Climate Action Figures

Season 2, Episode 19: Emmanuella

• John Whidden • Season 2 • Episode 19

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In this episode, John interviews Emmanuella, a Ghanaian intern with the Green Climate Fund in South Korea. They discuss waste management differences between Ghana and South Korea, Emmanuella's experience at COP 29, and her innovative climate projects in Ghana.

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John:

Hi, everyone. I'm Emmanuella from Ghana, but currently living in South Korea. Akwaaba(welcome) to Climate Action Figures, and I hope you have a great time. Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Climate Action Figures. My name is John Whidden, and this week on the show you get to meet Emmanuella. Now, one bit of housekeeping before Now, one bit of housekeeping before we dig in with today's guest. We still have some life in Season 2. But, when we get to our last episode of Season 2, we will be reflecting on all of the guests we've spoken to this season, the future of Climate Action Figures, and more, and we would like you to supply some of the questions. So, pause this episode right now, no I'm serious, pause it right now, and send in at least one question you would like me to answer, climateactionfigures@gmail.com, or you can connect with us on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook. Get on it. We want to hear from you. This week's quick fix is brought to you by Sophia and her grandmother Bertha from Quebec. And they made a big list of quick fixes for us, and we are on to the last one that they sent in. They said, before you throw it out, make sure that it can't be mended, recycled, or re gifted. Ask yourself those questions before you throw it out. And they also said: Make sure you recycle and compost rather than throwing things in the garbage so they don't end up in the landfill. Thank you so much to Sofia and Bertha for all of your quick fixes that you sent in and Welcome, Emmanuella! Thank you, John. What do you think about that quick fix today, Emmanuella? I think it's pretty much amazing. I mean, I do it personally, and I also work with organizations that I help them to come up with innovative solutions to recycling of plastic waste. What I do is that I use plastic bottles, so like the water bottle waste, to make Christmas trees, and so it's pretty amazing to know that Sophia and her Grandmom recycling waste and not contributing to the waste issues globally. So that's great. Now, Emmanuella, you are in Seoul, South Korea, but you said you have not been there your whole life. You're originally from Ghana, is that right? Yes, yes. I've been here for only nine months. Okay, cool. So what took you to South Korea from Ghana? That's quite a switch. Yeah, that is, um, it's my job that took me here. So I'm currently working for the largest climate fund. That is the Green Climate Fund. I'm an intern here So I switched from my legal career to come work in the climate space as my way of contributing to climate action. just before we get into the financial side of things, what do you see around you in South Korea in terms of the way they perceive and deal with their environment? Do you see a lot of recycling? Like, what's different from Ghana to South Korea in those terms? it's been very inspiring since I got here because there's so many things that they are doing right in terms of the environment, you know, waste management that I think that Ghana could learn from them. For instance, they have a very serious waste segregation rules. And so your food waste goes into a separate, bag, and then your plastic waste goes into a separate one, your paper waste goes into a separate plastic waste. And if you mess them up, you get fined. So these are some of the, the waste segregation rules that you know, exist here in Korea that is amazing. Also in terms of like Keeping waste in the, in the bin and not putting them on the streets. That is also something very inspiring that, that I see around here that we should learn more in, in Ghana. It's not like they've banned plastic waste, but you're using a lot more of paper waste than the actual plastic waste and the plastic waste gets, gets recycled That composting is very interesting. How on earth do they check to see whether people are putting things in the right place? Yeah. So the interesting thing about Korea is that there are CCTV cameras everywhere. They can track you right from your doorstep to when you go to the, the, the trash bin to, to dispose of. So they can know who put what where. But also sometimes like you buy food or you get a receipt. It has your name on it. It has your building number on it or your room number on it. So if you don't, you know, properly segregate your, your waste, you're going to put one of your receipts and let's say it's, it's a paper waste and it's supposed to be in a, in a paper with, but you put it in the food waste or something like that. You're going to find out. So they trace it back to you and then you get a bill. In your mailbox. I'm very curious to know how you feel about having cameras looking at you all the time. A lot of people would be uncomfortable with that. What are your thoughts? I think it's, it's dependent on where you're coming from, right? Because