This week we’re talking about climate change. The COP27 climate conference is about to begin in Egypt. But what will be the conference’s own carbon emissions? And can the event deliver for Africa?
COP is back. This month, leaders from the worlds of politics, industry, activism, and academia will gather again – for COP27 – in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.
A COP taking place in Africa underlines many of the pressing issues that delegates will face. How can justice be achieved for those countries that are least responsible for CO2 levels, but often the most damaged by climate change? And how can such a large-scale event, bringing people together from around the world, be run without in itself creating more environmental damage?
This week we are joined by Dr Simon Chin-Yee, Lecturer in International Development in the UCL Department of Political Science and Professor Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science in the UCL Department of Geography.
Mentioned in this episode:
Season 7 Episode 5
The Road to COP27
3 November 2022
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
countries, ucl, sharm el sheikh, global, negotiations, cop, mark, climate justice, people, finance, africa, simon, climate, climate change, damage, emissions, flying, realise, loss, low carbon footprint
SPEAKERS
Mark Maslin, Alan Renwick, Simon Chin-Yee
Alan Renwick 00:05
Hello this is UCL Uncovering Politics, and this week we're talking about climate change. The COP27 climate conference is about to begin in Egypt. But what will be the conference's own carbon emissions? And can the event deliver for Africa?
Hello, my name is Alan Renwick. And welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics the podcast of the School of Public Policy, and Department of Political Science at University College London. COP is back. Last year as COP 26th Climate Conference was hosted in Glasgow. This month, leaders of the worlds of politics, industry activism, and academia will gather again for COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt.
A COP taking place in Africa underlines many of the pressing issues that delegates will face. How can justice be achieved for those countries that are least responsible for co2 levels, but often the most damaged by climate change? And how can such a large scale event bringing people together from around the world be run without in itself creating more environmental damage?
Well two papers by a host of UCL authors exploring exactly these issues have just been published. And I'm delighted to say that two of those authors join me now. They are Dr. Simon Chin-Yee, who is Lecturer in International Development in the UCL Department of Political Science. And Professor Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science in the UCL Department of Geography. Mark is author of 'How to Save our Planet: the facts', which is described by former COP head Christiana Figueres as a brilliant book containing all the information we need to have in our back pocket in order to move forward.
Simon and Mark, welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics. And let's start with the paper on the carbon impact of the COP27 conference itself. So this paper actually relates to an internet interactive travel toolkit that's now live on the UCL website, on ways of getting to Sharm el Sheikh, and the carbon impacts of those different routes. Mark, do you want to start us off by talking us through just what this toolkit is and what you were hoping to achieve with it?
Mark Maslin 02:25
So what we're hoping to achieve was a way that academics and other people going to COPs could actually look at the different transports, and work out which was the lowest carbon one to take. And it's interesting, because a lot of climate change deniers use this as a way of beating us up and saying, 'look, you have these huge climate conferences, you cause so much emissions, you're making the problem worse'. However, that sort of misses the whole point about needing to have 196 countries in the same place to discuss probably the most important topic on the planet.
So we decided we're doing a little toolkit that allows you to put in your sort of like, where you are, where you want to get to, and then it will look at ways of actually reducing your carbon footprint. What we discovered was actually, where you put the COP really matters, because guess what, it's really difficult to get to Egypt, from Europe, because you can't go by land, because if you go over, so the northern route, you hit a couple of wars, and a civil war. If you go to the southern route along this sort of like North African coast, you then have some troubled nations to get through. And what we hadn't realised is that the Mediterranean stopped ferries from going from the north to the south, this was all due to the pandemic. You used to be able to go to Italy, get to Brindisi, and take a ferry all the way to Alexandria.
And so we were left with this issue, which is at some point, you have to fly. And so the toolkit allows you to say, 'well, do you go half way, perhaps to Italy, then fly? Or is it actually better to take a flight directly from London? And it allows you to play with these really interesting things. And one of the most interesting things is, it depends on which airline you fly, how new their aircraft are, and basically how far you fly. So it's an intellectual exercise, because in this case, there isn't any real way of avoiding flying because there's no other direct means of getting there.
Alan Renwick 04:39
So you mentioned that it's hard to get to Sharm el Sheikh from Europe. Is this a problem that everyone has? That is hard to get there from many, many parts of the world?
