353: Who Will Pay? | The Unfair Economics of Climate Finance
Indonesia is one of the world’s largest coal exporters, and it has every natural resource it needs to transition to clean energy. This week we look at why the international finance system is making the transition harder for developing countries and we ask, who pays?
About this episode
This week we acknowledge the US strikes on Iran and the escalation that has followed. The immediate human cost is what matters most right now. But this crisis is unfolding within a global system still shaped by oil markets and fossil fuel dependence - a dependence that amplifies regional instability and turns it into global vulnerability.
The same structural tensions sit at the heart of this week’s conversation, recorded before these events.
Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, one of its largest coal exporters, and a nation with every natural resource it needs to transition to clean energy. The problem isn't will, it’s money. Who it's available to, and on what terms.
Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson are joined by Sri Mulyani Indrawati - Indonesia's former Finance Minister under three different presidents, former Managing Director of the World Bank, and one of the most credible voices in the world on exactly this set of challenges. She walks through what it actually costs to retire a single coal plant years ahead of schedule, why developing countries find themselves trapped by contracts they signed in good faith, and why the international finance system is making the transition harder, not easier.
Countries like Indonesia borrow at far higher rates than wealthier economies, even as they face greater exposure to climate impacts. When that exposure feeds into credit ratings, the cost of capital rises - making clean energy investment more expensive precisely where it is most urgently needed.
In a system that makes decarbonisation harder for the countries most vulnerable to climate impacts, who pays?
Learn More:
🏭 Explore Global Energy Monitor's coal plant tracker for Indonesia's existing and planned capacity
🎧 Listen to our interview with Prime Minister Mia Motley
🏦 Learn about the Bridgetown Agenda and its proposals to reform international development finance
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
Join the conversation:
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Or get in touch with us via this form.
Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Edited by: Miles Martignoni
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
Full Transcript
Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version
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Sri Mulyani Indrawati (guest, former Finance Minister of Indonesia): Hi, everyone.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It's Tom here. We're going to get into the episode in just a second. But before we do, we just wanted to start by acknowledging the remarkable events in Iran over the course of the last week with the US strikes and the subsequent regional escalation. We will get into this in the coming weeks, like so much else that happens in the world. We should, of course, focus on the immediate impacts and how to resolve them. But underneath this lies a deeper story about climate, a deeper story about fossil fuel dependence being a geopolitical vulnerability, about all of us being affected by price spikes as a result of activities in regions well beyond our borders that we don't control. Whether or not this will accelerate or derail the transition to a clean economy will depend largely on the political choices that are made off the back of this. But for now we wanted to acknowledge this major impact. We like you are thinking very much of all of the human beings that are affected by what is happening in that region. But for today we want to turn our attention to another very consequential country and that is Indonesia. And we're bringing you a conversation with Sri Mulyani Indrawati, the former Minister of Finance, who we have wanted to get on the podcast for a long time. So we'll come back to Iran and the Middle East in a future episode. But for today, here is our conversation about Indonesia. Hello and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.
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Christiana Figueres: I'm Christiana Figueres.
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Paul Dickinson: And I'm Paul Dickinson.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Today, we are going to be discussing the challenges and the opportunities of the Just Energy Transition in Indonesia. And we speak to former Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati. Thanks for being here. Okay, friends, so this is a topic we've wanted to do for ages. Indonesia is such a consequential country on the world stage. Paul, I know that you in particular have made the study of Indonesia a major part of your life for the last few years. So we'll turn to you in a minute. But as we know and as many listeners know, the energy demand issues in Indonesia are fundamental. Still using coal, but with ambition to transition. Still deforesting, but with ambition to try to get on top of that. There are many questions around the pathway of how we get to here to there and let's get into them. Paul, why don't we start with you?
