Podcasts about international public affairs

This week Ivy Slater, host of Her Success Story, chats with her guest, Susan Ann Davis. The two talk about resilience in the face of challenges, the importance of mentorship and community among women in business, and the strategic choices involved in scaling a company globally. In this episode, we discuss: How Susan's career path veered from law school ambitions to falling in love with Washington D.C.'s vibrant environment, leading her to strategic communications instead. Why mentorship is vital, rooted in Susan's experiences and efforts to create supportive networks like the International Women's Forum. Being unafraid to take risks and the power of listening more than talking to drive success. Handling difficult situations and failures. Overcoming challenges as a female business owner     Susan Ann Davis-President of SDI is a pioneering woman business owner who opened her agency when relatively few women were experiencing success in the business world, and fewer still owned their own business. Over decades, she has grown SDI into a global public affairs and strategic communications powerhouse, receiving accolades and recognition from industry peers and earning the respect of business and government leaders around the world. Internationally known for her expertise in strategic positioning, reputation management, government relations, and crisis communications, Davis has provided counsel to government and industry leaders on six continents and was a strategic U.S. advisor to the Irish Bishops Conference for the Vatican World Meeting of Families and the papal visit to Ireland. She is a co-founder of IPREX, a global agency network covering 100 markets worldwide. Davis has worked with more than a dozen countries on issues ranging from economic crisis to nation building and trade expansion. And for decades she has been a strategic communications and public affairs consultant on U.S. military and veterans' issues for the defense industry and to multiple Secretaries of Defense, DOD agencies, service branches and support organizations. Over her professional career, Davis has played a key strategic communications and government relations role in high-profile crises ranging from reputation management, product liability litigation to airline crashes, environmental threats, and foreign government economic crises, affording her deep insight into senior management policy, planning, execution, and decision making. And as a leader and business visionary, she is expert at developing engagement, media, and business opportunities for executives throughout the globe. She led the Global Irish Forum recommendation for Ireland to develop as a global hub for smart aging technologies, products, design and services, was a founder of Smart Ageing Living Labs of Ireland, and a former producer of a White House Conference on Aging and Silicon Valley Venture Boomer Summits. A lifelong advocate for social entrepreneurship, democracy building and leadership development for women, she is board chair emeritus of Vital Voices Global Partnership, the preeminent NGO that trains and empowers emerging women leaders in 115 countries. She was a founder and the first international president of the International Women's Forum, the global leadership organization now representing more than 7000 women of achievement. She serves on numerous philanthropy boards including the American Ireland Fund and the Razia's Ray of Hope Foundation, for which she is board chair. The Foundation continues to educate over 700 girls in rural Afghanistan. Davis chaired the landmark U.S. Ireland Business Summit, creating the groundbreaking US-Ireland R&D Partnership, and has been formally recognized for her leadership by the governments of Ireland and Northern Ireland. She's been named among the Top 100 Irish Americans, 75 Most Influential Irish American Women, and Top 100 Outstanding International Irish Business Leaders, and received the Flax Trust Award for Service to Northern Ireland. Along with then Prince Charles and former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Davis received the Global Empowerment Humanitarian Award in the United Kingdom, and she was awarded the Noble Humanitarian Prize in Glasgow, Scotland and the prestigious Order of Merit by the Knights Templar. Among her many professional awards are the Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Business, the Bronze Stevie for Woman of the Year, National Woman Business Owner of the Year, Woman Business Advocate of the United States, and the National Association of Women Business Owners Award for “Outstanding Achievement in National and International Public Affairs.” She was an inaugural honoree for the National Capital Public Relations Society Hall of Fame award and the Biz Bash Special Events Hall of Fame. Washingtonian Magazine called Davis one of “Washington's Most Powerful Women” and the Washington Business Journal has recognized her as one of the Washington D.C. region's most influential businesswomen. A University of Wisconsin–Madison graduate, she has been recognized with the Distinguished Service Award in the Field of Communications and the Distinguished Alumni Award. Website: https://www.susandavis.com/      

For decades, the standard labor market model has been ruled by supply and demand, but a younger generation of labor economists is questioning that approach. Suresh Naidu is a Professor of Economics and International Public Affairs at Columbia University. He says while the supply and demand model is not wrong, it only tells part of the story. In this podcast, Naidu and journalist Rhoda Metcalfe discuss why today's labor market model sometimes fails to reflect the real world.  Transcript: https://bit.ly/4aHBqvz 

In deze reeks afleveringen neemt Money Matters je mee door het boek de Nieuwe Polder. Elke aflevering horen we de schrijvers van een van de essays uit de bundel. Deze week gaat Ruben in gesprek met Johan Barnard, Head of International Public Affairs bij pensioenfonds APG, over energie en het financieren van de energietransitie. Dat er flink geïnvesteerd moet worden om deze te laten slagen staat als een paal boven water. Maar op welke manier kunnen investeerders en in het bijzonder pensioenfondsen verleid worden om hierin mee te investeren? En hoe zorgt de overheid er dan voor dat ze voldoende controle hebben op kritische infrastructuur?

Graduates from a small number of elite private colleges account for a disproportionate share of America's business and political leaders. In this episode, John Friedman joins us to discuss his recent study with Raj Chetty and David Deming that examines how admissions criteria at these institutions privilege students from high-income families. John is the Briger Family Distinguished Professor of Economics and International Public Affairs at Brown University, where he is the chair of the Economics Department. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has served in the White House as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the National Economic Council. John is also a member of the U.S. Treasury Council on Racial Equity, a co-Editor of the American Economic Review, and a founding Co-Director of Opportunity Insights. A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

