgan, State Street and, indeed, emerging to the heights of foreign finance. And finally, Mia convinces Avi to return to Barbados, where he might need her help. She knows foreign economics well, and it’s a valuable skill set that she needs to develop. And so, around 2007, he repacked his circle of relatives and left.
And as of 2007, I write each and every budget she makes and each and every budget response.
And so Avi is racing with Mottley now. And then, in 2017, a couple of devastating hurricanes hit the Caribbean.
So, in 2017, we had the worst hurricane season in the Caribbean, two category five hurricanes. This ends with Dominica. They lose two hundred. . .
And one of the hardest hit is the neighboring island of Dominica.
I get a call from Mia. Mia says, you have to pass them.
And Mia asks Avi to stop by and see how he can help.
And I learned that Dominica, a small country, the global one will be Dominica in five days. How can we save them from ting Dominica in five days?I believe that in a few weeks there will be a serious turn of fate in Pakistan. Nobody remembers Dominica. So I think –
And Avi walked away and decided to try to see what he could do to make countries like Dominica and Barbados more prepared to deal with those disasters, to deal with the effects of terrible storms, even after the eyes of the global had changed.
Then Avi realizes that any plan he proposes will have to have two vital characteristics. First, you cannot simply beg, charity from rich countries, to get out of this cycle.
Because the Caribbean loves to beg, but it has a predetermined position. We are in a horrible place. We are on the front line. You have to help us. Because you caused it, you have to help us. And you know what? It hits you, but no one follows it. What they will do is send the leftovers.
And you don’t need it to be Mia Mottley to ask for leftovers.
Several other people have done emotional things, but the difference is that they have never had a solution. His story was, woe to me, it’s terrible. You have to do something about it. And the world doesn’t start begging.
And he doesn’t even think this technique works to solve the problem.
So the moment you tell other people that I constitute a small emerging island state, what others do is take you in their heads and put you in the box of irrelevance. Because the “small island emerging states,” all of that tells them, if you communicate with America and say, I’m a small island approaching the state, America is already beyond your head, like, who am I going to communicate to now?Because this user is not afraid of me.
In fact, it had to be bigger.
And the way I’ve tried to bring it home to the other Caribbean island people is that I say, you go up the population of all the SIDS in the world, you get less than 1% of the global population. The world is not going to replace its foreign monetary architecture for the 1% of the population. So I created a new coalition, and then the term “front line” is something I proposed two years ago.
I needed to think of a broader plan that would be applicable and applicable to countries around the world experiencing disasters. Basically, it sees all of the tropics as the front line of the existing climate crisis.
And we say that the front line is between the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. Now, what I’m doing here is saying that I don’t constitute 1% of the world’s population. I am 3. 3 billion people, or 40% of the world’s population, are all in the same group. And now Mia is not fighting for a small island of 14 to 22 miles with 300,000 people, but for 3. 3 billion people.
And so it is with those two big concepts in mind, not just asking for cash and not just making small island nations, that he’s helping expand what will be the Bridgetown Initiative.
So essentially it says that you can’t ask rich countries to invest tons of cash in the deficient small countries, although it is true that they are the ones that have caused the most climate change, which is just a strategy of waste.
Right.
So, in this plan, he discovers a way to use the same old banking system, loans, not charity. And it speaks of a much larger component of the global in a way that rich countries cannot ignore.
It’s true. And to put the main points of that plan on paper, Avinash convened an assembly last summer in Bridgetown with the most sensible economists, senior executives, senior United Nations officials, himself and Prime Minister Mottley and divided it.
IT IS OK. So who do they have to do to make this happen?
Well, you might think that the other people you’d like to convince are the directors of those institutions, other people like David Malpass, the president of the World Bank. And David Malpass has been in the news a lot in recent months, largely in part because of an interview I did with him in September. In that interview, I asked him if he believed in the fundamental facts of meteorological science. And his answer was, I’m not a scientist.
