Rachel Kyte CMG was appointed the UK’s special representative for climate in October 2024.
She is professor of practice in climate policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, as well as dean emerita at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Previously, Kyte was the UN secretary-general’s special representative for sustainable energy, the CEO of Sustainable Energy for All and a vice president and special envoy for climate change at the World Bank.
- On her priorities for the role: “It’s really finance, forests and the energy transition externally.”
- On fraught geopolitics: “The Paris Agreement has worked; it just hasn’t worked well enough.”
- On the Paris Agreement: “It’s better than anything else we could negotiate today.”
- On the global response to Trump: “The rest of the world is like, ‘we’re growing, we need to grow, the fastest energy is renewable, how do we get our hands on it?’”
- On keeping 1.5C “alive”: “1.5C is still alive. 1.5C is not in good health.”
- On net-zero: “[T]he whole concept of net-zero is under attack from different political factions in a number of different countries. It is not isolated to one or two countries.”
- On climate pledges from key countries: “Let’s not make a fetish out of under-promising.”
- On delivering these pledges: “The conversations that I am engaged in…are like: ‘There’s no question about the direction of travel. The question is about the pace at which it can be executed.’”
- On COP30 outcomes: “The UK is engaged extensively with Brazil on a…potential large nature-finance package.”
- On climate impacts: “[W]e’ve got to deal with issues of adaptation, because [climate change is] happening right now, right here, right everywhere.”
- On fossil-fuel phaseout: “I think there are lots of informal discussions…around [whether] there [is] something [that] can be done on fossil-fuel subsidies.”
- On the climate-finance gap: “The pressure on our public resources is to make sure that that is targeted at where it can have the most impact.”
- On being an “activist shareholder”: “[T]he UK, which is such a significant shareholder across the multilateral development bank system…we have to be an activist shareholder.”
- On COP reform: “Should there be…summits every two years? People are talking about that.”
- On finance and the global south: “I’m not Pollyanna about this, but people [have] got really big problems in front of them.”
- On calls to slow action: “[W]hat I think we’re very forceful about is that you can’t take two to three years out of climate conferences just because the world’s really difficult.”
- On the impact of US tariffs: “[T]he sort of tariff era we’re in, the risk is that it slows down the investment in the clean-energy transition at a time when it needs to speed up.”
- On China’s role in the absence of the US: “They already were a major player. The world had already shifted in that direction.”
- On her climate “epiphany”: “I remember some very, very, strange meeting somewhere in eastern Europe and watching a really badly made movie about migration.”
Listen to this interview:
Carbon Brief: You were appointed the UK special representative for climate last October, a role that’s been held by the likes of John Ashton, David King and Nick Bridge over the last 15 years or so, and was left unfilled towards the tailend of the last government. Please, can you just explain what the role is and what your priorities are for it?
Rachel Kyte: So, it’s good to talk to you, nice to be here. So, the Labour government decided to appoint two envoys. They are politically appointed, so that does distinguish it a little bit from the past and so we are not civil servants; we occupy this space in support of ministers and in support of the civil service. So I’m the climate envoy and Ruth Davis is the nature envoy. I report to the foreign secretary [David Lammy] and the secretary of state for net-zero [Ed Miliband], and Ruth reports to the foreign secretary and to the secretary for Defra [Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs] [Steven Reed].
And our role is to help ministers project British climate and nature priorities in our engagements in the world. So we are externally focused, outside of the UK, and I think that Ruth and I coming in, and in discussion with ministers in the first weeks that we were here, focused in on the energy transition internationally, which is the extension of the energy mission domestically. Really progress around forest protection [and] tropical forest protection, because this is obviously on the critical path to getting to net-zero and, with COP30 coming up, and, having COP in the forest, this seemed to be an urgent policy. And then, for me, finance. And, of course, there’s climate finance, which is what gets negotiated in the COPs. And then there’s the financing of climate, which engages in a wider cross-Whitehall conversation around how we are building [the City of] London as the green financial centre [and] how we are exploiting the fact that the green economy is growing faster than the economy [overall].
So, inward trade investment, but outward trade investment. How we are mobilising private-sector finance. So, it’s really finance, forests and the energy transition externally.
You can imagine that the foreign secretary has a world that has got an awful lot more complicated in recent years. We’ve got more wars than we’ve had. We’ve got more grade-four famines. It’s a very, very complicated world.
So I think the envoys are there to try to support the prioritisation of climate and nature at the heart of foreign policy, which is what [the foreign secretary] said in his Kew speech. But then helping the service of the [Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office] deliver that externally.
CB: Thanks, Rachel. You nicely segued into our next question. We can definitely all agree that geopolitics is pretty fraught at the moment, perhaps more so than any time for decades. Multilateralism is under extreme pressure. We’ve seen that through recent UN summits, not just the COP. How does international climate policymaking – and, in particular, the Paris Agreement – survive this period of turbulence in your view? And, from some actors, there’s obviously outright hostility coming from some angles.
RK: So, it’s a great question. At the core of all of that is the fact that the Paris Agreement has worked; it just hasn’t worked well enough. And so how do we keep the conceit of the Paris Agreement? Which is that countries would have their nationally determined contributions, and that that ambition would filter up, and then when you put a wrap around it, you’ve got something that is on a line to net-zero by the middle of the century.
If countries start to slow down, or if countries start to walk away from that, how does the Paris Agreement still live? And we’re in that moment now.
But I think we have to hold two truths in our minds at the same time [within] a lot of climate, energy, nature policy. So, on the one hand, there is a direct attack; the United States has decided to leave the Paris Agreement. And I think there are many other countries looking for clarity from the United States about whether it will leave the underlying convention [the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] as well. We don’t know.
But when I travel around the world, not withstanding that and notwithstanding some of the transactional interactions of the United States with other countries on a whole range of issues, the rest of the world is like, “well, we need to grow, we need to grow fast, we need fast energy, in particular”, right? Because I think countries really are worried that if they can’t get the energy security that they need that it becomes difficult for them to manage their economies and meet their people’s needs, but they’re also very worried about missing out on the AI [artificial intelligence] revolution.
So everybody wants a data centre, everybody wants to have enough energy for AI. But I think many emerging markets and developing economies are really worried that if they miss this next S-curve this would be defining for them for the next step. So the rest of the world is like, “we’re growing, we need to grow green, the fastest energy is renewable, how do we get our hands on it?”
At the same time, obviously, we still haven’t peaked emissions from fossil fuels. There’s a short-term economy, which is alive and well and funding into gas, etc. And we have two world views about what the future of the energy transition is. We have a US view, which is that climate change…what seems to be being articulated now is “climate change is real, but it’s just not a priority for us right now and we’re doubling down on the fossil-fuel economy”.
And then kind of the rest of the world, which is, like, “yeah, we are in transition, maybe we need to slow the transition, because the world is insecure and unstable”, but, at the end of the day, they can only meet their goals with access to more clean energy.
So I’ve reduced it down to energy, but you can have that conversation on a number of other aspects. So, yes, we have to keep the Paris Agreement as the place where we move forward from. It’s better than anything else we could negotiate today. And I think that it, therefore, does need to transform itself a little bit into a way of moving implementation forward and to move outside of the confines.
So, for example, we discuss resilience in the global economy, we discuss resilience in conflict, and we discuss resilience in development and, in climate, we talk about adaptation finance. Those two things have different origins, but they are, at the end of the day, going to come together in the same sets of decisions that countries make. So, how do we move forward in that debate?
And then, in particular, for those countries that come to COPs every year and don’t get what they want and face the existential crisis, how does this continue to be meaningful for them? And I think we have to answer that question over the next couple of years.
CB: You mentioned the Paris Agreement. We’re almost 10 years on from that landmark moment. One of the central calls at that moment 10 years ago [was] “1.5C to stay alive”. Is 1.5C alive still?