Learn how what we're really doing as we go through life is work on ourselves. What makes an inspiring leader? According to my guest today, Dr. Srikumar Rao, it is to be personally inspired by a vision which brings a greater good to a greater community. As a leader, you are in the business of helping everyone you run across improve their position in life and raise their level of consciousness, because this is your path in life. Isn't that a great message to live by? My dear friend Pat Shea, with whom I did a podcast back in 2020, told me that I just had to have Dr. Rao on our podcast and boy was she right! Listen in, this could very well change your life. Watch and listen to our conversation here Dr. Rao's pearls of wisdom that you can take and apply to your own life The only thing you ever do in life is work on yourself. Everything you're given by the universe—your partner, your children, your job, your career, your business—they're tools. You use those tools as skillfully as you can. But in the process of doing that, what you're really doing is, you're working on yourself. Life is a short journey, let's make sure we have joy and it feels purposeful and takes us to another place. Your awareness is like a flashlight. What does a flashlight do? A flashlight illuminates whatever you shine it on. What do we typically do with the flashlight of our awareness? We shine it on the two, three, or four things that we think are problems in our lives and we DON'T shine it on the 40, 50, 200 things that are good about our lives. So shine the flashlight of your awareness on the many ways in which you're fortunate and blessed. Do it the last thing at night before you go to bed. Do it first thing in the morning. Call to mind the many ways in which you are truly fortunate. When you're in a state of mind of appreciation, of gratitude, you're not nervous, you're not anxious, you're not fearful. The two cannot coexist. Become aware of mental chatter, that internal monologue that you have going on in your head all the time. Don't beat yourself up over mistakes you've made (the second arrow). Learn how to rise above it and see the world the way it should be. To contact Dr. Srikumar Rao You can reach out to Dr. Rao on LinkedIn, Twitter or his website, The Rao Institute. For more on how self-awareness and gratitude can help you be a better leader, start with these: Blog: Time to Add Gratitude to Your Life—And Your Company's Culture! Podcast: Richard Sheridan—How To Lead With Joy And Purpose! Podcast: Danielle Grant—Authentic, Ethical, Caring And More Effective Leadership Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast here Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. Hi, I'm Andi Simon, and I'm your host and your guide. My job is to get you off the brink. We've done this for four years now, and as we approach our 400th session, I'm still in awe of how many wonderful people there are to share with you so you can see, feel, and think in new ways. Remember, we decide with the heart and the eyes and then the head comes into play. So, how can I introduce you to this wonderful man, Dr. Srikumar Rao? Pat Shea, dear friend, said I must have him on our podcast. Now this is important. So let me give you a little bit of background so you know why his perspective is so important for you as our listener to better understand. Dr. Srikumar Rao is a speaker, former business school professor and head of the RAO Institute. You should look it up. It's a great website based out of New York. He's also an executive coach to senior business executives whom he helps find deeper meaning and engagement in their work. This is a theme, a recurring theme. Now, it isn't work that gives you purpose; it's finding deeper meaning in your work. Dr. Rao's programs have helped thousands of executives, professionals and entrepreneurs all over the world achieve quantum leaps in effectiveness, resilience and overall happiness. Like, you know, there's a whole body here. Graduates of his workshops have become more creative and more inspiring leaders in some of the world's most successful companies. He helps leaders around the globe transform their lives so that they can experience abundant joy no matter what comes their way. He is a Ted speaker, an author and creator of the pioneering course, Creativity and Personal Mastery. Dr. Srikumar Rao, please tell the audience better than I can your absolutely wonderful story for the audience. There are two stories that are going to come together today. One is Dr. Rao's own personal journey, and it is a wonderful role model for you yourself, and then what he developed to tell others through their journey so that they don't get stuck or stalled on the brink. Remember, today people are on the brink, and they get off it because they have an aha moment, an epiphany. They begin to see things through a fresh lens. And that's why I want to share with you, Dr. Srikumar Rao. Please, who are you? What is your journey? Dr. Srikumar Rao: Thank you, Andi. My pleasure. Let me share the brief or the briefer version of my journey. I grew up in India. We were a middle class family. I was a physics major and then I came to the US. I came to Columbia to do my PhD. I had no interest whatsoever in doing a PhD, but I had a huge interest in coming to the United States of America. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you want to come to America, it's a very good idea to come on somebody else's nickel if you can manage it. And here were all these great universities saying, Mr. Rao, come do a PhD. We will give you a fellowship. That means money. So I said, Yes, I'll do a PhD. So I came to Columbia because it was in New York, which seemed good. I did my PhD in marketing because at that time, Columbia was the world's best business school for marketing. So that's how my life went. I was drifting. I got a job with Warner Communications and there were a series of lucky breaks as a result of which I rose spectacularly fast. I got a big project, which normally would not have been given to me, but my boss had a personal emergency. His boss had to go to Europe on a long scheduled trip. So I got to do it. So I advised on the marketing strategy for a book, which went on to be a movie, which went on to become an all-time blockbuster. In fact, even today, after more than 50 years, it's on the list of 50 top grossing movies of all time. This was the original Exorcist. Ah, so that was my career. And I rose rapidly up the ranks. And at the ripe age of 22, I was head of corporate research for Warner Communications, reporting directly to the president. I got burnt out by corporate politics. So I thought I'd go to the academia where everyone was imbued with a quest for pure knowledge and politics did not exist. I was sadly mistaken. So then I got stuck in a university environment while my colleagues who remained in corporate now moved on to great financial success and hierarchical positions of authority. And I was stuck plodding along. And I thought I had such great education, such a wonderful early start, and I blew it all. I wasted my life. I'm done. You know, it's over. I blew it. So I was not depressed, but pretty down on my life. I'd been doing a lot of reading, spiritual biography, mysticism, a lot of biography which took me to a wonderful place. And I came back to the real world and it sucked. And I remember thinking, if all of this is useful only if you're sitting quietly thinking peaceful thoughts, but not when you came to the hurly burly, then it's useless. Somehow I knew that wasn't true. I knew that this was very valuable. Maybe even the only thing that was valuable. I just hadn't figured out how to make use of it. So one day, I got my bright idea, which is, why don't I take the teachings of the world's great masters, strip them of religious, cultural and other connotations and adapt them so that they're acceptable to intelligent people in a post-industrial society. And the thought of doing that made me come alive.My process up to then, I was a marketing guy. So every time I got a bright idea, I'd ask, will others be interested? Is there a market for it? And if I thought there was, I'd develop that idea, otherwise I'd drop it. This is the first time I didn't ask the question. My initial thoughts were, I teach MBAs. We all know what motivates MBAs. Nobody is going to end up enrolling for the course, but that is okay if they did register, God bless them. If they didn't, God bless them. Anyway, I was going to create the course because I needed it for me. So I did, it did well. I moved it to Columbia Business School in 1999 and it exploded. It was the only course at Columbia Business School, which is a university-wide draw. I had students from law school, from business school, from the School of International Public Affairs, from journalism, teachers college, all over the place. And Columbia is a big international school. So people from other business schools came to Columbia on exchange and they took it and they went back and said, Hey, you gotta take this course. It's great. So it traveled. I taught it at Columbia, obviously. I taught it at London Business School, at Kellogg, at Berkeley, at Imperial College. And then I spun it out and started teaching it privately. And it got a tremendous amount of publicity. You know, it was in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes Business. Andi Simon: You have fallen onto a diamond. Yes. And you're polishing. So where did that take you? Dr. Srikumar Rao: So that's how it all started. And in the meantime, I became an executive coach because people viewed my videos. They watched my TED talks and said, I want to work with you. So I became an executive coach with a global clientele by default. I have a unique niche in coaching, Andi. And my niche is I coach successful people who really want to have an outsized impact on the world, but they also have a spiritual bent, and they want to infuse that into every part of their life. That's my coaching sandbox. Andi Simon: When you think of this as a podcast or a video podcast, the audience is saying, how does one do that? Is that something you can share with them? How can they begin to, it's the same words that you are using to see, feel and think in new ways about themselves because you said something important. These are executives who don't just want to make a living, they want to transform others in the world in what they're doing. They have purpose and meaning. How does one do that? Dr. Srikumar Rao: Well, the answer to that, Andi, is very simple. You begin that process of transformation inside. In other words, you have to undergo personal transformation before you can become effective at helping others on the journey. If someone tells me, I want to be an inspiring leader, I tell them, you're pretty well advanced on the wrong path. Because when you say, I want to be an inspiring leader, it's all about you. I want to. And what you're really saying, if you examine it, is, I want people to do what I would like them to do which perhaps they don't want to do. So I got to figure out how to get people to do what I want them to do. And they don't want to do what I want them to do because I got to learn how to manipulate them. I'm being deliberately provocative, but there's more than a grain of truth in what I've just shared with you. So the way to become an inspiring leader is to be personally inspired by a vision, which is a grand one, which brings a greater good to a greater community. And you have tremendous flexibility in defining both the greater good and the greater community. But if you find something which draws you so strongly that you're willing to devote, if not your whole life, at least a big chunk of your life to it, and it brings a greater good to a greater community, and you learn how to communicate that vision, then whoever comes in touch with you will become inspired. You'll become an inspiring leader by default. You know, when Ghandi set out on his journey, he never said, “I want to be an inspiring leader. I want tens of thousands, millions of people to follow me now.” He said, “The passport laws are unjust and I will not let them stand.” And he was a British-trained attorney. He had verbal skills and he used whatever talents he had to mobilize support for the passport laws. “Laws are unjust and I will not let them stand.” And later on when he led the war against colonial rule in India, and in the process of doing that, he did in fact become an inspiring leader who, and even 80 years after his death, there are millions of people worldwide who were influenced by his ideas. That's how you become an inspiring leader. The journey of transformation always begins between your ears. Andi Simon: This is so both brilliant and appropriate. I have three leadership academies. The word “leading” requires us to have followers and followers who hear you, understand what you're asking of them, but hear it in a way which takes them and inspires them. Not just to be tactical and practical, but to have a bigger reason for doing something. Dr. Srikumar Rao: Exactly correct. Andi Simon: In the words. Purpose and meaning have become trivialized in today's world. Dr. Srikumar Rao: That's true. Andi Simon: In “the great breakup,” people are saying to corporate: “Unless I have meaning in work, I don't need to work there.” But I'm not sure they know how to find that purpose and meaning, and what those words actually mean. I know you have some courses and you have a book in the process. Is this a collective experience, a personal one? How do people begin to discover themselves? Dr. Srikumar Rao: It's both. See, what happens is, in the very syllabus of my course, I state, “This is a program which will profoundly change your life. And if it doesn't, we have both failed.” What do you mean, it'll change my life? But it really does. Consider where I've drawn my material: from the words of hte great masters. So what happens is, as you undergo this journey, you change, and as you change, you recognize that you're not in the business of creating followers. You are in the business of helping everyone you run across, improve their position in life. More precisely, raise their level of consciousness. And the reason you raise their level of consciousness is because that's your path in life. In the process of helping them raise their level of consciousness, you're really working on yourself in raising your level of consciousness. Because in my book, Andi, the only thing you ever do in life is, you work on yourself, and everything you're given by the universe—your partner, your children, your job, your career, your business—they're tools. You use those tools as skillfully as you can. But in the process of doing that, what you're really doing is, you're working on yourself. And that's the only thing you ever do in life. You work on yourself. Andi Simon: You came about this by struggling through other avenues. You knew you really didn't want to go into marketing, but you did really well in it. You left and joined a university and you did well, but not financially well. And then all of a sudden you had an epiphany. Those master courses opened your mind to a whole other way of thinking. Do people have to go through a similar kind of journey? Is there a pathway that starts earlier that can help them? Or do we have to experience life first? Dr. Srikumar Rao: It's a combination, Andi. There is no must. Each person has a unique path in life. I've had people who've taken my program say, “Your course completely changed my life.” And they didn't have any dramatic reversals or breakthrough switch catapult. They just examined what I said, and it made sense to them and they adopted it. And others have to have their head beaten by life before they start recognizing the way I've been doing it is all wrong. So there is no one size fits all. It's a uniquely individual journey. Andi Simon: It's interesting as I'm listening to you, because my third book has just gotten published, it comes out in September. It's a good book. It's called Women Mean Business. It's