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00:00 Let me bring in Oliver Farrie. What's your takeaway from that?
00:03 Well, there was definitely, despite for all of Emmanuel Macron's talk about like a financial shock is needed
00:11 in order to combat climate change, he's very much keeping the same players on board.
00:17 He dismissed any possibility of a debt cancellation or a jubilee, which is something that
00:24 activist groups from developing countries have been calling for for the past two decades.
00:30 He says that's not going to happen simply because if you do that, lenders will stop lending.
00:35 He would rather like risk to be reduced, to spread it across.
00:41 He's probably, being from the world of international finance himself, he is probably somebody who
00:50 is probably more sympathetic and possibly more optimistic with the whole,
00:58 the willingness of hedge funds and various other financial institutions to go along with all this.
01:05 That it may not be the case after all. He also wants to more or less get the more consuming,
01:14 the more emitting nations, which are the wealthy ones, to pull their weight, particularly with taxes on
01:20 financial transactions and also on air travel. And he didn't mention there, but it has been touted for
01:27 for this particular summit on shipping as well. As he showed in the diagram there, there is a sense
01:33 that definitely richer countries do need to pull their weight, but there's also an undertow as well,
01:41 which you got the sense that they want to probably continue as they are doing and have their cake
01:47 and eat it and maybe try to solve their conscience by paying a little bit more. It may ultimately,
01:53 on the climate side of things, it may not actually be enough.
01:57 Interesting. Thomas Friang, there was from Open Diplomacy think tank, quite combative at times,
02:05 Emmanuel Macron centering France to say that we are pulling along the rest of the planet, he said,
02:10 environmental, Percy talked about decarbonisation, but he was asked about, well, hang on a minute,
02:14 let's cancel the debt for poorer countries. And he said, no, we have to talk about restructuring
02:19 the debt because ultimately, the creditors will lose out if they're cancelling this altogether.
02:24 What did you make of that? I think it's absolutely fair to say that if you say to investors we won't
02:29 pay back, anyone would put money on the table to finance anyhow. And that's the way I would insist
02:37 on three main takeaways I had from President Macron's speech, an interview he gave. This issue
02:43 is exactly the same for 1,000 or Western or Northern countries. We are exactly on the same
02:48 page on financial issues. And we are facing the same tough challenges. Except let me bring in
02:53 the fact that one point made by some of the developing countries is that if they go to
02:57 a big institution like the World Bank, say they want a big loan, the Netherlands will get a far
03:02 better terms of payback than a Ghana, for example. At this stage, that's true. But this is exactly
03:08 what it is about to say there is no North, there should no longer be North versus South in facing
03:17 this issue of both tackling extreme poverty and climate change. Because we have poverty issues
03:25 in Northern countries. We have to cope with a just transition issue. We also have to put money on the
03:30 table to invest our decarbonization. And when we talk about this, it's the same issues as in South.
03:38 The RFI journalist said there is West for climate and South for poverty. That's absolutely wrong.
03:43 Those 1,000 countries, Maya Motley, she came to say we are the most vulnerable countries facing
03:49 the harsh climate risks. And we need to cope with this together. And this is the first thing I would
03:55 like to remember from that summit is that there is a good sense of what interdependence means.
04:01 We are exactly facing the same issues of social and environmental challenges, different types of
04:06 risks, different types of timelines. But at the end of the day, it's the same political agenda,
04:11 which is the 2030 agenda of the UN. Second point I wanted to make to answer the question you asked
04:17 about debt restructuring or counselling, I say it's the same issue. And that's why it's the wrong way.
04:23 We should not go in the wrong way. We face the wrong way risk when we face policy emergency.
04:29 That's why it's so important to insist on the fact that we have to change the global financial
04:33 institutions in a way that they can channel private money, which is super amounting. We
04:39 have an amount of savings that is at highest level ever, but it's not flowing in the right
04:44 direction. We can use that private money to flow it to cope with climate change and climate
04:49 disruptions and also to ensure just transition, both in the north and in the south. And this is
04:55 much more efficient than debt counselling or than taxation, because at the end of the day,
05:00 wrong policies don't bring right results. What brings right results is effective policies.
05:06 There is an injustice, but wrong solutions are not just, they are just inefficient. And the last
05:11 point I wanted to make is that when we deal specifically with the south issue, we always
05:19 have this wrong idea that there is a dichotomy between development and climate combat. That's
05:27 absolutely wrong. And what is at stake here in the summit is to find a path of a low carbon
05:33 growth or development, I would say, in using both financial and technical leapfrogging
05:39 intuitions and innovations. Meaning putting money and technology in ways you develop yourself
05:48 without the whole carbon trajectory that the northern countries have had. This is possible.
05:53 This is what we're doing with Senegal, with South Africa and other countries. And this is
05:57 exactly the way forward in ensuring both development and respect for the environment.