A Small Island Nation’s Climate Challenge

In this episode of Planet A, Dan Jørgensen engages in a compelling dialogue with Ralph Regenvanu who serves as the Minister responsible for climate change, energy, the environment, weather, geological hazards, and disaster management in Vanuatu. 

The island state of Vanuatu is one of the most vulnerable countries facing numerous challenges due to its vulnerability to climate change. Throughout the episode, Regenvanu shares insights into how this small island nation is grappling with the severe impacts of global warming. From rising sea levels to increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters, Vanuatu's struggle encapsulates the broader crisis faced by small island developing states across the globe. 

But the episode is not just about the challenges that Vanuatu and other small island developing states face. It's also about the solutions and strategies being implemented to adapt to and mitigate these challenges. 

Transcript

Vanuatu is ranked by the United Nations University as one of the top three countries most prone to disasters, tropical cyclones, erratic rainfall events.
But that disaster ranking is also due to our limited capacity to be able to build resilience into our economy and respond because we are one of the least developed countries of the world.
The island state of Vanuatu is one of the places on Earth that is hit the hardest by climate change.
Today I talk to one of the most prominent ministers in Vanuatu's government, Ralph Reckonmano. Welcome to Planet A, a podcast on climate change.
My name is Dan Jørgensen. I'm Minister for Development Corporation and Global Climate Policy in Denmark. In a series of conversations, I ask some of the world's leading experts, policymakers,
authors and activists how to stem climate change. We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency.
For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. The reason I believe we need to act now is because the facts are staring us in the face.
The time to answer humankind's greatest challenge is now.
So this gives us the best possible shot to save the one planet we've got.
There is no Plan B because we do not have Planet B. Welcome to Planet A, the podcast dedicated to exploring the issue of climate change.
Today we have the privilege of hosting a distinguished guest, Ralph Reckonmano, who serves as the minister responsible for climate change, energy, the environment, weather,
geological hazards and disaster management in Vanuatu. Mr. Reckonmano is a global voice in the fight against climate change, representing a small island state
that are already now facing the consequences of climate change and that are looking into a very bleak future if the world does not manage to keep the temperature increases below
1.5 degrees. Ralph Reckonmano, Global Climate Policy, Energy, Energy, Climate Change Hello, Ralph. Good to see you, my friend. Welcome to my podcast. Ralph Reckonmano, Global Climate Policy, Energy, Energy, Energy, Climate Change Thanks for having me. It's a great pleasure. Ralph Reckonmano, Global Climate Policy, Energy, Energy, Energy, Climate Change Of course. Of course. Of course.
So I actually had the honor of visiting you in Vanuatu in your office last year. Are you in your office now? I'm in my office right now, yeah. It's got the best lighting. Ah, fantastic. Fantastic.
Well, I guess it's a little bit warmer where you are than where I am. Here in Copenhagen, we've got snow. Yeah, well, here it's, we're in the middle of our summer, very hot, not so much temperature-wise,
but very humid, very rainy. But Ralph, we need to cover... We need to cover a range of different topics.
First one, of course, is you are a minister in a country that is hit hard by climate change already now.
But of course, there's a danger that in the future you will face a catastrophe if we don't, as a world community, manage to fight climate change and keep temperature increases below
1.5 degrees. Can you share with the listeners how you see this challenge and how you are affected and how you fear you can be affected in the future as a country?
Well, Vanuatu is, you know, ranked by the United Nations University as, you know, one of the top three countries most prone to disasters.
And these are natural hazards like tropical cyclones, erratic rainfall events. It includes also volcanic events.
I mean, Vanuatu is on the Pacific Rim of fire, so we have eight volcanoes in our country. But that disaster ranking is...
It's also due to our limited capacity to be able to build resilience into our economy and respond because we are one of the least developed countries of the world.
So that is something also that I think is important to think about when you talk about the effects of climate change. I think climate change is affecting most countries in the world right now. I mean, all countries to varying degrees.
But it's the capacity to climate-proof our economies, our societies, and respond, which is different. It's different depending on whether you're a rich developed country or one of the very poorer countries in the world like Vanuatu.
But in terms of what we're seeing, you know, we're getting the sea level rise. And for some of our neighboring countries, the low-lying atoll countries like Tuvalu,
Kiribati, those countries will disappear at the current rate of sea level rise. There will no longer be land area. And so they're facing really existential threats.
