.png)
Bula COP31!
Bula COP31 is a podcast for anyone wanting to understand what it means for Australia and the Türkiye to co-host COP31 in 2026, and why this moment is influential in the UNFCCC process. Australia will be putting the Pacific Islands at the forefront of the climate negotiations to ensure adaptation and infrastructure investments flow to the region.
Your hosts are Heidi Dumesich and Jack Whelan.
Jack is a proud boomer who started his sustainability career long before it was considered ‘cool’. His experience spans the earliest COPs and reaches across business, industry, government, development agencies, NGOs, and the UN. He’s worked with the International Chamber of Commerce and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development; and across Asia-Pacific with the Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility, Asian Development Bank, and World Bank. Jack was nominated by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the design team that established the IRIS initiative, supporting climate- and disaster-resilient infrastructure in Small Island Developing States — work that sits at the heart of Pacific climate priorities.
Heidi Dumesich is a millennial environmental scientist focused on implementing practical solutions. She’s the seasoned podcaster behind Life on Planet A, and currently a Sustainability Manager at Ventia, leading an Infrastructure Sustainability Council rating for a major road project. Heidi brings a fresh, grounded perspective on climate action and how sustainability plays out across communities and sectors.
Bula COP31 explores what really happens behind the scenes of a COP — with a special focus on how Pacific leadership, values, and voices shape the global climate agenda. Through candid conversations with stakeholders across Pacific governments, Australian agencies, industry, civil society, youth, and community groups, we unpack how climate diplomacy in our region is driven by relationships, resilience, and shared responsibility.
Whether you're a policymaker, business leader, activist, Pacific climate champion, or simply COP-curious, this podcast is your guide to getting the most out of COP31 — and understanding how it can deliver for the Blue Pacific Continent.
Tune in, get engaged, and say Bula COP31!
Bula COP31!
Episode 'S' for Solomon Islands: The Case for Electrification - Part 2 with Jon Jutsen
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Jon Jutsen returns to Bula COP31 to unpack the messier middle of the energy transition: where biofuels and biogas still have a role in hard-to-abate sectors like mining, farming and remote transport, and whether Australia's electricity grid is actually ready for the wave of EVs and heat pumps about to hit it. Jutsen makes the case that biodiesel is a short-term bridge at best, that biogas is underused in agriculture and rural industry, and that our networks — built for a world of dozens of new connection applications a year, not thousands — are racing to catch up. The conversation turns to a bigger question: are big centralised transmission networks becoming redundant as we shift toward local, distributed grids?
Jutsen thinks the answer is nuanced — networks aren't going away, but their role is changing fast. A must-listen ahead of COP31 for anyone tracking Australia and the Pacific's electrification journey.
Follow us on our socials for more content: