Inside Geneva: is climate change the forgotten crisis?

COP30 has ended without a firm commitment to phase out fossil fuels. Inside Geneva talks to some campaigners who remain surprisingly optimistic.

“I’m actually quite hopeful, and I think that the answer is probably coming from the countries and the communities that have the most to lose,” says Candy Ofime, from the Climate Justice Team at Amnesty International.

Indigenous peoples made their voices heard at COP30.

They have deep knowledge of land use and forest preservation, which can help us tackle global warming.

“The answer is us and that was part of the campaign that we had as indigenous peoples. [We said] ‘pay attention to the world.’ Basically the solution that many of us are looking for has already been happening in the indigenous local communities,” says Deborah Sanchez, from the Community Land Rights and Climate Initiative (Clarifi).  

Some now suggest global warming is a hoax…but the scientific evidence proves otherwise. It is damaging our planet and our health.

“These are clever people who want what’s best for you and can read a temperature graph, and they know that there are concrete actions that you can take which are good for your health, as well as good for the planet,” says Diarmid Campbell Lendrum, from the climate change and health unit at the World Health Organization (WHO). 

So does it matter that the world’s super power, and biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, stayed away from COP30?

“The US is usually a blocker, and sometimes having the biggest polluters not in the room allows for consensus to be reached. And so in this forum, decisions have to be made, and they will be made with or without the United States,” says Ofime. 

Can the world tackle climate change without the US? Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva. 

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Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage At COP30
• 5:00 Climate Change As A Health Crisis
• 10:10 Can Health Systems Cope With Heat
• 16:00 Indigenous Knowledge Protects Forests
• 22:30 What A Just Transition Really Means
• 28:20 The Hidden Costs Of Critical Minerals

Transcript

SPEAKER_04: 0:47

This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, Imogen Folkes, and this is a production from SwissInfo, the international public media company of Switzerland. In today's program.

SPEAKER_07: 1:02

In this arena of COP 30, your job here is not to fight one another. Your job here is to fight this climate crisis together.

SPEAKER_09: 1:14

I'm actually quite hopeful, and I think that the answer is probably coming from the countries and the communities that have the most to lose.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25

Indigenous peoples are on the point of the spear.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29

They are on the front lines protecting what is sacred for the planet. The answer is us, and that was part of the campaigns that we had as an Indigenous people's. Pay attention, right, to the world that basically the solution that many of us are looking for is already been happening at the indigenous local community.

SPEAKER_08: 1:49

It's called the Endangerment Finding. It's a landmark scientific determination that planet warming pollution from fossil fuels endangers human health.

SPEAKER_06: 2:00

These are clever people who want what's best for you and can read a temperature graph, and they know that there are concrete actions that you can take, which are good for your health as well as good for the planet.

SPEAKER_10: 2:12

Climate change.

SPEAKER_09: 3:48

Hi, Majin. My name is Candy Ofime. I am a researcher and legal advisor in the climate justice team at Amnesty International. My main role at Amnesty is to document the impacts of the climate crisis.

SPEAKER_04: 4:00

Climate change is, as we said, a challenge to all of us on many different levels. It challenges our health, it challenges our way of life if our sea levels are rising, or our ancestral lands are subject to drought or flooding. But also, if we work in the fossil fuel industry, tackling climate change challenges our livelihoods. But let's start with health. Just before COP30 began, the medical journal The Lancet and the World Health Organization produced a new shocking study, suggesting that climate change, and our inaction in the face of it, is already claiming millions of lives a year. To find out more, I caught up with Dermid Campbell Lendrum, head of the Climate Change and Health Unit at the WHO.

SPEAKER_06: 4:50

Climate change hits on health in many ways, some of them obvious and direct. So heat waves take a lot of lives every year, and the latest report from the Lancet that we're also collaborators on indicates that extreme heat now takes about 540,000 lives every year. That's a huge number. But it also hits in many other ways as well. So the impact of floods or droughts has immediate effects, but also long-lasting effects. So we're now starting to find out that the impacts of floods, in fact, take perhaps 10 times as many lives after the effect as it does in the event itself. Climate change also makes it easier to transmit infectious diseases, for example, those transmitted by insects or by contaminated food or water. But most fundamentally of all, it undermines the environmental determinants of health on which we all depend. It makes it harder to provide clean, fresh water to populations or safe and sufficient food. So this is why WHO has identified climate change as potentially the greatest health threat of this century.

