SDIM24 - Putting COPs' Pledges into Practice

Mirek Dušek: On behalf of our organization, I would like to warmly welcome you to the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings here, overall. And specifically, to this very special session on the three COPs and how they can deliver on what they have on the agenda. Obviously, this is a very unique moment. We have three COPs going in close sequence in one year on biodiversity, climate and desertification. And we're really to talk about what are, not only the ambitions, but also the partnerships necessary to help them succeed.

You may know that the World Economic Forum has a longstanding history, a tradition of working on climate and nature, so really spanning all the agendas of the different COPs. We know what is at stake. This year is unfortunately on track to become the hottest on record, putting stress on food systems, water systems. We are also seeing this intersection of conflict and the humanitarian picture intersecting with extreme weather events and effects of climate change. And we are also living in a more complex geopolitical environment. So, you see it here, I'm sure, during the UNGA week, how more complicated the relationships are and relations between and among global powers. And obviously it's a little bit of a drag. The lack of multilateralism or ossification of multilateralism is a little bit of a drag on what we really need to do in terms of these common global challenges.

And so, in this aspect, in this respect, obviously it's very important to double down on diplomacy and multilateralism, but it's also very important to be very innovative in terms of public-private collaboration. So, this is what the World Economic Forum has been doing over the past years, really focusing on how we can support processes like the Conference of the Parties with innovative public private partnerships. And given the context that we are in right now, I think it could not be more important.

We're also very proud that, as is our tradition, we're working very closely with the hosting countries. So we have great collaboration with the government in Colombia, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia that are preparing those respective meetings, as well as, of course, the secretariats of those different co-ops.

So again, just a warm welcome to all of you. Also a warm welcome to all of you who are watching us online. This is a web-streamed session, but of course, also a warm welcome to the panel. Thank you for joining us. You've been working with us on this for a while. So we're very happy that you can share with everyone here, and also online, how you see the ambition and more importantly, how can we then follow through.

Thank you so much. And now it is my pleasure to hand over to the moderator, Bill Weir, from CNN over to you.

Bill Weir: Thank you very much. Thank you. Hello, everybody. So great to be with you on Climate Week, day one.

I live, sort of, in my job, at the intersection of nature and human nature. I resisted a beat most of my career because I like everything. I want to be a generalist; I like everything. Turns out the climate is one beat that includes all the others: food, transportation clothing, world economics, diplomacy, national defense, really matters in relation to a planet in balance. And these COPs, that I've now been to a few of, can be frustrating. They can be exciting. It beats the alternative of humans not talking to each other about this gigantic earthly problem. But I'm really excited to get to know our guests and our panelists and hear their ideas around this. And just to keep it sort of organic, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit of your origin story as we go down the line and what brought you here.

Ibrahim Thiaw: Hello, my name is Ibrahim Thiaw. I'm the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. If you don't know what it means, it's about land, food systems, it's about water and it's about human wellbeing.

Bill Weir: The stuff that keeps us alive is turning to sand, literally.

Ibrahim Thiaw: Exactly.

Bill Weir: Please, introduce yourself.

Sumant Sinha: My name is Sumant Sinha. I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Renew. We are India’s, one of India's largest renewable energy companies. So our job is to basically build, own and operate large utility-scale wind farms and solar farms. And we have about a total portfolio of about 15,000 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity. Right now.

Bill Weir: Excellent. Jesper.

Jesper Brodin: Hey, Thank you. Jesper Brodin from Ikea. So, I've been heading the group, one of the groups in the Ikea family for seven years now. I’ve been with the company since I can remember, to be honest. Working through supply chain, working through design, business development and so on. And now working, very engaged also with how we transform into the new economic model.

Bill Weir: So, you came up from the stock room with all those those funny named furniture items.

Well, thank you all for being here. Let's start just talking about the COP process and what you think we should get out of it, and what we've gotten out of it so far. The line, the joke was, you know, with a petrostate, hosting a COP it’s like a tobacco company hosting a cancer convention. But COP28 at least declared the beginning of the end of fossil fuels. Didn't say exactly when that would happen. And that's sort of a key data point. But what do you think, Ibrahim?

Ibrahim Thiaw: Well, this Conference of the Parties of ours on land and drought will indeed be hosted by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia – a dry country, arid lands country. Water scarcity is a big issue in Saudi Arabia. And of course, it's a country that has legitimacy in addressing these issues.

For 30 years now, this convention has been meeting and trying to fix some of the most complex issues in the world today. You know, it may seem simple just to say land, but if you know that 99% of our calories are coming from the land and the fresh water that we enjoy is also coming from ecosystems that are found on land. And if you think that the part of the air we breathe and the quality of the air is also coming from healthy ecosystems and the interactions that are there between land degradation and our own health, the interactions that are there between land degradation and migration, forced migration, the interactions that are there between land degradation and conflicts. When people fight for access to fertile land and water all over the world, then it becomes much more complex as it is.

So, it requires diplomacy, it requires political engagement, it requires policies at the national and at the regional level. And it requires that farmers, women's groups, youth, indigenous peoples all come together with governments to actually discuss these issues that are critically important. Now, if you are if you live in the United States, you may be remotely associated with land, but if you're if you live in Myanmar, you may not have any other asset than the land that you inherit from your parents or you manage to buy. So, it is critically, it is actually the human face of it is more highly salient than any other environmental issues that we are talking about.

Bill Weir: Right. What are the trends in India these days? I've seen some stories out of China as these massive solar arrays are actually bringing this unintended sort of benefit consequence of a shady area beneath the panels, which creates a cooler ecosystem, which allows grasses to grow, they can do a lot more sort of photovoltaic livestock grazing between that. What's happening in India around desertification and the future?

Sumant Sinha: Yeah. You know, I think on, land usage is obviously a key issue because renewables take up a lot of land. One typical megawatt of solar requires about 3 to 4 acres of land and wind requires almost the same. The only difference is that in solar you require contiguous land and wind, you need, you know, you need little pieces at big distances from each other. But land, fundamentally, is required.

Now in India, the advantage that we have is that most of the land for solar, the best solar radiation, is actually in western India, which is desert land. You know, it's called Thar Desert in Rajasthan. And so, land is barren there, so we don't actually get into conflict with agriculture there. But what we did get into conflict with is slow flying, low flying, large birds called the Great Indian bustard. And it turns out that there are about 200 of these great Indian bustards. And they were constantly running into, as was being alleged, into some of these transmission lines, and dying as a result. And so there was a real threat of extinction. And so, the Supreme Court of India actually then bounded a large part of land, which was in some ways prime land for putting up solar panels. And so, you have this real conflict between preserving biodiversity was actually putting up the cheapest solar in the country. And so that's something that now the Supreme Court has resolved in a manner to sort of keep out a certain area, but the rest of it has now been opened up.

Bill Weir: Interesting.

Sumant Sinha: So, I think I think it's those kinds of conflicts that do happen. And for wind, a lot of the good wind resource in India is actually in agricultural areas. So typically, when we buy land, we need about five acres so that, you know, once you put up a turbine, then you can get the crane in eventually if there's a problem. And, you know, so you need to keep that land open. But we actually can't because farmers are cropping all around us. So, they're now actually cropping all the way to the turbines. So even though we own the land, they actually just come all the way to the steps of the turbine. And so, there is farming all around it.

So, I think all of those are things that we have to just find ways of working around and dealing with because there is this natural conflict of, you know, land, as Ibrahim was saying, has multiple uses and we have to find some way of coexisting.

Now your point about putting up, you know, solar panels at a higher level and then having cropping below that, it just increases the cost substantially, actually – because then you have to raise the solar panels.

Bill Weir: Right. I just visited the Gila Bend Native American [reservation] in Arizona. And they have a test project where they're lining their irrigation canals, the tops of them, with solar panels. Which not only, you avoid the land fights, but it also decreases evaporation by 50% and algae growth by 90%, which gums up the pumps. And so bonus-bonus, win-win.

Sumant Sinha: And there's another thing. The evaporation actually cools the bottom of the solar panels and therefore increases the performance as well.

Bill Weir: Exactly, more efficient. Jesper, let's talk about land and Ikea. I remember years ago reading a statistic – and I want you to correct me – that Ikea consumes a mature tree a second. Is that true?

Jesper Brodin: Well, I have no clue if it's a second, but we are a big consumer of wood. And we don't we don't look at it as consumption of wood per second, but we look at it as part of land, but also part of the carbon plans that we're having. And more than that, I think being one of the biggest resources in Ikea – so coming back to the land topic: Food is part of what we do, but also forestry is part of what we do. So, the way we look at the forestry topic is to go for the higher standard of responsible forestry management, which includes all of these aspects, including also social ones.

Bill Weir: Right. But it's interesting that we always have these arguments about: is it the economy or the environment? What isn't baked into that metric is the free services that all those pollinators give us, the free irrigation that comes from a healthy mountain range. I like to say that we're made of stories.

And the best example of that is that most of my life I was told that if I wanted to show my love for one special person, I'd spend three months’ salary on a diamond engagement ring because diamonds are forever and they last forever. Turns out there's diamonds everywhere. There are diamonds underground and on other planets – what's really rare is a tree. Because we're the only planet in the known galaxy that has them, but we don't think about them in those ways. So how do you manage consumption for a company where your business model is making really affordable furniture – disposable in a different time, but maybe you're trying to educate folks around that. But that business model on a planet of shrinking forests, how long can you keep that up?