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Paul Dickinson: Well, briefly, Indonesia is just an absolutely gigantic country, 288 million people, the fourth most populous country in the world. Very seldom discussed, GDP of about 1.3 trillion, which is large, but only about half the market capitalization of Microsoft. And it has extraordinarily significant coal resources. It produces about 70% of its electricity from coal, 60% to 70%. It is the world's second largest coal exporter after Australia. And it has coal almost overbuilt across much of the central grid, with very long take or pay contracts signed. So, coal is intrinsically part of the electricity system in Indonesia. And it's been really quite difficult for the country to migrate away from coal, because it's sort of oversupplied with very long contracts for the existing coal. And it doesn't have a financial incentive other than the Just Energy Transition Partnership, which was more than 20 billion signed by the US and others. The US has since pulled out of that, and a small amount, one or two billion have been kind of made available. But the government themselves have pulled back from the first coal station to be retired. And so we're in quite a complicated space in Indonesia right now. That's the way I'd set it up.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Christiana, complicated space.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, I think throughout this conversation, listeners will hopefully get a glimpse on the vexing coal conundrum that is the reality in Indonesia, but not only in Indonesia. And it so happens that we're using Indonesia to illustrate this. But the vexing coal conundrum that so many countries have, those that have coal, is that they're stuck with coal because so many of these plants are already running. They don't have the capital either domestically, nor are they getting the international capital to close the coal plants before their lifetime. And they have legal contracts that are actually obligating them to continue producing electricity based on those coal plants. So there's a stuckness here. That's why I call it a vexing conundrum. Because even if politically they want to contribute to the decarbonization and to the energy transition, which so many countries do, they're really stuck at the reality of what they have.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It's such a good point. I mean, if you there's lots of challenges we can talk about, and we'll get into it with Indonesia or that they are facing resource availability is not one of them. It's such a resource rich country with renewables and all other kinds of resources. It's how do those get managed? How do the contracts put in place and how do we move forward? One completely insignificant point that I want to share is that I grew up partly in Indonesia. I lived there for three years. I placed very close to my heart.
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Christiana Figueres: So is this all your problem? Did you cause this problem, Tom? Finally, we can point at someone.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I think there's a limit to how much my nine-year-old self could take responsibility for, but whatever I've done, I'll do my best to fix it. I'll leave it at that. Okay.
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Christiana Figueres: Good job.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Now, I think we should probably go to the... We're going to run this episode a little differently. We're going to have a section of our interview with Sri Mulyani, the former finance minister. Then we're going to be back for a bit more of a chat. Then we're going to play another section. There's a lot to this. And we want to kind of bring you, the listener, with us through it, because it's really important.
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Christiana Figueres: First person to serve as a minister of finance under three different Indonesian presidents.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And three wildly different presidents. I mean, these were like big changes in political winds, and she stayed there. And that's a real testimony to her brilliance, that they all felt she needed to be in position.
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Christiana Figueres: Did we mention that she was managing director at the World Bank and executive director at the International Monetary Fund? I mean, honestly, such an authority on these issues. She was really, for so many years, giving confidence. She was the backbone of economic policy, and to a substantial degree, she was the backbone of climate policy with regard to the energy transition. Just an incredible woman.
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Paul Dickinson: Co-chair of the finance minister's group at the World Bank, you know, just an amazing leader.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: She'd make a good UN Secretary General, if anyone was looking for one, wouldn't she?
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Paul Dickinson: I think there's a vacancy coming up quite soon, actually, so, yeah.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Anyway, we should leave that to one side, perhaps.
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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, let's leave that to one side.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: All right, so let's kick off with the first part of this interview. So, let's get into the conversation that you both had with Sri Mulyani Indrawati.