RK: 1.5C is still alive. 1.5C is not in good health. And so there is an important moment that, between now and COP30 [in Brazil this November], and then coming out of COP30, we will receive the synthesis report from the UN based on all of the NDCs [nationally determined contributions]. And we will get a sense of what kind of critical condition 1.5C is in.
And then I think we have to, as an international community, work out how to address that, but also how to communicate that to the world’s publics. Because, obviously, the whole concept of net-zero is under attack from different political factions in a number of different countries. It is not isolated to one or two countries.
So, I think the question of how we communicate where we are in the transition, it has to be addressed once we see the synthesis report. But that also goes to what’s really important for the next few weeks for me and the British government, which is to still encourage those countries that have to file their NDCs to have NDCs which are stretch targets; realistic, but ambitious.
We’ve still got the EU to come in. Still got China to come in. There are a number of key economies that haven’t filed their NDCs yet, so we can sort of get very doom-laden about where we are, but there is an opportunity for a number of key blocs to still maintain the ability to be ambitious.
CB: What are you particularly looking for from, say, the EU or China, some of these key NDCs?
RK: Well, to not walk away from ambition. There are all kinds of factors that go into a country’s NDCs; the capability, the rates of economic growth, the politics and the different political cultures have a different approach to under-promising and over-delivering, versus over-promising and under-delivering.
And, while you can respect under-promising and over-delivering, the delivery is important at this particular moment with [the] Paris [Agreement] fragile. I would say that this is the moment to promise realistically, right? And I think that’s where British diplomacy is focused at the moment. Let’s not make a fetish out of under-promising.
CB: Do you think that message is landing?
RK: Yeah, I think people are…So, my impression is that no country in the world is not living in the world, right? So people are watching the tariff wars, but…this is complicated. What does this mean for us?
I was in Southeast Asia a few weeks ago. Every country is trying to get a deal with the US and understand whether things are stable, or whether they’re going to change. It has direct impacts on the flow of finance into the clean-energy infrastructure that needs to be built. It has a direct impact on the cost of capital, etc.
Every country is watching the broader geopolitics. Everybody’s watching people become distracted by other wars and conflicts. And, in the middle of that, you’ve got to plot your way through to growth, right? And then that growth has to be greener, because [of] the cost of clean air or the benefit of clean air, the benefit of jobs, etc. This is understood, but this is a particularly difficult environment in which to navigate.
And, in the middle of that, we’re asking countries to plot out how they’re going to get to where they are committed to being. And for countries that produce conditional NDCs – ie if the finance is there, then we can do this – both trade and finance and international cooperation have been disrupted over the last year.
So, NDCs are complicated things to produce at the moment, just like any other growth plan. And so the conversations that I am engaged in, the further east and south you go, are like: “There’s no question about the direction of travel. The question is about the pace at which it can be executed.”
CB: Looking ahead to COP30 in Brazil later this year, realistically, you’ve already talked about a lot of different tensions that we’re facing, So what kind of outcomes are you expecting? And what are you pushing for?
RK: The UK is engaged extensively with Brazil on a couple of things. One is, I would describe it as a potential large nature finance package, right? Carbon markets, we agreed Article 6. There’s technical work that’s going on. There’s a lot of Article 6.2 activity. We are leading the coalition with Singapore and Kenya on demand for voluntary carbon markets. The Brazilians are very interested in the interoperability of compliance markets. So a piece around really driving carbon markets forward, because that would be a new stream of revenue, much needed, right? And answers part of the climate-finance problems.
Secondly, is the TFFF, the tropical forest – I always get it wrong –Tropical Forest Forever Facility. This is a flagship initiative of the Brazilian government and, if we have a COP in the forest, then we should be able to make breakthroughs in how we address the need to have a flow of finance into tropical-forest countries.
So, we’re working extensively with the Brazilians and we’re waiting for them to come forward with the prospectus. And then the question is our contribution [to the TFFF], if we make one with others, and also our ability to help the Brazilians go, basically, on a road show, right? And get other private-asset owners and asset managers and others into this fund.
And then maybe other nature finance things to do. Remember that biodiversity COPs always talk about climate, climate COPs never talk about nature, so we can correct for that. So that would be one bucket.
Then there’s going to be, this will not be negotiated, but the Brazilians will produce, together with the Azerbaijanis, a Baku-to-Belém roadmap. This, hopefully, will demystify how we get from $300bn to $1.3tn, or whatever the number is, and start to talk about how we scale; the leverage of public money for private money. So this is issues of standardisation of different asset classes, new asset classes [and] new ways of issuing bonds. So all of the mechanics of international finance that can be mobilised. And I think this is not well understood in a COP. It might be well understood in the City [of London] or in Frankfurt or Wall Street, but maybe this roadmap can demystify it.
And then I think we’ve got to deal with issues of adaptation, because it’s happening right now, right here, right everywhere, and the questions of adaptation finance, which isn’t just about the “quantum”. It’s also about what kind of financing: the grants, the need for concessional [financing], where the private sector is really able to mobilise and also quality [finance], and it’s also the accessibility of that finance.
We’re seeing huge improvement in the performance of the Green Climate Fund. The multilateral climate funds are just emerging now into an era where they can start to really deliver at scale. And then we’ve got the reform of the MDBs [multilateral development banks], where we, I think, have to be a much more activist shareholder.
So, finance, forests, bigger package on nature. I mean, there’s a lot more that needs to be negotiated, but I think those would be things that we can do, not withstanding the geopolitics.
CB: I’m quite struck that almost all of those things that you talked about are outside of the formal [COP30] negotiations. What do you think is going to happen on something like carrying forward the fossil-fuel transition outcome from Dubai?
RK: So I think there’s two things going on, right? One is what can we negotiate in the current environment, with the current postures of different groupings and different countries, and getting moving on the action around tripling renewables, doubling efficiency and transitioning away [from fossil fuels] is very important.
So, what could that look like? I think there are lots of informal discussions at the moment between different groups and with the Brazilians around [whether] there [is] something [that] can be done on fossil-fuel subsidies? Can we set targets within that that would allow us to measure progress? What can we usefully agree on that, this year?
And, then, I think there [are] conversations around where does the stuff that’s happening outside of COP land in a negotiated text? Or how does it get referenced?
I think we’re waiting for clarity from the Brazilians about their approach to a “cover text” and things like this. And I think this is still in the air. But these things that could happen outside of the negotiated text, referenced appropriately, give life and meaning to some of the paragraphs that need to be negotiated.
CB: With many major donors, including the UK, cutting their own budgets, even as countries made this collective pledge to scale up climate finance that you referenced, there’s a lot of expectation now on institutions like the World Bank and the multilateral development banks. Are these institutions capable of filling this climate-finance gap? Or where else should developing countries be looking? You mentioned maybe some of the carbon-market kind of revenue-raising, potentially? But, just on the wider pressures they are now facing, as we already alluded to, the kind of pressure on those multilateral institutions…
RK: Yes. So, we’re now basically – across the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] – with a lot of countries hovering at like 0.3% GDP for ODA [official development assistance]. So, first of all, the war on nature and the climate crisis are one and the same thing, [they] are the context within which all growth and development happens, right? So the pressure on our public resources is to make sure that that is targeted at where it can have the most impact, where it’s needed most, and targeted at where it can be, where it can leverage itself, right?
So, we can talk about how we use ODA to sort of reduce emissions. There are certain geographies where emissions need to be curbed in order for us to get to 1.5C and then how do we use the public money to leverage other resources to crowd in and end the destruction of tropical rainforest or the protection of mangroves. So you take your climate-critical path, and you look at your ODA and you say: “How do we apply this the most effectively?”
For a country like the UK, which is such a significant shareholder across the multilateral development bank system, then we have to be an activist shareholder. And, yes, the answer is that the MDBs could do more. First of all, they’re doing more now than they were a few years ago. And they could do even more.
If we look at the leverage rates of the MDBs, those could go up. And I think in the conversations around the $300bn at COP29 it was very clear, especially from the regional development banks, that they thought that they could do more. And I think that in some instruments and in some ways in which they work, they could do a lot more. So I think those leverage rates should be over $1 for certain facilities, etc.