Oh-oh
Ouais. Il, therefore, it would be wise to embark it. But the fact is that the other people who matter most here are the shareholders of the World Bank, the United States, Japan, China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. And finally, if these basic primary reforms are to be adopted, it is those countries that will have to be convinced. And that’s why Prime Minister Mottley was at COP27 with all those countries piled up there, looking to convince the other people that they intend to adopt this wonderful systemic reform.
So, how is it going?
In fact, she will be at 4:00 p. m.
[MISCELLANEOUS NON-ENGLISH] 1:00 now and there are 36 presidents who have to speak.
Decidedly.
Therefore, on this first day of COP27, he gave this wonderful speech in which he makes his presentation to the world. But even then, as we heard, it is not transparent how he won through other world leaders.
Me where they went.
[BACKGROUND CROWD NOISES]
I mean, I suspect they possibly would have done it just for launch.
We don’t know how he felt about it or what was happening on the sidelines or in the scenes.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
So we were desperately looking to succeed with her and Avi, and we spent a lot of time searching to locate them.
Japan, South Africa, India, Qatar, Korea, Canada.
And so we ran through this huge, expanding network of convention centers to see if we could reach it there.
Scotland, right? There’s Scotland.
Hey, here we go. IT IS OK. We are in the Scottish pavilion, where Mia Mottley will talk to other people in about 20 minutes.
And so, despite everything, we support it in the Scottish pavilion.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Mariana.
And we have front-row seats. She’s there on this super-tough panel, and she’s explaining in more detail what she’s contemplating with the Bridgetown Initiative. And we’re a little worried sitting there, hoping we can sign up later to ask him how it’s going.
Our public servant has a return rate for the. . .
It’s a crowd scene with other people looking to corner her and take pictures with her, communicate with her, and hand her business cards.
It’s an absolute scrum right now, as everyone is looking to snap a picture of this high-profile women’s panel we just heard.
And at first we were a little shocked. But finally, we secured ourselves together with her and Avi. And we can walk with them as they headed to their next appointment and, despite everything, they had the opportunity to talk one-on-one to face with Prime Minister Mottley. Good morning, Prime Minister Mottley. David Gelles of the New York Times. How is he?
Not bad.
I a bumper. Me there because of the pandemic.
Yes. In Barbados?
Yes, indeed. So I appreciate very much –
So when do you come back?
We’re back.
Yes. But when do you come to live?
As soon as I can. I asked Premier Mottley how she thought her message was being received. Is this something you think is gaining ground regardless?
I guess. I think we are calmly confident. We get a lot of positive feedback and will continue to make the binding commitments.
Are demanding situations active resistance or more akin to passivity and apathy?
No, I wouldn’t say active resistance. I think we’re just looking to bring as many other people together as we can imagine and really see what the potential obstacles might be. Because so much of what we put into it is so basic, I’m sorry to say, and it doesn’t make unusual sense. That for them to be rejected at this level makes no sense when the opposite or the consequences of rejecting it will, in fact, be the loss of lives and livelihoods. That is, the global cannot be in this moment of polycrisis and we cannot locate a way to finance our exit.
We don’t ask for cash to do trivial things. We ask for cash so that we can make sure that we can recover from the climate crisis, that we can build resilience to climate crises, that we can better prepare for the next pandemic. , that we can invest in education and health. Those of us who suffer from the climate crisis cannot continue to displace the entire area we have on our balance sheet just to prepare for something we do not cause.
Thank you, Prime Minister.
Thank you so much.
Gracias.
And of course, together with Prime Minister Mottley Avi. Avi, can we walk and communicate with you on your way?
IT IS OK. Yes.
How do you think the message was received?Do you feel like the other right people hear it?
I guess. I think there is indeed great potential, genuine potential. I plan to place other people who say that there has never been such momentum around a set of ideas before. Package correct, but I think there is a pretty strong view that there has never been so much consensus and momentum around a set of ideas. And I think it’s because we were. . .
