Carnegie Council Podcasts

Governance is a key element in ensuring that nature-based approaches to addressing the climate crisis support ecological functions, are sustainable, and produce co-benefits, says Manuel Pulgar-Vidal during a C2GTalk interview. Ultimately, he stressed, any intervention—whether nature- or technology-based—can only be considered if it is based on a strong commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Manuel Pulgar-Vidal is the leader of the climate and energy practice of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International. He was formerly the minister of state for environment in Peru and president of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 20th Conference of the Parties (COP20). A lawyer with over 27 years of experience in the field of environmental law and policy, he founded the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law, one of the most recognized organizations of environmental law in the region. In his role as minister of state for environment in Peru, he was responsible for proposing and defining Peru's environmental policies, including those covering biodiversity and climate change. He was also in charge of implementing the country's environmental legislation and its enforcement policies. This interview was recorded on November 17, 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website. 

Whether it's rigging elections in Hong Kong, arresting activists in Venezuela, restricting voting access in the U.S., silencing the opposition in Belarus, or censorship in Burma, there can be no doubt that democracy is under assault. For Global Ethics Day, Carnegie Council hosted a panel featuring activists fighting on the frontlines to uphold and strengthen democracy. What can individual citizens do to support democracy? What's the role of international organizations? For more, go to carnegiecouncil.org.

As the U.S. chief negotiator of the New START treaty, Rose Gottemoeller's new book is an invaluable insider's account of the negotiations between the U.S. and Russian delegations in Geneva in 2009 and 2010 and the crucial discussions between President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev. In this fascinating talk with Senior Fellows Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev, Gottemoeller reflects on her career, the importance of arms control, and what it was like being the first female deputy secretary general of NATO. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Addressing the global challenge of governing climate-altering approaches through multilateralism is not just possible but necessary, says Ambassador Franz Perrez during a C2GTalk interview. In the end, he says, it is in everyone's best interest to build a common understanding of the potential risks, opportunities, and challenges linked to climate-altering approaches.  Ambassador Franz Perrez is the head of the International Affairs Division at the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). In this capacity, he is also the Swiss ambassador for the environment and represents Switzerland at all important international negotiations in the area of the environment. This interview was recorded on November 13, 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

Ahead of the United Nations COP26 Climate Change Summit, Parag Khanna joins "Doorstep" co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to speak about his new book MOVE: The Forces Uprooting Us, and the impact of climate migration on the future "map of humanity." As climate migrants become the greatest percentage of people seeking new opportunities in new places, Khanna discusses the rise of regional self-sufficiency and how governments can become better stewards of natural resources. For more, including a transcript of this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org

"What does it mean for us to think about these border regions beyond the questions of international security?" asks Suchhitra Vijayan, the author of the new book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. In this podcast, Vijayan discusses with host Alex Woodson her 9,000-mile journey through India's borderlands, which formed the basis of the book, and she discusses the violent and continuing history of the 1947 partition, the stark differences and similarities along South Asia's various borders, and what "citizenship" mean in India in 2021 and throughout the world. For more, including a transcript of this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Young people may not yet have a seat at the decision-making table, but they are influential stakeholders with the power to steer the direction of the climate discourse, said Marie-Claire Graf during a C2GTalk interview. As they work towards getting that seat, they are building capacity, learning and awareness on a range of issues, including the governance of climate-altering approaches. Marie-Claire Graf is one of the Global Focal Points of YOUNGO, the Children and Youth constituency to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She is a Swiss youth advocate for sustainable development and climate action, and the president of the Swiss Associations of Student Organizations for Sustainability, and vice president at Swiss Youth for Climate. Marie-Claire is a Climate Reality Leader, and co-founder of a crowdsourcing platform startup for aggregated science-based and citizen-science data called C’Square. This interview was recorded on 15 December 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence and Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellows Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach are joined by former U.S. Navy pilot Mary “Missy” Cummings, a professor at Duke University, director of the school’s Humans and Autonomy Lab, and a world leading researcher in human-autonomous system collaboration and robotics. The conversation touches upon the maturity of current AI systems applications and key conundrums in AI research to make sure humans are not a design afterthought.   

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellows Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach are joined by Mona Sloane, senior research scientist and adjunct professor at New York University, and Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter's director of machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability, to discuss their recent online resource aiprocurement.org. The conversation addresses key tension points and narratives impacting how AI systems are procured and embedded in the public sector.

Five years since the Paris Agreement came to fruition, Paul Watkinson talks to C2GTalk to provide some personal reactions, drawing on his long experience of climate action, about what comes next. How and when do we start thinking about the large-scale carbon dioxide removal that may be needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels? What multilateral approaches might the world need to govern solar radiation modification? Paul Watkinson has more than 20 years of experience in multilateral negotiations and action on climate and sustainable development issues. He served for many years as chief negotiator of France on international climate change issues. In particular, he was a member of the steering committee of COP21, heading the climate negotiating team and contributing to the development of the Paris Agreement. He was chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for 2018 and 2019 and a member of the bureau of the COP for those two years. As such, he worked closely with the other presiding officers to put together the package of decisions adopted in Katowice in December 2018 that constitute the rulebook of the Paris Agreement as well as other decisions and conclusions to implement the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol. He worked closely with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to ensure that the best available science could be used by parties in their work under the UNFCCC and also ensure a closer cooperation in multilateral work to tackle climate change and biodiversity. From 2009 until 2013 he was one of the lead negotiators of the European Union in the multilateral climate negotiations. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website. This interview was recorded on November 17, 2020, and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español and Français.