We know a lot more about how to use guarantees. We know a lot more about how to leverage the private sector using MDBs. The classic example for us was taking the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), putting a bond structure around their performing portfolio, and then listing it in London [on the stock exchange] and raising $7bn [$500m, following clarification after the interview], which then goes back to the CIF to be reinvested. I think there’s just been recent stories about the Inter-American Development Bank [IADB], which has a set of performing assets in its portfolio of renewable energy that can be turned into an instrument that can be listed, that generates money, that goes back into IADB.
So I think this is learnt now and, because of the ODA cuts, this becomes very, very important. So I am confident that there is a “to-do list” and that to-do list has come out of MDB reform work. It’s come out of the G20, TF-CLIMA, it’s come out of the Brazilians last year. It’s come out of other work that other thinktanks and others have been doing. London just listed…the government just announced a sustainable debt work here in the UK. So, that to-do list is a kind of “known known”. Right now the question is implementing it and that will require political leadership, for sure. And the Brazilians have created a circle of climate ministers, sort of 30 climate ministers to lead that. And there is a coalition of finance ministers convened by the World Bank.
We know what we need to do and now we need to start working out how to do it. The other thing is that we have an investor taskforce that the Treasury and the Foreign Office and leaders from the private sector have set up. And that’s sort of crunching its way through the mechanics of some of these things. But I think, as they start to go to market, we should be able to invest.
And there are a couple of things where we haven’t really faced up to yet. So, first of all, the private sector is investing in resilience, a) because it’s losing money, so it’s backstopping. And, secondly, because it can see how the world is being impacted by climate change, they are investing in their resilience in changed circumstances. That is captured as a cost in most countries in their accounts. That is not seen as an investment.
And also, I think in most countries – and certainly in the UN – we have no way to capture that. So we don’t really capture how much the private sector is already investing in its ability to just continue to operate under current climate conditions.
CB: It’s been really interesting over this year so far to see the Brazilian presidency of COP30 and also conversations at the Bonn talks in June explicitly referencing this idea of COP reform. What reforms would you propose or support?
RK: So, there’s no fixed British position on this yet, right? But I think what’s being discussed is there’s a utility to walking up to a mountain and putting a flag on the mountain every year, right? But, actually, we’re sort of in a more undulating landscape of implementation, where we need to be working throughout the year, right?
So, should there be Rio Trio summits every two years? People are talking about that. I think you could argue backwards and forwards, right or wrong, on that. What happens between the COPs? How do you bring the external world into the COPs? How do you let subnational actors and voices be heard at the COPs? These are all live topics and I think we need to move forward on most of them.
And then are we getting to the point where only certain countries can host them because they’re so big? I don’t know. Do you have thematic meetings throughout the year? How do we better keep real-time track of progress? So the next time we do a stocktake, in the world of AI and other things, is there a better and easier way? And can we still make that more transparent?
It would be great if the public could look at a sort of traffic-light spreadsheet and [say], “OK, we’re on track and not on track”. So I think all of those [questions are being asked] and it poses real challenges to the UN, which itself is in a process of reform now, in part, as a response to the US’s sort of questioning of the efficacy of parts of the UN, but also, I think, because the world is significantly changing.
CB: In your role, you’ve been in meetings over recent months with counterparts in Indonesia, China, South Africa, etc. What have been, particularly for some of those key countries, what have been the specific points of conversation you’ve had with them? Is it all about finance, or other important ingredients to those discussions?
RK: No, I think the starting point is, well, a lot of it is about finance, but, it’s about investment. It’s about growth and investment, right? It’s green growth and investment. And then finance fits into that.
So it’s not the finer points of the way finance is described in the COP. It is huge demand for the technical capacity of the UK, whether it is sophisticated demand-side management in grids, or how we regulate and how we oversee our grids in this country. Or how we exited from coal. Or what we are planning on some other dimension of the energy transition, our technical capacity and civil nuclear management. The desire for UK Inc’s knowledge about how we do things on things that we have actually been successful in – and also lessons of failure as well, honestly. So, everybody is figuring out how to do this.
There’s a strong desire for a pragmatic UK that is capable of convening across traditional blocs. I think we are seen as having a relationship with Brussels, a relationship with the US, a dialogue with China, a new free-trade agreement with India and a dialogue with India, [as well as] relationships through the Commonwealth and directly with small island states and least developed countries. We are seen as someone that already has bridges in place [and] could help strengthen those bridges.
So, what’s really been striking to me is it isn’t a conversation about, “oh woe is us, what we’re going to do?” It’s a conversation like: “I have a 10% growth rate. I need to do this. I would like you to be investing more.” It’s that kind of conversation – and that’s whether I’m meeting the minister of energy, finance, mines, environment, whoever I’m meeting with, that’s kind of the focus.
So I’m not Pollyanna about this, but people have got really big problems in front of them and it’s about their economic growth and development. And it’s, how can we help? I think the other thing that’s really coming through is just the cost of the impacts already, every flood, every failed harvest, every pressure on a city. I mean, this is really, really, really now…you can’t escape it, every country’s in the middle of it, we’re in the middle of it, domestically. And how this gets addressed, I think it is a question for this COP and the next COP.
CB: Other than the prime minister [Keir Starmer] and also your bosses, Ed Miliband and David Lammy, you’re kind of one of the key “faces” on the international stage representing just how invested the current UK government is in this issue of climate change. How do you think the UK’s role in this is perceived by other countries, ranging from China and other climate vulnerables, to the likes of the EU and the US?
RK: So, I think my perception of the external view of us is that – and what we’ve been trying to project as well – is “don’t do as we say, do as we do”. That means that we need to do a lot of things building on [the progress we’ve already made]. And I think that the beginning of the inward investment, just in the last year, into the clean-energy economy here [in the UK], that’s upwards of £50bn. So we’re open for business.
There’s one thing to talk about the City as a green financial centre, which has happened because of the leadership of City leaders, but now there’s this dialogue between government and the City about how to make that even broader. And, of course, that would mean becoming the western world’s heart of the carbon markets, if Singapore is the heart of the sort of eastern world’s carbon markets. It would mean that London helps define what a good biodiversity credit looks like, what a standardised swap looks like. There’s so much more that could be done there and I think that that’s what people want from us, but it’s also what we are trying to be able to build ourselves up to offer.
I think people want us engaged in the dialogue. So there’s a strategic dialogue with China. You could say that the strategic dialogue between China, the UK and the EU is the sort of triangular underpinning, actually, of the strength of the Paris Agreement. And, of course, we’re just about to see the EU-China summit, which will be important.
Our dialogue with India is interesting, right? So India found itself in a very difficult position at the end of COP29. In our free-trade agreement and in our strategic partnership with India climate and energy is a big part of that conversation. That’s all about technical lessons, learning and investment in both directions.
And then with the EU, the EU/UK reset is in the rearview mirror now. So now we need to get into the negotiations around the proximity, or the alignment between the ETSs [emissions trading schemes] shared stances on other issues and then how we show up as the sort of “liberal west” in the COPs.
So, the world is changing. It’s flatter. The BRICS are more and more important. We have, I think, powerful relationships with a number of key countries within the BRICS and that is an object of foreign policy, as well. And so how do we as the UK build up our agility, our global sense of the world and our place in it, so that we can help everybody stay on track for the kind of results we need by the middle of the century.
But what I think we’re very forceful about is that you can’t take two to three years out of climate conferences just because the world’s really difficult. And that has to be argued domestically and it has to be argued with [our] international partners. We don’t have time to just sort of say, “Oh, well, we’ll come back to that”. We have to build it in now.
CB: Specifically around the damage that’s been caused by the current trade tensions caused by the US, how do you think that is directly impacting the kind of wider climate negotiations, but also just the push towards the transition? Is this a key stumbling block now?