a great book. I think all my books are great books. But in the process, I'm now at a phase saying, what's next? Business is very good. We picked up a great client. We're going to study the meaning of life for older adults and what is quality. I mean, it's really cool work, but there is another piece, and I share that with the listeners and yourself about what matters as you reach a particular stage in our lives. I'm not growing younger and the past has been a delicious one for me. I've had a great life, great family. But you're raising that question of what's that larger purpose, meaning something beyond tactical and practical, something that can really lift up and lift up others. While people have said that to me, I'm not quite sure what that meant. And I'm not sure I can touch it and feel it, but you are saying something which is, maybe I should come and wander through your course with you and begin to understand it and begin to see it in a bigger picture. You're smiling at me. Dr. Srikumar Rao: I would be delighted. Andi Simon: It's funny because Pat and I were talking about this just a week or so ago, and Pat is very interested in having me deliver my course in Nashville. And she is a dynamo, as you know. And she wants it so strongly, and I'm not opposed to it, that we might very well conduct a live program in Nashville. We are still working out dates and details and so on, but it very well could happen. Dr. Srikumar Rao: But aren't you in New York? Andi Simon: I am in New York. Dr. Srikumar Rao: So am I in New York? So maybe there's a New York version that we can do, because I can't. Andi Simon: That's also possible. I've conducted the course in New York. Yes. So a big advantage of doing it in Nashville is that Pat is a strong supporter and an anchor. But I also think Pat is seeing it as a bigger thing. If she has, I don't know, 25, 30, 40 people who she touches, how can she elevate all of them to a higher level? Dr. Srikumar Rao: That's the whole point. Exactly. Correct. Andi Simon: She wants to spread your pixie dust so that those folks have more joy in life. I think you say on your website, life is a short journey, let's make sure we have joy and it feels purposeful and takes us to another place. I'm curious, I'm an explorer. People said I'm a futurist, which I didn't know, but I'm always looking forward to see how fast change is going to affect us and what's strong about it and what's weak about it. What do you see coming next, both from a philosophical perspective? Life is changing and quickly, and as a result of what is happening outside, I'm finding that there are many people who are recognizing that the real journey is between our ears, as you say, not outside. Now, I'm not in a position to say whether this is a trend in the product population. Certainly the persons who seek me out are persons who have already started that inner journey, otherwise they wouldn't have sought me out in the first place. So there are more of them than ever before. But are there more of them because I'm getting better known and there are more videos of mine floating around? Or is this a trend that's something I cannot comment on? Well, but either way, you're serving your need. Remember, it's not about I, it's about what they need and how you begin to open up a doorway into a different view of their lives at a time where we're all doing it. When I'm working with our folks about preparing for the future, you know, humble perspectives, humans need to see the future. If they're going to live today, what you do is give them a way of being excited about that future. The past has passed. So what's coming next and how do we capitalize on it? How do we enjoy it? Because it's coming. I've become a big fan of ChatGPT. And I just did a podcast with someone who said, “Oh, I haven't even touched it or tried it.” I said, “So before you criticize it, go explore it, be an explorer because it is here and it's going to be transformative.” It is here and it's going to change how we get things done. Is that bad? I don't know. And that's not the only, whether blockchain is here to shrink stuff or, you know, 3D printing. If you put 'em all together, the world is in a very transformative moment. It will not be the same as yesterday, but I don't know what it's going to be tomorrow. So go ahead. Dr. Srikumar Rao: Think back 20 years ago, you hardly had the internet then. And I can remember if you went from place A to place B, you actually had to have a map. And think how things have changed in just the last 20 years. Andi Simon: And it is accelerating. Yes. I think that's actually exciting for my grandchildren who will see the world in a very different way. One of the things that came through the pandemic is a good deal of research on the distinction between virtual and real. And, this is a profound philosophical question. About what is virtual and what are you and I'm not real, because we're doing this virtually. Are video games for people, adults, not part of their reality. Kids talk about avatars and do-overs. It's because they've been well trained by their video games. That's a perfectly normal response to something. Dr. Srikumar Rao: Completely. I agree. Andi Simon: You've just hit upon a very important issue. You know, what is real? You can have some interesting discussions on that. And, without a perspective of your purpose and your own life here, it's very easy to get into the anger over the changes. Humans don't like change, you know that. As opposed to the joy of the new and the unfamiliar. I do think that we are all going to be changed, whether we like it or not. Who are now writing books and perspectives besides yourself? I'm beginning to identify the transformation in a way that they'll be a part of our masters in 10 years. Dr. Srikumar Rao: Here is the funny thing, Andi. What the great masters said is as relevant today as the time that they said what they did. And this goes all the way from Buddha and Jesus to modern Michael Singer, Ram Hershey, Anthony de Mello, just to name a few. They are every bit as relevant. The essential message does not change because human beings do not change. No true circumstances do change. And there are all kinds of gizmos and toys to distract us. But who we are fundamentally has not changed and will not change. Andi Simon: How true that is. And we are good people, humans who have thrived and survived because of our ability to tell beautiful stories and share extraordinary lives. A couple of things you want the listeners not to forget as you've been thinking about this? We always remember that they remember the ending better than even the beginning. And I'll always remember you coming to Columbia because it was a cheap way to get to the Americas, but apart from that, what don't you want them to forget? Dr. Srikumar Rao: Okay. Let me share some things that I would like every person watching or listening to this to take away. The first thing I would like them to be aware of is that your awareness is like a flashlight. This is very important. What does a flashlight do? A flashlight illuminates whatever you shine it on. Take the flashlight of your awareness and shine it on the chair in which you're sitting. The moment I ask you to do that, you become aware of the pressure of your buttocks on the seat. You feel the fabric or the leather against the back of your thigh. Correct? 30 seconds ago, you were not aware of any of this, but now you are. That's true. Why? Because you've shone the flashlight of your awareness on it. What do we typically do with the flashlight of our awareness? We shine it on the two, three or four things that are problems in our lives. More precisely, we shine it on the two, three or four things that we think are problems in our lives and we've defined them as problems in our life and the 40, 50, 200 things that are pretty damn good about our lives, we never shine the flashlight of our awareness on it. So this slips by in the background unnoticed. You and I are incredibly privileged. We've had books published. We don't have to worry about whether we are going to eat tomorrow. We have a bed to sleep in, a roof over our head. We have competent people who can give us medical attention, should we need it. Any of this is a big deal in a huge chunk of the world outside. But we never shine the flashlight of our awareness on it. So it slips by. So what I advise everyone, my coaching clients, people who take my call: shine the flashlight of your awareness on the many ways in which you're fortunate and blessed. Do it the last thing at night before you go to bed. Do it first thing in the morning. Don't go to the space of there's too much to do and I don't have enough time to do it all. Call to mind the many ways in which you are truly fortunate. Bathe in it, marinate in it, value in it, soak in it. It is my hope that everybody listening to this will be in the default emotional domain of appreciation, gratitude. Because when you are there, you're not nervous, you're not anxious, you're not fearful. The two cannot coexist. Andi Simon: That's a very important lesson to learn. You have the flashlight of your awareness, shine it wisely. Dr. Srikumar Rao: The second thing is for them to become aware of something called mental chatter, which is an internal monologue that you have going on in your head all the time. It begins right up when you get up in the morning. It is with you throughout the day and is with you when you go to bed. And sometimes it's so loud that it prevents you from going to sleep. The kind of thing that says, what time is it? Do I have to get up? I don't want to get up. Let me hit the snooze button. I can get another 10 minutes of sleep. All of that is mental chatter. It's always been there. It's like an unwelcome relative who's shown up in your house and you can't kick him out. So we ignore it, suppress it. We work around it. We do our level best to live a life despite our mental shadow. Huge mistake. And it's a mistake because we construct our lives with our mental shadow. We think we live in a real world. We don't. We live in a construct. And we built that construct. We made it out of our mental chatter. Let me illustrate. One of the more powerful teachings of the Buddha is the parable of the second arrow. The Buddha asks his disciple, If an arrow would've hit you in the arm, would it not be very painful? Yes, Lord. Very painful. And if a second arrow would've hit you exactly where the first arrow hit you, would it not be even more painful? Yes, Lord, it'll be even more painful. And then the Buddha asks a surprising question. Why then do you shoot the second arrow? So that needs some explanation. So let me tell you a story. There was this woman, which is a good mother of a son who grew up to be 16. And he got his provisional driver's license. And one day he wanted to show off that he had his license. So he went to his mom and said, Hey, I'm going to go out with some friends and can I take the car? And she said, of course not. You know, you just got your driver's license. Where do you have to go out from? No, no, no, mom, you don't understand. I've got to take the car. She said, okay, I'll drop you. No, no, no. You don't understand. I've got to take the car and you have to not be there. I was okay if I can't be there, that's fine. There's Uber. No, no, no. You don't understand. I have to take the car. Didn't you hear me? I have to take the car and you have to not be there. And the mother says no, but you know how children are. He begged, he pleaded. And bit by bit, she felt herself giving way. She took promises, you're not going to drink. No, no, I'm not going to drink. You're going to call. Yes. You'll be back by 10 o'clock. Yes. So reluctantly she gives him the car keys. And of course once he gets the keys, he forgets all about his promises, he doesn't call, breaks curfew and has too many beers. On the way back, he has an accident and his mother is with him in the hospital while he is being operated on. And then when he is wheeled to the recovery room, she dashes home to have a quick shower and change so she can go back to the hospital. And at that time a friend calls and says, how could you possibly have given him the car? You are not a mother, you are a murderer. Now, are you shocked that a friend would say something like that at this juncture? Probably. Would you be less shocked if I said, that's not what a friend said, it's what she told herself. That is the second arrow. It's bad enough having a son who's recovering from an accident, and you don't know what the after effects are. Does it make matters better to tell yourself that you are a poor mother and in fact, maybe a murderer? Of course not. No. But we do it all the time. That is the second arrow. And the second arrow is always delivered by means of mental shadow. Let me repeat that. The second arrow is always delivered by means of mental shadow. No matter what situation you're facing, Andi, your mental chatter about that situation is making it at least in order of magnitude worse. For most of my clients, if I can get them to stop at the second arrow, they'd be way ahead of the game. By the time they recognize what they're doing to themselves, they're on their fifth, sixth, 253rd arrow. Andi Simon: Oh, I know. My daughter is a special ed teacher, and she sometimes tells me, If only I could work with the parents, the kids could turn out far better than the parents working with the kids. And as I'm listening to you, that mother-son story is a very appropriate one to think about. Where and how do we create the right action, values and self-care so that we can deal with the situations that come, in a very positive fashion with control over it. And that friend who said, You're a murderer, was right in some ways, but that was less important than that it was the mother. Dr. Srikumar Rao: So those are the things I'd like to leave your listeners with. Andi Simon: If they want to reach you, your book is on Amazon? Dr. Srikumar Rao: Yes, it is. So the book is called Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots: The Movers and Shakers' Guide to Unstoppable Success. It is virtual and we'll be starting up live courses again, but all those details are being worked out. They can go to my website, which is www.theraoinstitute.com and sign up for it. And then they will be signed up to get information about that. And then they'll be on my list. They'll get my weekly blog, and they'll also get information about my courses and programs. Andi Simon: I love it. This has been a very heartfelt conversation. I want to  thank Pat Shea for insisting that I have Srikumar on for my listeners, I know you are sitting there saying, This is really important. I can already imagine some of my listeners, I know who they are, saying, Hmm, am I shooting myself with the second arrow or am I able to rise above it and see the world the way it should be? Dr. Srikumar Rao: Yes. It's hard, but it's important. Andi Simon: Let me thank you. And I think I'm going to sign up and get your blogs, maybe even take your course. Dr. Srikumar Rao: Thank you, Andi, it'll be a pleasure having you. And if Pat is your friend, you can be sure she'll reach out to you. Andi Simon: To our listenerers, thank you again for making us among the top 5% of global podcasts. But most of all, thank you for coming, sharing, and enjoying. Our job is to get you off the brink. And today you can really hear why we are both anxious for you to see, feel and think in new ways so you don't get stuck or stalled. And I urge you, listen to Dr. Srikumar Rao's podcast, share it, give it to others. The transcript will be up on the blog that we post. I think there's some deep thoughts here that are well worth remembering, thinking about, reflecting on, and maybe taking to the next step. Dr. Srikumar Rao: Yeah. And they can watch my TED talk, Andi. Andi Simon: Yes. I will make sure that's on there as well. Thank you. You've been such fun. Thank you all. Thank you all for coming. Have a wonderful healthy day. Please see the world as a gift every day as a gift to you.