Mark Maslin 04:49
So most people flying in from the rest of the world are going to have to fly into Cairo, and then either take a short flight down to the resort or perhaps even take the train. So again, it's one of those key things where people are trying to balance security, location, continent representation, and at the same time travel. And I think sometimes the actual ideas behind it are much more political than they are practical. And in this case, we're going to be taking tourist flights, because those are the cheapest, they fly direct to the resort. And therefore we're going to be hopping on at Gatwick or Luton Airport and flying directly there. Whereas all of us would prefer to hop on a train, and perhaps take a day to actually get somewhere. But in this case, it's not possible.
Alan Renwick 05:42
Simon bringing you in, then what is the what's the answer? What is the best way for someone to get to Sharm el Sheikh from the UK?
Simon Chin-Yee 05:48
Well, as Mark was saying, the best way that we're finding is is by flying. When we first started these discussions last November after COP26 in Glasgow, it was quite exciting the prospect of UCL academics travelling together to Brindisi getting on that ferry, that now we know does not exist. And getting to Alexandria renting an electronic vehicle with many people and getting down to Sharm el Sheikh. What we're finding is and I'm finding this with other colleagues is that flying is really the the least carbon intensive option at the moment from London. I would stress that. The other colleagues of ours that are for example, not taking these, these these flights that are are tourist flights, are having to change in Istanbul or even getting trains to Istanbul and then going down and it's it takes a lot longer. It's actually much more expensive. And it's actually producing more emissions is what we're finding throughout.
Alan Renwick 06:49
More emissions to take the train to Istanbul?
Simon Chin-Yee 06:51
And then fly. Because eventually you're going to have to fly. This was what we found. This was the problem. Again, initially, we thought Egypt, okay, it's not that far from mainland Europe, right? There should be a ferry available, but because of COVID-19, all of those passenger ferries have been cancelled, and they're still not up and running. So you will have to fly at some point.
Alan Renwick 07:11
And are you flying all the way from London to Sharm el Sheikh? Or can you take the train part of the way and then fly part of the way?
Mark Maslin 07:20
But this is an interesting thing. Because actually, if you have a modern plane, which is nearly brand new, and you take it from London, and you fly it directly to the resort with no stopover you actually have a smaller carbon footprint, then you would taking the train to mainland Europe, catching perhaps a flight that is not quite as new. And that flight would only go to Cairo, and then from Cairo you then have to get to Sharm el Sheikh. So it's interesting that this is the only case that I know of that actually flying direct with a tourist airline, with the newest aircrafts that they have is actually the most firstly, cost effective, time effective, and actually carbon effective.
Alan Renwick 08:07
And is there an alternative to just not go at all? And to take part digitally rather than by travelling there? I mean, what are the disadvantages? Simon, maybe you can speak to this. What are the disadvantages of participating online rather than actually being there in the room?
Simon Chin-Yee 08:07
Well, it depends on where you're coming from. Of course, if you aren't, if you're coming from a country with low connectivity online may simply not be an option for you, right? The, as much as it sounds a bit crazy to have 20 to 30,000 delegates attending one of these conference of parties (COP), it cannot be stressed enough the importance of having face to face negotiations, especially for countries in the Global South. These are countries that a lot of the time will be coming to the COPs to start or get involved in the negotiations, where for example with the European Union, you have a whole team, a whole wing of people that are already working on these issues.
So this is a chance for global south countries to actually get their voices heard. And I would say if you're doing that online, as we saw in 2020, when everything did go online, including some of the negotiations, that they just weren't as effective enough and the regular players and we can talk about representation even in the COP, of course, but a lot of that was even it was the Justice aspect of that was decreased even further. in terms of countries from the global south being able to attend.
However, Alan, let's take your point, every delegate, especially if you're coming from Europe, UK, US or anywhere, do look at your carbon footprint to understand exactly what emissions is are being produced by simply your attendance. That's one of the goals of this paper was to look at transparency in when it comes to travel to these giant climate conferences. In order for The public, for example, to understand what on earth is happening when you have, as I said, tens of thousands of delegates, media, negotiators, academics attending one of these climate conferences. And are all flying in there to get there.
Alan Renwick 10:15
So what's the case for the two of you to be there? Mark?
Mark Maslin 10:20
So the most important thing is, as Simon said, is that face to face, and we have to look back at the representation. Where you have had incredible politicians from the Global South, who have been able to move the negotiations, the idea that not just do we have a two degree limit, but we have an aspiration for one and a half degree limit. That was the small island nations, that was the developing countries with some support from the EU, who really pushed that through. So actually being there, being able to negotiate is incredibly important.