RK: Investment flows when everybody feels confident, right? And it just begs a whole bunch of questions and I think that’s slowing down investment decision-making.
So, I don’t think it’s specifically anti-climate, or whatever. I think it’s, generically, like if I don’t know if the tariff is 10%, 20%, 25%, 56%, whatever, well, let me put it off till the next quarter to make that investment decision. And I think that that’s what we’re beginning to see. So that, for me, is the main [thing]…It’s the hesitancy that it puts in the mind of government, but also in the mind of investors and the private sector.
I mean, it’s a little bit too early to tell in terms of investment not going into the US and going elsewhere, or individual supply chains for individual pieces of the clean transition, but I think the main problem globally is just this hesitation.
I would have to say that other things, including, perhaps, the ability of NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] and the National Weather Service to continue to provide services to the Caribbean and Central America, that the impact of the cuts to USAid [US Agency for International Development] in certain geographies are profound. But, generally, the sort of tariff era we’re in, the risk is that it slows down the investment in the clean-energy transition at a time when it needs to speed up.
CB: With the US in retreat, is China now the most important country in the world when it comes to climate action? Can you give a sense of your recent conversations with your Chinese counterparts, both recently, but also how they might have changed over recent years?
RK: So China’s posture before…there is obviously a China-US dynamic, but aside from that dynamic, China’s posture has been that “we are multilateralists, we want multilateralism to thrive and we’re all in”, right? And they’ve repeated that in every possible forum and they’ve repeated that at the highest level, including in [Chinese president] Xi Jinping’s statements at the leaders summit hosted by the UN secretary-general [António Guterres] and [Brazil’s] President Lula. So they are in.
Are they taking up space that would have been occupied by the US before? Nature abhors a vacuum, so all kinds of people are coming in. And the world moves towards China because of the fact that, over the last 25 years, it’s emerged as dominant in the solar-energy supply chain, with all of the problems that that has brought as well.
And then, financially, because of the way in which the [UNFCCC] convention is framed, they are a developing country, so they quite rightly only want their contributions to be made voluntarily, but they are a major player, right?
They already were a major player. The world had already shifted in that direction. Our conversation with them is technical and collegial and, I think, really frank. And we hosted the ministry of environment [Huang Runqiu] here recently [and] met with both the secretary of state for energy and the secretary of state for environment, and I was just really struck at how wide-ranging the issues that they would like to discuss is, and just how sort of practical, pragmatic and how sort of sleeves rolled up it was. And I think that’s also what is observed in their relationship with the conversations they’re having at a technical level in Brussels.
So it’s a complicated, nuanced relationship across all issues of trade, security, investment and climate. But they’re living in a world where climate is going to disrupt their own economy, if they don’t build their resilience. And of course, China has its tentacles everywhere. So maintaining our ability to talk to China about these issues, notwithstanding all of the other tensions and difficulties and opportunities, is “sine qua non”, I think. So let’s see how they show up in Belém.
CB: Just the final question, which is a bit more of a personal question, which we like to ask this of our interviewees, what is your first moment of epiphany on climate change? Can you remember? Was it a book, a lecture, a documentary, a conversation, or a trip you went on? Can you remember where that penny really dropped and you thought, I need to work on this, professionally and hard?
RK: There were two. One was very early on in my career. I was working on international youth politics in Europe. And, at that time, the Iron Curtain was up – I’m that old [smiles] – and sulfuric acid would go up from power plants in the east and it would land in the west and destroy the forest in Norway. And the conversation was: “Well, do you have ever-higher limits on the Norwegian industry?” Or do you go to Poland and say: “Look, can we put scrubbers on your [power plants]?” And it was the interconnected [nature of all this].
And, of course, at that time, young people in both east and western Europe wanted to build a more benign presence of Europe in the world and we wanted to be united, right? Or wanted the wall to come down. And that was a question of peace and environment. And it was the environment movement that was at the heart of the peace movement. So that was [a moment of thinking], “so I want to work on this”.
And I remember some very, very, strange meeting somewhere in eastern Europe and watching a really badly made movie about migration and the idea that, if we didn’t cope with this [climate change], people would come in boats across, presumably the Mediterranean. And I was, like, this is a global problem.
The second thing was just before Paris [in 2015]. There were these sort of famous rumours about all these women that got together and worked together to try to help the Paris Agreement happen. And so I was in a meeting with a bunch of women and two leaders from emerging markets, developing economies – it was very juxtaposed, because I was, at that point, the vice president of the World Bank – and we were having a discussion about 1.5C and whether, did it make sense as a strategy. And I was like: “2C is going to be difficult enough, you want to negotiate 1.5C?” And then we sort of broke. And then the next morning, we reconvened and we were just reflecting on the day before’s conversations and they both said to me: “You can’t just throw these numbers around as if they’re points of negotiation, because, for my culture, the difference between 2C and 1.5C is existence or non-existence”. And that was important.
CB: OK, thank you very much, Rachel.
RK: Thank you.
The post The Carbon Brief Interview: UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Mads Christensen is the Executive Director of Greenpeace International.
In a year that marks the UN’s 80th anniversary and 30 years since the first UN climate summit, the global multilateral system tasked with preventing disaster remains incapable of delivering the speed and scale of change we need — even as the available carbon budget shrinks and tipping points loom.
At the heart of this paralysis lies the broken consensus model of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Every decision must be agreed to by all 198 Parties. In practice, this means even one country can block the rest of the world from acting — and a number often do.
We’ve seen this play out repeatedly: oil-saturated nations derailing fossil fuel phase-out language, rich nations delaying climate finance, and authoritarian regimes using geopolitics as leverage to stall negotiations. But it’s not just fossil fuel exporters or autocracies causing the deadlock.
The result is a ‘race to the bottom’ that rewards inaction, dilutes ambition, and sidelines the world’s most vulnerable. It’s time to end this cycle. It’s time for majority voting at UN climate summits and to reform what are now outdated governance structures.
System is failing vulnerable nations
The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, was a diplomatic breakthrough — but it lacks enforcement mechanisms. Implementation has stalled. Emissions are still rising. Fossil fuel production is expanding, and we are hurtling toward 3.1°C of warming by the end of the century.
In short: the system is not delivering and the world cannot afford another lost decade of incrementalism.
This isn’t just a technical problem — it’s a moral one. The communities most affected by the climate crisis are also those least responsible for causing it. From small island states facing existential sea level rise to millions across Africa and South Asia suffering crop failure, water stress, and energy poverty, the injustice is staggering.
-
UN raises COP30 allowance to help with Belém accommodation crisis
But funding shortfalls risk reducing the number of government negotiators who can receive the payment unless more money is put on the table -
Treaty to protect deep ocean reaches key threshold for entry into force
The High Seas Treaty, now signed into law by 60 countries, is seen as crucial to achieving a global goal of protecting 30% of land and sea ecosystems by 2030
These nations have consistently called for stronger action. But under consensus rules, they are routinely overruled or ignored. Instead, decisions are held hostage by the interests of the few: fossil fuel-producing states, authoritarian governments, and wealthy nations with regressive leadership, like the US under President Trump.
Consensus has become a tool of obstruction. We need a model that actually gives climate justice a chance to prevail — one where the majority can act, and the vulnerable are empowered.
Momentum for reform is growing
The case for majority voting is not just practical — in the light of recent judicial developments, the legal and political implications are being magnified.
In July, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating that fossil fuel licensing, consumption, and subsidization could amount to violations of international law and basic human rights. This raises the legal stakes for governments that continue to expand fossil fuel production while obstructing climate negotiations.
Simultaneously, political momentum for UN reform is growing. In a speech this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed a more “just and equitable global governance system” in a pointed critique of institutions dominated by outdated rules and powerful interests.
The UN Secretary-General’s own flagship initiative for global reform, the UN80 process, underscores just how overdue these governance changes are.