Jesper Brodin: Yeah, I think this is the hard question of the new economic model that we are discussing right now. Ikea is, like many companies, it's an 80 year-old company that grew up in a model where we assumed that resources would be endless and we could continue the model we're doing.

Now, so we are based, so it's good to also maybe able to say: biodiversity, nature, land is of course connected with climate – all of this is interconnected. At this moment, the progression of how we as corporates, I'd say, address it. I would say climate is the model that is the most solid right now. So we have an opportunity as corporates to commit to Paris. We work with SBTI targets and plans. Ikea is today, we have since Paris grown by 31%. So, we're doing well. And we are -24% in absolute carbon. If I may just, you know, put an exclamation mark on that.

And the interesting story of that – and we also, by the way, performing well when it comes to forestry, when it comes to FSC or even beyond in many of the of the cases – the interesting story is, we need to change the narrative when it comes to business/nature/climate because and there is no way a company like Ikea can exist in the future if we would be reckless about nature or materials or climate. And it's very simple, you know, except for the ethical reasons – except for the brand reasons, which each one of them, I believe is big enough – is that the economic model doesn't allow depletion of resources. So, the story of Ikea has always been about resource smartness before we even could spell the word sustainability.

So therefore, why it has been able to grow by 31% and decarbonize by 24% is basically by being smarter on how we apply methods of climate, of resources. So, climate smart and resource smart is cost smart and business smart.

And today, we are in, you can say, a position where we need to hurry. Because if we want to serve people tomorrow, who we know also, by the way, will not be able to pay extra because these are people with thin wallets, with loans, with two jobs, two kids, maybe single mothers out there. We know from our customer base that they will not be able to pay an extra premium. So, we need to integrate this. And therefore, again, by being resource smart, we will be able to exist tomorrow. Circularity, renewable energy and all parts of the Scope 3 footprint is part of the economic model of the future.

Bill Weir: Ibrahim working with big business leaders, what do you hope, what do you expect from folks like Jesper? How do you leverage this? I'm sorry to interrupt, but really, what we want to understand is how we leverage these three COPs in a row for maximum impact.

Ibrahim Thiaw: Just building on the discussion about land use, which, by the way, is the second largest emitter after energy, even if you just take the climate issue, you're not even considering biodiversity and nature. But, it raises the issue of land tenure. Now, someone was discussing, you know, farmers coming to actually occupy the land that was, that is being used for solar energy or renewable energy. The question is, which was there first? Was it the local communities or the renewable energy company? So, who occupied the land first? It’s the more or less the same debate you are having between wildlife, conflicts between wildlife and communities. Saying that communities, I mean, wildlife has come to a community, to the communities and destroyed. Actually, communities found the wildlife there.

Bill Weir: Who's in whose backyard, right?

Ibrahim Thiaw: Exactly. So, there's always the issue of land tenure also when you discuss about forestry or biofuels. It's own good. It's own good for the planet and to have clean energy and so forth. But it is important to have a holistic view so that you do not destroy with the left hand what you are trying to build with the right hand.

Just to give you an example, you know, the ozone treaty, when it was established, we all identified these gases that were being used as being ozone-depleting gases, and we substituted them with other cultures until we found that actually the other gases that we have, that we are using, are actually climate potent because we are not using the whole concept. And then we had to substitute them again by another gas. So, it is important that we have a holistic view so that we, you know, have a vision that is much more coherent.

And land use and land tenure is a such an important issue in a world where 3.2 billion people are affected by land degradation. You have urban sprawl, urbanization that is occupying more land. You have urban consumers that are found in cities but actually have their products coming from far from the city where they live. So, the conflict between rural and urban is there, competition of access to land and water. So, it is therefore a much complex issue to consider. And you cannot just solve the issue of biodiversity or climate alone or land degradation alone, you have to have a very coherent view.

So, I think your question about the COPs, the question there, I mean, you have October, November, December, three COPs in three months. It's a wonderful opportunity for countries, for parties – it’s the same countries that are parties to all three COPs – to actually have a more, much more holistic view, rather than having decisions that are specific to one convention that may actually harm another treaty. So it is therefore important that we have that holistic view.

Bill Weir: If you get a chance to see it while you're in New York, in the Meatpacking District, there's this amazing parade of 100 life-size elephant sculptures. They’re from the south hills of India, where is the densest concentration of humans and wild elephants in the world. About 200 elephants live in relative harmony, with about 250,000 people. And the idea with this exhibit was to take Lantana camara – this toxic, invasive bush – give it to the artisans, who are used to making furniture, but they have no relation to that. But they know these elephants. And you go see these things and in person, they hope to sell them and raise millions for wildlife conservation. But it's the example of a win-win-win: pulling out invasive species, making art with it, trying to do it on scale, and oh this Lantana plant can also be used as biochar to bring down carbon. And it all is, like you say, holistic – it touches lives in ways you might not expect.

