272: COP29 Live: From Call to Action

Tom: [00:04:04] How are we going to get on top of the finance agenda. My name is Tom Rivett-Carnac and we are joined, honoured to be joined by two world leaders to get into this discussion in the next half an hour. Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados, of course, has fundamentally changed the nature of this debate two years ago, when the Bridgetown Initiative was launched in September 2022, its third iteration, it brings together a set of reforms to make the global financial system fairer, more equitable and more able to deal with shocks. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, recently appointed with the new Labour government, has a long track record of leadership in climate and justice, and you have made very clear that you want to centralize climate and nature in your work. And the UK, of course, is a G7 country, centre of the world's largest sustainable financial centre, is in a very strong and powerful position to be a real ally in this agenda. So this discussion is about the pivot to action and implementation. And let's kick off, if that's all right with you, Prime Minister. The Bridgetown Initiative has genuinely changed the debate in the course of the last couple of years. But the world has changed a lot, including what's happened in the last couple of weeks. How's it going?

Mia Mottley: [00:05:16] I think we're doing okay. We're moving in the right direction. But the problem is, as I've said, almost like a parrot for the last two years, we need speed and we need skill. And regrettably, in the absence of speed and skill, we're not going to make it. The persons running in a 100 metre race are all going in the same direction, but one is going to come first and one is going to come last. And therefore, unless you have speed, you're not going to get there. Scale is necessary because if we are only tackling one aspect of the problem, then it means that we're not in a position to move the entire range of things. And essentially we're trying to make our countries and our people more resilient because whether we like it or not, we are almost in a new reality with respect to where the temperatures are. If we can get a global methane agreement, we might be able to dip it back down a half a degree. But in the absence of that, this is our new reality. And therefore we do need scale and we do need speed. But let's see what happens here.

Tom: [00:06:32] And Foreign Secretary, you've been very clear coming into this post, despite an intense in-tray, you're going to continue to center climate and nature. You talked about that in your Kew speech. What are your priorities as Foreign Secretary coming here? And how does UK leadership domestically translate into credibility and leadership around the world?

David Lammy: [00:06:52] Well, I've got to begin by saying that Mia Mottley is a dear friend, and it was wonderful to watch and be inspired by her leadership when my party was in opposition. We were in opposition for 14 years, so you'll forgive me, I just want to sit here and soak up being a Labour Foreign Secretary representing the United Kingdom. And, and obviously, we have come in absolutely determined to be really clear that for a P5 nation, the United Kingdom recognizes the responsibility we have both domestically and internationally, to lead in relation to the climate emergency. It's why immediately Ed Miliband walked through the door we made all of those series of changes. The ban on onshore wind gone. The, our commitment to see no more, oil and gas licences in the North Sea, granted. Our determination to be a, or to lead and to be part of a clean power alliance. Being really clear, setting up GB energy, the first publicly owned company of its sort in the UK for 75 years. So domestically, we're really clear. We want to cut people's bills and we think that clean energy is the way to do that.

David Lammy: [00:09:02] And internationally, what I've sought to do is to absolutely say that in a Labour Foreign Office, building on the work of my predecessor, Robin Cook, who was the first Foreign Secretary to centre climate. When you look at these problems around the world and you see these problems without passports, people fleeing areas that are hugely suffering famine, conflict being driven, migration, these problems without passports. You recognise that any foreign ministry has to centre climate has to understand the key connectivity of climate. So that's what I sought to do in my Kew lecture. And obviously I am delighted to be building on that. You know, the event I just did on forests and tenure rights for indigenous people, it's really powerful for me as a UK Foreign Secretary, to come alongside indigenous communities to fund and support their work, recognising the commitment of biodiversity in nature and actually in a in a, non-partisan way, building on the work of say, Zac Goldsmith in the last government. So I'm delighted to be here, delighted to share a stage. We haven't even got to climate finance yet, but there's a lot to do.

Tom: [00:10:39] Fantastic. Thank you, thank you.

Mia Mottley: [00:10:41] I was about to say to David that he may want to also build on some of the stuff that Andrew Mitchell did. And the truth is that when we were fighting for natural disaster clauses to be included in debt agreements, not only did the World Bank respond positively in the last year under the new president, but Andrew would also have ensured that the UK export agencies have also started to include the natural disaster clauses in your agreements. The truth is that we need now to standardize it not just for public sector loans, but also for private sector, because one of the reasons why we know that we're going in the right direction with that is that the lender is kept whole and not have to worry about whether we will default or not with a climate crisis event and we are given the elbow room, in our case it is 17 to 18% of GDP over two years. There is no country nor entity that is going to give us 17 to 18% of GDP to recover and rebuild after a climatic event.

Tom: [00:11:59] So, so, so let's get into that, because I think what you're touching on there, Bridgetown is now in its third iteration. I think a major part of what you've called for is changing the rules of the game, the structural underpinnings that disadvantage countries like yours, particularly when it comes to extreme weather events. I'd love to hear you set that out just just before you do, David, I think just to follow up on what you just said, one of the interesting things about the approach you're taking is we have seen the impact of not bringing domestic populations with us on progressive global agendas and the way that your government is talking about cost of living, I think gives us a platform that is being watched very carefully here around how you're able to bring the UK with you on that agenda. But Prime Minister, let's let's get into Bridgetown 3.0, changing the rules of the game. How would you set out what you're calling for there?

Mia Mottley: [00:12:42] Well let's be real. When the rules were set, our countries did not even exist as countries independently, and therefore in many instances, decisions are made without reference to whether the impact on us is positive or negative. So we begin first from the perspective that if you don't know our reality, you can't lead for us in that respect. And we do believe that there is a valid case, for example, for small island developing states to have a voice on the boards of these entities, whether it's the IMF or the World Bank. We've seen changes. Kristalina has done well in bringing in another country from sub-Saharan Africa. But there needs to be more change. With respect to the other aspects of the governance and the rules. The banks and the multilateral development banks. And the fund will tell you about the impact that the credit rating agencies have on them. And it is clear that unless we have discussions with all players at the table, we're not going to change the system. Thirdly, we need to change the rules of the game as to what determines access to concessional funding or not. We fully support low income countries having access to IDA money. And against that backdrop, we want to encourage David, you and others to be able to ensure that we can be successful with the IDA replenishment next month.

Mia Mottley: [00:14:09] And really and truly, in a world with more than enough money, we should not be coming short of the 120 billion that we set for IDA. But when we leave the IDA countries, we want to stop countries that have come out of poverty from going back into poverty. And if we don't change the rules of the game for them, we will send them back into poverty. The reality is that we need, as vulnerable middle income countries, longer terms for capital and more affordable capital. We need also to have natural capital taken into account in the assessment of GDP. We need to be able to look at how our biodiversity losses can also be included. Look, Barbados has been able in the last two and a half years, we did a successful debt for nature swap, where we issued blue bonds that have allowed us to earn about 50 to 60 million US over a 15 year period to be able to finance a marine sustainability trust. And we did that with Nature Conservancy and the Inter-American Development Bank. We're now in the process of closing a debt for climate swap with the same Inter-American Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and the Green Climate Fund and some private commercial banks. And we've been able to do that by thinking outside of the box and changing how we view by Repurchasing elements of our debt, and out of the savings that we get, we will refinance a completely new sewage treatment plant for our South Coast that will allow us to replenish the aquifers with the treated water, and also to use it for non leafy green agriculture in a different part of the country. I give these examples both at the academic level and at the practical level, to show you that if we do business as we were doing it for decades, we're not going to get where we need to get. But if we change the approach in terms of who we see and if we change the approach in terms of not using per capita GNI to determine access, that is as useful, as I said, as taking my blood pressure from two years ago to determine if I'm vulnerable to a heart attack today, it is a complete waste of time, and we continue to use measurements that don't track vulnerability when in truth and in fact, it is the vulnerability that will determine whether we go back into poverty or whether we stay out of poverty. And remember, 70% of poor people don't live in poor countries. They live in middle income countries.

Tom: [00:16:53] Please, yeah. I mean, I think, Prime Minister, whenever you talk about this, you obviously you focus on the injustices, but you also look in this inspiring way in the pathways in which finance can really unlock opportunities, which is partly why you've been so successful in changing the debate. Foreign Secretary, coming in, hearing this list of, you know, around governance, around access to capital, what's your agenda internationally? How can the UK support these kinds of calls from Barbados and others?