there's so many things that I wouldn't do in Ghana. There's so many barriers that I face in Ghana because of security issues, right? But even here I can close from work 9 p. m. or go somewhere at 10 p. m., 12 a. m., and confidently walk around because I know nothing is going to happen to me and even if something did, I'll get help right away because someone is sitting behind the screen, you know, watching whatever is going on. It can be a bit of, you know, personal data issues, but also on the good side, it makes me feel safe that, you know, someone is going to run to my aid because they're watching. And they can track your history, you know, where you moved to, where, and be able to search you out. And so legal issues here, like, once you do something wrong, there is no lying, because the camera is gonna get you, yeah. Okay. Let's get on to the financial side since that's your area of expertise. you attended COP 29, correct? Yes, I was a negotiator for Ghana. Wow, that's cool. And it was touted as the, the financial COP. And they, you know, we've heard about this one point, was it 1. 5 trillion that was being asked for? And 300 billion that was actually agreed upon? Yeah, so it was basically developing country parties. We were looking for something around 1 trillion and over as part of the climate finance that should come from developed country parties, but they managed to use your politics in a way to, you know, change the text so we have 2 different concepts: we have 1. 3 trillion. Which is supposed to be mobilized from all over the world, including developing country parties contributing to it. And there is a 300 billion quantum, which is also supposed to be from a variety of sources, but would developped country parties taking the lead. So it's a bit, you know, what do you mean by taking the lead? Are they supposed to provide all of the 300 billion? Or they're supposed to take the lead and now the kind of threshold or the characteristics of that 300 billion they brought up from public, private sources, from variety of sources, you know, those are very vague terms that do not actually place the obligation, on the developed country parties to produce it so that is where the challenge was. reflecting back on COP 29, do you feel that there was much accomplished or not really? There was a good sides and the bad sides, let's say the bad sides were more than the good sides, at least in my opinion, but for instance, we had article six of the Paris agreement that is carbon markets finally operationalized after five years or more of negotiations. And we had other Climate negotiation achieving what they wanted, but the major issue was the climate finance part and the geopolitics that played a role and many of us wanted no deal rather than a bad deal. But it seems like things turned around with the plastic treaty because the INC 5, that is the plastic treaty negotiations they had, there was no, you know agreement on it, no negotiation text. But then for the climate finance, we ended up with a very bad text and it still got adopted. We just would have preferred no deal rather than a bad deal. But. it didn't go as we planned. You say geopolitics played a role for sure. We've talked with a number of youth who were there who certainly expressed disappointment in the results. Let's just talk for a minute about the future. If you could design the future however you wanted it, what would that include in terms of climate finance? I think a future in climate finance for me would be climate finance where there is a balance between adaptation finance and mitigation finance as well as loss and damage finance because currently we see mitigation finance, you know, being way higher than Adaptation. The gap is so glaring. And for me, if a future in climate finance should be a future where developed country parties recognize that they have historically polluted. They've developed the economies based on fossil fuel. And so when we call on them for climate finance, it's not about the fact that we want to disturb them. We want them to sort of be accountable for the kind of pollution they have benefited from. A future of climate finance is a future. where everyone has access to climate finance, not a few 1%, not a few privileged countries, but all developing country parties, least developed country parties, as well as small island states. Everyone has equal access to climate finance. That to me, is the future of climate finance that I want to see in the coming years. And let's just take a moment to define those terms. You said adaptation, mitigation, and what was the third one? Loss and damage. Loss and damage. Can you just define those for us so we're really clear on the differences between those three? adaptation mainly is building your climate resilience. So, Countries experience the climate crisis and their current infrastructure and systems do not allow them to be resilient against climate change. And so you see the impact, you know, being much harsher on some countries as compared to other countries that have the structures in place to be resilient to climate change. Some of them have early warning signals so they can prepare before the disaster happens, but some other countries do not have. So putting in those structures is what we call climate adaptation, building your resilience against the climate crisis, and then on mitigation is basically reducing our emissions because under the Paris agreement We want to stay between 1. 5 degrees celsius to 2 degrees celsius And for us to be able to do that, we need to move away from fossil fuel, reduce emissions You know transition to renewable energies to be able to do that we need to come up with innovative projects that reduce emissions and so, That is mitigation. Loss and damage is basically when we cannot adapt to climate change when we've done everything that we could, but we still face the climate crisis, the kind of impact that this has on our communities, the destruction that we face, the disasters that occur and all of the damage that happens, we sort of quantify them, and then you get reimbursed for those damages because it was out of your control, it was not your fault that those kind of damages happened. So if a farmer has an acre of maize farm and then there's flood and it gets destroyed, it is not his fault, you know, so there are mechanisms put in place to ensure that they get that kind of reimbursement for the loss that has occurred. And then they can go back again to, to find an alternative source of living with that money or other sustainable agricultural practices. So that is the distinction between the three. All right. Let's laser focus on Ghana because you know Ghana. If Ghana was to receive mitigation money who would, who would they receive the mitigation money from the United Nations? It could be UN agencies could be the multilateral climate funds, like where I'm working currently. It could be. I mean, from anywhere, honestly, from carbon market trading. okay. So let's say they receive some of the mitigation money. What do you expect that would be used for in Ghana? I'm expecting it to be used towards our nationally determined contributions because every country, I mean, under article four of the Paris agreement has to set their own indices. It's linked to the common but differentiated risk responsibility and respective capability principle because we know that yes, we are supposed to transition, but we need to do that at our own pace as a country because of our economic situation. And so we have our own NDCs, which has its own target. And so we need to use that money towards the NDCs. Now, under our NDCs, there are certain focus. areas that we really want to transition away from. So one of them is like the clean cooking space because just like any other African country, we cook a lot with firewood because that is what we have available. And so as a mode of mitigating our greenhouse gas emission, you know, using clean cooking fuels and technology is one of the major areas that that money would be invested in. Another one is in our transportation industry, because we depend on fossil fuel in our transportation industry and so we need to invest that you know, moving away from diesel or fossil fuel powered vehicles to, renewable energy powered vehicles, among others, and also greening our buildings. So solar energy or solar technologies is also one of the areas that we would invest that in, at least as a country. Now, Emmanuella, I live in Western Canada in a province called Alberta where there is huge fossil fuel production and our government here is very big currently on fossil fuel production. they want to go hard on it. They're not that concerned about cutting back. So I'm curious to know what the conversation would sound like between someone in our government and you. So I'll pretend to be our government and let's see what you say to them. So they might say, this is the basis for our economy. We need to produce fossil fuels because it gives everybody jobs here. It's our economic engine. Plus we can't just cut back on fossil fuels because there's not enough renewable energy on earth to power all the new, you know, AI and everything else that's ramping up. So what do you say to that? Well, I think the, the position of Canada is quite similar to the position of many African countries, which I have a slight, you know, opposition to that because at least for developing country parties, it will make a bit of sense, but to a country like Canada. Which the whole world is looking up to. There are a few countries that most countries look up to in terms of transitioning from fossil fuel to renewable energy so that they also follow suit, right? So if a country like Canada is having a strong position of not transitioning, then it's going to have, let's say about 30 to 40 other countries saying, okay, if Canada is not doing it, then you know, we are also not going to do it, but I think also that Canada has that kind of capability or capacity to actually take lead in the renewable energy space, because you have all of the technologies, you have the finance and you would be able to set up your own renewable energy that can also be some sort of a business or, you know, like a contributor to your GDP, because you'd be supplying it to other countries. And so if you invest in green hydrogen, if you invest in nuclear Energy or any other type of, you know, renewable energy. I think that Canada has that capacity to do that in terms of infrastructure in terms of, planning in terms of policy wise, you can be able