The company tracking energy transition minerals back to the mines
Although key reform proposals have been delayed beyond this year’s UN General Assembly, the Secretary-General’s mandate implementation review paints a picture of systemic dysfunction: overburdened mandates, siloed agencies, and an avalanche of reporting with little impact or accountability.
If the broader UN system is struggling to deliver on its own instructions, climate governance must not remain stuck in the same bureaucratic inertia. Majority voting could be the first real test of whether the UN can shift from fragmentation to function.
Brazil’s leadership needed
We must ensure that this momentum is used to strengthen — not weaken — international climate governance and majority voting is a clear and immediate step that can deliver results. The UNFCCC’s draft rules of procedure — pending since COP1 in 1995 — already contain provisions for majority decision-making. Their adoption has been blocked for three decades by countries benefiting from the status quo.
Brazil, as host of COP30 in 2025, has already taken a leadership role by proposing innovations in climate cooperation. In a letter to Parties in May, it floated the idea of an “alignment” of actors and efforts— signals that the country is open to innovations in cooperation that go beyond the consensus trap.
That opening must be seized with the courage to act and this year’s UN General Assembly offers governments an opportunity to push for procedural reform and test majority-backed decisions.
As governments bet on carbon trading, Japan’s early scheme spotlights pitfalls
Brazil’s leadership, and support from a wide coalition of countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific, and progressive EU members, can tip the balance. Multilateralism that cannot function — that enables the few to obstruct the many — is no longer credible and must evolve.
While consensus can remain our preferred approach, where there are a few blockers to the majority, we must instead push ahead with science, justice and majority voting to ensure progress.
This is not unprecedented. Other international bodies, from the World Health Assembly to the International Labour Organization, use majority voting when needed. It’s time the UNFCCC caught up. The climate crisis is the defining challenge of our time.
The world’s people are demanding action, and a majority of nations are ready to respond. But a system where one or two countries — whether fossil fuel powers or political saboteurs like Trump’s America — can block the entire planet from acting is not just undemocratic, it’s deadly.
Let consensus be the starting point. But when the majority are ready, and the stakes are existential, let the majority act. Let the majority decide.
The post It’s time for majority voting at UN climate summits appeared first on Climate Home News.
Laura Clarke has been the CEO of environmental non-profit organisation ClientEarth since September 2022.
ClientEarth works in more than 60 countries, using the law to “bring about systemic change that protects the Earth”.
It has recently been involved in high-profile climate litigation cases, such as against Brazil’s Devastation Bill, against Shell’s board of directors for “failing to move away from fossil fuels fast enough” and against Cargill for “its failure to adequately deal with its contribution to soy-driven deforestation”.
Additionally, ClientEarth joined others in successfully taking the UK government to court in 2024, arguing that its climate strategy was “not fit-for-purpose and, therefore, breaches the UK Climate Change Act”.
Clarke joined the organisation after spending two decades in diplomatic roles across Africa, Asia and Europe, including being British high commissioner to New Zealand, governor of the Pitcairn Islands and high commissioner to Samoa.
- Clarke on what ClientEarth does: “If you get the right laws in place, you change the rules of the game.”
- On the International Court of Justice ruling: “It strengthens climate litigation and will absolutely open the door to even more litigation.”
- On ‘lawfare’: “I think if you use the law in the right way, it can really help build agency and build public buy-in for environmental action.”
- On ‘slapp’ suit tactics: “It is a very aggressive tool, the chill effect can be enormous and it’s hugely anti-democratic.”
- On multilateral cooperation: “Geopolitics are really tough…But I think that doesn’t mean that you give up. There’s no space, there’s no time for defeatism.”
- On attribution science: “[It] opens a greater prospect for class action, for damages cases against these big emitters.”
- On cases using such science: “Lots of people will be thinking about [such cases] now, with that very close collaboration between the science community and the legal community.”
- On what’s next for climate litigation: “I think climate litigation, in terms of fossil fuels, is very well established. What’s next? We’ll see a lot more on ‘Big Food’.”
- On holding companies liable: “I think the human rights angle at the country and government level is very powerful.”
- On the ‘Trojan Horse’ of local pollution: “The cost to the US of these unplugged oil and gas wells is estimated to be $1.5bn in terms of the climate impact, the health impact, the pollution [and] the cost of cleaning it up.”
- On the ESG backlash: “Whatever the political weather, whether ESG is in or out, what doesn’t change, a bit like gravity, is the materiality of climate risk.”
- On operating in China: “We work very differently in different places. And that’s really important.”
- On David Gilmour’s charitable gift: “It was the most amazing gift from David Gilmour that has enabled us to scale what we do, to expand [and] to expand internationally.”
- On the ‘art of the possible’: “Sometimes we carry a big stick of litigation, but it’s always about thinking creatively.”
- On her experiences in the South Pacific: “It’s not just about climate. It’s about everything. It’s about how we live our lives, how businesses operate [and] how governments think.”
- On COP30: “It’s really critical at this COP30 that we do see countries come together with ambition and not just putting forward new nationally determined contributions, but really having a plan for what that looks like in the real world.”
- On the need for climate laws: “Turkey recently agreed its first-ever climate law. But there are others where it would be hugely beneficial.”
Listen to this interview:
Carbon Brief: Please can we just begin with you explaining briefly what ClientEarth is and does? Can you give us a couple of recent examples of where you’ve had a legal victory or win – and why you see that as a win?
Laura Clarke: Yes, absolutely. Well, there’s quite a lot there. So ClientEarth is a legal environmental nonprofit. We’ve got 300 people globally and we work across the full lifecycle of the law, essentially using the law to try and accelerate climate and environmental action and get to those positive tipping points faster.
So that means we work on what the right laws are that you need. Because if you get the right laws in place, you change the rules of the game. We support governments with drafting climate legislation. We work on regulatory reform for the energy transition, for example. So we strengthen the laws.
We litigate to hold governments and corporations to account for what they’re doing, to try and change mindsets, shift [and] accelerate action there.
Now we also do what we call “build the field”. So we work with lots of partners globally, we train judges, lawyers, prosecutors [and] work with community groups, so they’re also using the law to defend the environment and uphold their rights. So there’s a lot there and there’s a lot of advocacy as well.
But, of course, it’s normally our big-piece litigation that hits the headlines. And you asked for a few examples there. Most recently, I think a really lovely example is a case that we brought and we supported in Spain [where] community groups were suffering from the extreme pollution caused by industrial pig and poultry farming that was affecting their human rights. It was polluting their water, polluting their air [and] people were getting really ill.
We brought this case in Galicia in Spain and the court ruled that a clean and healthy environment is interdependent with human rights and ordered the authorities to take action to ensure the pollution was cleaned up [and] pay compensation to those citizens.
It’s cases like that that are important, both in terms of the experience of those communities who are living there on the front line of the impacts, but they’re also important in terms of the precedent that it sets. Because that’s a court saying very, very clearly that there is a human-rights obligation on authorities to take action on the environment, a clean and healthy environment, which includes, of course, tackling climate change [and] stopping pollution, [that this] is critical for human health and human rights.
So, it’s one example. I can give more if you want…
CB: Well, there’s a very notable kind of case that many of our audience would have heard about in the summer, which is the International Court of Justice, which made headlines around the world when it issued this landmark advisory opinion on climate change. In practice, though, how does that actually change things? For example, in terms of reparations, the opinion talks about a need to establish a “sufficiently direct and certain causal nexus linking a wrongful act to climate damages”. So how might that actually play out and be achieved in practical terms? In your work, for example, how does something like the ICJ opinion change or move the dial?
LC: So the ICJ opinion is hugely important. It’s a hugely important and authoritative articulation of what states’ obligations are on climate change under international law. So that’s hugely relevant for any courts in any country when they’re hearing litigation. This decision will be on their tables, right on their desks. They will be having regard to it, because it sets out very clearly that states have an obligation under international law to take action on climate change. [That] they need to regulate companies [and] countries that are historic emitters have a greater responsibility. So it’s hugely important in terms of really understanding what states need to do.