David Lammy: [00:17:21] Well, we've got to get beyond the words to the actions. And the only way we're going to achieve that is through a commitment to internationalism and multilateralism and and fairness. And so I insist on that fairness component, particularly in relation to this agenda. And I acknowledge, what Mia Mottley has said, and that is that to tackle the systemic reform or the systemic problem, we will need reform in the system itself. And the UK is committed to playing its part in that reform. So let me just think about we've been in government now four months, you've seen what we have set out to do domestically. But let's just talk about the international context particularly, we in the United Kingdom welcome the African Union presence at the G20, which will be very important indeed. And I was very proud to speak alongside, African foreign ministers in New York in September. We support and have supported a third exec board seat for Africa on the IMF, this is essential if we want to achieve the global reform that we want to see in the IMF now will match the World Bank. We're not going to get the MDB reform unless there is a seat at the table, as Mia has been pushing for. And we also switched to supporting an International Maritime Organization levy to raise finance from the shipping industry, to pay for climate and development, an area that was long neglected. And we will continue to shore up and show support, often forgotten for regional development banks. I've got an event in a few moments with the Asian Development Bank, a bit later, but there's much, much more that we will need to do over the coming months and years.

David Lammy: [00:19:40] I've been in politics now, I know I don't look like it, but for 24 years and at the beginning of that journey, I remember, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, people like Desmond Tutu, the Church of England and wonderful NGOs coming together to really do something about the debt that was facing the developing world. To get to a place where some of that debt, not all of it, but some of it was restructured and we saw it beginning to come down. I have to say that 24 years later, it's a huge challenge and rather depressing that that debt issue is back, alongside the huge interest rates, the nature of that debt is now more complex. So the way we gather around the table as governments, as banks, as philanthropy, as private enterprise, to deal with that debt requires a degree of multilateralism. But multilateralism beyond just governments to address it. And clearly we recognise that the UK has a role to play in convening and pushing for change in that area. I also think the  
World Bank shareholding review and the discussions around the quota review are going to be very important going forward. And the other area that we raised in opposition as Labour. It came up particularly following the war in Ukraine and our real concerns around, oligarchy, plutocracy and illicit finance means that there's a lot of money being wasted and we need to address corruption and illicit finance and the role that major economies play in that story if we're serious about this issue. So we are in this space in just four months, but we recognize that there is more to do if we're serious about the agenda that has been set out.

Tom: [00:21:54] Thank you, Foreign Secretary. So I'd like to talk a little bit about like disaster relief, particularly recovery from shocks, which has been so fundamental to what you have put forward. But I don't know if you want to respond to that very interesting point about the pernicious nature of the attempt to deal with the debt issue, which you're right, I mean, 24 years ago, it felt like we had momentum. And how do we regain that?

Mia Mottley: [00:22:15] Well Barbados is now chairing the V20 countries, the Climate Vulnerable Forum, and there are 70 countries in there. And we have determined that as we deal with climate, we have to deal with debt and we have to deal with climate and health because of how, the new the reality of what will happen with new diseases and new pathogens coming about. I believe that it is a timely discussion for us to review the debt situation. In some instances, countries just need a shot of liquidity, like you get a shot of adrenaline to be able to avoid the worst medical outcome. Countries, some of them with that shot of adrenaline, can come back on the straight and narrow. There are some, however, who will need deeper surgery and deeper restructuring of the debt, and I believe that it is the morally right thing to do. And for us to have the discussions, because these countries have not gotten into that situation by accident, they have gotten there one, as a result of facing a polycrisis moment, and two, that in many instances, the increased interest rates have been as a result of the quantitative easing and other expenditure in the Northern Atlantic countries that have had a huge impact on the global economy. So when you have a country whose debt was manageable within the context of the pre-pandemic, and then all of a sudden in the post pandemic, they are carried to the edge of a crisis, I think we generally ought to have an appropriate conversation.

Mia Mottley: [00:23:58] From my own country's perspective, we can bring back down debt overnight, but if we lose the investments in the social capital and in the critical areas of keeping our country secure and stable, it will take a generation to bring back down those countries. And that is why it is the morally correct thing to do. And I leave here to go to have a discussion with the Pope in the Vatican tomorrow. And it is certainly something that we will continue to reinforce, because I believe that if the United Kingdom and the Vatican and a number of other entities can say, look, it is time for a Jubilee moment again, then I think that we will be doing the right thing by those people who come to be on the front line, not through their own making, but through the actions of others. And it brings me to the next point very quickly. David mentioned the issue of the possibilities for what can happen in the IMO with shipping. A year ago when I raised this in Dubai, everybody thought I was crazy and we now have for the first time the IMO, genuinely discussing what potentially can be raised not just for this alone, but the truth is keeping it in the context of what they're about, which is coastal infrastructure, which is coastal resilience, which is shipping that is greener. All of those things are necessary. But what is the underlying connecting thread? It's not even climate alone.