Talk to us about your mission of setting up clean energy projects with folks who may be getting their first energy project. And the hope is that places like India could leapfrog the dirty stuff, the way you leapfrogged the land line. Is that a reasonable hope?

Sumant Sinha: That's not just a reasonable hope, it's an absolutely essential hope. We need it because obviously countries like India, which, you know, still have a majority of our economic growth ahead of us, including many countries in Southeast Asia or Africa, if we follow the same path that has been used by all the developed countries, it's going to lead to much larger carbon emissions. So, we have to fundamentally follow a different trajectory. And that trajectory has to be based on clean energy, because we know that energy accounts for 75% of carbon emissions. And so therefore, energy has to fundamentally get reshaped and redone.

And India is, I would say, quite at the vanguard of making that change happen. We are now at a point where the bulk of our new electricity capacity is coming from renewable sources. We do need, just given the pace of growth, we do need some more new coal plants as well, but we are doing it out of compulsion rather than out of choice. Because it all depends on the actual data on renewable energy as fast as possible. And we simply can't go any faster. And today, our entire power system in the country is about 420 gigawatts (GW) of total capacity from all sources – nuclear, thermal, gas and renewables. And the target for India is to add an additional 300GW, 350GW of new renewable-only capacity by 2030. So almost 75% of what we have today from all sources has to just come from renewables. So that's the target that we have set right now.

But then, if we extend beyond that, beyond 2030 to 2040, 2047, we need to add almost 150GW of new renewable capacity every single year to get to those targets. And so, all of these issues with land use and all of these kinds of tradeoff decisions could become even more significant as we go forward. But, so, I would say that, as far as the energy transition is concerned, becoming, you know, growing in a more, less carbon-intensive way, certainly India's doing what we can on that front.

Now, beyond electricity, we also need to decarbonize the rest of the energy value chain, which is 75% of all energy consumption, right. And for that, we now have new technology solutions becoming available, which are based around things like green hydrogen and so on. So those also need to scale up. But unfortunately, green hydrogen today is more expensive than grey hydrogen. And so therefore, nobody voluntarily – unlike the renewable energy, which is cheaper than its counterpart of thermal energy – in the case of green hydrogen or hydrogen, nobody wants to really move to that because it's more expensive. And so, you either need subsidies from governments or you need some sort of mandates to come down on corporates which say that you have to use green hydrogen. And those mandates globally are coming down very slowly, the subsidy programmes are progressing way too slowly.

And so, by 2030, globally, we have set targets of, variously in the European Union, 20 million tons of green hydrogen, in India 5 million tons of green hydrogen by 2030. Those targets at this point look unlikely to be met. And other countries and regions haven't even set any targets. So, we don't even know what the US is thinking beyond the IRA, which may or may not survive the elections. And of course, the Far East.

So, there's a lot of confusion on what is to be done now beyond electricity, where the solution is becoming apparent. And my suggestion as far as three COPs is concerned is, why not just have a single COP? We could debate all of these things. It's a great idea. People and different parts of governments coming together rather than each of them going back and reporting things variously to the governments.

So, it's actually, if you ask me honestly, I would say the whole climate change and all of these kinds of issues, the whole multilateral process is actually broken. We are not making any real progress. It's moving very slowly. Look at the global carbon markets. We have 75 different carbon trading schemes in the world. None of them talk to each other. None of them are consistent with each other. And, you know, a bulk of the world does not even have any carbon trading schemes. There is no global price on carbon. So, you know, one can go on and on.

And so, yes, we have made some progress through these COP multilateral conversations. But it's really, really too slow. And we all know that we're not moving fast enough.

Bill Weir: So, if you had a magic wand, what's the biggest block?

Sumant Sinha: The biggest block is that, see it’s the classic issue of why should I do it, why shouldn’t somebody else to it. Right? And therefore, why should I be the guy paying the cost for it? Let somebody else pay the cost. I will only do it if that other guy does it. And there's so much mistrust between people that nobody actually is able to jointly take a step forward and say, you know, let's do it together.

For example, the single most important thing we need today is that, the people who emit carbon need to get charged for it, irrespective of where they are and what they're doing, right? So, if you're an agricultural country that is consuming carbon, if you're an industrial company that is producing carbon, you should get charged for it. But today there is no charge for carbon. And unless that changes, we are never going to be able to make substantial progress. And the reason we can have a price for carbon is because nobody knows how much carbon actually is consumed in making a specific product in a specific geography. And getting that information is going to take years and years and years of effort. And today there is no global body that is even thinking about doing something like that. So, it's not going to happen.