SPEAKER_04: 6:03

And when you bring those reports to governments, do they accept this data, this evidence that you bring? Because there is, you know, there is debate about whether climate change is really happening.

SPEAKER_06: 6:17

Well, there is debate about whether climate change is happening, but not scientific debate. The scientific consensus uh on the main points is absolutely clear and has been for decades now. It's it is happening. It's mainly due to uh human activities. It is bad, including for health, and this has been documented in sequential reports, for example, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Um it is getting worse, but the final point is perhaps the most important one. We can fix this, and it is actually good news for jobs, the economy, and health if we take the actions that we need to fix it.

SPEAKER_04: 6:56

These changes you're talking about, though, it's not going to happen overnight. In the meantime, you are seeing, you are recording harm to health because of climate change. We hear a lot about the strain on our health systems. Are they prepared? Are there things they need to do?

SPEAKER_06: 7:15

Well, the you're right, that health systems uh around the world are already doing, in some sense, a fantastic job in improving people's lives, protecting people's lives, but there's probably not a health system anywhere in the world that isn't already under strain. The demands always uh exceed the resources uh available. And climate change just piles up problems on on top of that. If you have an overstretched health service and then which is then hit by a heat wave uh which sends uh a lot of particularly old people, for example, uh to hospital, then you're further overburdening your health system. And countries around the world are getting better prepared for these now. And in many cases, we know what to do. So we know, for example, that heat health warning systems, telling people a heat wave is coming, telling them what public health measures they should put into place to protect themselves, are effective and they're also a really good investment. So we've looked, as WHO, we've assessed just five climate and health interventions, um, the ones with the uh the best evidence. And the evidence there is that if we deploy those across the world, we could save about two million lives every year, and the benefits would outweigh the costs by a factor of at least four to one, probably much more than that. And those are the kinds of things that, in fact, we need to put into place now if we're not going to have climate change and uh climate extremes tipping our health services over the edge in many cases.

SPEAKER_04: 8:51

You would think, listening to that, that governments the world over would be thinking we need an answer to this and fast.

SPEAKER_00: 8:57

Indigenous peoples continue to be some of the leading solution-focused voices on the climate crisis.

SPEAKER_04: 9:03

As it turns out, there are groups in the world who know a lot about working with our planet, who know how to conserve our environment. Leaders of Indigenous communities from around the world are also attending. Indigenous peoples made their voices heard loud and clear at COP 30. Their knowledge can help to tackle climate change, particularly when it comes to preserving forests, the lungs of our planet.

SPEAKER_01: 9:47

The answer is us, and that was part of the campaign that we had as an Indigenous people's. Pay attention, right, to the world that basically the solution that many of us are looking for is already been happening at the indigenous local community.

SPEAKER_04: 10:02

Tell me about that, because I've heard that from a number of different groups. The answer is us, our communities have knowledge, we have experience, we can help with this. Give me some specific examples what you mean by that.

SPEAKER_01: 10:17

Yeah, so for example, when we are seeing um the Democratic Republic of Congo, where we already are working and have several projects with the indigenous peoples, but also with the local community. And we did a mapping, and now you can see in the maps that those lands that had been secured or recognized for those indigenous peoples are still intact forests. And they are making a living there, and they have their communities there, and they have sacred places there, but they still conserve, still manage. And if you see surrounded areas, beyond that, there are already a lot of deforestation happening on the on those lands. So that is a very practical example of how tradition, knowledge, customary tenure actually are supporting, for example, deforestation, holding deforestation on the very key biodiversity areas in the world.

SPEAKER_04: 11:13

And of course, forests are something we very much need if we're going to tackle climate change.

SPEAKER_01: 11:19

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04: 11:20

Yes. Some people might say though, look, the kind of world we live in now, to produce the things we need, even to produce the renewables we need, we are going to have to do different things with land. And some of it might interfere with how indigenous peoples live.

SPEAKER_01: 11:39

Yeah, and that's true because we need to really make sure the solution that we are bringing into the table are sustainable solutions, right? So if we are doing renewables one hand, but then we're deforesting or the or destroying ecosystem on the other hand, we are actually not solving the problem, right? We're just putting the problem somewhere else, but not actually bringing a real solution. And that's where communities are asking for being informed and has consensus around what are we gonna do with with the land and what we are gonna do with the resources. And then I hear, for example, we had a meeting with the pastoralists from Eastern Africa, and those are dry lands, not like rainforest, but but dry forests. And they say, you know, the potential for lands to solar energy, for example, is there because it's a land with a lot of sunlight. But how communities participate, how consent and decision making is happening is the key. So it's just not about the what, but it's about the how we are we are bringing those solutions into the conversation.

