Carnegie Council Podcasts

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.

Island peoples may well consider climate-altering approaches, like carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification, because of the existential threat posed by climate change, said Ambassador Elizabeth Thompson during a C2GTalk interview. One of the main challenges, in her view, is how to ensure that the most vulnerable will have a seat at the table when these approaches are considered. Ambassador Elizabeth Thompson is the permanent representative of Barbados to the United Nations. She has worked in development policy for nearly 25 years. She served as an elected member of Parliament from 1994 to 2008, and at various times as minister of energy and environment, housing and lands, physical development and planning, and health. Thompson served as assistant secretary-general of the United Nations as one of two executive coordinators at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, and engaged in a number of advisory roles within the UN system, including on the transition from the MDGs to the SDGs, in the Office of the UN Secretary General, UNDP, the President of the General Assembly and on the Secretary General’s global energy initiative, Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL). This interview was recorded on November 24, 2020. For more, including an edited transcript, please visit C2G's website.  This interview was recorded on November 24, 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español and Français.

The world faces a planetary emergency that requires considering all possible options to tackle it, said Johan Rockström, in a C2GTalk interview. Speaking just before the Climate Ambition Summit in December 2020, he said this was a critical moment to put the world on an irreversible path towards decarbonization, to ensure that any consideration of additional approaches—such as solar radiation modification—would not undermine that essential work. Johan Rockström is director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Professor in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam. Rockström is an internationally recognized scientist for his work on global sustainability issues. He spearheaded the internationally renowned team of scientists that developed the planetary boundaries framework, which are argued to be fundamental in maintaining a "safe operating space for humanity." Aside from his research helping to guide policy, he acts as an advisor to several governments and business networks, and at noteworthy international meetings, such as the United Nations General Assemblies, World Economic Forums, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conferences (UNFCCC). For more, including an edited transcript, please visit C2G's website. This interview was recorded on December 3, 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español and Français.

The 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly ended this week in New York with little fanfare. Yet important global discussions took place in both in-person and virtual meetings. Seton Hall University's School of Diplomacy and International Relations' Dr. Catherine Tinker joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss what the media missed and how the UN still plays an important role as the "People's House" bringing nations together to solve and be accountable for transnational problems like climate change, migration, and COVID-19.

What can we learn about China's ambitions from studying how its diplomats operate? In his new book "China’s Civilian Army," Bloomberg's Peter Martin draws on memoirs and first-hand reporting in Beijing, to share the untold story of China’s "wolf warriors," its highly disciplined diplomats who have a combative approach to asserting Chinese interests. Martin joins Senior Fellows Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev for a fascinating conversation on China's diplomatic army.