Alan Renwick 10:58
But why should you. Why should two UCL academics be there?
Mark Maslin 11:04
So why we're there is we need to be able to observe that. We need to be able to report on that. And we need to actually input to that. So we have incredible colleagues at UCL that cover everything from engineering, to law, to medicine, to politics. And you have to remember the COP is a complicated animal. There is firstly, the negotiations right in the core where the countries are trying to negotiate different treaties and different sort of legalities.
And then outside that, in the green zone, you still have, what I'd say is the sort of like city fair, the fair where countries and organisations like the World Bank, FAO, show off their wares, and a lot of business and a lot of science is done there, where we can engage with these global players, with our science with our social science, and input our expertise. Then outside that you have business. Business turns up to all the COPs because they know everybody they want to talk to his there. And they set up their own COP meetings outside. And then this is going to be really interesting about how it happens in Egypt, is the social movements, the protests, the actual engagement outside, so you have four COPs in one, and we're there to observe, to support, to actually engage and provide our expertise.
Simon Chin-Yee 12:31
And I'd love to add on to that. In terms of UCL. For example, Mark just mentioned that businesses are organising their own parallel meetings outside. So are we right? This is another chat opportunity for myself, for example, I'm organising a workshop outside of COP but in Sharm el Sheikh with. Because we have the players in Sharm el Sheikh. We have the countries that I need to work with our partner countries. We have the consortium, we have the funders, we have the World Bank, we have all of these different players that will be present at Sharm el Sheikh, What are the opportunities of getting that together in and this is one of the things these COPs can do. So in parallel to that we can forge our own policy, our own our own work, our own research, as academics.
Mark Maslin 13:13
And I think this is really important, because I don't think people realise that this is the first opportunity, or the only opportunity per year where 196 countries get together and all have the same voice. They all have the same representation, one country, one vote. And so therefore, this is really interesting. And this is something that [?] picked up from my work, he suddenly realised that actually, the reason why countries of the world actually communicate is because of the COPs, because there's no other form, that they do this. You have the G7, you have the G20. We have all these other forums, which are international, but they're not inclusive. This is the only one that all 196 countries are at and are in the negotiation room.
Alan Renwick 14:02
Fantastic. Thank you. And I think through this work on your toolkit, you're also trying to kind of demonstrate how to do a carbon footprint calculator well, in terms of transparency, and so on. Do you want to describe for us what are the key principles, design principles I guess, have a good carbon footprint calculator?
Mark Maslin 14:26
So the most important thing about a carbon calculator is to realise the complexity. Because people just assume you take a train and all trains are equal, but that's untrue. So if we take the United Kingdom, if you take the Eurostar from London to Paris, incredibly low carbon footprint, it's all electric all fantastic. However, in the UK, you might take train from say London to Manchester, and actually that might be a diesel train. And the weird thing is in that case, you might I have a lower carbon footprint for view sitting in a medium sized saloon car, driving at a reasonable speed up the motorway to Manchester. This is the madness.
Now, of course, had the UK Government electrified the whole of the UK rail network, as has happened in most of Europe, then we wouldn't have this issue. So it's those complexities. Same with flying, everybody assumes flying is all equally bad. No. If you take a huge A380, from London to the Middle East, and the whole of the actual plane is full, your carbon footprint is actually really quite small compared with other flights, which are less full, and in a less efficient aircraft. So it's the nuances. It's actually thinking about those things.
And sometimes, and I love the fact that electric cars are great, except there is one place in the whole world where actually having an electric car is worse than sort of, say a petrol car. Because of course, in certain parts of Canada, all the electricity is produced from tar sands. So actually, your electric car is worse than your petrol car. So it's all these little nuances that you have to do. But it also has to be open and transparent. So people can actually look at what's being produced. Because so many of them, you just click on where you're going, and then an airline goes, 'oh, yeah, that'd be £3.50 For offsetting the whole of your flight for the rest of your life. And we know that that's not true, and it doesn't actually work.
Alan Renwick 16:31
I wish we had lots of time to go into that, because it's a fascinating area. And I'm always wondering, what would be the better choice to take it in these different scenarios. But there's a lot that we want to discuss here. So let's move on to the second paper on climate justice for Africa. So this paper argues that COP27, because it's taking place in Africa, there is an opportunity to protect and promote climate justice in ways that perhaps has been less prominent in the past. Simon, what exactly do we mean by climate justice?