FASKIANOS: Thank you, and welcome to today's session of the Winter/Spring 2023 CFR Academic Webinar series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website CFR.org/Academic if you would like to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Arunabha Ghosh with us to discuss climate compensation and cooperation. Dr. Ghosh is an internationally recognized public policy expert, author, columnist, and institution builder. He's the founder and CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water. He previously worked at Princeton University, the University of Oxford, the UN Development Program, and the World Trade Organization. He's also contributed to the creation of the International Solar Alliance and was a founding board member of the Clean Energy Access Network, and he currently serves on the government of India's G20 Finance Track Advisory Group, has co-chaired the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Clean Air, and is a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and on the board of directors of the ClimateWorks Foundation. And he is joining us—it is, I think, after 11:00 p.m. where he is, so we appreciate your doing this so late your time. So, Dr. Ghosh, thank you very much for being with us today. We saw in November a historic climate compensation fund approved at the UN climate talks. It would be great if you could give an overview of what it means to compensate developing countries for losses and damages caused by climate change, as well as share your recommendations for how countries can more effectively cooperate on such efforts and maybe the interplay between mitigation, adaptation, and compensation—how are we attacking all of these things. So over to you. GHOSH: Well, good day to everyone out there. It's good evening at my end. It's nearing up on midnight. But thank you, Irina, for having me as part of this conversation and thank you to the Council on Foreign Relations. I think the way you framed it right at the end is really the way to start—how does mitigation, adaptation, and compensation all come together? Before I dive into the specific issue of loss and damage I want to just up front state for those listening in that I see climate change and the responses to climate change as not one market failure but at least three market failures that we are simultaneously trying to solve for. The first market failure is that climate risks are nonlinear in nature and, therefore, we don't have the normal approaches to insuring ourselves against climate risks. You can predict the probability of an earthquake of a certain intensity in a particular region without predicting an exact time of an earthquake but you can actually insure it by looking at the averages. But you can't do that with climate risk because the risks that we face today is less than the risks that you will face in 2030 and then it will exponentially rise in 2050. So your normal approaches towards insurance don't work. That's market failure number one. Market failure number two is, put very simply, money does not flow where the sun shines the most. We have a severe problem of climate-related investment in absolute terms not being sufficient globally and in relative terms significantly insufficient, especially in the regions where you actually have very good natural resources, particularly sunshine, for solar power, and the very same regions where sustainable infrastructure needs to be built between the tropics where countries continue to be developing and need to raise their per capita incomes. The third market failure is that even as we move towards or at least expend efforts towards moving to a more sustainable planet, we haven't really cracked the code on how do we narrow the technology gap rather than widen it. And this matters because, ultimately, the response to climate change, while it's a global collective action problem, because it is nationally situated it does raise concerns about national competitiveness, about industrial development, about access to technology and, of course, the rules that will—that would embed our moves towards a more free and more sustainable marketplace at a global level. And if we cannot crack the code on how technologies are developed and technologies are diffused and disseminated then it will continue to serve as a hindrance towards doubling down on developing the clean-tech technologies of tomorrow. So it's against this backdrop of multiple market failures that we have to understand where this whole loss and damage story comes through. Loss and damage has been discussed for decades, actually, in the climate negotiations. It was put formally on the agenda in 2007. But it was only at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt that there was finally an agreement amongst all the negotiating parties that a loss and damage financing facility would be set up. Now, what is loss and damage itself? Is it the same as adaptation? Clearly, not. It refers to the adverse impacts that vulnerable communities and countries face as a result of a changing climate including the increase in incidence and intensity of natural disasters and extreme weather events, as well as the slow onset of temperature increase, sea level rise, and desertification. So it's not just the hurricane that comes and slams on the coast. It's also repeated rounds of drought which might be impacting smallholder farmers in another part of the world. Now, adapting to a changing climate is different from compensating for the damages that you're facing and that is why there was this call for a separate financing facility for loss and damage. Now, this is the agreement thus far but it's not—it's not a done deal yet. What the decision did was basically said there will be now a transition committee developed dedicated to loss and damage with equal representation for rich and poor countries, and so on and so forth, but that transition committee would then have to figure out the funding arrangements, the institutional arrangements, where would this money sit, figure out how alternative sources of funding would come through only through existing mechanisms and ensure that it all gets delivered by COP28, which will be held in the UAE later this year. Now, my belief is that a political decision, while it's a strong signal, it's only, you know, just—you're just getting off the blocks and several other building blocks will be needed to make this work properly. Number one, we will need a much more granular understanding of hyperlocal climate risk. Today, if you wanted to buy a house in Florida, for instance, there's a high chance that there will be a neighborhood by neighborhood understanding of flooding risk, hurricane risk, et cetera, which is then priced into the insurance premiums that you had to pay for purchasing that property. But in many other parts of the world, when you look at climate models they treat entire countries as single pixels, which is not good enough. My own organization, CEEW, has trying to develop the first high-resolution climate risk atlas for India, a country of a billion and a half people. We now have a district-level vulnerability index looking at exposure to natural disasters sensitivity based on the economic configuration of that district and the adaptive capacity of the local communities and the administration. Based on that then we can say where do you need to double down on your efforts to build resilience. But that kind of effort is needed across the developing world in order to actually understand what it means to climate-proof communities and what it means to actually understand the scale of the problem that loss and damage financing facility will have to address. The second thing that has to happen is more development of attribution science. What is attribution science? Basically, a bad thing happens and then you figure out using the latest science how much of that bad thing happened because of the changed climate. Now, here's the problem. Only about—about less than 4 percent of global climate research spending is dedicated, for instance, to Africa but nearly 80 percent of that spending is actually spent in Europe and North America. So what I'm trying to say is that even as we try to build out attribution science we need a lot more capacity that has to be built in the Global South to understand not just global climate models but be able to downscale them in a way that we're able to understand what the next hurricane, the next flooding event, the next cyclone means in terms of the impacts of climate change. The third thing that has to happen is something called Early Warning Systems Initiative. Basically, the idea—it was unveiled at COP27—is to ensure that every person is protected by early warning systems within the next five years or so. So the next time a tsunami is coming you're not reacting after the fact but you're able to actually send out information well in advance. I'll give you an example. In 1999 a big cyclone—super cyclone—hit an eastern state of India, Odisha, and about ten thousand lives were lost. A huge effort was put in for early warning systems subsequently along with building storm shelters, et cetera. So twenty years later when a similar sized cyclone hit the same state in 2019 less than a hundred lives were lost. Ten thousand versus a hundred. So this is the scale of impact that properly designed early warning systems can do to save lives and save livelihoods. And, finally, of course, we have to build more resilient infrastructure. So the next bridge that is being built, the next airport that is being built, the next bridge that is being built, or a highway that's being built, all of that is going to get impacted by rising climate risks. So how do you bring in more resilient infrastructure? There's something called the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure that India has promoted. It has about thirty-five countries as members already and many multilateral institutions. It itself has started a program on infrastructure for resilient island states—for the small island states. So what I'm trying to tell you here is that the loss and damage—when we talk about compensation it's not just the monetary resources that are needed. There's a lot of technical resources needed to do the hyperlocal climate risk assessment, the infrastructure that is needed to do early warning initiatives, the scientific capability that is needed for attribution science, and the sort of organizational administration capability at a district level but also all the way at an international level. If all of that comes together then maybe we have a better architecture rather than just an announcement around compensation. But that just solves or begins to solve the first market failure. Let me maybe pause there and we can use the rest of the hour to talk about this and the other market failures I highlighted. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Thank you so much. It really is daunting what needs to happen for sure in all the three market failures. We want to go now to all of you for your questions. You all should know how to do this. You can click the “Raise Hand” icon on your screen to ask a question. On an iPad or a Tablet click the “More” button to access the raise hand feature and when you're called upon accept the unmute prompt and state your name and affiliation and your question. Please keep it brief. And you can also write a written question in the Q&A box and, please, you can vote for questions that you like but if you do write a question it would be great if you could include your affiliation along with your name so that it gives us context. So the first question I'm going to take we'll go to Morton Holbrook. Morton, please identify yourself. Q: Hi. I'm Morton Holbrook at Kentucky Wesleyan College in Owensboro, Kentucky. Thanks, Dr. Ghosh, for your presentation. I confess I haven't paid enough attention to COP27. Can you enlighten me as to what the United States committed to and, more importantly, whether the Democratic bill—the bill passed in Congress in December was able to add—actually commit funds to the loss and damage project? GHOSH: Should I answer that, Irina, or are you taking a bunch of questions at a time? FASKIANOS: No, I think it's better to take one at a time— GHOSH: One at a time? OK. FASKIANOS: —so we can have more in-depth— GHOSH: Sure. Sure. Thank you, Morton. Well, the decision on loss and damage was agreed to by all the member states negotiating at COP27. But, as I said earlier, this only suggests the setting up of a financing facility. How it's going to be funded is yet to be determined. Will this be a reallocation of overseas development assistance that is redirected towards loss and damage or is this new money that's put on the table? All of that has to be decided. In fact, the developed countries did take a position that some of the larger developing countries that are big emitters should also contribute towards this loss and damage financing facility. Of course, on the other side the argument is that these are also the countries that are continuing to be vulnerable. So there is a difference now that is coming up in the conversation around loss and damage around vulnerability versus developing in the sense that even emerging economies could be vulnerable to climate change, whereas developing countries might be poorer than emerging economies that are also vulnerable to climate change but in some cases might not be as vulnerable. So the focus is actually on vulnerability in terms of the exposure to climate risks and, as I said earlier, the sensitivity of the communities and the economic systems. Now, with regards to the U.S. legislation, I am not sure of the legislation you're referring to for December. The one I'm aware of is the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed prior to COP27. But if there is something specifically that you're referring to that was passed through Congress in December then I'm not aware of it. FASKIANOS: OK. Let's go to Clemente Abrokwaa. Q: Thank you. Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: We can. Q: Oh, good. Thank you, Dr. Ghosh. Very interesting your explanation or discussion. I'm from Penn State University and I have two short questions for you. One is base compensation. How would you monitor that? If you give a bunch of money or a lot of money to a country, especially those in the third world societies, third world countries, how would you monitor where it goes? Who controls the funding or the money? And I have a reason for—reasons for asking that question. And the second is I was a little surprised about the—what you said about the 80 percent of the money given to Africa is spent in Europe, unless I got you wrong. Yeah, so those—why should that be if that's true? GHOSH: So let me answer the second question first. That is, I was referring to climate—global climate research spending that happens. Of all the global climate research spending that happens less than 4 percent is dedicated to climate research on Africa. But that climate research 80 percent of that less than 4 percent is actually spent in research institutions in Europe and North America. So it wasn't about money going to Africa for climate. It's about the climate modeling research that goes on. So the point I was trying to make there was that we need to build up more climate research capacity in the Global South, not just in Africa and Asia and South America and so forth, in order to become better at that attribution science when it's related to the extreme weather events but also to understand in a more localized way the pathways for more climate-friendly economic development pathways. For instance, my institution CEEW, when we did net zero modeling for India we were looking at multiple different scenarios for economic development, for industrial development, for emissions, for equity, for jobs impact, et cetera, because we were able to contextualize the model for what it meant for a country like India, and now we're doing similar—we've downscaled our model now to a state level because India is a continent-sized country. So that's the point I was trying to make there. With regards to how to monitor the compensation, now, I want to make two points here. Number one is that, of course, if any money is delivered it should be monitored, I mean, in the sense that it's—transparency leads to better policy and better actions as a principle. But we should be careful not to conflate compensation for damages caused with development assistance. Let me give an analogy. Suppose there is—someone inadvertently rams their car into my garage and damages my house. Now, I will get a compensation from that person. Now, whether I go and repair my garage or whether I go on a holiday as such should not matter because what matters is that the damage was caused and I was due compensation. That's different from my neighbor coming and saying, I see that your garage, perhaps, needs some repair. Let me be a good neighbor and give you some money and help you rebuild your garage. In that case, it would be unethical for me to take that money and go on holiday. So there is a difference between compensation for loss and damage and money delivered for development assistance. However, I want to reiterate that once that money reaches any—whether it's a developing country government or a subnational government there should be—there should be mechanisms put in place for transparently monitoring where that money is going. That should be reported whether it's in a—I have often argued for climate risk assessments to be—annually reported at a national level. So the expenditure on all of this should also be reported. That should be tabled in a country's parliament. So I think it's important to use democratic processes to ensure that monies are deployed for where they are meant to be. But it should not be a reason that if I cause you damage, I will not pay you unless I think you are good enough to receive my money. No, I caused you damage. I owe you money. That is the basic principle of loss and damage. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Lindsey McCormack, raised hand. Q: Hi. I would love to hear your thoughts on lessons from the successful response to Cyclone Fani in 2019. I believe you mentioned it was over a million people were evacuated in India and Bangladesh, saving many lives. You know, I am a student at Baruch College in New York and you probably saw that terrible blizzard upstate. People were stranded and died. And I was just comparing their response capacity and the preparedness in that situation versus in the cyclone where you have over a million people moved out of harm's way. I'm really interested to hear what goes behind making that kind of preparation possible. GHOSH: Well, thanks for the question, Lindsey. This is extremely important. I think what happened—before I talk about Cyclone Fani let me go back again twenty years. There was the super cyclone in 1999 and then just a few years later there was also the tsunami in 2004 and, of course, there have been natural disasters from time to time. In fact, between 1990 and 2005 there were about 200-odd extreme weather events that we faced in India. But since 2005, we've already faced well over three hundred. The frequency of extreme cyclones has gone up 3X between the 1980s and now. So there is this constant need, obviously, to upgrade your systems but that investment that was put in in early warning systems at a sort of regional scale using satellites, using ground sensors in the sea, et cetera, help to monitor and help to predict when—the movement of cyclones' landfall and so forth. Along with that is—has been a lot of local administration capacity building of how do you then get this word out and how do you work with local communities. So there are, for instance, again, Odisha women run self-help groups who have become managers of storm shelters so when the community voices are telling people to get out of harm's way it has, perhaps, more social capital attached to it. In another part of the country in a hilly state in Uttar Pradesh—Uttarakhand, I'm sorry—there is a community-run radio station that sends out information about forest fires and things like that. The third thing has been around the rebuilding. So saving of lives is one thing but saving livelihoods is another critical issue and that's why it's not just getting people out of harm's way but often, for—the early warning helps to get livestock out of harm's way as well because, you know, for a small marginal farmer losing their cattle itself becomes a major loss of livelihood. So these are ways in which there have been attempts to ensure that the scientific or the technical capacity building is married with the social capital and the local administrative capital. But that does not mean that this is consistently done all the time. It's all work in progress and a lot more needs to be done in terms of the coverage of—and that's why this Early Warning Systems Initiative that was talked about in COP27 is important because you've got to—I mean, we, again, are working with some private sector entities that provide early warning systems for hundreds of millions of people. So how do their—how do our ground-level data and their sort of AI-based kind of modeling capacity marry together to offer those services to much larger numbers of people, literally, in the hundreds of millions. So it's very important that this becomes—and since the title of this conversation is about climate compensation and cooperation I would argue that this is a no regrets approach towards bridging the North and the South. 2022 has demonstrated that a long-held assumption that the rich would escape and the poor would somehow adapt is kind of gone. You know, we've all been slammed with extreme events and I think, of course, there will be positions on which the North and the South and the East and the West will be on different sides of the table. But building a resilience against nonlinear climate risk is a no regrets approach on which we could certainly be cooperating. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take a written question from Caden Hicks, who is at Lewis University. Of the 197 nations involved in these annual conferences of the parties when wealthy and powerful nations such as the United States and China do not meet their pledges are there any consequences for them? If they decide to drop their participation in this council how would they—what would the consequences be? GHOSH: This is at the heart of the climate problem. I talked about three market failures and there is one political failure, which is that we don't have an accountability mechanism, so to speak, that can hold everyone to account, the largest polluters but also everybody else. And that's why the climate regime is different from the trade regime, which has a dispute settlement mechanism, or the international financial regime where you have annual surveillance of what you're doing in managing your fiscal deficit, for instance. So when it comes to holding actors to account, I see that we need to make efforts both within the FCCC framework and with outside. Within the FCCC framework, the Article Fifteen of the Paris Agreement is something that can be leveraged more to ensure that the Compliance Committee has greater powers, that those that are not compliant are able to then—for instance, in Article Six, which has yet to be operationalized in terms of internationally trading of carbon credits, if you are not compliant with your domestic nationally determined contributions, then Article Thirteen compliance should demand that you have to buy more carbon credits than otherwise would have been possible. That's one idea. The second is that the—and I've written about this recently—that we need to stop making the COPs just platforms for announcing new initiatives, that every alternate COP should be designed as an accountability COP, which means that we come there and we report not just on what we are emitting and automating in terms of the biannual update reviews, but have a genuine peer review conversation as it happens in many other international regimes. Right now no one asks tough questions and no one answers tough questions. So it's—I mean, I said this quite publicly at—in Sharm el-Sheikh that, unfortunately, the COPs have become mutual admiration societies. Every year we come and make announcements. We form some initiatives. We say something will happen on methane, something will happen on finance, something will happen on agriculture and forests. And the next year we come and make new announcements. We never really ask what happened to the announcement you made twelve months ago. So how do we shift from being mutual admiration societies to mutual accountability societies? But beyond the COP process I think there are two other ways in which parties can be held to account. Number one is domestic legislatures and domestic courts. It's important that the pledges that are being made are legislated upon at a national level so that parliaments can hold executives to account, and if that is not happening then you can go to court and hold your governments to account. But, equally, it's not just about state parties. There are the nonstate actors. And last year I also served on the UN secretary-general's high-level expert group on net-zero commitments of nonstate entities, which means the corporations that are promising to get to net zero, or the cities and the states and the regions that are promising to get to net zero, and we laid out some clear principles on what it would mean to claim that you're headed towards net zero. Where are your plans? Where are your interim targets? Where are your financing strategies? How is this linked to your consumer base so you're not just looking at scope one or scope two but also scope three emissions. So there are ways in which then the shareholders and the consumers of products and services of corporations can hold them to account. It's a much more complicated world. But in the absence of the FCCC haven't been able to deliver genuine compliance. We've got to get creative in other ways. FASKIANOS: I'm going to go next to Stephen Kass, who has raised his hand. Also wrote a question but I think it'd be better if you just shared it yourself. Q: I'm an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and at NYU Center on Global Affairs. As you know, COP27 included these remarkable but belated obligations to make payments but without any enforceable mechanism or a specific set of commitments. Some years ago the New York City Bar Association proposed an international financial transaction tax on all transfers of money globally with the proceeds dedicated to climate adaptation. This would not be intended to replace the COP27 obligations but I wonder how you feel about that proposal. GHOSH: This is, again, a very interesting question, Stephen, because the need to be creative of—about different sources of money that can capitalize a loss and damage financing facility or an adaptation financing facility is absolutely essential because governments—I mean, we recognize that governments have limited fiscal resources and it has become harder and harder to get any money—real money—put on the table when it comes to the pledges that have been made. So I have recently been appointed to a group of economists that are looking at this issue. There is this approach, of course, of taxing financial transactions. There is another idea around taxing barrels of oil. Even a single dollar on a barrel of oil can capitalize a huge amount of fund. There are other ways, taxing aviation or the heavy kind of—heavy industries that—you know, shipping, aviation, et cetera. Then there are approaches towards leveraging the special drawing rights (SDRs) on the International Monetary Fund, which are basically a basket of currencies that can then be used to capitalize a—what I've called a global resilience reserve fund. So you don't make any payout right now from your treasuries but you do use the SDRs to build up the balance sheet of a resilience fund, which then pays out when disasters above a certain threshold hit. So these are certainly different ways in which we have to be thinking about finding the additional resources. See, when it comes to mitigation—this goes back to Irina's very first point—when it comes to mitigation there is—at least it's claimed there are tens of trillions of dollars of private investment just waiting to be deployed and that brings me to that second market failure that I referred to, that despite those tens of trillions of dollars waiting to be deployed, money does not flow where the sun shines the most. But when you pair it with, say, adaptation, let me give you an example. India has the largest deployment of solar-based irrigation pumps and it plans to deploy millions of solar-based irrigation pumps so you're not using diesel or coal-based electricity to pump water for agriculture. Now, is a solar-based irrigation pump a mitigation tool or is it an adaptation tool or is it a resilience tool? I would say it's all of the above. But if we can define that through the International Solar Alliance, it's actually trying to also fund the deployment of solar-based irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa as well. So the point I'm trying to make here is if we can find ways to aggregate projects, aggregate demand, and reduce that delta between perceived risk and real risk, we can lower the cost of finance and drive private investment into mitigation-cum-adaptation projects. But when it comes to pure compensation, the kind that we are talking about when it comes to loss and damage, disaster relief, et cetera—especially when climate shocks have compounding effects—that you're not just doing an after the event, you know, pitching a tent to house the displaced population, but we're building in real resilience against even the slow onset of the climate crisis, in some aspects. Then we have to get a lot more creative about the resources because private resources are not flowing there and traditional kind of vanilla-style public resources don't seem to be available. So your idea is very much one of those that should be considered. FASKIANOS: So I'm going to take a written question from Allan Victor Cortes, who's an undergrad at Lewis University: To what extent do you believe that small motivated groups can truly make a global impact on the climate scene? What incentivizes larger bodies, be it states or multinational corporations, to listen to these collaborations of small governments or firms and their proposed environmental solutions? GHOSH: This is a very interesting question because it has a normative dimension to it and an instrumental dimension to it. The normative dimension—I was having another public event just yesterday where we were talking about this—is what is the value—when you're faced with a planetary crisis what is the value of individual or small group action? The value, of course, is that there is agency because when we talk about, say, lifestyle changes, and India announced this national mission called Mission LiFE in October in the presence of the UN secretary-general—Lifestyle for Environment—the idea was how do you nudge behavior, to nudge behavior towards sustainable practices, sustainable consumption, sustainable mobility, sustainable food. You can think about creating awareness. You can think about giving more access to those products and services and, of course, it has to be affordable. But there is a fourth A, which is that it only works when individuals and communities take ownership or have agency over trying to solve the problem. But that is one part of the story. But there is an instrumental dimension to it, which is what I call the enabling of markets beyond just the nudging of individual or small group behavior. So, again, let me give an example of—from India but which is applicable in many other parts of the world. It is the use of distributed renewable energy. Now, distributed renewable energy is smaller in scale, smaller in investment size, even less on the radar of large institutional investors, and yet has many other benefits. It makes your energy system more resilient. It actually creates many more jobs. We calculate that you create—you get seven times more jobs per megawatt hour of distributed renewables or rooftop solar compared to large-scale solar, which creates more jobs than natural gas, which creates more jobs than coal, and it is able to drive local livelihoods. So we mapped this out across India of how distributed renewables could drive livelihoods in rural areas whether it's on-farm applications or off-farm applications, small food processing units, textile units, milk chilling and cold chain units, and so on and so forth, and we were baffled when we realized or we calculated that the market potential is more than $50 billion. In sub-Saharan Africa the market potential of solar-based irrigation is more—about $12 billion. So then suddenly what seems like really small individual efforts actually scales up to something much larger. Now, if we can figure out ways to warehouse or aggregate these projects and de-risk them by spreading those risks across a larger portfolio, are able to funnel institutional capital into a—through that warehousing facility into a large—a portfolio of a number of small projects, if we are able to use that money to then enable consumer finance as has been announced in today's national budget in India, then many things that originally seemed small suddenly begin to gain scale. So we, as a think tank, decided to put our own hypothesis to the test. So we evaluated more than one hundred startups, selected six of them, paired up with the largest social enterprise incubator in the country, and are now giving capital and technical assistance to six startups using distributed renewables for livelihoods. Within two and a half years we've had more than thirteen thousand technology deployments, 80 percent of the beneficiaries have been women who have gone on to become micro entrepreneurs, and India is the first country in the world that's come out with a national policy on the use of distributed renewables for livelihood activities. So the normative value is certainly there about agency. But the instrumental value of converting that agency into aggregated action is also something that we should tap into. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Tombong Jawo, if you could ask your question—it also got an up vote—and identify yourself, please. Let's see. You have to unmute yourself. You're still muted. OK. We're working on that. I'm going to take a quick question from Mark Bucknam, who's the chair of Department of Security Studies at the National War College. What is the best source for statistics on how much money is being spent on climate research? GHOSH: There are multiple sources depending on where you—I mean, the study I was referring to came from a journal paper that was written by Indra Overland, “Funding Flows for Climate Change Research.” This was in the journal Climate and Development. But I would think that the IPCC—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—would probably have some estimates aggregated in terms of this and you could check there. But let me also check with my modeling teams to see if they have better sources and get back to you on this. FASKIANOS: Fantastic, and we will be sending out a link to this webinar—to the video and transcripts—so we can include sources in that follow-up. So since Tombong could not unmute I will ask the question. Tombong is an undergraduate student at Cavendish University Uganda. Climate compensation and cooperation is undoubtedly a step in the right direction if all stakeholders adhere to the laid down rules and regulations. However, what mechanisms are put in place to ensure that it gets to the people who matter the most and not diverted for political gains by politicians? GHOSH: I mean, this is similar to the question that Clemente asked earlier, and I understand and I think it's important now that we start thinking about what are the national-level efforts that would be needed to build in the monitoring of where the funds go and what kind of infrastructure is built. So you can do this at multiple levels and this, again, goes back to the first thing I said about loss and damage, that we need this hyperlocal assessment. Let's say a hundred thousand dollars have been given to a small country for resilience. Now, how you deploy that needs to be a conversation that first begins with the science. Now, where are you going to be impacted the most? What is the kind of climate risk that you're going to be impacted by? Is it a flooding risk? Is it coastal degradation? Is it crop loss? Is it water stress? Accordingly, the monies should be then apportioned. Once it's apportioned that way it should immediately get down to a much local-level kind of monitoring. That requires itself a combination of state-level reporting but I would argue also nonstate reporting. So, again, we spend a lot of our efforts as a nonprofit institution tracking not just emissions but also tracking how moneys are deployed, the scale of projects, where the projects are coming up. We do a lot of ground surveys ourselves. We do the largest survey in the world on energy access, that data that helps to inform the rollout of energy access interventions. We've now paired up with the largest rural livelihood missions in two of our largest states to ensure that this work around distributed energy and livelihoods and climate resilience is tied up with what the rural livelihood missions are promising at a state legislature level. So I think that it is very important that the science dictates the apportionment of the funds but that there is a combination of government reporting and nongovernment assessment to track the progress of these projects. Of course, with advanced technology—and, I mean, some have proposed blockchain and so forth—can also track individual transactions, whether it's reaching the person who was intended to be reached, and so on and so forth, and those kinds of mechanisms need to be developed regardless of this loss and damage financing facility. If we talk about offsets, all the activity in voluntary carbon markets that are going on, the level of rigor that is needed for when, so you're trying to offset your flight and saying, well, a tree is going to be planted in Indonesia for this long-haul flight that you're taking, how do you know that that tree truly was planted? And also if trust is broken then it's very hard to rebuild and that's why, again, I said earlier in answer to a different question that transparency has its own value in addition to improving the trust of the market. But it has its own value because it guides policy development and policy action and individual action in a far better way. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Charles Fraser, who has raised his hand. Q: You can hear me? FASKIANOS: We can now. Thank you. But identify yourself. I know you also wrote your question. So— Q: Sure. I'm a graduate student at the Princeton School of International Public Affairs. My question is about access to finance issues. The UNFCCC has produced—has decreed other climate funds in the past, the Green Climate Fund and the Adaptation Fund for example, and often beyond issues of how much money is mobilized to those funds issues about how recipients can access the funds is a prominent thing that's discussed. How do you think that the—this new fund on loss and damage can be set up to address those issues and, perhaps, demonstrate ways to get around those problems? GHOSH: Firstly, in the case of the loss and damage financing facility we should make sure that it is not designed as a development assistance fund because, as soon as you do that, then you get into all those other questions about is this—is this going to be spam, should we really send it there, are they really ready to receive the money, and then so on and so forth. It has to be a parameterized one in the sense that if certain shocks are hitting vulnerable communities and countries above a certain threshold it should be able to pay out and that's why that hyperlocal climate science and the attribution science is absolutely critical. On top of that it has to—you know, this is not an investment fund in the sense that this is not a fund manager that has to then see where do I get best returns, and is the project application good enough for me to invest in this, whether it's a mitigation project or adaptation project. No. This is a payout fund. So most of the effort for loss and damage financing facility, in my opinion—I don't sit on the—that technical steering committee that is designing it—but in my opinion most of the effort has to go in figuring out what was the vulnerability, what was the baseline, and how much about that baseline did the—was the damage caused and therefore how much has to be paid out. That is really where a lot of the effort has to go, and the second effort that has to go goes back to what Stephen Kass was suggesting in terms of alternative ways to capitalize this, because with rising climate risks we will quickly run out of money even if we were able to capitalize it with some amount of money today. So these two will have to be the basis and the governing board has to basically decide that is the science that is guiding our understanding of a particular event robust enough for us to make the payout. It should not be contingent and that's—it's the same as one, say, an investigator from an insurance company does before a payout is made for a house that's burned down. But if you keep the victim running around from pillar to post asking for the money that they deserve as compensation, then it will quickly lose legitimacy like many of the other funding schemes that have come out of the climate regime thus far. FASKIANOS: I'm going to take the last question from Connor Butler, who's at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. In the near future do you see wealthy developed countries collaborating with poorer lesser-developed countries in order to build a resilience toward and combat climate change, or do you think that the North will always work together without involving the South? GHOSH: Connor, thank you for this question because this gives me a segue into my third market failure, which is should we build or are we building a sustainable planet which widens rather than narrows the technology divide. I analyzed about three dozen so-called technology-related initiatives emerging in the climate and energy space over the last decade and a half and there were only four that did any kind of real technology transfer and that to—none at scale. Basically, what happens is when you talk about technology, when you talk about cooperation on new technologies, usually these initiatives get stopped at, you know, organizing a conference and you talk about it. Sometimes you put in a—there's a joint research project that begins. Very few times there's a pilot project that actually you can physically see on the ground, and almost never does it get used at scale. So I have been increasingly arguing for technology co-development rather than technology transfer, because it's a fool's errand to hope that the technology will be transferred. Now, why is technology co-development important not just from the point of view of Global South? It's important from the point of view of Global North as well. Let's take something like green hydrogen. It is a major new thrust in many economies. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act provides a $3 subsidy for production of green hydrogen. India has just announced the largest green hydrogen mission in the world aiming to produce 5 million tons of green algae by 2030. But green hydrogen is not just—it's not easy to just take water and split it. You need a lot of energy. To make that—to split the water you need electrolyzers. For that, you need critical minerals. You need membranes that are developed in certain places. You need manufacturing capabilities that can build this out at scale. I mean, India alone will need 40 (gigawatts) to 60 gigawatts of electrolyzers by the end of the decade. So, ultimately, if we have to build a cleaner energy system and a cleaner economic system we will actually have to move away from islands of regulation towards a more interdependent resilient supply chain around clean energy and climate-friendly technologies. So rather than think of this as a handout to the Global South, I think it makes more sense—and I can talk about batteries, critical minerals, solar panels, wind turbines, green hydrogen, electric vehicles—and you will see again and again we are actually mapping economy by economy where strengths, weaknesses lie and how the complementarities come together. We can see that this technology co-development can become a new paradigm for bridging the North and the South rather than technology transfer being a chasm between the North and the South. FASKIANOS: I think that's a good place to conclude, especially since it is so late there. This was a fantastic conversation. We really appreciate your being with us, Dr. Ghosh, and for all the questions. I apologize to all of you. We could not get to them all. We'll just have to have you back. And I want to commend Dr. Ghosh's website. It is CEEW.in. So that is the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water website and you can find, I believe, a lot of the studies that you're talking about and your papers there. So if people want to dig in even further they should go there, also follow you on Twitter at—oh, my goodness. I need—I need—I think it's midnight here. GHOSH: So ghosharunabha. It's my last name and my first name—at @ghosharunabha FASKIANOS: Exactly. Right. So thank you again for doing this. We really appreciate it. The next Academic Webinar will be on Wednesday, February 15, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time with Margaret O'Mara, who is at the University of Washington, and we will be talking about big tech and global order. So, again, thank you, and if you want to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships you don't have to be in New York or Washington. We do have virtual internships as well. You should please reach out to us, and we also have fellowships for professors. You can go to CFR.org/Careers and do follow us at @CFR_Academic and come to CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. So, again, Dr. Ghosh, thank you very much for today's conversation and to all of you for joining us. GHOSH: Thank you, Irina. Thank you, CFR. Thank you very much. (END)