Ibrahim Thiaw: Can I just say, you are so right about green hydrogen and the need to provide some subsidies to actually reduce the burden. It will change, I mean, the price will pick up, but at the moment the world is subsidizing fossil fuels to pollute, not subsidizing clean energy to actually resolve the problem. What do you emit with green hydrogen? Water. So why are we not changing the whole narrative and why are we subsidizing, I mean, using our taxpayers’ money to pollute more and to kill ourselves rather than investing on green technologies that can solve our problem

Bill Weir: Good point, sir. Let us welcome our late comer. No guilt. No guilt. It is Climate Week in New York. I had to take two city bikes just to make my panels. Please welcome Maria Susanna Mohammed, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development of the great nation of Colombia. Great to have you with us.

Maria Susana Muhamad: Thank you so much.

Bill Weir: Thank you. I was just in your country this year following some amazing whale scientists who were monitoring humpbacks from Antarctica to the Colombian coast.

But tell me about your hopes and fears for this week as we get ready for three COPs in a row. Do you like the suggestion of doing all at once? Do you think anything will come out of these three? And what are they?

Maria Susana Muhamad: Well, this is, I think what we need to create is the right political environment so that we can start having more democratic discussions around these issues. And COP16 in Colombia is working to put the voice of the people at the front of the crisis in the discussion. And actually, we have partnered with indigenous peoples that signed up for this and communities, scientists, youth, women, in more than 100 preparation events so that they can prepare for the discussion.

Then we're going to have the largest Green zone that Biodiversity COP has seen. So there is a public platform for people of all walks of life to participate in the discussion. We have now more requests for accreditations from the business sector in Colombia than all of the business sector that came to COP15 in Montreal – just the Colombian business sector. And we have created a process, or at least provided the guarantees from the Colombian government that we can put the difficult discussion on top of the table, and the democratic perspective, even if it's contradictory, even if it's conflictive, but in a way that we can address the issues from all those walks of life.

And I guess this is an attempt to revitalize the multilateral discussions that have become in the past, recent past, very much focussed on discussion between the private sector, profit, and the governments – many of the of those selected also by huge resources of that private sector. And so the shift of power in the discussion, we hope that brings a refreshing perspective and a different political perspective.

We are hoping that, of course, the negotiations, the multilateral negotiations have their own scope and that scope is based on what the parties have agreed. But for us, the biodiversity convention is a time for implementation. After the Kunming-Montreal agreement, we have at least four discussions on the table and decisions to be made in Cali that are for the implementation.

I think one breakthrough, and hopefully we can get to that decision – it’s a difficult one, but it would be a very important one – is to be able to approve that multilateral framework on the distribution of benefits of digital sequencing of genetic resources. Why that would be a breakthrough? Because it would be on, at least in the recent court, a decision that creates for implementation, a multilateral mechanism that actually puts a contribution to the private sector, that goes to a multilateral fund for the use of genetic resources, in this case that will be distributed to the most mega-biodiverse countries. So, it will show, in a very technical thing, but it will show that we can create multilateral structures that put can put capital within the perspective of justice, at least in an attempt. And I hope that will open an interesting discussion for Azerbaijan in the financial discussion and could also open an important discussion about the synergies of the process.

And then on the finance piece, which will be the main discussion in Azerbaijan, at the Biodiversity COP we are also opening the hard discussions in the financing. We are putting on the table, what is the role of credit rating agencies? And we are putting on the table, why some countries can access capital at one rate and others can't. And then what is the political deal we're going to have around debt, climate and nature? And we want to open those discussions in a structural way because we see that there is some momentum. And hopefully we can approve a COP16 some multilateral process, an intergovernmental process to create a new mechanism within the biodiversity Convention that can put money from all sources and with different strategies, an ecosystem of mechanisms for getting the scale of finance that we need.

So, somehow politically, the biodiversity COP is under the radar, which is good. Because then we don't have that much pressure from different actors. But actually we have a very productive and proactive attitude from different actors to be able to start making breakthroughs that hopefully, by example, by action, can also influence the climate convention, which is critical. If we don't deal with the climate, with the emissions, with the production of fossil fuels, there's no future for nature. Then at the same time, if we don't partner with nature, we won't be able to control climate change. So that that synergy is critical.

I think this year of the three COPs at the same time will be also another year where the synergy between the three will be evident and that comes together in the finance and comes together in the actual action on the ground, where we hope all these stakeholders would pull their voice up and we can create a more open process.

Bill Weir: The gentlemen sitting next to you there is the CEO of Ikea. I don't know if you’ve met, but you were telling me before we met that you were able to decrease your carbon footprint because you had very specific targets you were trying to meet. But with nature, it's a little more nebulous as to what it is you're trying to hit. How can I prove, I mean, forestry maybe that's easier, but any of her suggestions makes sense to you? Like, what do you need as a CEO of Ikea to figure out how to protect ecosystem?

