0:00 Sara Pawlikowska
Hello everyone, welcome to the Grin podcast. My name is Sara Pawlikowska and I'm the co-founder and Grin.eco, as I'm sure you're aware, tomorrow, COP28 is kicking off in Dubai, and it's gonna be happening till the 12th of December, and we're super excited about it. But just in case you're not quite familiar with the concept, let me introduce you.
0:26 Sara Pawlikowska
So the COP. COP is the United Nations Climate Change Conference that is happening every year. And its main purpose is to come up with solutions to climate change. And just in case you're wondering how this whole long name abbreviate to COP, it doesn't. COP actually stands for the Conference of the Parties. And, at least for me, that's a pretty vague name. So I prefer using the first one, but a little bit of history. So in 2015, during the COP21, the Paris Agreement was established. And its main idea is that we will do our best to keep the change in the global temperature just to 1.5 degrees. And we're going to do that by year 2100. We're not there yet. But the reason I'm mentioning that is that the COP28 conference this year is very much focused on keeping that promise. So we'll see how that goes.
1:27 Sara Pawlikowska
But just to let you know a little bit about how the COP conference looks like. So there are two zones, there's a blue and the green one. And the blue zone is basically a space for all the leaders and delegates to come together and talk away about climate change and hope we come up with good ideas. And then we're talking I think, for the countries taking part we're talking around almost 200 countries, I think it's around 197 now. And the green zone, this is the space for basically everyone else. So for the average Joe to just come and speak their mind about climate change. Of course, it's not that easy. But it's basically the space for people who are not necessarily leaders of the countries to also have their say. And then the yeah, basically, it's a big event. So we're talking over 70,000 people. That's a lot of people.
2:27 Sara Pawlikowska
And the focus of this COP, particularly there are four main points, which I'll quote. So the first one, "fast tracking the energy transition, and slashing emissions before 2030". Sounds good enough. "Transforming climate finance by delivering on old promises and setting the framework for a new deal on finance". So this one was a bit vague to me. So I had to dig a little deeper. So from what I found, and all of this information, you can find that on COP28 official website, I'll put the link in the description if you're interested to know more. And this one, when I heard climate finance, I was thinking a little bit about carbon credits, so the carbon emission allowance for companies, or taxes on fossil fuels, or basically just investment in sustainable energy. But what I found, moreover, is that the developing countries need an excess of 2.4 trillion US dollars of annual investment in climate action by 2030. So we're talking a lot of money. So we'll see how that goes.
3:39 Sara Pawlikowska
The third main focus of this COP is "putting nature, people, lives and livelihoods at the heart of climate action". So again, a little vague, but from what I understand this is about putting human faces on the carbon policies. So basically looking for more holistic solutions. In other words, I guess you could say that we're just trying not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And the last one is "mobilising for the most inclusive COP ever". Sounds pretty straightforward, self-explanatory. So obviously this is very important because even the most interested people in the sustainability environment, you can do all the stuff that you can do, but there's only this much you can do. So it's very important to see other people's perspectives on their lives and how this could be influencing them.
4:35 Sara Pawlikowska
So this is basically what I want to talk to you about today. I hope you're also now excited about the COP28. I strongly recommend you keep an eye on the events. I'm sure there will be a lot of press and a lot of media about that. So have a have a look. And if you haven't, checked out our website as well, the Grin.eco website. We're also on social media. We're basically everywhere, so make sure to check that out and have a good day and have a good COP.