SPEAKER_03: 12:48

You might have heard a lot about what shifting away from fossil fuels should look like. The truth is, this needs to be a just transition. That means shifting to an environmentally sustainable economy in a way that's fair to everyone.

SPEAKER_04: 12:59

What Dermot and Deborah have to say is, I'm sure, compelling for many of our listeners. Lots of us are frustrated with the slow pace of change. We're worried we won't be able to keep global temperature rises within 1.5 degrees centigrade, and some of us are already suffering the health effects of extreme heat. We want to know what we can do personally to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Some of us are trading in our petrol cars for electric vehicles and turning to renewables to heat our homes. But, says Candy Ofime of Amnesty International, we do need to think carefully and aim for a just transition.

SPEAKER_09: 13:42

I think for most people, transitioning to renewable energy might mean uh changing your gas stove, buying uh an electric car. But I think if we want the transition to be just, fair, equitable, and rights respecting, we have to think about the whole supply chain model that we're transitioning from into. At Amnesty, we spent a lot of time documenting the impact of renewable energy transition projects on groups in different parts of the world. If you think, for example, about an electric car, a lot of them are built with critical minerals, cobalt, among others, that are extracted in a way that's polluting and that has a huge human rights cost on communities in different parts of the world. I've documented the impact of cobalt mining um in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, both mine industrially and through artisanal mining. And today, cobalt is everywhere. You see it in electric vehicles, energy storage facilities. It's a mineral that's essential for the energy transition. But what most people do not know is that the world's largest reserves are located in the Congo, and people are evicted from their land for industrial sites to expense. And a lot of artisanal miners are actually risking their lives on a daily basis to mine without protective equipment. And so it's easy if you just think about what you see, what's before you, to think that your individual consumer habits might be more sustainable if you don't think about tracing the sort of ecosystem within which your energy is supplied and the goods that you actually have tangibly before you where they come from.

SPEAKER_04: 15:34

Do you think that COP has been addressing that particular side of it sufficiently? I mean, we've had the indigenous groups protesting about fossil fuels, but is there a consciousness that when we, if as we switch to renewables, that the extraction of these critical minerals, rare earths, and so on, that that has to be done fairly within a human rights framework?

SPEAKER_09: 16:00

I think these are demands that civil society have been bringing to the attention of COP leaders. Um, I think we're far from it in terms of outcome documents that particularly embed a human rights framework to think about the energy transition. Now, what civil society is demanding is not just a transition to renewable energy in the abstract. You'll hear the phrase just transition a lot. It's coming from the labor movement, and it encompasses both a process that leaves no one behind. And that starts with the workers of the fossil fuel industry who will have to be rescaled and provided alternative opportunities for their subsistence all the way to the consumption and the production models that will pivot to while we transition away from fossil fuels. So we're barely at the stage where cop leaders are considering discussing the elephant in the room.

SPEAKER_05: 17:03

How much will climate change cost us and what will it cost us to stop it?

SPEAKER_04: 17:09

But even while Candy and her colleagues argue for a just transition, in the world's wealthiest countries, some people are beginning to doubt that any kind of transition is worth it or even necessary.

SPEAKER_06: 17:22

We will drill, baby, drill.

SPEAKER_04: 17:26

They worry about the cost to themselves. The WHO's dermid Campbell Lendrum suggests the current fossil fuel-based financial model needs more scrutiny.

SPEAKER_06: 17:37

At the moment, the world is massively subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels. So if you're a taxpayer, you should probably be aware that governments around the world are on average providing about$3,000 per household per year on top of the energy bills that you pay in order to subsidize the consumption of fossil fuels, which are also taking many lives from air pollution now and also driving the climate crisis, which is messing up the future for you and your children. So you should probably take an interest in the fact that for most people, your taxes are actually going to subsidize the climate crisis.

SPEAKER_04: 18:19

Well, you say that, but a lot of people, particularly in the West, in the developed countries, are personally thinking, I'm gonna this is going to cost me too much. I'm gonna have to make unnecessary sacrifices.

