The Agenda Podcast

Send us a text The curtain has now come down on the COP29 climate summit in Baku. And while a trillion dollar deal for climate financing was done at the last minute, some campaigners have called it a betrayal - as much of that figure will have to come from private financing or new sources which have yet to be agreed. To consider where the meeting really leaves us, and our planet, on this edition of The Agenda podcast, Juliet Mann speaks to Jeremy Rifkin, Author of many books including "Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe", Christine Loh, Chief Development Strategist at Institute for the Environment at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Jacopo Bencini from the Florence School of Transnational Governance and Michael Wilkins, Executive Director and Professor of Practice at the Centre For Climate Finance And Investment at Imperial College London.

Send us a text In 1944 delegates from 44 countries gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in the United States to agree on a system of economic order and global cooperation. Eighty years later, the seeds sown there for the likes of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank still dominate the world. But with the rise of countries like China and the rest of the global south, many think it's time for a substantial rethink of those Bretton Woods institutions, especially in the wake of the recent meetings of APEC, G20 and COP29. In this special edition of The Agenda, Juliet Mann gets the opinions of Professor Marc Uzan, Executive Director and Founder of the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee.

Send us a text As world leaders cross the planet to attend the APEC meeting in Peru, the G20 Summit in Rio and COP29 in Aerbaijan, the voice of the global south has never been more vital. At all of these gatherings, developing nations are fighting to get their voices heard, and pushing to create new forms of global governance that can change the way the world is run. We’ve heard a lot of talk in the past weeks, but what does the rise of the global south really look like in practice? Joining Juliet Mann on this episode of The Agenda are Erik Solheim, Former Under-Secretary General of the UN and former head of the UN Environment Programme, Alicia García-Herrero - Senior fellow at Bruegel and Chief Economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, and Yin Zhiguang, Professor of International Politics at Fudan University.

Send us a text The votes have been counted and Donald Trump has been returned to the White House for a second term. Voters in the US said the key issue for them was the economy – and whether they felt better off after four years of President Biden. But what does Trump’s re-election mean for the rest of the world? For relations with China, the EU and the rising global south? And for the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East? Joining Juliet Mann on this edition of The Agenda to look at the US result from a more global perspective are Yawei Liu - Senior Advisor on China at The Carter Center and an adjunct Professor of political science at Emory University, Henrik Stålhane Hiim - Head of The Centre for International Security, and Michael O'Hanlon - Senior Fellow and Director of Research of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution.

Send us a text World leaders, CEOs and Climate experts are now heading to Baku for the annual United Nations Climate Change conference - COP29. Against a backdrop of increasingly depressing news that warming gases are still accumulating faster than at any time in human history, the plan in Azerbaijan is to consider what now needs to happen next, and who will foot the bill to save the planet. Many think the gap between the global north and south, particularly over climate financing, will be the dominant issue at this COP. To look ahead to what exactly we might expect on this edition of The Agenda, Juliet Mann is joined by Nigar Arpadarai, UN Climate Change High-level Champion, Niklas Hagelberg, Global Coordinator for Climate Change at the UN Environmental Programme and Wu Changhua, Chair of the Governing Council of the Asia Pacific Water Forum.

Send us a text China's President Xi Jinping and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi wwere among the world leaders to join Vladimir Putin in Kazan recently for the 2024 BRICS summit. It's the first such gathering since the group added new members - Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. And, if this week's discussions are anything to go by, BRICS is only set to get bigger - with countries from across the global south pushing to join up. So what does all this really mean for the global balance of power? Joining Juliet Mann on this edition of The Agenda are Arkebe Oqubay - Former Senior Minister and Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, and now British Academy Global Professor at SOAS in London, Egypt's former Assistant Foreign Minister, Hussein Haridy, Rashika Desai, Professor at the Department of Political Studies at the University of Manitoba and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group and Michele Geraci - former undersecretary of state at the Italian Ministry of Economic development.