Making Climate Finance Work For Real People / Net Zero/ Carbon Removal Updates

Some weekly updates on the Walk It Back campaign from Craig Cohon, a recap from the World Bank Spring Meetings and more about the Road to President Macron's summit in Paris

Apr 21, 2023

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Eid Mubarak! As Ramadan comes to a close, I want to wish all of those celebrating a peaceful, healthy, and joyous holiday.

In case you missed last week’s update, I did an interview on Sky News Australia this past weekend, which you can check out here, here, and here. Please feel free to like and share. To Quote Australian Ambassador Kevin Rudd, “Money isn’t everything, but money with a moral purpose means a lot.” Couldn’t agree more.

During my recent trip to Washington, I found some spare time to visit the Ford Theatre, famous for being the location where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. To my surprise, the day we visited was 158 years from the date of his assassination. Despite visiting DC frequently, I had never had the chance to see the theatre before. The National Park Ranger who led the tour gave an outstanding talk. Highly recommend it.

Earlier this year I wrote a post about my friend Craig Cohon’s Walk It Back campaign in support of carbon removal efforts. A few of you have inquired about Craig's current whereabouts. I suggest checking out the Walk It Back LinkedIn page for the latest updates, and I highly recommend subscribing. According to the page, Craig is currently in the Czech Republic.

I always list some great things to read or listen to at the end of this weekly update. Last month, to mark St Patrick's Day I wrote about my experiences in Belfast earlier this year. We have heard a lot this past few weeks about the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and some of the creative diplomacy that went into achieving this historic diplomatic breakthrough. A few great articles and podcasts have been going, but I especially recommend interviews on Leading with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart.

While waiting for my flight in the airport terminal, I watched this thought-provoking Net Zero debate. It provided a lot of great insights into the roadmap to achieving Net Zero and what's realistically feasible. I highly recommend giving it a listen.

Read on for more of what we’ve been up to this week, including details on the next Paris Briefing the team at Global Citizen will be hosting.

The Return of GC NOW

It is less than a week away from GC NOW, and many people I know couldn’t be more excited! The team at Global Citizen have announced an exciting few new additions of speakers to the lineup.

For those who have been invited and haven’t yet RSVP’d, please make sure to do so via the unique link in your invite, as spots are limited and quickly filling up!

Today, the Global Citizen team were pleased to announce the addition of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, John Legend, Katie Holmes, Gayle King, Busy Philipps, and Joe Scarborough to their already remarkable lineup of speakers.

Other names added to the Global Citizen NOW line up include: H.E. Dr. Tariq Al Gurg, Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman, Dubai Cares; Tiffany "The Budgetnista" Aliche, New York Times Bestselling Author; H.E. Samira Bawumia, Second Lady of Ghana; Maria Borges, Model and Activist; Juju Chang, Co-Anchor, “Nightline”, ABC News; Pinky Cole, Restaurateur, Author and Philanthropist; Liya Haile, Country Lead – Ethiopia, Girl Effect; Caroline Hyde, Bloomberg Co-host, Bloomberg Technology; Gayle King, Co-Host, CBS Mornings; Lisa LaFlamme, Journalists For Human Rights, Special Correspondent; Nomzamo Mbatha, Actress; Jacqueline O'Neill, Canadian Ambassador for Women, Peace, and Security; Busy Philipps, Actress, Author and Activist; Joe Scarborough, Co-Host, Morning Joe and former U.S. Congressman; Laurie Segall, Founder, Dot Dot Dot; Jessica Stern, Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons, US Government; Alok Vaid-Menon, Artist; and Elizabeth Vazquez, CEO & Co-Founder, WEConnect International.

Making Climate Finance Work For Real People: Lessons For The World Bank From Fiji And Barbados

This week on Forbes.com, I discussed the need to bring common sense back into the equation when it comes to talking about climate change, and remember that the solutions the world needs are often much simpler than the buzzwords – like “resilience”, “MDB reform” and “SDRs” – suggest. In my piece, I draw on takeaways from my recent Fiji trip to break down the importance of promoting “common sense” climate-resilient solutions, like the Bridgetown Initiative, that can be implemented anywhere. Check it out and learn more here.

Twitter Space Discussion on Women’s Rights

In this month’s civic space Twitter conversation (which you can listen to here), the Global Citizen team looked into different aspects of how the rights of women and girls are moving forward (and how to push against the pushback) in particular contexts where civic space is closing back. The team usually design these two-hour conversations as different thematic segments, and this time was no exception. They highlighted different victories and current struggles, introduced the audience to what the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women is and how civic society engages in it, and they went deep on how the human rights of women and girls are promoted and restricted online. Civic space and the rights of women and girls are strongly interconnected as we can see in different current examples around the world, so please help amplify these messages and stay tuned for the next episodes.

Recapping the World Bank Spring Meetings

As you will have seen in last week’s newsletter, I was in DC for the World Bank Spring Meetings, where Global Citizen hosted its own event in collaboration with the Australian Embassy. With the Spring Meetings now over, the team at Global Citizen recapped everything you may have missed out on, in their latest Twitter impact thread here - check it out and let me know what you thought of last week’s meetings.

Launching Accenture’s Sustainability Innovation Challenge

This week the Global Citizen corporate partnership team launched the first episode of an eight-part video series with Global Citizen’s Global Partner, Accenture.

The video series focuses on Accenture’s Sustainability Innovation Challenge, an annual competition inspiring the collective skillset of its global workforce to design innovative solutions for some of the world’s greatest social and environmental issues. They have published the video on YouTube and across their social channels, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The article can be found HERE along with the Global Citizen social posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

So have a read and watch how Accenture is catalyzing employee innovation to address the most complex issues of our time!

2nd Briefing - Road to Paris & the New Finance Summit

Mark your calendar, because next Wednesday April 26 at 2:30pm CET/ 8:30am EST, Global Citizen will be hosting its second CSO briefing on The Road to Paris, alongside its partners at What World Strategies. This will be a follow-up to the session they held in March, and the team be joined in the first half of the call by Ombeline Gras, advisor to President Macron, and Ambassador Didier Le Bret, who is in charge of organizing the summit. The second half will focus on advocacy and campaigning activities. Please make sure to save the date, and share widely across your networks! You can register on the eventbrite page here.

Global Citizen is Hiring - Come Work With Them!

Global Citizen is hiring for two key positions - Consultant - Impact & Private Sector Policy and Government Relations and Advocacy Manager (Germany).

My Weekend Reading List

That’s all for this week! Looking forward to seeing some of you at GC NOW next week!

As always, if you’re enjoying the weekly newsletter format, and want even more, you can subscribe to my Substack here where I publish reviews, lists and articles on a regular basis.

All best,

Mick