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This episode of #WooSays takes us to Belém, Brazil, where COP30 is taking place. It’s been 33 years since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was first signed in Rio de Janeiro, and now that the COP is back on Brazilian soil, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Professor Emeritus Datuk Woo Wing Thye and Melisa Idris unpack what’s at stake this year, and with global politics more fractured than ever, is there still hope for the climate agenda?
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00:00hello folks welcome to another episode of who says this is where we get real about the u.s
00:17china and everything and everywhere in between it is two superpowers but it's one global story
00:25and this week all eyes are on belham brazil where cop 30 is taking place um it's been 33 years since
00:34the un framework convention on climate change was first signed in rio de janeiro so cop is back um
00:42back on brazilian soil back to its brazilian roots but the stakes couldn't be higher this year because
00:49the question we want to ask today is who's gaining who's losing in terms of climate action and how is
00:56the climate agenda reshaping global power dynamics joining me as always on the show is professor
01:04emeritus wu wingtai brav um let's look at what's happening in in brazil so cop 30 cop 30 the 30th
01:12um the 30th conference of parties under the un framework convention climate change back in brazil
01:20now how significant is this uh cop and how should we understand it in the broader context of global
01:28climate diplomacy well it comes certainly when we know that the global temperature the average global
01:39global temperature for the year went over 1.5 degrees above the level of the pre-industrial age last year
01:50so last year we went above 1.5 which was the target that uh the paris climate treaty was trying to aim at
02:01and as you know every country prepares something called the nationally determined contribution which
02:11it had had uh gives to the united nations saying what they are doing to reduce the emissions of co2
02:20if you take all those national targets in the national nationally determined contributions we will be
02:28getting at least 2.5 degrees above the average of the industrial age in other words we are we
02:38not only have hit 1.5 we are going to hit 2.5 so that certainly is not a a good situation right and
02:48the the the big thing is even if people are willing to do it they have to be able to get the means to do
02:59it the means to do it is that uh we need to make uh conversions in our energy system for example so that
03:10we stop generating electricity with coal and gas but either with uh with things with green renewable
03:18sources like water hydro uh and of course solar power and that requires money and the one of the big goals
03:34of president lula is to is to increase the financing for climate action to 1.3 trillion per year
03:46which is uh much closer to what that is needed then we the the usual less than one-third amount
03:55that is that is that is that has been offered so that is a very big step the other perhaps symbolic action
04:06that occur was he all the official cars that are be used in bellum to take delegates around uh
04:17uh byd brand which means that it's almost like saying the wave the primary driver of uh green climate action
04:35is china and this of course comes up at no at the very bad time where donald trump has just told the
04:44united nations that climate change is a hoax although the only thing that was a hoax was that claim itself
04:52so yes we are in a situation where all of science says that we are going to exceed the 1.5
05:02and here is some someone who's making a valiant effort to raise money to do it in the face of
05:14an irresponsible action by the richest country in the world right can i can i ask you about that
05:21because last year if you um recall cop 29 convened i think it was just days after donald trump was
05:30re-elected as president of the united states and that was anything anyone could talk about when they
05:35talked about uh cop 29 in in baku azerbaijan um because of course the last time that he was in office
05:41the us withdrew from the paris agreement you mentioned that donald trump had called climate
05:48change a hoax in the un at the un assembly what what has this past year been like for climate action
05:57with trump back in the white house how do you see how do you assess the past year having played out
06:04well he not only has called it a hoax he has backed it up with actions like for example he has stopped
06:15the funding of uh the development of alternative energy sources and he had like for example the
06:25there was a plan to make green uh evs in america he's taken away the tax credit for those companies that
06:35was going to do it that were going to do it and the other thing he has done is he has doubled down
06:43on the sale of american gas to the rest of the world if you look at the trade treaty that malaysia
06:52signed when when he was here we agreed to buy more u.s gas to uh do we we we signed to import more u.s
07:04gas and if you look at many of the trade treaties that's what he has made it a condition of
07:11of course it is possible that people may buy more gas from america and less gas from other places so
07:19that does not mean by itself that uh the countries are backtracking the total amount of gas they end up
07:28using could be a lot less by just by offsetting their purchases from the traditional suppliers
07:36and he has also uh looking actively into granting permits to drill in different parts of the united states
07:51that is the other action right and of course a usaid had programs to help the poorer countries to
08:03uh decarbonate decarbonize not decarbonate sorry decarbonize their economies and all those uh plans
08:11have been removed from usaid in fact usaid itself has ceased to exist oh wow yeah while we talk about
08:22climate cop it is important to know that the united nations have three conferences on the environment
08:32the climate is the one that's most well known the second one is the biodiversity cop because biodiversity
08:41can be lost not only because of climate change but because we do things like over harvesting the fish