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Sri Mulyani Indrawati (guest, former Finance Minister of Indonesia): I'm going to use Indonesia case, but this also applies to many other emerging developing country, I believe. No country in the world can move up into a middle higher income country without access to energy. Demand for energy is usually twice as high as the economic growth. So, when the Indonesia is growing by 5%, that means the growth of the energy is going to be around a minimum of 10%. This is before we put into the equation this artificial intelligence and digital technology that will increase even more the demand for energy. And energy is the largest emitter of the CO2. The question regarding how we are, on the one hand, actually fulfill the increasing demand for energy, but at the same time also can contribute in addressing the issue of climate change. This is exactly the crux of the question for Indonesia. And for Indonesia, as a country which is blessed by many alternative energy, this issue is actually solvable. It should be manageable. Indonesia has already contributed by putting the national determined contribution by reducing the CO2 emission by 29% with Indonesian-owned effort, or if it is going to be supported, it will increase up to 41%. Now, the question is actually the how. And this is exactly the problem, because you can produce a lot of document, commitment and speech saying that you are committed, but if there is no ability to deliver, and especially on the financing, it's going to be one of the empty, what you call it, promise. So for Indonesia, we actually worked very hard in the past when I was serving as a finance minister. Finance ministry office is playing a very critical and important role in actually not only discussion, but also in actually calculating the implication of each of this NDC. And we come up, for example, with the estimation that for every tons reduction of the CO2, if it is coming from energy, it's going to be three times more expensive than the forest and land use. So we can actually, from the financing point of view, if this is for the sake of just delivering reduction of the CO2, you can use more forest and land use to actually delivering with least cost. But of course, energy is going to be continue growing. And that's why we have to address the issue of this transition of the energy, energy transition. Let us now look at the possibility of retiring coal. If we're just talking about the aggregate figure, we never come up into a detail and then cannot find the real obstacle of financing. So we try to actually at that time come up with one coal power plant that can be retired sooner. So for example, they are supposed to operate until 2045. Then we are going to reduce into seven years earlier, 2033. That will then able to calculate how much CO2 emission can be reduced. And also at the same time, the question about this seven year cutting shorter need to be replaced with the other energy. So the calculation will lead us to the new investment that needs to be provided in order to replace the coal. And at the same time, who's going to pay for that? For example, in this case, 660 megawatts, one of the coal power plants that is being estimated or calculated. It will require Indonesia to invest for the new, to replace the 660, retiring seven years earlier. It will require 1.2 billion US dollars. So the question, who's going to pay for that? This is already there. Of course, for many emerging developing countries, financing is not something which is a luxury and easy. It comes with a cost. For example, like if it is going to be issued by the debt, it will also cost you in terms of the cost of debt. Of course, usually also the exchange rate risk. So this is one of the examples in which Indonesia tried to participate in a much more constructive and rational way. When we talk about just energy transition, but at the same time also need to be affordable because not only Indonesia developing country or emerging country, even in a high-income country here in the UK, in the United States, the issue of affordability is becoming very political, very important in the life of the father. So just an affordable energy is becoming very, very important. And by calculating and presenting the case, I think it's going to be very important.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay, so this first part of the conversation was a lot around the costs of transition and how we're actually going to be able to grapple with those costs in order to move forward. What did you both leave that discussion with?
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Paul Dickinson: If you think about, yeah, just, you know, the key numbers she used. Retiring one 660-megawatt coal plant seven years early costs $1.2 billion. And she says, who's going to pay? And that, you know, it's not the first time we've heard that on climate change, but this who's going to pay is a very significant issue. You can have all sorts of conversations about this, but people did build these plants, these contracts were signed. So literally, you know, even if solar, for example, was cheaper, and it may not be because the, you know, the supply on the Java barley grid has all been sort of amortized down, it's all paid for now. You know, if it was cheaper to put solar on that grid, and if the grid upgrade costs were included, it would cause losses for the state electric utility because of these long term contracts that have been signed to take the power or to pay for it and not take it. So, you know, to some degree, the nation is a bit stuck. I would, however, say that there are critical issues regarding the construction of new coal power. And we are seeing plans for considerable numbers of additional coal stations, both on the grid and also captive coal stations. And those are the ones where it's possible to not sign up for a long term take or pay contract. Possibly it's possible to not build them. And so this is a critical time in terms of the development of the infrastructure, I would say. But, I mean, her central point was the richer world in a way has to support the poorer world or whatever the word that we're looking for, the less resourced countries in their energy transition. And she, a great believer in multilateralism, which she is, believes that there should be funding, such as the JETP mechanism or other mechanisms, that defer the costs for the Indonesian state from moving from coal to renewables.
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Christiana Figueres: Paul, could I invite you to separate these two issues? Because I actually do think that they're, they both refer to coal plants, but they're fundamentally different. The first one is, should we, we, any developing country, start building any new coal plants? That's the first issue. And of course, China continues to build coal plants less than they used to. So they're declining the speed with which they are building, and the number of coal plants, but they do continue. Is Indonesia also, do they have new coal plants on the books? And are they either domestically financing or borrowing for new coal plants? That is a different issue than the second that I want to go into, which is mostly what we spoke to Sri Mulyani about. But could you just clarify for us?