In this episode of 1050 Bascom, we were excited to welcome Jean Vilbert. Jean holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in law as well as as Master's degree in International Public Affairs from the La Follette School of Public Affairs. He is currently teaching courses for the Political Science department. In an interview conducted in December, we asked Jean about his career teaching law and working as a judge in Brazil. We also asked Jean for his insights into Brazilian politics more generally. We had a really interesting conversation, and we learned so much. We hope you will too.

In Season 3, Episode 2 of the empowerME Conversations podcast, host and Atlantic Council empowerME Chairman Amjad Ahmad interviews Arab Republic of Egypt Ministry of International Cooperation Minister H.E. Rania A. Al-Mashat with guest co-host UPS President for International Public Affairs and Sustainability Penelope Naas to discuss Egypt hosting COP 27, increasing women in leadership positions, promoting inclusivity in the economy, energy transitions, and the continued development of Egypt's entrepreneurial ecosystem. Season 3 of the empowerME Conversations Podcast is sponsored by UPS. Key Takeaways0:00 Intro4:50 H.E. Rania Al-Mashat discussed Egypt as the first country in the Middle East and North Africa or in Africa to issue green bonds, which are anchored on projects that have outcomes related to climate action, such as sustainable infrastructure, water, waste management, transportation, and renewables. 6:10 H.E. Al-Mashat underscored Egypt's forethought as the country invested in silos for wheat storage for the first time in 2014, demonstrating the resilience in adaptation projects which allowed the country to survive the wheat crisis. 9:10 H.E. Al-Mashat argued that Egypt will attract capital amongst competition because of its success and goals such as the global competition for startups with Green Solutions and continued focus on adaptation for Africa. 13:20 H.E. Al-Mashat emphasized the importance of COP 27 and the necessary energy transitions in Egypt, and Africa at large. 17:00 H.E. Al-Mashat gave an overview of Egypt's current and future projects to target climate action, such as the Integrated Sustainable Energy Strategy which includes KPIs for renewables, both wind farms, and solar plants, and by 2035 40% of Egypt's energy mix will be renewables.19:45 Penelope Naas reflected on Egypt asan important crossroad with regards to Egyptian waterways connecting the East to the West, and how this relates to Egypt's relative climate and the fragility of supply chains and infrastructure. 23:10 H.E. Al-Mashat asserted that regionalization and localization are not mutually exclusive when it comes to supply chain resiliency and furthered that there must be localization but with a level playing field.26:23 H.E. Al-Mashat stated that there are three words that shape the future of every country's economy: inclusive, digital, and green.29:30 H.E. Al-Mashat agreed that Egypt must continue to support women at all levels and cited the Closing the Gender Gap accelerator which supports women in leadership positions, pushes for equal remuneration, and also pushes for digital skills.32:40 H.E. Al-Mashat reflected on Egypt's increased emphasis on the implementation and execution of recent projects and those since 2011. 37:50 H.E. Al-Mashat purported her optimism and positivity for Egypt come from the amount of engagement that takes place within the country and with other countries. Quotes mentioned by H.E. Rania Al-Mashat “Women's participation requires commitment from the government. And once that happens, culture starts to change… when women are in leadership positions and they do well, it becomes more familiar.” “I think there are three words that shape what every country's trying to do now on a national level or in partnerships, whether with the private sector or with IFIs, and it is an inclusive economy, a digital economy, and a green economy.” “There's also a lot of commitment, not just from the government but also from the private sector, that has been experimenting with incubators, pushing risk capital and venture capital into these startups... a key point is to market more and to make the success stories known.” Guest Social Media Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/rania-a-al-mashat-a00899182/https://twitter.com/RaniaAlMashathttps://www.linkedin.com/in/penny-naas-077aa57/https://twitter.com/pennynaas Host Social Media Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/amjadahmadvc/https://twitter.com/amjadahmadVC

