Networks, not global forums, to drive climate action? full transcript
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Host [00:01] You’re listening to Make Change Happen, the podcast from IIED that offers insights on issues affecting the path towards a fairer, more sustainable world.
Anna Schulz [00:15] Hi, I'm Anna Schultz. I am with the International Institute for Environment and Development, IIED. I lead our work on global climate governance in the UN climate negotiations.
Carina Bachofen [00:32] It's great to be with you, Anna. My name is Carina Bachofen. I am the convener of the Green Economy Coalition. And I'm really excited to be here today talking with you about what's happening in the world of global governance and what that has to do with climate leadership in particular.
Anna Schulz [00:50] Yeah, we've been doing a lot of thinking over the last six months about global climate governance, particularly how to accelerate adaptation and resilience through the multilateral system.
These can mean different things to different people, but basically adaptation means shifting our systems in response to climate risk and creating sustainable futures. Resilience, on the other hand, is the capacity of societies and systems to respond to shocks, in this case, climate disasters. And by multilateralism, we're really referring to the efforts of countries to collectively resolve global problems that cannot be solved at the national level.
Carina Bachofen [01:34] Yeah, and we find ourselves in a completely, I would say, maybe unprecedented time. We're seeing seismic shifts at the moment with what's happening on the global stage. We see the unravelling of multilateral efforts.
We have states around the world reducing their contributions to overseas development assistance, how much money they give to other countries to help efforts to develop. And that includes climate finance, of course. We see the value of longstanding alliances being questioned, and we're seeing conflict proliferating, either intensifying or just growing and in scale around the world. And I think we all feel that we're in a new normal.
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Carina Bachofen [02:17] Yeah, so having outlined a little bit what's happening globally, it's also important to know what do ordinary citizens think and how are they seeing what's going on in the world?
The Green Economy Coalition's director of engagement, Jean McLean, recently led work together with our partner, Sivanta, to understand what the public is saying about the need for environmental protection versus economic growth. Can these both be achieved? What do people around the world think?
So let's hear from Jean about the results of this survey of 10,000 people in multiple countries.
Jean McLean [02:48] The GEC Green Economy Attitudes Polling conducted by Savanta involves surveying over 10,000 people across 10 countries in late 2025. The data examines opinions on environmentally friendly priorities, trade-offs and barriers to making eco-friendly choices, and it went to a representative sample of the population of Brazil, Peru, UK, Turkey, Nigeria, South Africa, India, Indonesia, China and Australia.
Key insights show that while environmental protection over economic growth remains a strong global consensus, support for financial sacrifices has decreased, and the biggest barrier to climate action is a lack of government support. The data reveals that global support for environmental protection is exceptionally strong. A significant 84% globally agree that protecting natural resources is more important than short-term economic gains.
This commitment holds even when costs are considered, though we can see this year, cost sensitivity is rising. For instance, 82% agree that investments in clean energy should be a top priority, even if it requires significant government spending. Crucially, though, in the research, we see citizens feel that government action is the missing piece of the puzzle. Cost is the next largest obstacle.
We see really strong demand for political leadership, with 73% agreeing that politicians are not keeping up with what people want them to do on the environment. When asked what government support would help, respondents highlighted several key areas, almost equally: more funding for the environmental programmes, better laws or regulations and support for environmentally-friendly businesses or jobs.
Carina Bachofen [04:29] So Anna, what I take away from that, from the very rich results that Jean's outlined, is that citizens want governments to take action. They want more laws, they want more regulation, they want a predictable environment.
And so we're seeing less and less action at the global level. We're seeing great work being done at the local level, for example, local green enterprise. There's lots of momentum and energy around there. But what are you seeing in your work, working with national governments, for example, in the UN climate change space, the UNFCCC, and also maybe talk a little bit about the action agenda, where it is about non-government action on climate.
Anna Schulz [05:07] Thanks, Carina. We're just coming off the back of the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN climate change negotiations. And obviously, the withdrawal of the US from the UNFCCC and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And this is coming at time of mounting calls for reform to the UN climate governance system.
This is in part because the Paris Agreement has failed to galvanise the scale of mitigation required to stay within the 1.5°C goal, but also because of mounting frustrations around access to climate finance and adaptation as well as means of implementation for adaptation. This poses real challenges, obviously, to the UNFCCC system, to the UN climate negotiations, because as trust between national actors within that system declines, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to reach agreement.
However, the UNFCCC and the climate negotiations, I would say, also do remain critically important. It's a space that allows countries to sort of slowly increase the floor on ambition and it's the only space internationally that provides and centres conversations around equity and climate justice and ensures a seat at the table for the most vulnerable governments.
However, there is a need for the entire global climate governance system to shift its focus from negotiating agreements towards implementation and to rapidly scale that implementation over time.
Is the multilateral climate governance system capable of doing that? I think that there are aspects under the UN climate negotiations that are really positive steps forward, particularly around the action agenda, which is designed to leverage not just national governments, but all stakeholders within the climate system.
Now, the action agenda over the past years has really been focused on launching new initiatives. I think that one of the things that we really saw change at this COP, with the Brazilian COP presidency, was a focus away from new initiatives and towards implementation and towards building out networks of partners who are engaged in implementation and work on the ground.
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Anna Schulz [08:03] I would like to introduce our colleague, Paul Mitchell, who leads our work on locally led adaptation within IIED, who's going to discuss a bit more about how networks and the action agenda could support locally led climate action.