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Paul Dickinson: Well, I mean, the first question, I think I wouldn't call it a trick question, but you're probably not going to find anyone on this podcast who's going to recommend that it is the right idea to build new coal-fired electricity generation. Much as I admire China's leadership in solar production and EV production, I am disappointed by China's construction of additional coal plants. I just don't think we should do that. I personally would rather we were building hydro or nuclear.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, but it's not a morality issue, right?
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Paul Dickinson: Isn't it?
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Christiana Figueres: No, that's not the way investments are decided. But in Indonesia, Paul, I just wanted to nail that. Do they have new coal plants on the books, and are they looking for financing domestic or international for that? Do you know?
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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, I mean, there's actually potentially a significant number of particularly captive coal-fired power stations being built by industry. These are off-grid power plants, and they lack transparency. And groups like Global Energy Monitor say that it's impossible to plan for the replacement of coal plants with renewable energy alternatives without first understanding the existing and planned coal capacity landscape. So it's not even known. Your question was in two parts there. You're saying, is it difficult to finance this? As we both know, many international financial institutions have said they will not fund new coal. They have great concerns about that. They think it's just the wrong way to go in terms of electricity generation. But wrapped up with other projects, wrapped up with incredibly lucrative nickel smelting, which requires massive electricity consumption, then it's not that difficult, I would think, to get financing for even captive coal-fired coal.
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Christiana Figueres: Private financing probably, yeah.
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Paul Dickinson: Correct.
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Christiana Figueres: Okay. I mean, that's even worse, right? Because that is adding coal to the grid. So on top of that, then we have, as Sri Mulyani explained so well, we have the situation with existing coal plants that have already signed contracts to deliver for the next X years. And should a government, in this case, the Indonesian government, want to close prematurely, they face a huge bill to do that. Domestically, they can't find that funding. And internationally, that funding has not appeared. So that is the vexing conundrum.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: One additional observation I would just make from...
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Christiana Figueres: From your nine-year-old self.
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Paul Dickinson: Yeah.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Such a sophisticated economist talks about the cost of replacing these pieces of infrastructure early, but also talks about the cost of debt and everything else that has to be serviced as part of that. And it's worth pointing out, just so that we're dealing with a level playing field, we all know that Germany is struggling to get off coal and shift to renewables. Germany pays about 3% on its sovereign debt. Indonesia pays anywhere between 8% and 12% on its sovereign debt. And on top of that is an estimated additional 2% currency risk, because Indonesia has a currency that tends to fluctuate. Now, a paper I read recently suggested that a doubling of the financing cost can increase the overall cost of a project by 50%. So given that Indonesia's financing cost is at least double and maybe even triple what Germany's are, we talk about the energy transition, but Indonesia is trying to undertake a completely different energy transition, energy transition economics to the one being attempted by Germany. And I think we don't realize enough that the playing field is not level for these transitions.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, which takes us to the other topic that we went into with Sri Mulyani about what credit rating agencies are doing to these developing countries.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yes.
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Christiana Figueres: Should we listen to her first and then comment on that?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Good point. Let's do that. Thank you.
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Christiana Figueres: If you could wave a magic wand, what would you say is the role that the international development finance world should play? That would be the World Bank, IMF, the ADB, the Asian Development Bank. What role should the private sector finance play in order to support developing countries, especially large emerging developing countries, in order to help with this transition? If you have an ideal idea of what could be, is it possible to get them there within a period of time that would be meaningful to address climate change?
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Sri Mulyani Indrawati (guest, former Finance Minister of Indonesia): Well, I don't think that we need the magic wand in this case. All these institutions have the balance sheet, and they definitely also have the priority program. So the international community have already demanding that both mitigation and adaptation, whether you are going to address through the technology, or you are going to address through a program that needs to be designed for a certain country, there are a room for this multilateral institution, the development agency or institution, that can actually respond to that. And I think I appreciate many of this leadership or presidents of all these development bank who actually increase their portfolio in responding to that demand or the real need or development challenge for many countries. And then the race management combining between public and private. Private sector in this case, I think still need to be continue catalyzed in order for them to be really come up. For emerging country like Indonesia, maybe quite big and attractive enough. But for many other which is much smaller and removed or lower income or even in this case, fragile state, they are much more harder actually to get the private sector appetite to come. And then I think the other block which is very important is rating agency. How we are going to be able to actually, the rating agency providing the accurate credible assessment, but also at the same time between short-term and long-term threat of risk of climate with the short-term maybe threat of the financial stability or macroeconomic stability and growth, I think this need to be reflecting in their assessment of sovereign risk.
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Christiana Figueres: That is so often forgotten, the rating agencies and how they're actually punishing developing countries right now, so unfairly. It sounds to me, please correct me if I'm wrong, that what you set out as a possible viable path is very adjacent to what is set out in the Bridgetown agenda under the leadership of Barbados and other developing countries. So if we have known now for several years what the path forward is, what is the resistance? Is it because these institutions are so large that it is difficult to move them? Is it because we don't have enough collective political will to do it? Is it a structural thing? What is the barrier? What's the handbrake?
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Sri Mulyani Indrawati (guest, former Finance Minister of Indonesia): Well, I don't think that in this case there is really... I mean, yes, each institution have their complexity. The World Bank is certainly with the most member of the world, in this case, operating globally. They are maybe much more complex, but maybe it's also at the same time have the portfolio risk, which is much more balanced. For any regional development bank, maybe concentrated in a certain region, then you have much more, in this case, manageable, I must say, but also there is more concentrated risk. I think many of the leadership have recognized that they can actually push and achieve more by working together. So the question more in many of these institutions, whether the recognition at the top level management, like the presidential level, can be translated into the institutional change. And that actually can be done. My own experience working in the World Bank, when the president is actually outlining this target, then it is the job of the management to translate into the KBI, the indicator that then can track this commitment or direction by the top management level. And this is actually can be done. This is really the work of leadership and managerial. This is the two combinations. You cannot just giving up by saying, oh, the institution is too big, we are operating globally, it's impossible to reform. I don't believe that. I think we can and tone from the top is very important. But equally important is the ability, the team management team who actually translating into a workable activity. I think that is the room to do. And that's, of course, you have to discuss with your own staff, with the client, which is very important. This is the bank that serving the sovereign country. The client, which is also have a political constraint, political opportunity, they have their own development challenge. So these are a very unique one.
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Christiana Figueres: So entirely possible, but we need to orchestrate, and the conductor of the orchestra is pretty important here, the leadership, the management.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Great to hear that second part of the conversation. Paul, maybe we should start off. This is, I know, a special subject of yours. Give us an explainer on credit ratings before we go any further and what the credit rating agency trap is.
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Paul Dickinson: Well, you began just before the second part of the interview to describe in detail the different components of the much higher interest rates that Indonesian projects or companies might expect to experience in comparison to, say, Germany. So you have some expertise yourself. But let's dig into why those variations might exist. And I think that they're correlated to, as you said, currency. Germany, for example, operates with the Euro, which is kind of arguably the biggest economic block in the world, or certainly one of them, alongside China and the USA. So there's a kind of huge stability in terms of the Euro currency and the sort of gigantic ability of the European Central Bank to sort of print euros to repay its debts in a way that less established economies find much harder. So the Indonesian economy being much, much smaller than the EU, it has this much greater potential variation in its currency, and this is seen as a risk. And the interest rates are based upon a variety of factors, including the sort of the historical ability of the country to repay loans and the potential enforceability of contracts and various kinds of disputes. Many people I think would argue that these people who sort of decide on the credit ratings have kind of biases that they sort of think Germany is somehow kind of morally or ethically or politically superior to Indonesia. And I'm sure there are lots of German people who would say that's not true at all. But the key point being, and this is what I think is really interesting, and I'd love to get your responses to this, companies like S&P and Moody's, they give credit ratings to nations. And they'd be quite a small group of people. You might look down a corridor and see a room, might be a large room with 10, 20, 30 people or something who are responsible for coming up with credit ratings, including Indonesia. But you might find that the financial policies of a nation of 288 million people are being to some degree dictated by this relatively small number of executives at a credit rating agency who are deciding what is the financial credibility of that particular government. And they typically look at the issue of government debt and its ability to repay it and the history. But I mean, how do you respond to the idea that there are radically different credit ratings for, for example, Germany and Indonesia?