And it turns out that he also thinks this is breaking through.
And do you think it’s true that it’s breaking through?Do you feel this is the case?
Well, obviously, the harsh climate replaces activists for what they heard.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
We will have to reconvene Bretton Woods and completely reorganize and reform the World Bank formula and give emerging countries access to personal capital.
But as the week progressed, we began to receive information that other people, such as French President Macron, were also on board.
[SPEAKS NON-ENGLISH]
France is one of the largest shareholders of the World Bank, so it was an endorsement that mattered. And then we think, wait, maybe this is spreading. And then, on Wednesday, I met with the IMF director and asked her what would be a basic replacement for her own institution. From your perspective, is there momentum among shareholders, who ultimately make the decisions, to make the adjustments they will make:
There’s. There’s.
And she said yes.
And then use it for large-scale personal financing.
I mean, it’s like the Bridgetown agenda.
That is precisely what it is.
So, do you have the British agenda?
Yes, I can do anything. Everything we can do.
And what is more surprising, even the most important members of the monetary sector appear in this project.
We want to get those banks of multilateral progression. And they are very different. Some are more aggressive, others less aggressive, to use their capital, much more capital.
Including the CEO of Bank of America.
Prime Minister Mottley led the charge. We will consult a little later in the day with President Macron on this, but the concept has circulated. Now is the time for governments, the shareholders of those institutions, to replace their bylaws, to allow them to help. Sector will come right behind. They are fair –
And that kind of approval is literally an issue because those are the establishments where other people expect them to invest more of their money. And we said, this turns out to be gaining ground. In fact, it can happen.
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And then at the end of the week, John Kerry, President Biden’s special weather envoy, said he was also on board.
Surely we want the reform of the progressive multilateral banks. We want to do that through next spring’s bank assembly. And if that happens, then we have about $400 billion or $500 billion that can then be used as leverage. That’s true. It’s starting to happen. The reform of the MDBs is undoubtedly essential.
And that’s a big challenge because the U. S. is the largest shareholder of the World Bank. And without the participation of the US. In the U. S. , none of those reforms will be carried out.
But hey, okay, you don’t hear any of them at a weather convention say that they oppose this very horny weather plan. Everyone must agree with that, right?What happens once the cameras are off and time passes and we get business?When rubber hits the road, what will others say?
Well, so far, the genuine opposition turns out to be inertia and bureaucracy. These are decades-old establishments that are very consistent in their habits. I have not yet discovered anyone, not any of the main shareholders or even any of the leaders of the establishments themselves, who have declared themselves against these projects. And Avi would tell you that the genius of this plan is that no country has to shell out more money.
So, in his narrative, there are a lot of downsides to all of this. But as we mentioned, there are more risks. All of this means potentially riskier loans. And all of this makes it a potentially very complicated sale in the end, even for shareholders who are saying right now that they agree with those reforms. So let’s see. But seriously, I don’t hear any opposition and that means a lot.
David, I feel like it’s a very position because what you’re saying is that things can be repositioned quite significantly. And, honestly, it sounds pretty funny. Because when I think about climate replenishment, it’s just this incredibly complicated and stuck challenge facing the world that, frankly, doesn’t seem so positive to me.
I’m listening. But I think the explanation for why this plan is breaking through is that it is employing the existing global monetary formula to try to solve this crisis that, for so long, has seemed so intractable. These are not weather repairs. It is not a fund for loss and damage.
It’s the market, what makes the world flow, is that?And they rely on him instead of fighting him.
That’s right.
David, how do you think the global one would be replaced if this happened?What would that look look like?
Well, let’s be clear. Even if everything we communicated happened, it would possibly not solve the climate crisis. It won’t avoid carbon emissions in a short time, and it possibly won’t prevent the planet from warming anytime soon. But at the end of the day, they communicate about cash here.