to do that but also, you know, exporting that renewable energy. So there can be some tradeoffs if they think about it carefully in terms of business wise and contributing to their GDP, whilst helping them to also transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy. thanks For answering that question, and thanks for also knowing that that's not my position. My roof is covered with solar panels, so. The sad thing is I'm not encouraged to do it. But, anyways. Great to hear your opinion on that. Now, I would love to pass along a few questions, Emmanuella, from our audience to you. Paul asks, Did you feel that your voice and opinions were heard at COP29 and honored by the older delegates and the decision and policy making politicians? I would answer this question in two part because I, I had like sort of dual roles at COP. I was UN Migration Youth Delegate, and then I was also on the other hand, a climate negotiator for my country. So picking the flag, speaking on behalf of my country you get to be part of the decision making process, you get to have the opportunity to voice your concerns because you're speaking for the country and you have the same opportunity as any other country. But on the flip side, speaking from the perspective of a young person. I think that most young voices were ignored. It's understandable that they don't have a say, you know, sort of like a voting rights or something like that in terms of the decision making process, but the older generation must not just, you know, Give them the platform to speak, but they must also take into consideration what is being said and factor it into the decision making process. And so we saw a lot of demonstrations going on at the court venue, even during the last day when the climate finance, was being decided upon. But all of these, you know, protests, all of these, you know, resistance to the bad deal that were being offered where we're ignored and young people felt like. We are given the opportunity to come here, but still our opinions are not being taken into consideration. We don't want just a table to sit at and be able to voice our opinions, but we want to see the end product of those opinions. Betty wrote in and asked a question that totally changes direction. She asks, how has educational curriculum in Ghana influenced your climate literacy? it was a bit different for me because I'm a lawyer by profession, and so right from my University my degree was in law and then I had my professional legal studies and we did a bit of environmental law here and there natural resource law, but nothing specific on climate change. So my climate advocacy, you know, effort and then journey has mainly been my own personal effort to volunteering with different, you know, NGOs that were championing one climate action projects or the other. Also, I have very resourceful people in my network who guided me, provided me with the opportunities. I've been in a lot of training programs, even climate negotiation programs to sort of build my skills and in those areas. Now some universities have climate change programs in their undergraduate and master's program. And this is very encouraging for people who just don't want to do other things but want to go straight into, you know, studying for climate change related causes. So that is super inspiring. But that was not my journey. But now young people in Ghana can choose that path in terms of having their degrees and climate change and also masters and even PhD programs in that topic. So. Most of the work environmentally was done on your own. Do you recall what that first big link was for you? brought you into the environmental frame of mind that you're in now? one friend of mine, I didn't really start off with environment, but it was like my first touch with sustainability I just signed up as a volunteer in my very first year in the university to volunteer for a program. And the topic of that program was to teach about the SDGs. And so I had a friend who, who introduced me to that conference and I talked with people and I got to know, okay, something like the SDG says this, right? So from there, I volunteered for one organization to the other, sort of championing different SDGs. So, Girl Child Education, Humanitarian Effort, Beach Cleanups, Water Project. I've been doing this for seven to eight years now. So the past four years, I've realized that I've been volunteering and working with organizations that were championing climate action so that was where my full focus on climate action started from. That was my friend. She's called Maud. Maud Ewoenam Fugar. She's, she's in Ghana right now and she's been an amazing person. She's the beginning of my journey in this, in this process. Betty follows up with another question: where do you get your climate or environmental information? You know, news sites, websites, TikTok, Facebook, where do you get your info from? One thing that I did was to follow a lot of inspiring people in the climate space on LinkedIn. So they share information there, so you'll see Vanessa Nakati, so many other people that are also like sort of youth voices or inspiring voices. Simon Stiell, I really admire him a lot. So, so many of these public figures that I admire because they share their personal opinion. I also