08:49cutting down too much forest for wood or simply polluting so that was so the second cop is biodiversity
08:57right right so then the third one is desertification and uh so when these three are interrelated of course
09:07okay professor would the um cop on biodiversity be the one that's more relevant to a country like malaysia
09:15because our contribution to carbon emission is quite low considered per capita um but we all we
09:24we're home to a huge reserve of biodiversity um thanks to our wonderful rainforests do you think that
09:32we're paying attention to the wrong one i mean just sitting here in malaysia that although the focus on
09:38cop 30 and the cop of the climate change um can be convening do you think we've we've lost focus
09:46as to which should be our priority no not at all in fact uh we have kept both firmly in sight we have kept
09:56our attention on decarbonizing the the malaysian economy as well as preserving biodiversity especially in east
10:09malaysia because in west malaysia thanks to long time uh clearing of forests for cultivation we have
10:19basically deforested western malaysia already so over there the question is uh rehabilitating the land so
10:30malaysia has paid attention to both largely because they are both interrelated like for example
10:38climate change if the temperature continues to go up they will heat up the water of the oceans
10:45and that will kill the coral reefs that in which we have we have a lot of and the coral reefs
10:54out constitute the breeding ground for fish so we certainly cannot just talk about biodiversity
11:06and neglect the fact that biodiversity is hurt by the higher temperature and we cannot talk about
11:14biodiversity protection without realizing that it actually helps to fight global warming it's just like
11:24deforestation if we deforest less then with them more trees sucking in the co2
11:31and furthermore uh when we clear peatland for agriculture then we are releasing co2 we not only have less
11:42trees but we're actually releasing co2 so the two are mutually reinforcing and malaysia is clearly thinking
11:50with both sides of its brains when it goes on to will pay attention to both all right the only thing we have not
11:59talked about is that certification because that's not a problem here okay well well coming back to to cop 30
12:08in berlem let's talk a little bit about that because i know in um i know in in cop 29 baku that was really
12:17kind of positioned as um the finance cops talking about money and company and the loss and um uh the
12:25uh what was it called the loss and damage um fund yes so talking about how uh more developed countries
12:34can help stump for maybe less developed countries in terms of climate compensation or climate resilience
12:41when you think about this cop and the power dynamics at play i love that you brought up the byd cars because i think that's really
12:49um a nice reflection of how power dynamics comes to play with um with cop right there's a lot of climate uh
12:59diplomacy at stake here a lot of lobbying happening at all these cop conferences so when you think about
13:05cop this cop in particular is it still about saving the environment is it still about getting
13:11below the one and a half um below the one and a half um degrees or is it about power and who has the bigger
13:18leverage and um lobbying muscle the kind of positioning between um nations
13:27well the only president who has really expressed opposition to the cop is donald trump
13:35as you can see the rest of the world has not changed uh its commitment to fighting climate change
13:44i think this is uh the the unfortunate fact that those of us who can act should continue to act
13:53and we hope that the united states would get out its uh populist rage and join the rest of the world
14:02so we have to keep the world safe until the the u.s returns to greater uh
14:11when it gets over its anger and frustration over many of its domestic problems
14:21right do you um there were tensions between the global north and global south i think in cop 29
14:28um talking about who should pay climate that pay for climate damage and who should cut emissions
14:34faster um do you still see this as a dispute about about fairness um i'm wondering because sometimes i do
14:42see this reoccurring pattern of unequal power when it comes to global climate governance um is that
14:50something that you have noticed as well well at well the good news is that one of the loudest voice
14:59against increasing the budget is missing this time which is the united states
15:05okay the united states is not involved in cop
15:10this year yeah it it it certainly is there okay but it clearly cannot be as loud when it tells that uh
15:20but when the rest of the world knows that it speaks from a basis which contradicts science
15:28so the the the the moral force which the u.s was able to marshal in the past is not there
15:37that and it is important that the financing that lula talks about is not just money to decarbonize in
15:49to undertake climate action he is also going to launch uh
15:57a rainforest a global rainforest fund to defend the lungs of the world
16:06which basically are the amazon uh uh uh jungle the congo basin jungle and the rainforest of southeast
16:17asia so uh as a sign of that malaysia has been thinking with both sides of the brains i should tell you
16:27that uh at sunway university we have got two big projects one of them involves 10 country teams in each of
16:40the aSEAN countries drawing up plans on how to decarbonize and not only how to decarbonize but how we should link up
16:48our electricity generation systems so that the cheapest producer can produce for the more expensive producers
16:58like like laos selling hydropower to singapore so that was that is one thing that we in malaysia
17:07have done and we have our team is in bellum reporting on this aSEAN initiative
17:15and of our heart what we have done to promote the aSEAN power grid
17:20which is a necessary component
17:23the second thing that we have done is we are the leaders
17:27of a 300 person research team drawn from indonesia brunei and malaysia
17:36to form the science panel for borneo
17:40the science panel for borneo