Paul Mitchell [08:23] We did see a step change in the action agenda at COP30. The focus on implementation rather than commitment really shook things up. I do think this new approach could be game changing for locally led adaptation. As the emphasis of the COP process shifts from negotiation to implementation, the action agenda provides us with the opportunity to showcase the ways in which locally-led approaches to climate action are often more effective and efficient and sustainable than traditional top-down, donor-driven projectised approaches.
While Brazil's approach to the action agenda was ambitious, the sheer number of thematic areas and initiatives that it featured was at times overwhelming. It was also often hard to find the most effective entry points to engage and highlight locally-led approaches within that broader, all-encompassing process. Despite this, though, I do hope that the Turkish Australia Pacific presidency process maintains the same level of ambition because it would be really good, I think, to see a multi-presidency coalition helping to drive forward the action focus as things shift away from negotiations.
I also think, though, that the action agenda could draw inspiration from the locally led adaptation community. We already operate in networked modes, with thousands of actions undertaken at different scales and operating independently but connected by communities of practice and knowledge exchanges. And I think building on strategies that we're already deploying to build synergies within and across a huge variety of locally-led initiatives could help bring some more coherence to this otherwise sprawling set of potentially disconnected action agendas.
I'm sure that many of the other initiatives within the action agenda would have lessons and approaches to share as well. We certainly don't need to be reinventing the wheel here at all.
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Carina Bachofen [10:11] Paul's insights are super interesting and I think tying it back to how we open our conversation, as multilateral efforts are waning, there is a role for coalitions and networks and new constellation of actors to be working together at national and sub-national level levels, driving action forward, not waiting for global ambition to just set the scene, but really to do the action on the ground.
You and I have done a lot of thinking, Anna, about what needs to change. How could a system work where governments are no longer leading the charge? For example, networks often outlast political cycles, they can take action on longer time horizons, not just working alongside or in accordance to short term political cycles. Networks are often by definition rooted in local action, local actors, local experience, lived knowledge.
I think that there's a lot to be said for networks operating across scales. They can be present at local levels, regional levels and all these sub-national levels and really bring advocacy, bring messaging, bring evidence and experience to decisions that are being made at a national level.
So I think that a lot of what Paul says is possible in terms of building on what's already happening in the climate space, the amazing work that's happening all around the world at the local level and using that as a driver for change moving forward, not just waiting for negotiations to conclude in order to then take action.
What do you think, Anna?
Anna Schulz [11:41] I definitely agree that networks are going to be incredibly important moving forward, bringing together partners that are ambitious and ready to undertake climate action, actors that are willing to be early movers in terms of adopting solutions are critical.
I also think that they are potentially capable of working around some of the instability in in the multilateral system. I don't think that they're necessarily a cure-all for all of multilateral instability. I do think that because of the nodal nature of networks, they are more resilient during times of potential political crisis.
Carina Bachofen [12:30] Well, we've also talked about how networks often, you know, moving beyond traditional agencies, these networks can be very mission oriented, very issue specific, they can form around clearly defined goals, they can have metrics and there can be a sunset clause that when a network has achieved its goal, then it ends and you move on to whatever's next.
I think there's an agility to networks in terms of the time horizons it works with, who can participate, what it can do, that is quite interesting to explore and tap further as we are dealing with governments that move very slowly and having potentially decreasing interest and in these topics as a whole.
Anyway, as mentioned, this space is changing very rapidly, isn't it?
Anna Schulz [13:15] Yeah. When we are talking about networks, we're really talking about networks of climate stakeholders. These could be businesses within the private sector, could include governments as well. It could be networks of cities and local governments.
Within the UN climate system there are a number of networks as well, like CAN, which is a coalition of NGOs that seeks to influence the UN climate process, or it could also be networks of local groups like Slum Dwellers International. There are so many different types of networks that could be used to galvanise climate action.
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Carina Bachofen [14:03] Anna, given everything we've talked about today, what's one big change that you'd like to see moving forward?
Anna Schulz [14:09] I would really like to see the shift towards implementation cemented into the action agenda at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
One of the challenges with the action agenda is that it is driven by each presidency, each COP presidency. As a result, the priorities of the action agenda can really shift over time. But I think the shift towards implementation within the action agenda space, rather than simply creating loads of new initiatives, is really critical to emphasise and ensure continues over time.
Carina Bachofen [14:50] From my side, I think I would love to just see more space for positive stories of action to emerge, stories that can inspire, stories that can help catalyse action. I think especially in today's environment, everything just feels so heavy and so doom and gloom and disempowering.
And if we can have more examples, for example, of the work the Climate Action Network is doing or the Green Economy Coalition is doing, where you see change happening from the bottom up, where people are taking charge, recognising their capacities, recognising the potential. There is great work happening on the ground, as Paul mentioned. There's great progress being made. And I would love to see more space for these stories to come forth and that's what we want, a snowball effect, to counter everything else that's going on the world. We need some positive, hopeful, and impactful stories that drive us further ahead.
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Anna Schulz [15:48] Carina, it was really great talking through these themes related to the reform of the multilateral climate governance system.
We are sure to see much more in this space over the coming months as the multilateral climate system learns to or begins to adapt to these rapidly changing geopolitical realities.
Carina Bachofen [16:15] Well, thanks very much, Anna. It's been great having this chat with you. Thank you everyone for listening. You can find more information on the themes we've touched upon today on our website.
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Host [16:26] If you’d like to send us your thoughts and feedback on the discussion, email us at [email protected]. That’s [email protected].
You can find out more information about this podcast and our guests, and learn more about IIED’s research around the issues covered in today’s episode, at iied.org/podcast, where you can also listen to previous episodes and browse the rest of our website for more information about IIED and our work.
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