It doesn’t have an enforcement mechanism. It is an advisory opinion. [But] it’s a decision from the highest court in the world, [so] it is authoritative in terms of cases that are brought at the national level, at the regional level, in regional bodies, for example. And it’s also really useful in terms of really putting the pressure on states and as an advocacy tool in the run-up to big events like COP30 in Belém, the climate change conference.
You ask about how it would work in terms of damages claims? Under international law, there’s a long-established principle of transboundary harm, for example, so that could come into play there.
I think it’s still quite hard to really draw a direct line from the ICJ advisory opinion to right now. You’re absolutely going to have damages claims from climate vulnerable countries against big emitting countries, but it strengthens the arm of those communities that are calling for action. It strengthens climate litigation and will absolutely open the door to even more litigation on this front.
CB: Where do you stand on the strategic use of, as some choose to characterise it, “lawfare“, as a campaigning and legal strategy amid all the current geopolitical headwind? At the moment, populist politicians and their media allies are working hard, it seems, to paint lawyers and judges as “elitists” who are using courts to frustrate and block the “will of the people”, as they describe it. I’m particularly thinking of the US, where the rule of law and climate legislation are both under intense political attack. So where do you stand on the strategic use of what people are calling “lawfare”?
LC: So, I think it’s more important now than ever, when you have these really challenging political winds, geopolitical winds, when you have this political polarisation [and people are making] an attempt to say, “well, if you care about environmental issues, that inevitably puts you in a certain political bracket”.
I think the law is critically important in lifting us from that sort of polarisation. It’s not political to want to breathe clean air. It’s not political to want to drink clean water or ensure that your children have a safe and livable climate. And, so, I think if you use the law in the right way, it can really help build agency and build public buy-in for environmental action.
So we have a number of cases, clean-air cases with the local communities – the pig farming pollution case that I talked about and a case on zombie oil wells in Colorado – which are designed to increase the number of people who feel like they’re getting their arms around these things and using the law to achieve better outcomes. I think that’s one thing. It’s not a matter of politics, [it’s] actually, what are people’s needs and rights and how do we use the law to achieve those?
I think the other thing is that, regardless of what’s happened with politics, if you get something in law, in legislation that builds in a longer-term time horizon, which can insulate a little bit from the politics of the day. So that’s really important.
It is getting more heated, particularly in the States, but you’re seeing also strategic litigation from organisations like us that are trying to get progressive environmental outcomes from their work, but you’re also getting your big Slapp [strategic lawsuits against public participation] suits, so “strategic litigation against public participation”. The most famous one recently, of course, being Energy Transfer against Greenpeace in the US, calling for $660m in terms of costs.
So that sort of thing is on the increase. That’s always top right of our risk register, that idea that those who are seeking to delay the transition or stop the transition will see us as a threat and will come after us with some sort of defamation.
CB: Do you need to go toe-to-toe with those kinds of legal [challenges]? The way that the opposition, some might say, are kind of using law or undermining the law or, however their tactics play out, [so] you need to step up and go into that fight, as opposed to not being sucked into that. I’m just intrigued about the strategy.
LC: So, what’s the strategy for dealing with this sort of “lawfare” from big oil companies, say? It’s about being incredibly careful. That’s the first thing. So we’ve done a lot as ClientEarth in the environmental movement on saying, how do you defend against Slapp suits? What does the proper due diligence look like?
But, also, there are important measures in place on anti-Slapp legislation, which is really important to defend, because it is a very aggressive tool, the chill effect can be enormous and it’s hugely anti-democratic.
So I think it’s about not stopping this work and [being] there to push for a clean and healthy environment, to defend [the] planet and people, but it’s about doing it in a very careful way and always being alert to the risks.
CB: So, more broadly, in terms of international law, if you like, amid an era of war crimes and human rights abuses in Gaza, Ukraine, beyond, etc, many have expressed a loss of faith in the potency of international law. What could this mean specifically for global climate treaties and the sort of multilateral cooperation required to tackle a global commons challenge, such as climate change?
LC: So, look, I think there’s no getting away from the fact that the world is a really scary place right now. It’s very uncertain. Geopolitics are really tough. Multilateralism is under strain. But I think that doesn’t mean that you give up. There’s no space, there’s no time for defeatism. And it’s about how we work through different multilateral channels to drive the work necessary?
COP in Belém is going to be critically important. A huge amount of work [is] going into that [and into] saying this is about implementation, about doing what we said we would do. Countries need to be coming forward with their new nationally determined contributions. And, yes, some countries will step away; the US, of course, has left the Paris Agreement. But that doesn’t mean that that cooperation at multilateral level stops. We need to find different ways of enhancing it.
And, at the same time, alongside all that diplomacy and multilateralism, you’ve got what’s happening in the economy, right? You’ve got the renewable revolution, [which is] absolutely scaling exponentially. You’ve got countries seeing that this is the way to secure growth, but also national security resilience and a cleaner way, a healthier way of life for citizens. So there is a lot of that real-world action being taken.
And you see it, for example, in China, which is way ahead in terms of renewable tech. [China is] absolutely seeing the economic advantage, the advantage for its citizens and the geopolitical advantage as well. So, I think progress can often go in fits and starts, and it’s about working out which talent you’ve got to sort of keep pushing on every front, but some will sometimes be more fruitful than others.
CB: So changing gear a little bit. I’m interested in the evidence base that the lawyers in your organisation will work with and take into court. Attribution science is a growing academic field, with climate scientists increasingly exploring the causal and probabilistic links between the numerous impacts of health economic issues, including those of extreme weather events. There has been a push to attribute even extreme weather to corporate emissions as well. So how might advances in attribution science shape climate litigation?
LC: Yes, it’s a really interesting developing frontier in climate litigation. Really interesting. And you will know about the case that was just earlier this year, Lliuya vs. RWE in Germany. This is the Peruvian farmer who took a case against RWE, the German energy company, essentially saying that his farm was at risk from glaciers melting as a result of climate change.
So it was really [a] very, very interesting attribution science claim. Now the court confirmed that corporate businesses can be held liable for their emissions. So that’s a hugely important precedent. [But] it didn’t actually rule that Lliuya was entitled to compensation because it didn’t find on that front.
But that’s really important. And, you know, as you say, attribution science – there was a really interesting article on it in Nature just a couple of months back – attribution science has come on so far in [its] ability to say, “well, this is what’s happening in terms of climate impacts, this is how it connects to emissions”. And it is only a matter of time before you get successful cases that show this extreme weather event or this sea level rise, or this temperature rise is directly attributable in proportion to the emissions of this company. Because, particularly these big fossil fuel companies, they are collectively – I think, Saudi Aramco as one company, if its emissions were a country, it’d be the fourth biggest [emitting] country in the world. So there’s a huge amount there.
Why is that exciting in the real world? Because then you open a greater prospect for class action, for damages cases against these big emitters. And when those really, really scale, saying “actually, fossil fuel company A is responsible for all this damage that’s been done to our way of life, to our community, to our economy”. When those damage claims scale, those really, really change the calculations and the business model of those companies.
CB: I’m interested in the timescale of that and also actually taking that science into court. In terms of the robustness of the science, if you like, in terms of a lawyer actually presenting it as evidence in a court case, you suggested we’re moving towards that? Can you give a sense of time? Is that many years away before you anticipate that there are some territories and countries with their legal systems that are probably more likely to accept that kind of evidence and in terms of a legal victory downstream of that?
LC: So, I’m not a scientist, but I think these are cases that lots of people will be thinking about now, with that very close collaboration between the science community and the legal community. And, as with any new frontier, if you like, in terms of legal, environmental activism, climate litigation, there will be cases that are attempted and that don’t win, and then some that will. And, of course, judges will require a very, very high evidentiary burden, looking at that attribution. But I think it’s a promising and interesting area.
CB: More widely, where is climate litigation going in the years ahead? How is it going to evolve? What are your sort of predictions or thoughts on that?