17:41borneo has finished a report of 3 000 pages on how to better protect come up with practical solutions
17:52of how to better protect uh the fauna flora and the indigenous communities in on the island of borneo
18:03so in this as a case of three countries working together and this is not at the official level
18:10these are mostly university professors from the three countries who have gotten together to draw up this
18:19detailed plan so uh that is at the official pavilion of cop 30 that's going to be a special session of the
18:31three forests the the science panel for the amazon the science panel for congo basin and a science panel
18:40on borneo and malaysia is probably leading both the science panel for borneo as well as the
18:49decarbonization study of the aSEAN so we are fulfilling our global responsibility largely because
18:59having money alone is not enough we have to know what to do and so we have come up with very practical
19:06ways of doing it and the good news is we don't pretend that we know everything we have got our
19:17neighbors to participate in these studies too so uh the cop is a is a high point for me personally
19:28because it's a coming to fruition of two big projects we've been doing for the last five years
19:34on how to decarbonize the southeast asian economies and do it in a cost effective manner and the second
19:43is how do we protect biodiversity yeah i'm so happy i actually feel good yes it you and as you should
19:54because it really is um an amazing project when i first heard about the science panel for borneo i didn't
20:03realize the scale of the treasure we have in this part of the world i didn't realize in our backyard in in
20:12borneo in east malaysia the treasure we have and what responsibility we have um as i think stewards as
20:21environmental stewards um for the lungs of the we're producing oxygen for the rest of the world essentially
20:28and that's such an important responsibility i love that this is going to be um culminate the culmination of
20:36this project will be at um cop 30 in brazil where we're also talking about the other lungs of the
20:45the other lungs of um of the world definitely wonderful that this is happening there um just
20:52even though we have all these big feelings and and pride about um our biodiversity and i know a lot
20:59of people feel so strongly and want to see more urgency in climate action i have i do remember
21:07hearing some um i think discontent would be the right word uh particularly in baku in cop 29 where
21:14there was chatter that the the cop process is maybe broken or not functioning the way it's supposed to
21:23and that maybe it's time to move beyond the cop process of you know requiring the agreement of
21:29every single country before we achieve we see progress because getting that consensus can take a
21:35long time and it's maybe some some countries have um have stronger punching power than other countries
21:45do you do you agree with that prof do you see that there is that the cop process may not be
21:52working the way it's supposed to is there any merit in that argument well the reason why we have been
21:59disappointed in the cops is because we have high we have high we have high expectations of ourselves
22:10so when we do not see when we when we can see ways of producing better outcomes we are naturally
22:17disappointed that the most efficient way has not come but i see it as it is a delay sometimes but the
22:28important things is those who can should go ahead with implementing these actions because they provide
22:37inspiration for the people who are lagging behind let me say the climate change and biodiversity protection
22:45are not just for the good of the whole world it turns out it is very important for us because
22:58if we don't do it some of the major world actors will punish us for not doing it for example look at
23:09palm oil production we have had so much flag from the europeans and other parts of the world about the loss of
23:21biodiversity because of the clearing of land so now we have turned our attention to increasing the yield per acre
23:31of palm oil trees that are growing in other words we are doing we are we are making a scientific progress
23:42in improving the genes of the oil pump so that it produce higher quality oil and then furthermore we also know that
23:55we want to use more organic fertilizer because the old fertilizer that we used to have use a lot of
24:05is leaching into the water table and going into the stream and causing a lot loss of species the third thing
24:17that we have done we have known now is how to design oil pump plantations better so that we actually have
24:24animal corridor so that they can migrate from one part of the forest to another you cannot keep them
24:32because then if we don't have these corridors there are occasional rampages you could say and this clash
24:41between men and animals could be avoided and all of this have come about partly because of external pressure
24:51and because of this this accelerated the uh a big transition in the palm oil industry so the idea clearly we it
25:05would be stupid to say why don't we just greatly reduce the palm oil industry in malaysia then the question is
25:15is how do the people earn their income should they go uh meat hunting instead that would certainly
25:25you know make things worse so i think uh we have been able to be creative to come up with solutions to
25:36the many objections to uh palm oil production in malaysia and let's face it of all the different kinds of
25:46vegetable oil palm oil is the has produces the most vegetable oil per acre peanut just is peanuts
25:58there's there's no way that they can uh make up for what palm oil could could produce so and and you could also see
26:10that uh because of our greater demand for green energy sarawak has now um think about building this undersea cable
26:24to connect their supply to the peninsula or to singapore so in you know you know uh this is a very
26:37that we the good news is we have reacted to the crisis and we are moving things in the right way now you
26:45got to move the needle faster and to move the needle faster we need to be able to governize
26:53the funding to do it there's no use having the intention and not uh getting the funding to do it and