Jesper Brodin: Well, to start with, I think, let me start by saying even if there are some elements of the nature agenda that has not yet progressed, modeled in a way for corporations, I think each one of us have to take responsibility for what we actually do. If we are engaged in water. We are, in textiles. If we are engaged in forestry, because it's a big part of our resources. If we are engaged in food, which we are in Ikea also. I think there are already today, standards, models and enough to say that you need to be engaged. And if you, you know, it's a choice for you as a company to make to be a leader in that and we are.

But if I come back to the connection here. So first of all, we are participating as a company in the work that is basically happening within the COPs and in between, in the Task Force for Nature disclosure, the SBTM aspects, the modelling of what will become, what are the coherent tools for us to apply in the future.

Bill Weir: What would those be? What do you hope for?

Jesper Brodin: Well, I'm sitting here a little bit exposed among people who know more than I. But if I look at the carbon topic or the climate topic, the only simple part of that is that it's one molecule.

When it comes to nature, you have to look at both restoration, you have to look at scaling down, you have to look at production as well is part because we are building an economic model. And so there are more areas and elements that we need to, so to say, have in that modelling.

But what I still find at the parallel, which is very interesting, is that we are going all in at full speed on climate and to a certain degree this will be synergetic. And I can give you many examples of that. If you take, for instance, in the numbers I shared with you that we are down by 24% carbon, we have a couple of sub-targets where we are a little bit delayed, some where we are ahead of the game. One is food waste. So, instead of addressing land or land size as such, we addressed food waste and we were able to, before our goal actually, to reduce IKEA's food waste by 50%. Obviously, that's a great impact on land, on all aspects of it.

So again, there are many of these topics that are interconnected. So there is no reason, I think, for companies to be in a waiting mode. But actually, in the climate sphere, we have all we need to go ahead except one thing which we need to speak about, I think, in this panel.

And I don't have an opinion about combining the COPs. It's not in my competence to judge that. I can imagine for anybody who wants to host that cop. It's, well it's complex enough. And I think honestly, if I have an amateur opinion, I think maybe some parts need to be in the stage of maturity where it can be focused, like nature right now.

But what we do need in all of them, and particularly in climate, is that we need to break through the lack of a systematic approach between companies and governments or policymakers. So today, if you listen to the Secretary General today, he called out – which I believe to be true, even if it's not true for all companies – that companies are ready. There's money in the system. We are ready to engage and invest there. And here it is. More and more companies are coming to a place where it's not possible to get the big leverage because we have basically exhausted the low-hanging opportunities within our companies.

So, we're reaching out to supply chains, to Scope 3 partners, to peers, but in particular to governments to say: if we, as we heard before here today on the stage, if we collaborate on policy shifts, we will be able to fix this and speed it up. We need to remove subsidies of fossil fuel and move it into smart and new ways of energy.

I'm not worried that it wouldn't happen, but it takes too long time. And it's basically working against the system. It’s circularity. We need to call out the subsidization of incineration. We are burning materials, which again has an enormous pressure on land and so forth. So, we need to reverse some of the systems and collaborate.

And today, representing also the WEF Climate Alliance, we are ready to engage. We actually know in a very good level of detail, what we need to do in order to engage. But the cops have not yet found a way to integrate the corporate sector. So it remains to a very high degree, intra-governmental negotiating, which I have the deepest respect for. But we need to find another system because the clock is ticking and we need to make sure that companies who have the money, who are ready to engage, don't have to wait years and years for permitting of investments and so forth. This, I think, is an incredibly important aspect in all three of the COPs.

Bill Weir: We've heard frustrations from the private sector. From your perspective at the UN, where's the logjam? What would create a new tomorrow that isn't like this one?

Ibrahim Thiaw: Can I just comment on the three merger of the three COPs. I think it's that's not the debate. And I don't think that will happen soon. It's like asking three countries to merge and have one government. You have three different treaties, three different Conferences of the Parties. Conferences of the Parties are the equivalent for the United Nations of the UN General Assembly. So this is the highest decision making body. Governments in their sovereignty have decided to establish these institutions. I don't think we need to expand the discussion of that, as beautiful as it may look, but it may not be that easy.

However, any good investment on renewable energy will have a positive impact on land, will have a positive impact on biodiversity. Any reduction by Ikea of its footprint in terms of forests, will have a positive impact on biodiversity, will have a positive impact on land and water. The T-shirt that you buy is land and water. And biodiversity. If you connect this and each one of us, each company taking its responsibility, we may not have the final and latest and final dot on the assumptions or the results, but we do not wait until we get that. We have to start now. Because if we have to wait until everything is completed and all the calculations are made, it may be too late. We know that we have an impact right now. We know that food waste is a problem. We know that Goal 12 of the SDGs, which is sustainable production and consumption, is one of the biggest issues that we need to address. Let's fix it. And everyone, individually, collectively, companies, governments have their roles to play, and we should face that.