What it would mean if those reforms took a stand is that poor and vulnerable countries would have more budget at their disposal and more budget to use to recover from storms, fires and floods, more budget to prepare for long-term mistakes through construction things like or preparing their schools and hospitals and making them more resilient to large and unpredictable weather events.
And it would also mean that the poor countries that have been caught in this cycle of debt and disaster would possibly have lost some of the tension when it came time to pay off that debt, that they might not have had to worry about paying their debts. creditors before they did things like take care of the other people who were displaced by the last hurricane. And Prime Minister Mottley and Avi and all those who are beating the drum about those reforms are quick to point out that it’s in the interest of countries like the United States, which is in the interest of France and Germany.
And the explanation for why is that, if those poor and vulnerable countries continue to be trapped in this cycle of debt and catastrophe and continue to struggle so hard to lift themselves out of poverty, it will create even more cascading economic disorder for those countries that still have to be addressed a day later. Whether it’s through crisis relief or more debt or unpredictable geopolitical consequences from more and more countries destabilized through the climate crisis.
David, if all of this comes to fruition, feels a bit like we’re living in a kind of third era of global economic cooperation. The first global combination after World War II. The time when the global union to lift deficiencies Nations out of poverty. And the third would be this progression of a formula that fully integrates climate replacement into global finance, as a sustainable way to pay for all this.
And that would be the first thing. For decades, countries have understood that climate updating is real. And for decades, they’ve been trying those fragmented, sporadic, ad hoc approaches to dealing with those disasters. There has never been a coordinated and unified effort to try to channel the response. Global powers and all the cash they have to countries that want it to the max to make the world more climate-resilient replace as a whole.
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If all of those reforms come to fruition, if you set aside piles of billions or trillions of dollars and start using them for some of those projects, according to the estimates of many long-time climate replacement experts, it would constitute one of the ultimate basic and historic efforts to combat the climate, replace and help others who want it to the fullest to do so. in the face of an unprecedented threat.
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David, thank you
Gracias.
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‘Ll.
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Here’s what you know today. In China, several cities have announced easing of lockdown restrictions and testing requirements. In G-uangzhou, citizens returned to work Thursday for the first time in weeks since COVID-19 lockdowns were lifted. In Chongqing, some citizens were no longer needed to take normal COVID tests. These advances suggest that the ruling Communist Party is possibly beginning to backtrack on its unpopular zero-COVID policy, following one of the country’s largest rounds of protests in decades.
Today’s episode was produced by Michael Simon Johnson, Rachelle Bonja and Mary Wilson with assistance from Asthaa Chaturvedi. Edited by Paige Cowett and Liz O. Baylen, verified by Susan Lee, it includes original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell and designed by Chris Wood. Our theme song is through Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk from Wonderly.
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That’s it for The Daily. Mi is Sabrina Tavernise. See you on Monday.
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Organized by Sabrina Tavernise
Produced by Michael Simon Johnson, Rachelle Bonja and Mary Wilson
With Astha Chaturvedi
Edited by Paige Cowett and Liz O. Baylen
Original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell
Designed by Chris Wood
Last month, at COP27, the United Nations’ climate replacement conference, a year-long crusade ended with an agreement. The world’s rich nations, the main culprits behind the emissions that caused climate replacement, agreed to make a contribution to a fund to help poorer nations bearing the brunt.
In the background, however, an even more significant plan takes shape, run through the small island country of Barbados.
David Gelles, New York Times correspondent.
As warming leads to cascading climate disasters, leaders of the UN climate talks have said it is time to radically overhaul the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
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Our purpose is to make transcripts available the next business day after an episode is posted. You can place them at the top of the page.
David Gelles contributed to the report.
Verified via Susan Lee.
The Daily is directed by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, MJDavis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba IttoopArray Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.
Our theme song is through Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk from Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis. Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello and Nell Gallogly.
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