SPEAKER_06: 18:31

Well, I think perhaps we're looking at this uh the wrong way. The evidence on the on the economics is very, very clear. Clean energy is now the cheapest source of energy. So there are upfront investment costs in order to uh make the transition uh that we need to make to uh protect uh the climate. And in any country around the world, those investment costs are up front, but in a relatively short period of time, they pay themselves back. So typically, after say six or eight years, you've got back the money that you've invested just financially, and from that point on, you're effectively in profit, you're making more money back. So it's obviously a good deal just for the economy, but it's an even better deal from a health point of view, because if you factor in the fact that air pollution takes about seven million lives every year, that's a death every few seconds. And most of the drivers of air pollution are actually the same drivers as they are of the climate crisis. If you factor in the health gains that you would get from cleaning up our energy systems, in fact, those health gains are bigger than the costs that it takes to fix climate change. So these are things we should be doing anyway. To be honest, even if you didn't care about climate change, you should be doing it for clean air and more sustainable and healthy food systems and so on. It's absolutely clear from a scientific point of view, if not a political point of view, that this is a good deal for individual countries as well as for the planet as a whole.

SPEAKER_05: 20:05

Net zero, net zero net zero, net zero, net zero, net zero. Net zero. Net zero madness.

SPEAKER_04: 20:12

Dermud's points are persuasive, but still the fears about the cost of transition remain. Candio Fime at Amnesty has heard them too, and warns that many of the arguments over cost are being fueled by one particular lobby.

SPEAKER_09: 20:29

These are flawed arguments, often fueled by, you know, fossil fuel lobbyists in the industry that has a vested interest in spreading those narratives. These are also, in many parts of the world, narratives that are connected to the rise of authoritarianism. You see interesting strains that are attached to this fantasy of a romanticized past where economic growth was attached to modalities of production and consumption that are changing. And so I think there's a way to counter a narrative that's based in fear, looking at opportunities that renewable energy projects offer across the world and that are not complicated to imagine. I think we have to remember that our collective imagination is limited by design. They are corporate interests that are invested in preserving the status quo. And if we want to think creatively about liberation, and if we want to think holistically about how to protect our planet for future generations, I think we need to be very mindful and unpack the forces that are at play. We're talking about billions and billions of dollars of fossil fuel subsidies that states provide to fossil fuel companies. So when we talk about corporate greed and when we talk about limitations and possibilities, these are dimensions that I think a lot of people ignore. And if we had more political will and corporate interest in forging an alternative that's sustainable, I think the conversation would be in a different place in many parts of the world. In the past half hour, leaders at the COP 30 Climate Summit in Brazil have agreed on a deal that ends the summit but fails to mention fossil fuels.

SPEAKER_04: 22:20

So where is the political and corporate will? COP 30 has now ended with a very modest agreement which makes no mention of Moore commitment to phasing out fossil fuels. And the entire conference was held without the world's most powerful country, biggest consumer of fossil fuels, and also the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, the United States. You might imagine that the people I've been talking to today would be disappointed, but it's not as simple as that. Candy or Fime again?

SPEAKER_09: 22:54

You might be surprised by my answer, but I'm actually quite hopeful, and I think that the answer is probably coming from the countries and the communities that have the most to lose. So we've seen incredible examples of political leadership coming from small island countries like Tuvalu, Fiji Island, places that will disappear in the next few decades if we don't do something immediately. Small island countries, developing nations that actually have a lot to lose in the current state of play have really been stepping up on the international political stage to push for the conversation to shift. So surprisingly, I think because maybe I'm interacting with groups and communities around the world that have just demonstrated so much innovation around climate solutions, I feel like they're there. We just have to pay attention to them and bring them to the centers of decision making.

SPEAKER_04: 23:58

Has it been helpful or a hindrance that the United States, the world's biggest emitter, has not been at COP 30?

SPEAKER_09: 24:08

I think consensus from civil society would be that it's been helpful. The US is usually a blocker. And sometimes having the biggest polluters not in the room allows for consensus to be reached. And I think if we secure a positive outcome on um fossil fuel phase out at this COP, it would most likely have been helped by the absence of the United States, who most likely would have objected.

SPEAKER_04: 24:33

Okay, that's so that's interesting. World's only superpower gets left out. You're not the first person to say that to me that, okay, fine, they're not here, good. We need to get this done. We do it without them.