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Christiana Figueres: Well, first of all, yes, it is a few people in the end who decide, but they do it on the back of a lot of research and analysis of huge, huge teams. So, you know, I wouldn't want us to give the impression that it's two or three people in, in a closet doing this. But I think it's important perhaps for listeners to understand that these credit rating agencies basically look at financial health and economic conditions, risks factors, etc. And then they assign a rating that in turn signifies credit worthiness to investors. Now, there's basically, if I understand this correctly, Paul, please correct me if I'm wrong, there's basically investment grade ratings and below investment grade. So investment grade, the best you can get is triple A, all the way down to double A, single A, and triple B, I think, is still investment grade, sort of, just barely. And then everything underneath that, double B, B, C, et cetera, et cetera, is below investment grade. But even those that are investment grade, there's a huge difference in the cost of capital between a triple A and a triple B. Even of all of them are investment grade, that chunk of them. And this is the difficulty for developing countries, because they are rated as risky, partly or sometimes even largely, because they're directly exposed to climate impacts, floods, droughts, food instability. So climate change makes their credit rating worse than it would be without the impacts of climate change, which means that their transition, our energy transition, their adaptation capacity is much more expensive, as we have been seeing, which in turn makes it harder for them to reduce their emissions. So they're caught in this, yet another conundrum. We talked in the beginning about the conundrum of closing coal plants. This is another conundrum where developing countries are caught in this wheel between their exposure to climate, their bad credit rating, and therefore their transition being more expensive.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. I mean, I think this is so important, because we talk a lot on this podcast about political will, and we say political will is what we need to drive us forward. And of course, that is the case, and we need courage from our leaders. But these systemic structural barriers are actually often the things that make the difference as to whether those politicians can actually move forward. I mean, as you've said, credit rating agencies exist to price in default risk to protect the investors, right? That's what they do. I do also agree with Paul that there is a familiarity of risk with certain areas, and certain legacy technologies that we've seen over time can mean that coal and gas get a lower cost of capital than renewables. Fortunately, that's beginning to change. But we need more sophisticated investors who can enable the cost of capital to drop in places where energy transition is a fundamental function of planetary stability. We are not managing risk by telling Indonesia that the cost of capital is so high, you can't transition and therefore maintain a stable planet. There's a massive systemic failure inside our system, and it doesn't have to be this way. I realize many people will say, well, that's just the way economics is set up. We can't change it. In that case, we should think about what we need to do to reform the system, because we're not getting to where we need to with the current system.
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Christiana Figueres: Hello, Mia Mottley, PM of Barbados.
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Paul Dickinson: Well, just before you get to the great leader, Mottley, I just wanted to throw in something that I think is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard, which is many developing countries do have certain pension funds. I think Thailand has about 60 billion government pension fund that the government provides for the nation, so to say. There are many, many other funds to invest in the future, tentative sovereign wealth funds. Well, here's the thing. If you're in country X and you put your country's money into renewable energy, two beautiful things happen. First of all, in country X, country X does not consider itself to have a higher risk than anywhere else. Indonesia does not consider Indonesia to have a higher risk than anywhere else. Secondarily, if you're worried about currency risk, if you're selling electricity in your own country, you're completely protected against any kind of currency risk. It has been suggested to me that sovereign wealth funds of quite small countries are invested in stupid things like London property. Whereas if they just put it into renewable energy, they would be completely insulated against any, they could lend at the lowest possible rates, interest rates because they don't consider themselves risky, and they could always pay out in their own currency, whatever, however it was moving in relation to others. Own your own power is the message.
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Christiana Figueres: Nice.
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Paul Dickinson: So Mia Mottley, Christiana, to finish with.
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Christiana Figueres: We've had, I think, several, two, maybe two, maybe three conversations about the Bridgetown agenda that was originally put on the table by Prime Minister Mottley of Barbados, and that is slowly, slowly making its way through the World Bank and other regional development banks, which basically is to look at the lending structure and policy of these institutions to make it much more updated with the challenges and the needs and the opportunities for developing countries throughout the entire structure. And we will put in the show notes, perhaps, the latest conversation that we had about this because it's a fascinating topic in and of itself. Quite the complex issue.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Great. Very, very interesting.
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Sri Mulyani Indrawati (guest, former Finance Minister of Indonesia): Excellent.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: All right. Well, I thought that was a great episode and we will see you all next week. Thanks for joining us.
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Sri Mulyani Indrawati (guest, former Finance Minister of Indonesia): Bye.