Simon Chin-Yee 17:06
So climate justice isn't actually new, we've been talking about climate justice itself as climate for over 20 years, we've been talking about environmental movements and justice for decades. But what I think we see in the current climate negotiations, and what a lot of countries in the Global South are looking for, is a link of climate justice to human rights. It's linking development and human rights to achieve this human centred approach to climate change.
It's all about are supposed to be about safeguarding the most vulnerable populations by sharing both the burdens and the benefits of a changing climate. So in terms of our paper here, but in terms of also the negotiations, what I think we want to stress here is that what we used to see in climate justice, it was about perhaps reparations, which, as we know, the global north does not like to hear those words in the negotiations at all, still to this day. But it's not just about those financial transactions. Climate change justice is much more than that, it needs to be seen with this, within the context of centuries of resource exploitation. On this case, on the African continent, for example.
The concepts of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Again, this is a concept that came out in the early 1990s. Right, this is not new. But it is the the tool with which many in the global south and of course, 134 countries make up the G77 in the global south. So the the difference between India for example, and Burundi are vast, but they use the same concepts to highlight the importance of understanding vulnerability and their identities and their situations within climate change in the negotiations themselves. It's important to reduce emissions that we know of course it is we looking at mitigation, global North countries like to focus on mitigation, it was excellent to see at COP26, that finally after over a decade of the Africa group in the negotiations pushing for 50% of finance being gone, putting it on to adaptation, adaptation, that that was kind of being accepted.
Because it's not just enough to look at at reducing emissions, we need to look at effectively decarbonizing different sectors, many of the sectors we bring out in this paper including infrastructure energy. My specific work is on the maritime and shipping sector. Because while we need to green the sectors, while we need to look at decarbonizing these sectors, we also especially in countries in southern and eastern Africa, but in the global south, need to start and keep developing the sectors as well. So, we need to first grow the economy but in a way that is more emissions friendly.
So, back to climate justice itself, if we're looking at, if we're going going into COP27, and something we hinted at when we were talking about the toolkit was the fact that it is in Africa. And it's being touted as the Africa COP. And so in terms of just attending the COP, this has been a problem for many countries in the Global South to actually attend Sharm el Sheikh, but we can get into that at a later date Within this COP, because of the African COP, and something that I would like to see coming out of it is a concentration or focus on loss and damage and finance. Now, we've seen and we've talked about this in the past, but I think in terms of the role of justice, climate justice, within the negotiations, though, that concept of loss and damage needs to be at the centre of and what we're, we are expecting to be at the centre of these particular negotiations.
Alan Renwick 20:50
And do you want to just articulate exactly what that means, because I always find, when I'm in these conversations about COP, I'm in the middle of the conversation I can just about remember what we mean by mitigation, and adaptation, and loss and damage, and so on. And then, after five minutes, I've kind of forgotten again, which which biT is which, and so on. It's so slightly counterintuitive. So mitigation is. So Mark, you want to go for that.
Mark Maslin 21:13
And so it's very simple. If we look at how the COPS are structured, the major focus is about mitigation. And mitigation is how do we reduce our carbon footprint. And that's globally. And the interesting thing is that we have now taken on board that we have to go to net zero as early as possible. And that was the real focus of COP26. Really pushing forward the NDCs the national defined contributions, which you and I call 'pledges'. So basically the country's pledge that they're going to make this amount of cuts by this point in time. Which is interesting, because we have 80% of the global economy under a net zero pledge. And that includes USA and Europe and UK, are going to be net zero by 2050. India by 2070, China by 2060.
But that's only half the story. The other half is adaptation. And adaptation has always been seen as the poor relative, it's always been pushed to one side. And this is actually because of the politics. Because every scientist and social scientist and economists are shouting very loudly at politicians reduce your emissions, they felt that bringing in adaptation was a sign of weakness that we had lost the battle against climate change. And therefore, that will be seen as against mitigation. We've come around to the realisation that we haven't mitigated quick enough. And therefore we know all the extreme climate events of 2021, 2022, and more into the future, we need to adapt now. Particularly when we have billions of people still living in extreme poverty, who are incredibly vulnerable. So we need to lift them out of poverty, we need to adapt their environment to make them as safe as possible. And this is the importance of the African COP, because they stated very early on that adaptation was going to be one of their most important pillars for this actual meeting.