look for my information from the Nature Conservancy. their website, innovative inspiring posts and also documents that they share. There is also Carbon Brief. Carbon brief is very great, especially when you go for COP and you want to understand what is happening in the various negotiation rooms. They're also super supportive and the climate policy initiative. I use them when I need data on climate finance or renewable energy so they're very good when it comes to data. And also I sleep on the, Triple C website because you want to go back to submissions from different countries here. So it's a particular subject matter. It's super helpful for me when I go there and look for what other people are saying on different topics. So those are where I get my climate information from. just out of curiosity, you know, each country has a variety of news sources, but we're in such a time when we're interconnected internationally, you know, I can listen to BBC if I want or whoever. Do you find a news source out there for just general news stories that you find is very balanced in terms of not going too far one way or the other? well, I think most of our news agencies, at least international ones, are not focused on climate change, but they report on climate issues. So I mentioned Al Jazeera, for instance, yes, you know, BBC, CNN, but sometimes the story, once again, geopolitics taking, Place, you know, in all of these conversations. So depending on the country involved or where, you know, the people involved in the story, it can be a bit different across all of these, you know, international news agencies. So I kind of mentally created a block in my mind that okay, if I'm looking for something Middle East area, the side, I'm going to go to Al Jazeera because I can trust that the information is credible, you know, if something on the Western side, and I'm going to go to BBC or CNN. So it's Just my own mental, segregation, just, you know, to be sure that I get the right information without geopolitics sort of distorting the information coming out. Well, that's great for us to hear. And I guess the the rule we all need to live by is to have some balance. Listen to different sources so we don't always hear the same thing over and over. Now, before we let you go, Emmanuella, we need to ask you about your climate action. So tell us what you've chosen today what I do on a daily basis is to Never go anywhere without my bottle. So I never do plastic bottles. Whenever I'm, even if I get offered a plastic, you know, bottle water, yeah. I sort of transfer it into my bottle. It's, it's my own way of, you know, contributing to this whole conversation around plastic waste, but on a more personal level, before I moved to Korea, I was also supporting a project in my NGO, Grand Hedge International, where we basically turn food waste. So anything that can generate alcohol we turn these sugarcane molasses, Pineapple waste, we turn them into bioethanol fuel for clean cooking in Ghana, because I told you one of our major challenges is cooking with fossil fuel and so that was An innovative project that me and my team came up with and it was it's being funded by MasterCard foundation and so you're looking at one of the output of our, of our clean cooking project. this is a special bioethanol stove, and then the liquid you're seeing is bioethanol fuel, which doesn't emit any carbon dioxide at all. It's all renewable, a hundred percent renewable. And we are also dealing with the issue of waste to energy. So that is my little innovative ways of contributing to climate action. And tell us today, Emmanuella, what gives you hope? what gives me hope, basically, is to create a future for not just myself, but my children, unborn and generations, unborn, to give them that opportunity to experience nature as we are doing now to have the opportunity to choose to go to the beach, to choose to be in the forest area, to choose to enjoy nature without, you know, being denied that kind of opportunity. And if we go the business as usual, as we are going now, we're going to lose any sort of nature that we have and future generations will grow up not knowing, certain kind of special species. that existed in the world, or what young people 30 years ago used to do, like going to the beach or enjoying nature. And so that is my hope to, to keep climate action going forward to leave a future for a generation unborn where it is sustainable where it's void of, polluted air and where everything is clean. Powerful words from a young woman who is going places. I am certain about that. And we just thank you so much for being here. If you're not watching on YouTube, you probably don't know that it is pretty clear that Emmanuella's In her workday. She's taking this chunk of her workday to spend a little time talking with us and giving her perspective so we thank you so much for being here with us today. Emmanuella. Thank you so much. John. Thanks for having me And thank you to our thoughtful audience. I say that because, as you know, we get some really great comments, questions, especially on YouTube, so keep those coming. We love to hear from you. We will be back again next Tuesday to hear from another great climate action figure. Until then Go figures! Did I get that right? That was perfect!