SPEAKER_09: 24:43

Yeah. International negotiations, that's where multilateral multilateralism, and I can never pronounce that word. You know, you keep um keep going. And so right now the US is really using its influence internationally to leverage its economic and trade deals to disincentivize and to push really regressive policies on climate. And so in this forum, decisions have to be made and they will be made with or without the United States.

SPEAKER_04: 25:12

And Deborah Sanchez believes this year's COP, with its focus on indigenous peoples, has laid good foundations and she's already building for next year.

SPEAKER_01: 25:22

From our side, we'll be supporting as much as we can the governments to really understand what are those action points the communities are bringing and how from where policymakers can make a decision to actually advance these commitments that they have been done in COP. So by next year, when we are in COP again, we have some results. So, for example, we had supported in the policy around land tenure for indigenous peoples in DRC. And now in this COP, we already see 150,000 hectares of land being recognized for indigenous peoples and local community. And if we continue supporting that conversation and that work together between communities, countries, and philanthropy, channeling the funds there, next year in COP, we want to see bigger, right? We want to see probably 1 million hectares. And that will be a massive achievement around tackling climate change, but also from an angle of human rights and justice in environment justice and climate justice, that what is what we are advocating for.

SPEAKER_04: 26:30

And Dermud Campbell Lendrum of the WHO puts his faith not in the climate deniers who populate our social media feeds, but ordinary people the world over who every opinion poll shows want to protect our planet.

SPEAKER_06: 26:45

Well, first off, I think they may need less convincing than you think that uh we need action on climate change. The polling from around the world uh shows that there is a very strong majority in basically every country in the world to do more about climate change. We've fallen into this narrative that it's it's all pain and no gain, and it's all uh doom and gloom and no benefit. The evidence is if we look at the actual solutions that we need to put into place, many of those are pretty popular. So people are actually in favor of clean air. They actually want air that is safe for their children to breathe. They are in favour, I think, of spending less of their taxpayers' money and their and their own money on subsidizing the uh the climate crisis and putting that money into things which are actually useful for society. So the message that we have is to talk much more about the solutions, because those are popular and those are empowering, rather than just telling people the world's going to hell unless we all act to the uh to the extreme now, um, there's nothing we can do about it. When you break it down into practical actions that individuals can take and governments can take, you get a lot more support. The final thing I'd like to say on this is that the health community is absolutely behind this. So we work with health professionals from around uh the world, and there is a very clear consensus amongst frontline health professionals, your doctors and your nurses, uh, that we need to take action on climate change and that it's good for your health. And I the final thing I would say to the woman or man in the street is that you know you probably trust your doctors and nurses to be telling you what's good for you. These are clever people who want what's best for you and can read a temperature graph, uh, and they know that there are concrete actions that you can take, which are good for your health as well as good for the planet.

SPEAKER_04: 28:50

And with those wise words from the WHO, a gentle reminder, in fact, that listening to the scientific advice is always recommended, we come to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to Dermot, Deborah, and Candy for their time and their insights. We hope you enjoyed the program. Next time on Inside Geneva.

SPEAKER_10: 29:16

Judges from Britain, America, Russia, and France assemble in Nuremberg's courthouse. Imagination sickens at the crimes laid upon the accused, now stripped of the trappings of time. The world's writ has run to Nuremberg, and justice waits.

SPEAKER_04: 29:33

It's 80 years since the Nuremberg trials, 80 years since the founding of the United Nations, and 80 years since the world agreed on some basic international laws to keep us all safe. But 80 years on, is 2025, the year we threw it all away. Join us on December 9th for a fascinating discussion. And just before we go, here's some news of another Swiss Info podcast that some of our listeners might be interested in. Are you Swiss and planning to move abroad? Or maybe you've already taken the leap? SwissInfo has a new podcast just for you. It's coming out on November 25th. It's called Ade Merci Schwitz. Or maybe that should be Adieu Merci la Suisse. It's available in Swiss German and French. It covers everything you need to know about setting up your new life abroad. Abroad. We speak to Swiss around the world who've already made the move, and we ask experts to share their experiences. You'll find Ade Mercy Schwitz wherever you get your podcasts or in our SWIPLU app. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss Info production. You can subscribe to us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes: how the International Red Cross unites prisoners of war with their families, or why survivors of human rights violations turn to the UN in Geneva for justice. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for listening.