Mia Mottley: [00:25:30] It is that we need a global public commons, and that there must be a guardian of the global public commons, whether it is a climate crisis or the loss of biodiversity, or the immediate issues of food and water insecurity. Whether it is a pandemic, the traditional ones, or the slow motion, silent pandemic of antimicrobial resistance that is already claiming the third largest number of lives globally. Whether it is the technical digital divide and the unregulated role of AI and its impact on consolidating wealth and therefore inequity in our countries, we need to step back. We're looking at the trees there. We need to step back and stop seeing trees and see the forest for what it is. The world is at risk of too many difficult moments if it does not take care of the Global Commons and the World Bank, if it was to be established today and I do not tire in saying so, would be responsible for dealing with today's challenges and not the challenges of 80 years ago. So President Banga has carried us in that direction. But the political leadership of those countries who serve on the boards need now to send it, even at a faster pace, to be able to be that entity that can be the guardian of global public commons. If we do that, let's come now to the climate, which is one of those issues. The climate issues, if we do not have enough public money, the UK is facing a fiscal crisis, you just had a budget that has been contentious, but in my view is going in the right direction. You have France. You have the US. You have all of the others being warned by the IMF. So there is the reality that you do not have enough public money to close the gap within the time frame that we have to close the gap, and therefore what is needed is a recognition that there are many multinational corporations whose balance sheet dwarfs probably two thirds of the world's countries. If we use a simple principle that the polluter must pay, then we ask people, look, I'm not trying to place a disproportionate burden or to bankrupt any company, but if you leave 3 or $0.04 in a dollar or $0.05 in a dollar of what you are doing on the table because you have helped to contribute to the problem, be it fossil fuel, be it shipping, be it airlines, or if you are benefiting egregiously from the solution, in other words, your rate of return is likely to be more than 20%. Then both of you leave something on the table that will allow us to be able to develop the pool of funds necessary for adaptation. The evidence is there. For every dollar we spend in building resilience, we save 5 to $7 in losses. And CARICOM countries, for example, have had to pay out 18 more times more than they have received, largely because of the continuous losses. And people only see hurricanes.

Mia Mottley: [00:28:50] But let's talk about drought. Let's talk about sargassum seaweed that affects whether a hotel can get people coming or not, because of the noxious smells of the seaweed right there. Those didn't exist 12 years ago. Let's talk about convection rain that after midday every day in my country now, from July to December, dark clouds with an intensity of rain that my public infrastructure was never designed to be able to accommodate, so that we need to tap in to new sources of funding beyond public money. And let's come to philanthropy. You get to spend 100 cents and a dollar on what you like, and that's your right because it's your money. But if we live on the planet Earth, then everybody needs to create a little space. And if they spend 95 or $0.96 on what they love and $0.04 or $0.05 on what the world needs, then all of a sudden we have a doable plan that can allow us to meet the needs. It's recurring funding in the case of shipping. You put the formula of what we've put there. We did a op ed this weekend with President Macron Emmanuel and President Ruto and myself did an op ed. We are getting not the one off 100 billion that was promised that wasn't delivered. We are getting money every year to meet the needs of our country every year in building the resilience. And remember, as I keep saying, finance is not the destination. Pardon the pun, it is the fuel.

Tom: [00:30:24] I mean, fantastic, and I think what so, Foreign Secretary, what has been said out there is a very politically aware narrative that this money is not going to come from passing the hat around in developed countries every few years, and the political impacts of that can be quite difficult to deliver right. So the innovative financial mechanisms that can raise resources, you've talked about shipping already. Is that your view of how we move towards a restructured economy that can actually raise the resources necessary to get us to where we need to go?

David Lammy: [00:30:57] Well, if this debate is an old style debate that is about governments like the UK, using taxpayers money to fund this hole, we will not achieve what we need to achieve, on that, we agree. And of course, Mia Mottley is acutely aware of the fiscal environment in the UK, recognises the budget and recognises the constraints we have. Nevertheless, we need leadership within that and I'll come back to that. But a country like the UK has leverage. My first day in office I was speaking to Caribbean leaders because of Hurricane Beryl. Now Hurricane Beryl was devastating for Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines particularly, and that particular region of the Eastern Caribbean. This is a small example. So what we what we did, knowing that this is a region that experienced hurricanes, you set up a Caribbean fund, you leverage the City of London and insurance. We have that fund now. We were able to pay out and I've got the figure in front of me. 76 million in support. If you sit that alongside, of course, the work that the World Bank's got to do on the climate resilient debt clauses. If you sit it alongside the work that begins and must go on on adaptation, then you start to build a story that then has got to sit alongside philanthropy. I get the sense that philanthropy is up for it, when I speak to Bezos, I speak to the Ford Foundation. That's the sense that I, that I get. But you're right. Multinationals and others need leadership. They take that from government. They must step up to the plate as well. And we use our leverage to bring that about.

Mia Mottley: [00:33:05] That David would be on top of the public money that's there. We're just not asking for a scaling up of public money because we know the room isn't there. But what we don't want is a scaling down either.

David Lammy: [00:33:17] 100%. I can't determine what happens in every government across the developed world, but I can obviously be at the table of the UK government and demonstrate influence in relation to this debate. But just a few other areas, which is important, it does mean that you have to commit to clean power. It does mean that when Mia talks about the IDA replenishment, that's serious. You will see, I'm quite sure, from the UK a serious commitment to IDA. I indicated that at Kew. There's more coming. Watch this space. It does mean judge us by our NDC commitment. You will see a serious commitment. I'd get told off if I anticipated what Keir Starmer is going to say a little bit later on this afternoon, but you will see ambition from the United Kingdom in terms of our own ambition and therefore the permission and the leadership that you require of others to step into the place and get serious. All of that creates the environment for the private sector to step up alongside, for the banks to step up alongside, for philanthropy, to step up alongside. So it is about leadership and it's about partnership. So it's not just that sense of, those in the global South, those particularly who are, developing states, hectoring and pressuring and having no influence. It is about the genuine partnership that I think we're seeing, France, Kenya, Barbados coming together and of course, the United Kingdom stepping into the mix. Now, I wish I could say that we had arrived in a place where, the politics of this subject were kind of unassailable and didn't suffer the vicissitudes of elected democracy. I don't think we've yet arrived there, but I think there are some spaces that are nature, I think there's more consensus on the nature issue, on the oceans agenda, for example. So we are making progress and steady steps I'm sure, we will get there over the next five years or so.

Tom: [00:35:55] Thank you. And so good to point out those, those, bipartisan areas where we are going to continue to see momentum because obviously we're going into quite a different world in many of these different areas for lots of reasons. Prime Minister, you will leave tomorrow, but the work here will go on. This is a this is a sort of a quite a mature debate around how we're going to try and address this finance issue. Has that translated into what's happening in the UNFCCC, and what do you hope to see by the end of this COP from a finance perspective?

Mia Mottley: [00:36:24] Part of the difficulty is that we really need to see what will happen with the NCQG's and I don't want to predict or to pretend that I have a eye into the future. I don't, but what I do know is this is that what we don't do here has to carry over to Brazil, and we need to be very practical. This COP, these COPs have been framed more as media events, regrettably, than substantive governance events. And that's why I feel that there is an urgent need for reform. I believe that these first two days for leaders ought not to be a forum when leaders are making speeches without reference to everyone else, but ought to be a dedicated leader's caucus for us to be able to find where the common commonalities are with respect to political will, and where the differences are, so that we are then in a position to give our technical people the appropriate mandates to conclude what needs to be concluded with the rest of the time. This is critical to reform after 30 COPs next year, we can't keep doing things the same way when everything else around us has changed. Secondly, I genuinely believe that it is going to be important for us to understand where countries truly are, and I am not one of those who will come out and say immediately that with the election of President Trump, all is gloom and doom. I don't believe so, and I believe that we need to find mechanisms, even if he does pull out of the Paris Agreement to have the conversations because there is no aspect of economic activity globally, or there is no aspect of diplomatic activity globally that can function without reference to the climate.

Mia Mottley: [00:38:26] We've seen it across every jurisdiction, how we are being impacted. And even as the US were going into elections, they were recovering from two hurricanes in the same state within a matter of weeks, and they were fighting fires in California. The reality is, whether we like it or not, that we may have to tweak some of the conversation to meet the fact that not all of global leaders are in the same position. And what do I mean by that? There may well be a valid conversation for increasing the amount of funding in a warp speed way, as was done with vaccines by President Trump with respect to decarbonising technology for the fossil fuel industry, but at commercial scale. Now, if you want to hold on to larger aspects of fossil fuel, the issue has never been fossil fuels. The issue has always been the impact of carbon on the environment as a result of fossil fuels. So let's start with a global methane agreement. If we accept that methane can cause the greatest harm now to carrying us to 1.5 and over, then controlling methane is critical. Last year in Dubai, we had a voluntary compact with oil companies stepping forward with the president of COP that needs to change to a global agreement, just as we had with the Montreal Protocol dealing with CFCs, and see how far we've come in the last three decades in being able to control it.

Mia Mottley: [00:39:53] Explain to me which oil company is going to ignore the fact that if you fix leaks, you earn more money, and if you stop flaring gas, you earn more money. But you're not only earning money, you're helping to save the environment by ensuring that the methane doesn't catapult us in to higher temperatures. And similarly, if we can get the World Bank changing how people farm, whether it is rice, paddy farming or livestock farming, and deal differently with waste management, all of a sudden, instead of hurtling forward, we can probably, according to the scientists claim back a half a degree. Now, that's the kind of conversation we can have with President Trump, and that's the kind of conversation we can have with those other countries who are not quite where the United Kingdom is today. And that is what I want us to see going forward. This is not a single event world, climate is not a single event activity. These are just the opportunities when we pause from doing other things to focus here. So if we are not as successful coming out of this as we would like, we have to make it right going into the next one and in between. But I do feel we need to change how we do business in these arrangements.

Tom: [00:41:09] Fantastic. Thank you, Prime Minister. So I want to be respectful of time. We have just a couple more minutes. Foreign Secretary, I don't know if you want to make any closing remarks or respond to what the Prime Minister has said, and then we'll give you the chance to make a closing comment.

David Lammy: [00:41:19] Well, look, I, I think that, I'm hugely excited that an agenda that started out as 1.0, has become 3.0, that, it starts out in a small island state and it starts to be adopted by big, significant P5 nations. And I'm pleased that the United Kingdom is part of that journey. That notwithstanding some of the woe that you will pick up because politics moves and changes that, we begun this event by acknowledging my conservative colleagues Zac Goldsmith and Andrew Mitchell, and areas where there's common ground between us. We go back to that global common set of goals and purpose, that here we are, I think this is the second biggest COP in terms of those arriving. Philanthropy is here. NGOs are here. Ordinary people and activists are here. Enterprise is here, as well as governments and leaders. And that actually, I'm excited about this next period. I recognize that there are serious challenges. Of course there are challenges. Of course we have to push and shove to go faster. No doubt about that. And that's why you need extremely articulate global leaders, to, to get that pressure. But it is there. It is happening. And actually I'm a little bit more hopeful as we start at this COP, than say a couple of years ago where things felt quite tough. So I say keep hope alive, keep the pressure up, keep making the argument. And the denialism actually is is falling away.

Mia Mottley: [00:43:24] I do want to say to David and to the current UK government, thank you for landing ready to do work. And I say so because they have been consistent, whether at his level or through Secretary Miliband or through Prime Minister Sir Keir, that they are wanting to help lead this debate globally. And that's exactly what we need at this point in time. I say simply as well that that simple matter of special drawing rights appropriately utilized by countries can make a difference to a number of climate vulnerable countries through repurposing them through the regional development banks. So whether it's the Caribbean Development Bank or the Asian Development Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank or the African Development Bank. Once you put the SDRs in there, because of the extent to which they're leveraged, it then means that those SDRs will in fact go much further than if you were to give it to Barbados, or if you were to give it to Trinidad and Tobago. And that, I think, has to be the kind of movement that the UK needs to encourage its other board members, who would have received the majority of the Special Drawing Rights coming out of the IMF, what Kristalina did when the pandemic hit and giving that injection of liquidity was absolutely critical. That's why I said that there are a number of countries that need an adrenaline shot, and if they get that, they can go back to normal business, but regrettably, there is a fatigue that is hitting many of the countries and many of the institutions globally. And if we let that fatigue hit in, or if we're distracted by war or geopolitics or domestic politics, then we are going to find ourselves losing, even if we're going in the right direction, because we will have dropped scale and drop speed.

Tom: [00:45:28] Well, I mean, I have to say, as someone who's been involved in the UN process for decades, mature, serious, solutions focused conversation between two leaders on climate finance is very positive. Thank you both so much. Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, thank you for joining us.

Mia Mottley: [00:45:40] Thank you very much.