Dr. Brian Latell served 35 years as the CIA and National Intelligence Council's top analyst on Cuba He's a widely respected expert on the Castros and the Island's politics. He's now an adjunct professor at FIU's School of International & Public Affairs

On today's episode of Inside the War Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Eric Olander of The China Africa Project. In my opinion, it is the best site covering the intersection of China and Africa. If you are interested in their work, you can subscribe here. Eric's bio: Eric Olander is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience reporting, producing and managing newsrooms for some of the world's leading editorial organizations including CNN, FRANCE 24 and the BBC World Service among others. He has an extensive background working in newsrooms and doing content production in the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Asia. China, though, has been the central focus of Eric's professional career. He first went to China in 1989 and spent more than a decade of combined time living, studying and working there. Eric is fluent in both French and Mandarin Chinese. He received his undergraduate degree in East African history from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master's of International Public Affairs with a focus on Chinese foreign policy from the University of Hong Kong. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at warroommedia.substack.com/subscribe

Joining the discussion:Jeremy Goldberg | President of LeagueAppsJeremy Goldberg is the President & Quarterback of LeagueApps, a sports technology company headquartered in New York City, where he oversees the marketing, business development, community and impact functions.  LeagueApps, the operating system and community for the youth sports industry, is on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing tech and media companies in North America, and was recently named the Top 25 Best Employers in Sports by Front Office Sports.  Jeremy is also an operating partner at 212MEDIA, a venture development firm that produced LeagueApps, Homer (backed by Sesame Workshop and Lego Ventures), Saavn (exited to Reliance Jio), and LiftMetrix (exited to Hootsuite).  Previously, he served in technology strategy roles at the Mitchell Madison Group and Generate Insights and was the Founder and CEO of poliVOICE. Jeremy is also passionate about his causes, having worked in various capacities for Obama for America and Seeds of Peace, founded and Co-Chairs the PLAY Sports Coalition, and serves on the boards of Seeds of Peace and Search for Common Ground, and on the Women in Innovation (WIN) Advisory Council. Jeremy holds a bachelor’s degree with Honors from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, and a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs.Ashland Johnson, Esq. | Attorney and Founder of Inclusion PlaybookAn attorney, equity and inclusion strategist, and former Division I athlete, Ashland Johnson has over a decade of civil rights experience working with social justice communities, advising sports leaders, and serving in leadership roles in advocacy organizations. Ashland has extensive experience working with major sports leagues and associations, including the NBA, NCAA, NFL, USOC, and various national governing bodies to strengthen their social responsibility programming, policies, and platforms at the intersection of inclusion, race, gender, and the law. She recently authored the groundbreaking report, Play to Win: Improving the Lives of LGBTQ Youth in Sports which provides critical insights and action steps for more inclusive sporting spaces.Dr. Wilsa Charles Malveaux, MD MA | Sport Psychiatrist & Former Elite AthleteDr. Wilsa Charles Malveaux has a focus on Sports Psychiatry, helping athletes with mental illness, performance, life/career transitions, and overcoming unexpected setbacks. She has successfully worked with athletes at varying stages of their career, including high school, collegiate, professional, and retired athletes. Dr. Charles-Malveaux currently lends her expertise as a psychiatric consultant to the U. S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), to a professional sports league, and multiple professional sports teams, and organizations. She is also the Western Regional Trustee, Region IV for the Black Psychiatrists of America (BPA); and CEO and President of WCM Sports Psych.

This show has been regularly discussing Beijing’s support for sustainable development initiatives, its provision of aid, technical expertise and finance to developing counties under the South-South Cooperation umbrella, and the numerous infrastructure projects that China is undertaking in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.A common goal in several of the episodes in this season of the podcast has been to nuance the understanding of China’s recent activities, better understand its motives and reflect on its future strategies and actions. Much of the recent focus in Western media reports on China has focused on the damage that Covid has done to Beijing’s reputation abroad. There have also been growing concerns on how Beijing will react to certain countries defaulting on the huge loans that it has provided for infrastructure construction. But not everyone shares such concerns. And indeed there are numerous voices that have highlighted Beijing’s support for multilateral institutions and its ability to finance and undertake major development projects that the West has long neglected. Guest: Eric Olander is the co-founder of the China Africa project, an independent multimedia organization that explores China’s engagement with Africa. He is a journalist with over three decades of experience reporting, producing and managing newsrooms for some of the world’s leading media organizations including CNN, and the BBC World Service. Eric speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and has a Master’s degree in International Public Affairs with a focus on Chinese foreign policy from the University of Hong Kong. He also hosts a very popular weekly China in Africa podcast.Eric Olander on TwitterDan Banik and In Pursuit of Development on Twitter 

This podcast is part of a series focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our food system. We're interviewing Caitlin Welsh, director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies based in Washington DC. Caitlin is a leading expert on global and US food security and particularly on the relationship between food security, urbanization, climate change, and conflict.    Interview Summary   How is the COVID-19 food security crisis different from others, such as the 2007, 2008 food crisis caused by the great recession?   What we're experiencing right now is a crisis that's not related to production levels, whether you're talking about food insecurity in our own country or around the world. The last global food crisis that we experienced was the crisis of 2007 and 2008 and the crisis was caused by low production levels and high prices. The crisis we're experiencing right now is not a crisis; it's rooted in low production levels. Instead, it's rooted in disruptions across food systems writ large.   In my analysis, I've seen at least six different types of disruptions: 1) the first being reductions in wages and job losses, which has widespread effects on food insecurity. 2) In some countries, you're seeing that lockdowns threaten the transportation of ag inputs like seeds and fertilizer to farms. 3) The third type of disruption I'm seeing is that lockdowns threaten the movement of labor to farms. As one example, there may be an estimated shortfall of about a million seasonal ag workers in Europe because of lockdown related to COVID. 4) A fourth type of disruptive that lockdowns may threaten the transportation of food from farms to markets. And in the United States, I think that we've done a very good job of preventing this from happening. Early on to the pandemic back in March, the Department of Homeland Security included truckstops as part of our critical infrastructure to make sure that food could be transported from where it's produced to where it's consumed. 5) The fifth type of destruction I've seen is when social distancing measures result in reduced access to urban markets on which many consumers rely to meet their food needs. It's frequently urban consumers who are hit first by disruptions at the market level. 6) And the six types of destruction are trade disruptions, and these happened early on in the pandemic. In some cases, you saw labor shortages and slowed operations at ports, which hindered the trade of food from producers to markets. So I see disruptions at many points in food systems and not a crisis of production as we saw the last time.   Caitlin, you spent a decade working in US government positions, including seven years in the Department of State's Office of Global Food Security, so you know an awful lot about this issue. Can you describe what you see globally relative to food insecurity?   We don't yet have a global assessment that's given us a very clear picture of food insecurity. But, we have estimates that are done by a few different organizations. The World Food Program has estimated that the number of people who could experience acute food insecurity this year could reach 270 million. They think that COVID will push an extra 120 million people into acute food insecurity. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization provides its estimate. The numbers are different but complementary. The FAO looking at best mid and worst-case scenarios, even in the best-case scenario, COVID-19 could increase the number of food-insecure people worldwide by 83 million.   Those are startling numbers. Should the global approach leaders take to improve global food security change in response to COVID-19? And if so, how would you suggest things be done?   That's a great question, and I think that because of COVID-19, we should be taking a different approach than the approach that we took in response to the last crisis. But I also think that even if this pandemic had not happened, we should be shifting our approach anyway, based on new data that we're seeing so I'll address both things.   Because COVID-19 is causing disruptions across food systems writ large. I think that the global food security community should renew its focus on food systems post-production. And on the importance of transportation mechanisms to get inputs and labor to farms, on transportation to get food from farms to markets, on the importance of markets, particularly in urban areas, on global trade. So I think that COVID-19 is underscoring for us the importance of all of these elements to global food security, all of these elements that happen post-production. I do think though, again, that even if this pandemic hadn't happened, data that we're seeing now is showing us that the approach that we were taking in response to the last crisis isn't necessarily improving global food security.    So in response to that last crisis, the global food security community coalesced around an approach that generally focused on increasing agricultural productivity of staple crops in developing countries. And for many years we were following that approach that had some positive benefits among some populations in some countries around the world. But just last month, the UN put out its annual report on the status of hunger and malnutrition worldwide. And this is the annual report that measures progress against the sustainable development goal on hunger, that is, SDG 2 with targets to end hunger and targets to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030. And the findings of this report were shocking to me. One of the main findings was that combining numbers, people experiencing moderate food insecurity and severe food insecurity have an estimated quarter of the world's population.   On top of that, it's very interesting that it calculated the average price of healthy diets around the world, a good healthy diet and the best healthy diet. And for both of those diets, the average costs around the world is greater than international poverty line. So essentially if you're living in poverty, you can't even afford the minimally healthy diet around the world. And people are saying as a result of that, should we be thinking of the international poverty line differently if it can't even buy you the cheapest healthy meal?   The WFPC saw the same numbers that you did and was startled by them just as you are. And it makes me wonder, and I'd be curious to see what you think, is there any hope at all of meeting that 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 2 of having no hunger around the world? I mean, that would have been a tall order even if things had been getting subtly better but they're getting steadily worse.   Yes, again, the targets are to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition. And as of this year's report, the UN is saying that that hunger continues to increase and that when it comes to malnutrition, the current level of effort is not anywhere near enough to end malnutrition in the next decade. I also see less attention to this issue politically. It's not high on US development agenda, I don't see it as high on the UN agenda around the world. We'll see what the do about it. I'd like to put some color around the approach that we devised in response to the last crisis, which was to increase the production of staple crops. In 2015, the entire intelligence community put together an assessment of global food security. And their bottom line judgment was that simply growing more food globally will not lead to more food secure countries. And I think that that's what we see around the world. It's very important to be investing in agricultural production of staple crops, but simply growing more food is not gonna lead to more food security and that's what we're seeing today.   Turning our focus to the US, how is COVID-19 affected food systems in America?   Happy to talk about that. When it comes to the United States, again, I think it's analogous to what we're seeing around the world, where we have relatively high and stable production of many different types of food around our country. At the same time, you see spikes in food insecurity by many different measures. You can look at the number of people who are utilizing food banks, and you can look at the level of food insecurity among children. All these numbers are spiking. I'll describe these disruptions that I've observed across US food systems. When it comes to food banks, we're seeing that in the pandemic, demand that us food banks has increased by an average of 70% compared to this time last year. A big spike across the board, about 40% of customers at food banks had never gone to food bank before the pandemic kicked, grocery store prices are increasing. You have had small upticks in prices of cereals and fruits and vegetables, but the biggest increase is in the price of beef. The beef index increased 20% in the three months of April, May, and June, and that's the largest increase in history.   Given what you've just said about food banks in particular, how would you characterize the state of food security overall in the United States?   Yes, the last nationwide assessment of food insecurity in the United States was in 2018. They haven't produced an assessment yet of this year that captures the effects of the pandemic. But we do have surveys that are done by the US Census Bureau, and their data is showing that we have historic levels of food insecurity among households with children, but they've updated the survey such that data is now showing that it's children's specifically. Highest levels on record in the United States it's 14 million children around the country experiencing food insecurity.   I would like to ask you about COVID food security and racial justice. Well, what is the relationship that you see among these, and what are your thoughts about how to best move forward?   Yes, that is an incredibly important question right now. I just mentioned that there were historical rates of food insecurity among children. Still, the rate is far higher among black and Hispanic households than white households. About three in 10 black households with children are experiencing food insecurity. It's about 30% of black households. About 25% of Hispanic households with children compared to the rate of only 10% for white households. And my experience in this community is that I think that before the pandemic, and before the racial reckoning that we're experiencing right now, people used to take for granted that you would experience higher rates of poverty and food insecurity among communities of color in the United States. And I'm seeing a really important and much-needed shift where we're not accepting that as given. And instead, people are saying, why is this happening? And what can we do about it? I look forward to those conversations, and I look forward to those solutions. There's no silver bullet to these things.   I'd like to switch to something related to this, which is the relationship of the pandemic to food insecurity and inter-race in the United States. I think that we've all heard that Black and Latino Americans have died of COVID-19 at two to three times the rate of white Americans. I think that it's important to note that among the factors that lead to morbidity and mortality rates from COVID, the second most important factor in age is obesity. And nationwide, the rate of obesity is higher among black and Hispanic adults than it is among white adults. I think that obesity, a manifestation of malnutrition, plays an important role in the impact of COVID-19 on people of color in the United States. I think it's important to look at the interplay of race, COVID-19, and food insecurity in the United States.    And then to get to your question about what to do about food insecurity among people of color, I think that there are a number of things for us to look at. It's not only about food access. The conversation often goes directly to a lack of full-service markets in communities of color. I think that it should go beyond that. It's strongly linked to income, so increasing wages, the importance of investments in infrastructure like public transportation. And I think there are other conversations that we need to be having as well. Right now, headlines are being made around the increase in evictions because of the lapse of federal benefits at the end of July. There are strong links between eviction rates and food insecurity. So I've been reading studies about the correlation between food insecurity at age five and eviction rates for children. So there are connections between being evicted and having high rates of food insecurity. So communities of color are hit hardest, and I think that the policy community needs to do this.   Interviewee bio: Caitlin Welsh is the director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she provides insights and policy solutions to global and U.S. food security challenges. She brings over one decade of U.S. government experience to this role. She served most recently in the National Security Council and National Economic Council as director of global economic engagement, where she coordinated U.S. policy in the G7 and G20. Prior to the White House, Ms. Welsh spent over seven years in the Department of State's Office of Global Food Security, including as acting director, offering guidance to the secretary of state on global food security and its relationship to urbanization, climate change, and conflict. Ms. Welsh served as a presidential management fellow at the U.S. African Development Foundation, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco. Her analysis on global and U.S. food security has been featured in The Economist, Foreign Policy, BBC, and other outlets. Ms. Welsh received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and M.P.A. from Columbia University's School of International Public Affairs. She hails from Erie, Pennsylvania, and speaks Arabic and French.   