LC: Yes, so I think there’s a lot to talk about here – I think climate litigation, in terms of fossil fuels, is very well established. What’s next? We’ll see a lot more on ‘Big Food’. There’s the spotlight shifting to Big Food, both in terms of these massive food companies that have these huge supply chains, and that’s a question of emissions. It’s also a question of environmental degradation, deforestation [and] human rights abuses. So I think that’s one to look out for.
We’ll see even more human rights cases, on, for example, extreme heat. I think that’s going to be increasing as we’re in the era of climate consequences, right? We’re already seeing places becoming hard to live in. So there will be extreme heat human rights cases.
We’ll see increasing cases around the petrochemicals industry and what that does to human health. We’ve talked about attribution science. I sometimes talk about the under-the-radar enablers of the status quo, right? So you can’t build a new oil pipeline without the insurance, without the management consultancy, without the legal contracting, without the advertising companies. And, so, I think it’s really important that these professional services companies really look at what they’re responsible for.
CB: So you think it’s these – it sounds like you’re saying that it’s these companies and corporates that are potentially more liable and open to legal kinds of cases against them, as opposed to [fossil-fuel companies] per se…
LC: I think both. But I think in [different] countries you have to pick quite carefully to avoid unintended consequences or impact. But I think the human rights angle at the country and government level is very powerful, because it’s very well understood in governments that you have to look after your citizens and, actually, if you’re not protecting them from very severe climate impacts, you’re not doing your job. So I think we’ll see more of those human rights cases directed at the obligations of states, but then a lot also on corporates and what corporates need to do.
And trying to fix lots of the absolutely egregious practices that are underway. We’ve got a really, really exciting case live in the US at the moment, which is about unplugged oil and gas wells. There are 2.1m unplugged oil and gas wells across the US and the reason for that is that the fossil fuel company owns the oil well, makes all the profit, but towards the end of its life, sells that oil well on to a shell company. And, at the point, when the oil well needs to be plugged, made safe [and] the area around it remediated, that shell company goes bust, right?
And so, essentially, Big Oil are evading what are called their asset retirement obligations through very complex bankruptcy and fraud. And, so, we are bringing a case on behalf of Colorado landowners who often are faced with the impacts and the costs of this pollution, and our case is really designed to shift that accountability, so really making a reality of the polluter pays principle. Saying, “actually, it’s not OK to put private profit at the expense of public good, and your business model will be very, very different if you actually have to account for the damage that you’re doing, environmentally, for asset retirement obligations”. All these things. And that will actually shift how the economics of it work and that will help accelerate action.
CB: It is presumably easier to win over public sympathy for a case, if you’re dealing with local pollution, even if it’s a Trojan horse for a wider atmospheric pollution issue, it’s actually the local element…
LC: It’s very local and so what happens is, when Big Oil evades its asset retirement obligations, that lands on the local authorities, on the taxpayer, on the local landowners. And we’re talking about massive methane leaks. We’re talking about poisoning of the local land [and] kids getting ill. It’s a very, very real issue. And, actually, it points also to a really interesting point about the leverage of successful climate litigation.
So the costs to the US of these unplugged oil and gas wells is estimated to be $1.5bn in terms of the climate impact, the health impact, the pollution [and] the cost of cleaning it up. [So], if we succeed in in shifting the accountability for just 10% of those oil and gas wells, then that’s $150m saved, right? And our case costs $1.5m, so there’s a bit of maths there.
But the point is, if you can shift through corporate law, shift some of these corporate practices that are totally unjust, then you’re really getting to a point where the playing field is more level between the fossil fuels of the past and the energy of the future.
CB: Talking of corporates, we’re in this era of ESG [environmental, social and governance] backlash. And it feels like we’ve gone in recent years from a sort of dynamic of greenwashing amongst corporates to a kind of greenhushing. And how is that all affecting your work at ClientEarth, that sort of shift backlash against ESG?
LC: So I think what’s important to hold on to – whatever the political weather, whether ESG is in or out, what doesn’t change, a bit like gravity, is the materiality of climate risk, right? What will climate change mean for your business, for your operations, for your bottom line [and] what is your long-term commercial viability?
And there’s an amazing open letter written in March by people representing 50% of the UK’s food industry, talking about the materiality of climate risk and biodiversity risk for the food industry at large.
It’s a huge issue for companies everywhere and sometimes they might be doing less in terms of the PR and posturing around it, but any company that is thinking seriously about its long-term commercial viability is thinking about climate and biodiversity risk. They’re putting steps in place and they should also be advocating for the right regulation so that it is a level playing field.
CB: ClientEarth operates in a variety of countries. How does ClientEarth interact with environmental law enforcement in countries with more closed judicial systems, such as China?
LC: Yes, we work very differently in different places. And that’s really important. So, in Europe, we do lots of litigation advocacy.
In China, it’s a very different model. We’re there at the invitation of the Supreme Court of China. We’ve been there for a long time now and [have] been training environmental judges in environmental law, because it’s not enough to have the right laws in place. You need to make sure that those are enforced. And we’ve also been supporting the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in developing public interest environmental litigation.
So we’re not doing the litigation ourselves. We’re bringing our expertise from the rest of the world to support them. And, actually, the results are really quite amazing in terms of the number of cases that have been brought now by public-interest litigators in China focused on pollution, cleaning up the rivers [and] cleaning up air pollution. Most recently, we supported a case on mist nets that trap birds. So, mist nets that are used in agriculture and trap and kill birds.
So it’s a very different way of working. We work very much in collaboration with the authorities. You know, with the permission of the authorities, the invitation of the authorities, having a really, really significant impact.
And another thing we did was provide advice on no longer financing coal in the “belt and road initiative”. And that was a decision that went all the way up through the authorities, and then was implemented. And so the avoided emissions, avoided fossil-fuel infrastructure from that is important, too.
So it’s all about working out where we can have the greatest impact? Where do we need to be and how do we need to work in that context to get the greatest return for the planet?
CB: I suspect not everyone knows this about ClientEarth, but, in 2019, before your time as CEO, admittedly, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour kind of famously auctioned off some of his guitars and gave all the proceeds to support your work. I think it was reported at the time that it raised something like $21m or something incredible.
So, how has that gift been used? I mean, that probably did massively transform the finances and opportunities for ClientEarth. But how does that actually trickle into your work downstream?
LC: Oh, it’s been hugely important, and it was the most amazing gift from David Gilmour that has enabled us to scale what we do, to expand [and] to expand internationally.
So we now have a much larger presence in China. We’ve opened a programmatic office in the US. We’ve been able to build our teams here, but also build our capability around our communications, our fundraising, for example. So it’s just strengthened us as an organisation.
But, importantly, also we’ve used it to really develop our ability to innovate and to bring really, really exciting test cases. So, hugely, hugely important. It’s led to a sort of very rapid growth, which sometimes brings problems, but it’s been hugely valuable in terms of the impact that we can have.
CB: You personally have a very interesting CV with time deployed as a diplomat across lots of locations with a variety of, actually, environmental impacts, notably from climate change, which must have been apparent to you in your role at those times. How have those experiences shaped your current role at ClientEarth and your sort of thinking in your role?
LC: Yes, I loved being a diplomat and I often say that diplomacy, at its best, it’s about the art of the possible. How do you build connections? How do you understand other people? How do you collaborate to effect change? And I really think about this work as the art of the possible. Yes, sometimes we carry a big stick of litigation, but it’s always about thinking creatively. If we use the law at the right place at the right time, how can we get to these positive tipping points for us to accelerate the change we need?
And I think what I bring is that sense of, how do we collaborate? How can we be creative and use the law in a creative way? But, importantly, how do we build those friendships, networks [and] influence? Because none of this – this is all a team sport, right?
These problems that we face are so all-encompassing. The law plays one part, but it has to be with business, with government, with the science, with the arts and culture, the hearts-and-mind piece. And so how do we all come at these issues collectively, but from different angles to really try and drive the change that’s needed.
CB: I think you’ll be able to list all your postings. But you’ve got experience in Oceania, Asia, Africa, wherever, all over the planet in terms of those climate impacts. Where can you remember occasions or locations where it’s been almost like an epiphany moment, where you’ve seen real impact?
LC: Yes, I mean, it’s always been a huge focus for me, but it was when I was in New Zealand – I was high commissioner to New Zealand and high commissioner to Samoa and governor of the Pitcairn Islands. And when you spend a lot of time in the South Pacific and you go to these small island developing states – and I didn’t just go to Samoa, I travelled all around the Pacific in my role – climate change there is existential, you know. They’ve got no time for culture wars, [no questioning whether] is it happening? Is it not? It is an existential and a day-to-day lived reality, whether that’s about sea level rise, whether it’s about their economy [or] whether it’s a loss of livelihoods. And so that, for me, made me want to work on these issues full-time.
But I also saw, from my role as governor of Pitcairn, I saw the impact of plastic pollution. So Henderson Island in Pitcairn is one of the most plastic-polluted territories in the world, even though it’s uninhabited, and we did a lot of work there to clean up the plastic, study its impact on the natural environment [and] communicate that to the world.
And then, on the other side, on the more positive side, Pitcairn has got a massive marine protected area and we did a lot of science expeditions studying what the effect is of that marine protected area on the health of the oceans and marine life there, which was really, really inspiring.
And so I sort of came, thinking holistically about these issues [and] the art of the possible. But, you know, it’s not just about climate. It’s about everything. It’s about how we live our lives, how businesses operate [and] how governments think. How do we get away from that short-term thinking to thinking in the longer intergenerational sort of ways, is really important.
CB: So, final question. As we head towards COP30, I’m intrigued about two things: what ClientEarth’s role will be at COP30, but also, how do you think Brazil’s domestic politics might affect the outcome? I’m thinking particularly of the dynamics behind Brazil’s devastation bill, which I believe ClientEarth has been actively focused on.
LC: Look, I think it’s really, really challenging to have those dynamics domestically. And [Brazilian president] Lula did veto – well, veto or amended – that bill, but we mended the most devastating elements of it. But, clearly, the politics there is really hard. You’re seeing a lot in terms of new permits being issued for oil-and-gas extraction. So that’s really hard. It hampers a [COP] presidency.
It’s not the first time, of course, that a presidency has been holding multiple truths in its hands at the same time; that importance of international climate coordination and then the sort of messy domestic politics. But, you know, it’s really critical at this COP30 that we do see countries come together with ambition and not just putting forward new nationally determined contributions, but really having a plan for what that looks like in the real world.
It’s one thing to make a commitment internationally. It’s another thing to turn that into real-world changes.
And ClientEarth has been advocating, along with global legislators and WWF, for a next generation of climate laws, because that’s really how you close that gap between the international commitment and the real world change, and how you provide certainty, predictability for businesses, for all of the economy. And so we’ve supported a number of countries on their climate laws. We’re advocating for other countries to adopt next-generation climate laws to really make a reality of those international commitments.
CB: Is there a particular country where you think that effort is most needed on climate law? Can you think of…
LC: There are a number, and when we’re seeing, and I mean, for example, Turkey recently agreed its first-ever climate law. But there are others where it would be hugely beneficial, where there are still no climate laws, and others where it needs updating.
CB: OK, Laura, thank you so much for taking the time.
LC: It’s been a pleasure. Really nice, really nice to talk to you. Thanks a lot.
The post The Carbon Brief Interview: ClientEarth CEO Laura Clarke appeared first on Carbon Brief.
With governments due to announce ambitious emissions reduction targets at a UN summit in New York this week, the UN climate chief warned on Monday they will not add up to what is needed to keep global warming to the limits in the Paris Agreement.
Countries were asked by the UN climate change body to publish their new national climate plans (NDCs) by the end of September, in time to be included in a key summary report next month comparing those pledges with the global cuts scientists say are needed.
With around 110 countries lined up to speak at UN headquarters on Wednesday, a clearer picture will start to emerge on the scale of the gap between emissions-cutting targets and the reductions in planet-heating gases required to meet the 1.5C warming limit – 43% below 2019 levels by 2030 and 60% by 2035.
The European Union was unable to meet the September deadline because of political differences and will only present a range described as a “statement of intent” in New York this week.
China, meanwhile, is not expected to deliver an NDC that would align its efforts with the 1.5C limit. Heads of state from India and Indonesia are not scheduled to participate in the New York summit and so are likely to announce their plans later.
“We know [the NDCs] are going to be softer than what science dictates,” the UN’s climate head Simon Stiell told the opening of Climate Week in New York.
At the COP30 climate negotiations in Brazil in November, he added, “the focus… will not be what countries have presented, but how will they respond to those submissions – and that primary response is about accelerating implementation [of the NDCs], just getting it done.”
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Complex process delivering results
Despite the expected emissions gap, growing criticism of the UN climate process, and rising global temperatures, Stiell maintained that the 2015 Paris Agreement is working to curb global warming. Projections before it was adopted suggesting a 5C rise are now down to around 3C.
“It is slower than science dictates. It is a very, very complex process, but it is delivering results,” he said. His agency’s upcoming report will show how much further warming estimates can be lowered towards the 1.5C goal, he added.
“We won’t be at 1.5 but we… will have inched forward, so progress is being made,” he added.
The company tracking energy transition minerals back to the mines
Speaking alongside COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago, both men called for more effort to translate the decisions made by the UN process into stronger climate action in the world outside. For that to happen, they said, the benefits need to be communicated more clearly to the wider public.
“What I believe is important is for people to have confidence in the process,” Corrêa do Lago said. “We have to show that there are solutions, and we have to show that it is economically intelligent logic and useful to fight climate change – for jobs, for development. And I think this message is not fully perceived.”
The veteran Brazilian diplomat added that he hoped the “action agenda” at COP30, which aims to encourage businesses, cities and citizens to ramp up action on climate change, would make the mission more popular.
Stiell agreed, saying one key challenge is to “dejargonise” the COP negotiations, which are notoriously hard for those on the outside to understand, because of their long texts laden with difficult language and fractious discussions. “It is making what we’re doing more consumable in living rooms,” he said.
Spreading the renewable energy boom
In a separate speech on Monday afternoon, the UN climate chief said that, despite the negative “noise”, “the facts show a world aligning with the Paris Agreement”.
He emphasised how investment in renewable energy has increased ten-fold in the past 10 years, with investment in clean energy hitting $2 trillion last year alone and more than 90% of new renewables now costing less than the cheapest new fossil fuel option.
“But this boom is uneven. Its vast benefits are not shared by all,” he added. “Meanwhile, climate disasters are hitting every economy and society harder each year.”
Stiell called on industry to step up its efforts to decarbonise, saying the transition would lead to “stronger economies, more resilient supply chains, lower costs and lower emissions”.
IEA says some oil and gas projects must shut early to meet 1.5C limit
In particular, he urged companies running artificial intelligence (AI) platforms to “power it with renewables, and innovate to drive energy efficiency”. He warned of the need to “blunt its dangerous edges” and to use its power “to drive real-world outcomes: managing microgrids, mapping climate risk, guiding resilient planning”.
Speaking separately at the Climate Week opening, Mark Patel, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, said the urgency to scale up AI – which is set for investment of $5.2 trillion by the end of the decade – is currently reigniting demand for fossil fuels and competing for natural resources.
But, he added, it could instead be used to drive accelerated uptake of renewables and cheap battery storage, as well as nuclear energy and more efficient semiconductors.
Stiell argued that if the real economy powers forward with climate solutions and the UN talks set a higher bar for that action, with both feeding through to the other, it could lead to “a kind of virtuous loop”.
The post UN climate chief says new national climate plans will fall short on emissions cuts appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN climate chief says new national climate plans will fall short on emissions cuts
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