I heard multiple times in the World Economic Forum in Davos and some private companies are saying, nature is complex. We don't understand it. Yes, nature is complex, but we are using it. If you are a company working on agriculture, you are using nature. If you are a company working on furniture, you are using nature. So, why are you using it, if you don't understand it?

Jesper Brodin: We do understand it. Sorry to say.

Ibrahim Thiaw: So, I'm just giving my feedback here. It is not necessary to know everything before you start your action. It is important that you start now. And it's very complex to say, I am reducing my carbon emissions. But please reduce your carbon emission because, if you do that, then you have a positive impact on biodiversity and on land and water. But please do it. Do not just say it.

So, if you have a reduction of 50% of your carbon emissions and working on agriculture, it's probably, you are improving your agricultural productivity or you are improving your impact on land and water, or you are reducing the consumption of your water, that is very positive for the planet. So, before you convert it into carbon, if it is either agricultural or food or something material, then you convert it into carbon. Carbon is invisible and you cannot, why go to abstract if you can actually make it more concrete and lift this burden on humanity?

3.2 billion people are suffering from land degradation in the world. 1.8 billion people are suffering from droughts. So, if you combine these, you have half of humanity that is affected by phenomenon that are actually growing in the world. And then you wonder why these young people from Haiti are migrating? They have no choice. There is no way they can actually live in a barren land which cannot produce anymore the food that they need. They need dignity. Dignity. So, if there is no dignity, if you cannot provide any food for your family, what to do?

So, I think it is human face. I want everybody to understand that it is not abstract. We are talking about phenomenon that are driving millions of people, and you know, 100 million people around the world today, displaced.

Bill Weir: And this could be the opening attractions for what science predicts will be tenfold migration

Ibrahim Thiaw: Absolutely

Jesper Brodin: Now, also just a short comment as I was referred to. We are in full agreement. There is no excuse, waiting for the next COP result, for the next scientific model, not to act on what you know today. But what I forgot to mention, which I think is an incredibly important and very important positive factor. When I mentioned one of the main examples, the food reduction, I forgot to say we also reduce costs by 50%.

So again, the way to see this pain will come as a premium and so on, will slow down. Most of this is mythical but acting on climate and acting on smartness as actually acting on your cost as well. So this is a very important remark. I forgot to make that.

Sumant Sinha: And if I can if I can step in as well. I think that, you know, right now we all sort of tend to focus a lot more on the climate COP, rather than on the land COP, or the desertification or the biodiversity COP. And it's perhaps, in some ways, as a corporate group, it’s sort of trying to get us a little bit more involved in at least the climate COPs. Because ultimately, corporates do account for almost two thirds of global carbon emissions. And we have to make them, you know, we have to sort of understand a little bit better what's being discussed so that we can help in those conversations, to allow us to execute better the carbon emissions reductions that that we need to do.

I think one of the things that is my takeaway from this conversation is, and it's a learning for me, that we also need to involve ourselves much more in the other two COPs as well, because those are equally important also. And I think that the corporate sector is actually even further behind in getting involved in these two other COPs, which are also, as I said, important. So, I think that's something useful for us to think about. Right now, we have the Alliance of Climate leaders, but perhaps there is a case to be made for having an alliance for leaders that can also, you know, corporate leaders that can look at some of these other areas as well.

Now, whether it's the same group or a different group, of course, can be discussed and debated. But I think that today the corporate sector, if you ask me honestly, is not as focused on land use issues and on broader diversity issues as much as we are on the climate side. Maybe we are still struggling to catch up. So, I think there needs to just be a much you know, in some ways you can argue that countries themselves have such a difficult task of trying to align 193 countries together. Right. And create frameworks that everybody can follow. To involve more participants, i.e. the corporate sector just becomes a lot harder for them to deal with. And that's why the collaboration that we require between the public and private sector is really not happening as much as it should. And so, that does need a lot more dialogue. And perhaps conversations like this are helpful in that regard to really push this whole thing for a little bit faster.

Bill Weir: Maria, I want to give you the final word and thoughts as we as we wind down. Unfortunately, you don't get elected to a board of directors, at least in this country, by saying: here are all the forests we're not going to cut down or here are all the oil reserves we found that we're not going to exploit. There's no business, there's no upside for nature is the conventional thinking. Please expound on how

Jesper Brodin: I disagree to that but, I have to say.

Bill Weir: Okay. All right. But you understand my point is that everybody makes pledges, but no, who's the first to step away from a known asset? Can you name one? Like a major conglomerate to say we could make a ton of money over here, but it would be really bad for the planet, so we're not going to do it.

