The climate backstage at UNFCCC conferences — Foresight Podcast Ep. 04
Behind the scenes of the climate negotiations, where the whole world sits around the same table. We discover the swing of frustration and excitement underlying the process that brings to globally awaited treaties. It is a plot of interminable sessions, under the danger of a deadlock that is always around the corner, behind a comma or a single concept. Scientists, delegates and a journalist unveil how a climate agreement takes shape in the halls and the corridors of an International Climate Conference.
Once a year, delegations from all over the world gather to discuss global actions against the climate crisis. It is the Cop, one of the most longed-for appointments in the global effort to limit global warming as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
But how do we get there? What happens behind doors when scientists, delegates, and politicians from all over the world meet, discuss and decide?
In this episode, we enter into the complicated world of official climate reports and negotiations with the help of our guests.
From their specific perspectives, they explain the reasons why any negotiation is important, any agreement can make a difference in fighting the climate crisis, the most important challenge we face as humanity today.
Foresight — Deep into the Future Planet, a podcast produced by the CMCC and FACTA.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcast or on your favorite podcast app.
Meet this Episode’s guests
Lucia Perugini is a senior scientific manager at CMCC, PhD in forest ecology with a scientific background in forestry and climate change. Since 2003, she has been involved in the UNFCCC negotiations, providing technical and scientific support to the Italian Delegation on issues related to agriculture, LULUCF and REDD+. Her research activity is focused on the link between the scientific and policy communities in several EU Funded research projects (EU FP7 project LUC4C 2013–2017; ongoing H2020 project: VERIFY; COCO2 and PARIS-REINFORCE).
Between 2003 and 2007, she was actively involved as a forestry expert in various international projects as a team leader or as a forest carbon sequestration expert within AR CDM project development activities at several stages. Amongst others, she worked in China, Argentina, Mozambique, Ghana, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia for the Italian Ministry of Environment and Territory, in Albania and Ukraine within BioCarbon Fund projects, in Albania again with the World Bank and in India within an EU funded project in Haryana.
She is currently the Italian representative at Working Group 5 at the EU Climate Change Committee on “Implementation of the LULUCF Decision and policy development of the land use, land use change and forestry sector (529/2013)”. GEO Programme Board alternate representative for Italy, since July 2020, she is chairing the sub-Group on Mitigation of the Climate Change Working Group at GEO.
Shouro Dasgupta is a Researcher at Fondazione CMCC and RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics, and the Environment and a Lecturer at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia. His main research interests include studying the impacts of climate change on labour, food security, health, and inequality at multiple spatial scales.
His research contributes to advancing knowledge on socioeconomic impacts of climate change, identifying hotspots and vulnerable populations, and supporting the design of tailored policies to mitigate and adapt to these impacts.
Shouro teaches courses on Statistics, Economics, and Econometrics at both undergraduate and graduate levels at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia. He holds a PhD in Science and Management of Climate Change from the Ca’ and an MA in Economics from the University of New Hampshire.
Leo Hickman is Director and Editor of Carbon Brief. He previously worked for 16 years as a journalist, editor and author at the Guardian newspaper.
Before joining Carbon Brief, he was WWF-UK’s chief advisor on climate change. In 2013, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Exeter in recognition of his journalism.
His books include A Life Stripped Bare, The Final Call and Will Jellyfish Rule the World?