The second thing is that what Simon mentioned is loss and damage. This was a way that has been discussed for a good decade and a half to say, okay, the rich countries have actually produced most of the pollution in the atmosphere. And therefore there's a historic legacy, I have to say other countries are catching up very quick. But there should be some transfer of either recreation or damage costs, and therefore they were setting up and it was going to be the Glasgow loss and damage facility. And you set up a facility where there's money, which then least developed countries can bid into and go, look, we've had this damage, we need some money to actually repair and adapt for future events.
Interestingly enough, lots and lots of debate. And it was on the Saturday. Of courseCOP 26 should have finished on the Friday. It was on the Saturday that actually the USA and the EU were whispering in a corner and basically they blocked loss and damage at that moment in time because they feel vulnerable that this could open the floodgates to litigation and huge amounts of costs coming their way. Despite the fact that they agreed 10 years ago, actually more than 10 years ago, to provide 100 billion US dollars and still haven't. So I'm not sure how they feel vulnerable to being held over the coals for loss and damage if they hadn't even paid their first bill.
Alan Renwick 24:55
And is progress likely in Sharm el Sheikh on this loss and damage issue?
Mark Maslin 25:01
Well, I think that the developing countries have it very high on their agenda, they are going after it. And I think what they're going to do is they're going to hold it as a card to say, if you want us to improve, our pledges our NDCs, if you want to ask to actually decarbonize quicker, we're happy to do that. But we need you to agree to loss and damage. And we're happy to actually put that into a proper framework. And that's going to be the two week negotiation. I think Simon might have some better insights to whether we're ever going to achieve that or not.
Simon Chin-Yee 25:41
I do I have any better insights, I'll just say that I brought out my I did a podcast one year ago, exactly. And I had the exact same. Someone asked me what I wanted to come out of COP26. And what I wanted to come up with COP26, is what I want to come out of COP27. And it's when in terms of the global South, it is finance, where is that 100 billion that was promised in Copenhagen in 2009? It's simply not there, right? It's simply not there.
This this, this pact on loss and damage that was blocked, as Mark said last year, is not coming back. You'll see certain, I've seen certain factions of civil society in the global south pushing this. Not all I would say and I wonder whether the being blocked at the last day of COP last year will hinder it this year. The fact remains is that finances remains key to countries across the African continent in order to be able to contribute to to achieve their nationally determined contributions, that most of them are put in now a second round of of policies on. But without the finance, they're not going to be able to, to address the climate needs that they have. And as Mark said earlier, as when he very eloquently explained the difference between mitigation and adaptation. This is why the Africa group has been focusing on adaptation, very few of the countries have, or hardly any have anything to mitigate. Right? They don't have anything to mitigate, first of all, and second of all, they are not in a position to financially assist other countries. So they are looking for this finance so that they can put in their own adaptation projects in place. So they can themselves protect their own economies. And this is very essential to both what they're doing, but also how they're addressing their own their own emissions.
For example, if they're able to leapfrog, look at using oil, gas, and different sorts of fossil fuels, in order to, for example, build ports with green energy solutions, so that their economies can be built, but at the same time, they're not adding to the global problem of climate change, then that would, that would be the best for everybody. But we need the countries in the Global North to actually recognise this. And in order to recognise this, they need to put the that financial foot forward so that countries can actually have a pot of money that they can more easily I would stress as well draw from to implement these, these projects.
Mark Maslin 28:13
I also think with the finance, we actually have to really work hard at central banks, international banks, and countries because what was discovered before COP26, was that we were we were curious why people in the developing world was still paying for coal fired power stations. You know, when renewables are cheaper, they're easier to maintain. They provide you with energy security, because you're not reliant on anybody else.
And it turns out when UCL academic dug deep, it turns out that if you're a least developed country, and you go to a central bank, and you say, Please, can I borrow some money to build energy project X, the interest is higher on a renewable project than isn't a coal fired power station. And it's a sizeable difference. And actually, over the long term, that's a huge amount of money. And therefore, countries go up, just go for a coal fired power station, thank you very much. When you told bankers, this, they went 'really?'. They hadn't really looked into their algorithms or their actual black box of how they actually allocated money.
So actually getting to finance and saying to finance, look, just make it a level playing field. Just make sure that countries can access the finance they need for all these things. And again, if you're a country, now we also see you want to have energy security, because what you don't want is to have energy for your most vulnerable people and suddenly, overnight because of geopolitics, the price of that energy doubles. Because then suddenly all the gains you've made for lifting your people out of poverty suddenly disappear overnight. So what you really want is that energy security. You want to be able to have it distributed, so it can be in the countryside. And this is where renewables really come in.