In Vanuatu, we're lucky because we are high islands, mountainous. Yeah. Volcanic. But most of the low-lying areas where most of the food production happens will be gone
at the current rate of sea level rise and given sea level intrusion as well, which causes salination of water and soil. So that is a major threat.
But also, of course, the increasing frequency and intensity of cyclones. Just last year, 2023, for example, we had three category four cyclones, and we had two within a week.
In the month of March, which is unprecedented to have that intense cyclone three days apart hitting the country. And then the last one we had was T.C. Lolo, which is just before I saw you at COP, so it was in October.
And it actually came before the official start of the cyclone season, which is the first of November. So we're seeing, we're basically responding to disasters while we're recovering from others.
I suppose the biggest effects are from these very destructive winds of the cyclone. And wind and rain, also, of course, intense rainfall events, like we're experiencing some
rainfall events now, which are kind of unprecedented in terms of flooding and landslides that we're seeing these days. Also, we have changes in our ability to access food because of the coral bleaching and the
ocean acidification that's happening, which is causing the nearshore reefs, which have been a traditional main source of protein for our people. The nearshore reefs where you get most of the...
The fish and shellfish and so on, we're seeing bleaching and acidification, which causes the reefs to die. And so we have to go further out to get fish. And then we're seeing the same thing happening with patterns of where we can grow things and what kind of things we can grow.
So the traditional rhythms of our traditional culture, how we've survived in these islands for hundreds and thousands of years, are very much being stressed to the max now because
of these unprecedented changes that have never been seen before. Well. Well, when I visited you last year, maybe I shouldn't really put it like that because
I did visit you, but actually I was accompanying the Crown Prince of Denmark on her visit. But you took us, you were kind enough to take us to a small island, Pele.
Pele, yeah. I remember something that made a very big impression on me, which was exactly the description of the phenomenon that you mentioned of...
Cyclones coming at a frequency that they haven't been used to. So we spoke to some of the elders in a small village saying that, it's not that we are
not used to cyclones in this part of the world. We are, but they are here so frequently now and stronger than before. So now it's impossible for us to really maintain the lifestyles that we have.
And these were the voices of the elders, but we also spoke to some of the children in the schools. And the schools that said, well, they were afraid for their future, obviously.
They had experienced how the buildings of their schools were demolished, the roof had been blown off, and then when it was fixed, it was blown off again.
How do you as a government and political leader, how do you give these people hope? How do you help them believe in a future?
That's... If we look at the statistics. Yeah. The statistics are unfortunately quite bleak. Yeah, it is very difficult. It's very difficult to...
With the limited resources our government has as one of the least developing countries in the world, we have very limited resources to be able to build, for example, you're talking about schools, right?
The solution is to build schools in safe places that can resist cyclones. It sounds very simple, but that kind of school, that's kind of school building takes, you
know, I would say 10 to 20 times the amount of finance to build a really strong cyclone resistant school building than we're used to. And so, when you have limited resources and we're focusing, of course, in the social sectors.
Education is our biggest item in our national budget, health is second. Building the infrastructure we need, the public infrastructure to withstand and be resilient.
And I'm talking especially about roads, schools, health facilities. Let alone private homes. is that people have to build themselves. You're looking at a level of investment that is beyond what we have on our national budget.
And so that is why, you know, when we go to international meetings like the United Nations Framework Convention and climate change meetings, the so-called COPS, the Conference of the Parties that we were at, we continually talk about, you know,
the principle that we agreed to in Paris of developed countries who have the resources, providing those resources to the least developed countries like ourselves, who are least responsible for what we're experiencing now.
And that aspect is crucial to us. So we, for example, last December, when I was in Dubai for COP, you know, I was talking about these issues. And this is one thing we have to show to our people at home,
that we are fighting for this finance we need to bring home, to build this resilience into our economy so that they can be safe. We need to do it ourselves, but we can't do it by ourselves. We need international cooperation.
And that is one aspect. And then, you know, having people feel safe by living in areas that are not affected by landslides or sea level rise
or those slow onset events, and then building resilient infrastructure so they can feel safe during cyclones is really what we need to do. We're not doing it fast enough. We need to be doing it better.
And that's our challenge. And it's the most important aspects of resilience in Vanuatu is in the way people live our traditional culture. Because, of course, we've been living in these island environments
as the indigenous people of this area for hundreds and thousands of years. But as I say, the rapid change in climatic conditions is challenging and stressing that traditional resilience. And so people are adapting.
You're forced to adapt. You have no choice. But it makes it very difficult to draw on traditional models of doing things. And we do need much more in terms of investment
in doing things a lot better to make our society, and economy much more resilient to what we know is coming. You, as a small country, are one of the countries hit the hardest by climate change
in the world. But you're definitely not a part of the group of countries that has created the problem. A developing small nation. I mean, it really is an injustice
that you're hit so hard by something that is not your own fault, you could say. And therefore, also, there's a responsibility for the global community, especially, I would argue, for countries like my own
that has been emitting too many greenhouse gases for 100 years. Therefore, we need to help remedy the problem, stem climate change, and of course, also help countries like your own with adaptation.
You mentioned the COP a few times, and maybe we should dive into the results of that COP for a minute or two. One good thing that happened was that finally we adopted
a decision that we will now have a loss and damage fund that could help us. It could help potentially a country like your own. But it's also, I guess you will agree with me that that's progress. You can comment on that in a minute. But it's also important
to underline that adaptation is actually more important than support for loss and damage because adaptation is something
that we want to happen so that we will prevent loss and damage. So there's a difference between paying for a school to be rebuilt, which could be loss and damage, or, you know, helping to finance
a resistant and resilient infrastructure, including schools that you described earlier, which would be adaptation. For rational economic, financial reasons, the latter is obviously
the most rational way to go. But also for idealistic, humanitarian reasons, obviously it's better to help people in your countries, but all over the planet,
become more resilient and adapt to what happens already now and will happen, unfortunately, to a large degree in the future. Can you talk to us a little bit on how you see this problem
and elaborate a little bit? Yes, thank you. Vanuatu was, you know, the first chair of the AOSIS group, the Association of Small Island States, which is now, as you know, one of the main lobby groups within COP.
And so we were the founding chair back in the 80s. Back in, it was about 1992, was the first time Vanuatu as the chair of AOSIS called for, a loss and damage fund.
And so now it's been 30 years later and we have now finally agreed to establish one. But I totally agree with you. I mean, there's the mitigation piece, you know, preventing emissions that cause global warming, that causes climate change.
And then, yeah, then there's adaptation. And for Vanuatu and increasingly for all countries in the world, the adaptation will be what we do when we talk about developing our country, right? When we talk about developing Vanuatu, we're talking about adaptation.
That's the entirety of it, trying to build our economy in a way that we are going to become resilient. And so if the mitigation piece had been done and the adaptation financing had been sufficient, we wouldn't need loss and damage. We wouldn't need a loss and damage fund.
But in 30 years, we haven't seen that, right? So that's where we are now. It's a failure of being able to mitigate to the extent required. It's a failure to put the funds up for adaptation that we need. And so now we're talking
about loss and damage. And the more we don't put up the funds for adaptation, the more we're going to need funds for loss and damage. No, I want, I 100% agree. And we should have prevented all of this from happening
by reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally a long time ago. That has not happened. So now we are fighting to limit the damages, so to speak. We are fighting to keep
temperature increases below 1.5 degrees. Now you could argue that this is a political victory because years back, the negotiations dealt with keeping temperature increase below two degrees. But you could also argue the opposite,
that actually this is a failure in itself since a lot of countries, your own included, will actually have very severe negative effects, also with a temperature increase that is below 1.5 degrees. So for instance,
a temperature increase of one degree or 1.2 or three, where we are now in global average, that has very serious consequences and accelerates many of the challenges that developing countries
like your own are facing already now. Yeah, exactly right. I mean, we're not even at one, we're not even at 1.5 yet and we are facing continual cycle of response recovery from all sorts of things happening.