L'Istituto Affari Internazionali ha organizzato, nell'ambito della partnership con Intesa Sanpaolo, un webinar sulle implicazioni della pandemia di Covid-19 nelle attività della criminalità organizzata internazionale. Sono intervenuti nell'ordine: Hugo Doyle (Head of International Public Affairs, Intesa Sanpaolo), Ferdinando Nelli Feroci, (Presidente dell'Istituto Affari Internazionali), Paola Severino (Già Ministro della Giustizia. Vice Presidente e Professore Ordinario all'Università LUISS Guido Carli), Federico Cafiero de Raho, (Procuratore Nazionale Antimafia), Nicoletta Parisi (Già Professore Ordinario all'Università degli Studi di Catania. Componente del Consiglio, Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione), Ernesto Ugo Savona (Direttore, Transcrime - Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore).Ha moderato Francesco De Leo (Responsabile della Comunicazione IAI e Direttore AffarInternazionali).

This event launches Crony Capitalism in the Middle East: Business and Politics, from Liberalization to the Arab Spring edited by Ishac Diwan, Adeel Malik, and Izak Atiyas. The popular uprisings in 2011 that overthrew Arab dictators were also a rebuke to crony capitalism, diverted against both rulers and their allied businessmen who monopolize all economic opportunities. While the Middle East has witnessed a growing nexus between business and politics in the wake of liberalization, little is discussed about the nature of business cronies, the sectors in which they operate, the mechanisms used to favour them, and the possible impact of such crony relations on the region's development. Combining inputs from leading scholars in the field, Crony Capitalism in the Middle East presents a wealth of empirical evidence on the form and function of this aspect of the region. Crony Capitalism in the Middle East is unique in both its empirical focus and comparative scale. Analysis in individual chapters is empirically grounded and based on fine-grained data on the business activities of politically connected actors furnishing, for the first time, information on the presence, numerical strength, and activities of politically connected entrepreneurs. It also substantially enhances our understanding of the mechanisms used to privilege connected businesses, and their possible impact on undermining the growth of firms in the region. Ishac Diwan is Professor of Economics at Paris Sciences et Lettres (a consortium of Parisian universities) where he holds the chair of the Economy of the Arab World. He has held recent teaching positions at Columbia University, School for International Public Affairs, and at the Harvard Kennedy School. He directs the Political Economy program of the Economic Research Forum, where he runs two projects on the study of crony capitalism, and the analysis of opinion surveys. Diwan is a frequent consultant with governments and international organizations, working recently on policy issues in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Egypt. Adeel Malik is Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and an Associate Professor at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Malik is an empirical economist with a strong multi-disciplinary orientation. He is trying to develop a broader research lens to study Middle Eastern political economy. Malik’s research on Middle Eastern political economy has featured in the CNN, Financial Times, the New York Times, Project Syndicate, and Foreign Affairs. Courtney Freer is a Research Fellow at the Kuwait Programme, LSE Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. She previously worked at the Brookings Doha Center and the US–Saudi Arabian Business Council. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEMiddleEast

Não é preciso ir tão longe para se dar conta de que a Inteligência Artificial terá efeitos profundos em todas as áreas da atividade humana. Como ela afetará a prestação de justiça, o ensino, as profissões jurídicas e a operação do Direito? Que benefícios podemos colher e que armadilhas devemos evitar? Para debater essas questões, a Fundação FHC reuniu especialistas capazes de discuti-las dentro de uma perspectiva abrangente e com base na realidade do Direito e da Justiça no Brasil e em outros países, como os Estados Unidos. Convidados: - Ronaldo Lemos (advogado, com especialização em tecnologia, mídia e propriedade intelectual, e professor da Columbia SIPA - School for International Public Affairs, NY) - Paulo De Tarso Sanseverino (ministro do Superior Tribunal de Justiça) - Peter Messite (juiz federal do Distrito de Maryland - EUA) - Oscar Vilhena Vieira (professor de Direito Constitucional e Direitos Humanos e diretor da Escola de Direito de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas) - Flávio Yarshell (advogado atuante nas áreas consultiva e contenciosa) Data: 7 de outubro de 2019

Today Sarah will be joined by Anna Szklanowska. Anna is originally from Poland, but she moved with her family to the German-speaking part of Switzerland when she was 6 years old.She's twenty years old and currently a student at Sciences Po studying International Public Affairs with a focus on media and the East Asian region. Outside of school she's also really passionate about music and has been creating since she was 13 years old.Anna will be talking about mental health about well-being, having being diagnosed as bipolar and how she stays mentally strong. She is currently launching a YouTube channel to talk about her story.Should you be needing immediate help with your mental well-being, please contact LifeLine on 13 11 14:https://www.lifeline.org.au/

Donya Fahmy is the CEO and Alchemist in Chief of Sustainable Health Solutions Inc, and Founder and Formulator for Dropwise Essentials --a line of aromatherapy and organic plant-based personal care products. Donya is also a speaker, #1 Amazon International Best-Selling Author and a Natural Health & Lifestyle Expert. Her passion is helping women over 40 master the art of using natural solutions to experience more energy and better health so they can continue to look and feel good and enjoy productive lives as they age –something she calls Sustainable Wellness SuccessSM.After almost two decades of suffering from multiple chronic health problems, Donya was able to finally heal herself using natural and plant-based solutions to successfully accomplish what doctors and traditional medicine couldn’t. She was inspired to create the Dropwise product line after making an aromatherapy solution for her eczema that worked almost as effectively as the numerous steroid medications she had been taking. Using her extensive knowledge and experience, Donya has pioneered a simple step by step approach that anyone can use to naturally heal chronic health problems or prevent them from developing in the first place. With this approach she helps both individuals and families uncover and eliminate the hidden sources of their health challenges and introduces them to natural drug-free solutions –sparing them unnecessary medical procedures and expenses. She also uses this system to help companies identify the missing links in their workforce wellness so they can improve productivity and profits.A native of New York City, she relocated to San Francisco in the late 1980s where she transitioned from a Wall Street career into business communications and subsequently Internet development and consulting. Her mounting personal health challenges ultimately catapulted her into the natural health and wellness field. Donya has been formulating aromatherapy and organic personal care products for more than 19 years and is passionate about empowering people to take back control of their health and wellness.She has a B.A. in English from Barnard College and an M.P.A with a concentration in Finance and Law from Columbia University's School of International & Public Affairs. She has studied aromatherapy with Carol Schiller a successful author of several widely read aromatherapy books, and with Dr. Daniel Penoel, a renowned expert in medical aromatherapy. For more information visit the Dropwise web site at www.dropwise.com or read her blog The Aroma Zone at www.dropwiseblog.com. To get a copy of her free guide “Heal Yourself Naturally: 3 Steps to Life-Changing Results” go to www.yourhiddenhealthmines.com.

On this episode of Tertulia: we explore art as a tool for bringing attention to some of the most important issue of our day and giving voice to overlooked people. Our guests are Evan Marcus – PHD student and researcher at FIU’s School of International & Public Affairs, and Joseph Velasquez – artist and professor at FAU who specializes in traditional printmaking techniques.

On this episode of Tertulia: we explore art as a tool for bringing attention to some of the most important issue of our day and giving voice to overlooked people. Our guests are Evan Marcus – PHD student and researcher at FIU’s School of International & Public Affairs, and Joseph Velasquez – artist and professor at FAU who specializes in traditional printmaking techniques.

Negin Farsad (www.NeginFarsad.com)shares why she focused on African-American studies during graduate school at Columbia University's School of International Public Affairs.

In the 16th episode of NEOHUMAN, Agah is chatting with Liza Featherstone. Liza is an American Journalist and Journalism professor at NYU and Columbia’s School of International Public Affairs, who also writes frequently on labor... The post 16: Liza Featherstone appeared first on LIVE IN LIMBO.