Alan Renwick 30:10
And that's fascinating. And it gets to what I'm afraid will have to be the final question, which is basically, what needs to be done in order to get better outcomes from this process? And, you know, you might intuitively imagine that, well, it's just this is just a power game in which the rich countries have the power, and therefore they're going to impose the outcomes. But that example that you've just given us, Mark of the how the finance system is working, is suggesting actually there, there are potentially lots of kind of micro things and various different aspects of this problem that could be addressed, that aren't about power, that are just about kind of habits, ways in which things have been done in the past, and that it is actually possible to address things and make them better.
So some brief thoughts from each of you, I guess, on what practically it's possible to do in order to make things better, would be really fascinating. Simon, do you want to go first?
Simon Chin-Yee 31:11
As Mark said, and as our paper details, this is an incredibly complex issue. It is. It runs the gamut from issues around health, that we don't talk about enough, issues around infrastructure, that are not climate resilient, things around energy, that Mark was just speaking about. Not to mention ideas of sea level rise, desertification, migration, conflict, all of these different aspects play into it. Perhaps, Alan, what we can, what the countries in the Global South, specifically the Africa group here can do is focused in on the specifics of why it should matter. Why other countries need to listen. The problem I see with this is that we've been doing, they've been doing this essentially for decades now, right? This is not a brand new, this is not brand new news to anybody. And and they do, as I said earlier, have it is a power game. Unfortunately, Alan, as you said, maybe it shouldn't be but it is.
And so we need to understand those power dynamics within the negotiations. We need to understand how those rules, those norms, those values, over these past three decades have been kind of fixed and and influence international global policy, which then has a trickle down effect on these national strategies. These national strategies, for example, that also come out of every single one of the African countries bar one that have been put it put forward, you know, so these, these these strategies are trying to address the the complexities of the climate change on the ground, while at the same time addressing what we're saying at that global level. I would say perhaps something that we can focus on in the global and the Africa group needs to focus on is once again, finance for loss and damage. It needs, they may not want to hear it in the Global North, but they need to. They need to start listening to countries in the Global South, and then act on it.
Mark Maslin 33:03
For me, I think that the global south needs to be a little bit more coordinated. I think the Africa group doesn't understand how powerful they are if they work together, because they have the people, they have the resources, they have all the technology they need. And so therefore, they can work together in a much tighter way. But they can also work as a political bloc, and actually say, 'look, there is this huge legacy of colonialization of resource extraction, of pollution', both of their continent, as well as the atmosphere, there needs to be some balancing out here.
And of course, there'll be a quid pro quo, which is, you help us out with proper financing, and making sure that we have all of that sort of resources and technology. And at the same time, what we will do is we will ensure that we green our economies, we make sure that we have a low carbon footprint for our economy, and we'll also make sure that we provide all those essential minerals, metals, and other materials that's required for the global green economy. I think it's that balancing act, and getting that politics right, which will be essential, and we're stepping stone because this is an African COP, and therefore, other nations in the world are coming there realising that Africa is going to pull on a great show and say, 'look, this is the continent of the future. You need to deal with us, and we need to be able to actually deal as equals'.
Alan Renwick 34:38
Well, thank you so much, we're gonna have to wrap it up there as ever I wish we could continue these conversations for longer. But you've given us a huge amount of food for thought on many different aspects of these issues.
We've been looking at the road to COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, which if you're listening to this on the day the episode is released, starts in just three days time on the sixth of November. And we've been focusing on two papers in particular 'location, location location: a carbon footprint calculator for transparent travel to COP27' and also 'Africa and climate justice at COP27 and beyond: impacts and solutions through an interdisciplinary lens'. Both of those are available on the UCL open environment preprint website, where you'll find the full list of authors. And as ever, the details are in the show notes for this episode, where you will also find a link to information on Mark's book, 'How to save our planet: the facts'.
Next week is reading week here at UCL. So the podcast will be taking a little break, but we'll be back the week after when we'll be exploring what the war in Ukraine has taught us about the power of global tech companies. Remember to make sure you don't miss out on that or other future episodes of UCL Uncovering Politics all you need to do is subscribe, you can do so on Apple, Google Podcasts or whatever podcast provider you use.
I'm Alan Renwick. This episode was researched by Conor Kelly and produced by Eleanor Kingwell-Banham. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann. This has been UCL Uncovering Politics. Thank you for listening.