What do you hope to get out of business leaders from your position in Colombia? How do you keep those beautiful forests intact for the benefit of everybody?

Maria Susana Muhamad: I will come back to a principle of the Kunming-Montreal framework, which I think is very wise. And is that to mobilize this change, we need the whole of government and the whole of society. And I wanted to bring your questions, a little bit following your thread in terms that: It is in the local sphere, in the very local reality, where actually we see the synergies between these three conventions and also where you see how you can actually make a difference.

What I mean by this is that, how do we, and that's why that's the first goal of the Kunming-Montreal agreement, which is how do we plan the territory? In the territory in the really concrete, specific local area, that's where the nature and ecosystems is, that's where the resources are taking out from, that's where the concrete communities and knowledge is. And if we don't make collective decisions and also especially when multinational companies that do not have a local buy-in, but they see only nature possibly as a resource and they don't understand the context in which that resource is extracted from, and the consequences of that, and there's no strong governments to regulate also, and to make the social pact that we need to make, then that's what we start getting into this extractive mindset, this extractive economy.

What the biodiversity COP in Colombia wants to propose, and is based on the decisions of the parties, is that we need to rethink the economy from an economy that currently sees nature as an extraction resource to actually coming back and connecting back to the cycles of nature in a way that every economic activity that we do restores nature, not depletes nature. And that is a huge innovation landscape.

Bill Weir: What’s the enforcement mechanism to make sure people do that?

Maria Susana Muhamad: Well, regulation, planning regulation is one, social agreements at the local level – and that's also something very interesting in the different context of climate and nature, is that nature is concrete and local and contextual. While, when we talk about the molecules of CO2 that are dispersed and global and cannot be seen. That's why actually there is two points of regulation on the one hand, but on the other hand it's also the social buy-in of people in that local context and the power of people. That's why in the COP in Colombia we're going to empower a lot. The society which includes business, doesn't exclude business because business is not outside the society. Business is part of society and needs to understand that context.

For example, in the Colombian Amazon, we are working with local peasants to see how we can create a forest economy that restores the biodiversity of the Amazon. But then we started realizing that the products that can come from that floor of the Amazon, which is super rich and can give a lot of, I forgot the word in English, I don't know what but that give a lot of inputs to the industry, to cosmetics, to others. But we cannot think of that new economy has US extractive economy, which means putting the rules of the market on nature. Which means we're cannot have these produce every day, every year, because there's a huge market that continually demands these products. Could be whatever.

Now let's think from the ecosystem. Okay. What is the cycle of nature in the Amazon? And then how we can create some markets that allow that cycle of nature to happen and be restored. And then we realize it cannot be raw materials. We have to create added value with these communities, and a sense of identity and a sense of purpose. And then you start creating a different perspective from the economic system and a huge potential for innovation. When you also see the UNEP report on resources, which was launched last year, it’s incredible the revolution of materials and resources that we can make that align to the cycles of nature.

So, there is a side of the coin that is regulation, that is commitment, that is moral reality. But there is the other side of the coin which I call at risk, which I call opportunity and innovation and possibility. And how do we create that? I think it’s to look again at the local level and mobilize whole of government, whole of society, in reality, in the material reality. Not in the abstract reality of declarations that we do in COPs, not in the abstract reality of the market, not in the abstract reality of the finance system. In the material and concrete reality. And I think we can make a very material change, a very real change.

Bill Weir: Well, I appreciate that. Jesper, did you have another thought?

Jesper Brodin: I just thought it was a wonderful summary. So, I think, because why I responded to you, I think we need to challenge a bit of the myths. And part of, you know, the problem with myths is that they could be true. But, you know, we stand at the cusp of a new economy. The old economy was linear. It was assuming that nature was endless and so forth. So, but if we speak from that angle, we're not going to get anywhere.

I think the most important thing is what you spoke to, is to how do we build a system that is regulations is on one hand, and as we speak, to help us shift money on regulations to the right things? Secondly, make this business friendly, meaning using less resources – it’s smart, it's cost smart, it's not the opposite.

So even if there are challenges and difficulties on the road, I see across everything we have done in IKEA and again our massive reduction of carbon, we haven't suffered economically, we have benefited. And therefore, I think I, and a lot of us, are willing to say how do we explore the next level, which is, of course, next step of carbon, next step of the COP in Baku and so forth. But also, what are we learning and how can we fast track the opportunities side as you speak to? Because, if there is an economic opportunity we're going to get there faster.

Bill Weir: I learned a lot. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you for your wisdom and experience. And just your presence at this week means a lot. Hopefully these ideas will spark some sort of solution synergy going forward and we can carry these solutions home.

I'm Bill Weir. Thanks for being with us. Have a great rest of Climate Week and we'll see you down the road.