Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

The annual opening of the UN General Assembly is always one the most important weeks on the diplomatic calendar. The podcast has partnered with the United Nations Foundation to provide listeners with daily news and expert analysis about what is driving the diplomatic agenda at the United Nations during this key week. Today, we speak with UN Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed who articulates her priorities for #UNGA76. We then turn to climate diplomacy expert Yamide Dagnet of the World Resources Institute who explains the significant moments in climate diplomacy this week. 

This episode was recorded live in front of a virtual audience in advance of a key meeting at the United Nations known as the Food Systems Summit.  This episode is produced in partnership with CGIAR, the world's largest agricultural innovation network and features a panel discussion examining the links between food systems and action needed to confront climate change.   

Angela Merkel steps down this month after having served as chancellor of Germany since 2005. Her time in office coincided with a number of major world events, including the global financial crisis; the 2015 refugee and migrant crisis; Brexit, Crimea, Trump, COVID, and much more.  Throughout it all, Angela Merkel has been the de-facto leader of the European Union. On the line with me to discuss some of the significant moments in Angela Merkel's 16 years as Chancellor of Germany is Constanze Stelzenmüller, the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Transatlantic Relations at the Brookings Institution. 

As Afghanistan enters a perilous and uncertain future, the United Nations has promised to "stay and deliver." The country's humanitarian emergency is getting more acute by the day, taxing UN agencies like the World Food Program. Meanwhile, the Security Council's role in managing the political transition in Afghanistan is unclear, and many of the Taliban's senior leadership are still under UN sanction On the line with me to discuss the UN's role in the new Afghanistan is Mark Malloch Brown. He is the President of the Open Society Foundations and had long career at the United Nations, including as administrator of the UN Development Program and as the Deputy UN Secretary General.  

Zuhra Bahman was out of the country on a business meeting when the Taliban took control of Kabul. She is the Afghanistan country director for Search for Common Ground, an NGO that engages in community based peace-building work. I was eager to speak with her because it is very unclear to me and to the entire international community the extent to which NGOs will be able to operate under Taliban rule.  As Zurha Bahman explains, she is eager to get back to her work and life in Afghanistan -- but only if certain conditions are met. To that end, she is urging engagement with the Taliban to enable development and humanitarian NGOs to work in the country on behalf of the Afghan people. 

Today's episode was recorded live in front of a virtual audience in partnership with CGIAR, the world's largest agricultural innovation network, as part of a series of episodes examining the links between climate variability and security.  The episode features a discussion amongst a panel of experts who explore the relationship between security and land use, including forestry. Visit https://climatesecurity.cgiar.org/ to register for the next live event in this series.     

Zubaida Akbar is an Afghan human rights activist living in Washington, D.C. She is desperately trying to get vulnerable people out of the country, including a group of female journalists who are almost certainly marked for execution by the Taliban.  We kick off discussing what she is hearing from her friends in Kabul as people attempt to flee the Taliban's retribution.  We then have a very heavy conversation about the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan.         

Back in 2008, in the midst of both a global economic catastrophe and stalled progress on climate diplomacy, a unique multilateral platform called the Climate Investment Funds was born.   The G-8 created the Climate Investment Funds to support developing economies as they shifted to a less carbon intensive future. The Climate Investment Funds supports the development of clean energy markets and invests in projects and programs the enable clean energy transitions and adaptation to climate change. The CEO of the Climate Investment Funds, Mafalda Duarte is on the podcast today to explain the significance of this multilateral platform to the common global effort to confront climate change.

The Global Peace Index is an ambitious effort to measure peacefulness around the world using quantitative data. Now in its 15th year, the Index has offered policymakers and analysts a useful way to measure key trends in peace and conflict.  Steve Killilea, founder and executive director of the Institute for Economics and Peace, is on the podcast to discuss the report's findings and what it suggests about trends in peace and conflict around the world. 

This episode was recorded live in front of a virtual audience and produced in partnership with CGIAR, the world’s largest agricultural innovation network, as part of a series of episodes examining the relationship between climate and security. In today's conversation we discuss the key question of how one measures the relationship between climate variability and peacefulness or insecurity.  Sign up for the next live taping!  https://bre.is/e5REazzj