27:00getting the funding to do it is not just everybody dig deeper into their pockets we've got to use funding
27:07the funding schemes that black people put in more money and lower the risk to them when they put down
27:19money to it for example uh there is this uh mechanism called blended finance blended finance works by basically
27:30uh the government uh the government or the international agency covering the risk of the investment and because the risk of investment is
27:43taken out private uh private uh private investors are willing to land at a much lower rate than they otherwise would
27:55uh very good example is like uh let us say if the green the green project has a three percent
28:06a possibility of failure that means that the market interest rate would be
28:14what the interest rate would be to a safe project plus three percentage points
28:19so the safe rate is four you plus three that would be seven but whereas if the government puts the money down to cover the three percent of losses
28:31can crowd in 97 percent of private funds for the project that's really interesting i've been hearing a lot more about blended finance
28:44do you think it's really it's being um adopt adapted adapted and adopted um in terms of
28:51financing or funding some of these uh green projects or green transition projects or is it still
28:58still still nascent still a buzzword because i keep hearing so much about it there's
29:02such potential but i wonder whether there is um whether it's really being adopted in in
29:08in financial markets adopted the the government must increase the amount of money they have to spend covering the risk
29:19and what that would mean in practice is that international multilateral banks
29:27like the asian development bank the world bank the african development bank the inter-american
29:35development bank and so forth have to have more capital because if they have more capital then they can go
29:44out and borrow from the private market at a much lower rate and re-lending it to these uh projects that we
29:55talk about because they are the ones who have to cover the risk and they are the capital in which they have
30:03would allow them to greatly scale up the amount of private funds that would go to these projects
30:12so the first thing we got we need to do is to scale up the capital base of the multilateral banks
30:19and the reason why it has not been done is because these multilateral banks are controlled by a board
30:31and the voting power of the members of the board depends on the share of capital that it's the country
30:40has put in and the country the biggest share has been the united states and the united states has been
30:47unwilling to put in any more capital and so it has prevented the expansion of the capital
30:54other countries like china and japan had volunteered to expand the base but you cannot expand the base
31:04without the agreement of the board and the united states wasn't going to let its vote be diluted
31:12and so it has always stood in the way of preventing the japanese from expanding the asian development
31:19bank the asian development bank could be as big as the world bank but when when the when the japanese
31:26wanted to do it the the americans outvoted them and that was not done and they continue to outvote
31:36everybody else at the existing share so the chinese got so frustrated they started the asian infrastructure
31:43investment bank so that they can go ahead and make these loans development loans without getting
31:52permission from the united states oh dear don't you just love it that everything we talk about actually
31:59comes back full circle to the us and china and power affairs i mean it really does boil down all roads
32:07lead to rome eventually well but the good news is if we are we are able to get them to work together
32:16if we are able when they during their periods when they are both on the same page and there have been
32:24periods like that which is what the world was before 2000 2016 where people were working together
32:32so it's too early to write off the possibility of cooperation and of the stakeholders not becoming
32:43more responsible over time okay brof can i ask you one last question before we wrap this episode i i know
32:51this is a huge cop and one that's personally meaningful to you as well so maybe you can share with us what
32:59you hope to see coming out of cop 30 um do you are you hoping for some you know um what is green sky
33:10scenario blue sky scenario excuse me um and what is the realistic expectations what are the realistic
33:17expectations can we achieve blue sky scenario yes i think we can like uh one thing we could do
33:27is that we the world as a whole agrees to a timetable on the transformation of electricity generation
33:42from coal and gas uh as as the fuel to water sun and wind so i i certainly think that that could be done
33:58though the thing that i think is also most realistic and extremely symbolic since it is being held
34:03in balance is that the three rainforests of the world is able to truly take the lead as an example of international cooperation
34:21in biodiversity uh protection measures that would be certainly to me uh of a very serious step
34:33where movements could be made without any uh pressure from the united states or china to oppose it because
34:43they have no rainforest to protect so why should they object to these three other regions trying to protect
34:51the rainforest so that particular uh initiative is i would say very acceptable
35:02to both sides of the big power struggle and after all we are important allies that both sides want to have
35:14like for example brazil is in the americas and the united states certainly would not like such a big
35:22important country to do more than having chinese evs dominating yeah their roads so i think uh
35:35the american public will sooner or later wake up that it is not china that's taking the world for a ride
35:43it is donald trump and his claim of climate hoax that is taking the world for a ride
35:50bravo thank you so much for getting real about the us about china and everything and everywhere in
35:58between i guess that's it for this episode of who says i'm melissa idris and i will see you
36:04in the next episode see you then folks bye
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