And not only natural hazard events, but all these slow onset things that are happening and things that we have no, we never knew would happen, like having a, we moved into El Nino now as of a few months. And El Nino traditionally
in my countries is drought. The meteorologists were predicting drought, but we've had actually so much rain, flooding events, evacuations of people just in the last couple of weeks. This aren't, predictability of the weather
and climatic patterns, that's very scary. Now we need to be cognizant that the consequences different parts of the world are facing now are of course different. So the ones that you are facing are different from
what a developing nation, country in Africa might be facing. Even my own country, we are also seeing weather phenomena
that is a challenge to us. But there's not a one size fits all solution to this. So we need to be cognizant to solve this adaptation question. This also means that the international organizations that should help provide the financing for dealing with these problems
needs to be flexible and they need to also to have a capacity to actually deal with these variations. And by the way, not only of needs, but also political environment.
So the enabling environment that has taken place in different countries are also very, very fluctuating from country to country. One of the things I remember that you mentioned, that you and I discussed last year was the challenges that you face
being a relatively small country when dealing with the bureaucracy of some of the bigger funds. I guess we both agree that the funds are, it's good that we have them. The Green Climate Fund, for instance, fantastic.
World Bank is doing a lot of good things. A lot of United Nations organizations are doing a lot of good things, but there's too much red tape. And then maybe not actually able to take into consideration the differences that I talked about
pertaining to different countries. In different circumstances. Can you say a few words about that? This is not to shame anybody or try and put some organizations in a bad spotlight. That's not my aim.
I just want you to share with us the challenges that you face and maybe if you have a few suggestions to what could be done better. Yeah, I think, I mean, we have always been calling for a simplified access
and special consideration of the circumstances of small and developing states, for example. In terms of our capacity, our human resource capacity, our institutional capacity, to be able to do all the bureaucracy
that you need to do, all the reports and the forms and et cetera, et cetera, you need to fill out. And that's always been something that has fallen on sympathetic ears with the large funds that we're talking about, Green Climate Fund and so on.
But still, for example, Vanuatu, we are not an accredited entity. We're working on making our own government an accredited entity, but it's going to, it basically requires a whole new section of the Department of Finance. To be able to deal
just with getting funding from the Green Climate Fund because it's so intensive. And you need to be, you need to be accredited entity to be able to apply for money for specific projects, right? Right now,
we are using other organizations which are accredited entities, for example, large intergovernmental organizations, South Pacific Community, for example, which is the equivalent to the European Union as the accredited entity.
But of course, then they will take their bit before it gets to us. And so we are trying to become, we're in the process now of becoming accredited so we can have more say
in what sort of a place at the table to talk about, you know, how we need the funds or how we need them delivered. But it's always been an issue. Continually, it's something we raise at all levels of continuing to work with us
to simplify access, to make it more flexible to our circumstances. And that is something I think it's work in progress. Obviously, I 100% agree with you on that.
You said something earlier that I want to just ask you to elaborate on, which was that for you, development is adaptation. You will not be surprised that I agree with that
since my title is Minister for Development, Cooperation and Global Climate Policy. This is a testament to a decision made in the Danish government that we want to apply a holistic approach to these challenges. We want to make sure
that we see almost everywhere in the world that developing nations are hit by climate change already now and it's almost impossible to point to a country, I would even say,
to a type of political challenge or problem that is not affected negatively by climate change. Whether it's poverty, access to education, human rights,
conflicts, possibility for economic growth, all of that these things are negatively affected when countries are hit by climate change. Now, you are minister in a country
where this is relevant, but you're also a strong voice internationally. So I would be keen to hear your opinion on what we can do to make sure that this holistic approach
that we are trying to apply and that I know, Ralph, that you certainly are applying in your own country, how do we make sure that this is also integrated in COP decisions and in the multilateral development banks like World Bank
and in the United Nations institutions? I can see it happening. I can see everyone starting to realize and put it in their programming that you can't do development
without dealing with building resilience to the increasing effects of climate change. And in fact, if you don't deal with it, your investment is not going to last.
And we've seen that in Vanuatu. We've seen a lot of projects implemented that don't factor in the effects of climate change. And really, we have a lot of failed projects that have happened because there is a failure to,
for example, infrastructure projects, a failure to take into consideration the increasing effects of heavy rainfall events, landslides, flooding that we're seeing more and more. And so, for example,
you get roads that are built and then very soon they become obsolete because they're washed away. Investment in schools that doesn't invest in building projects. We get proper resilient infrastructure. We get schools built year after year that we were just talking about and you saw
on the island of Pele. Unless we, and even systems approaches that, for example, we have in our national legislation, we have a provision for,
you know, 1.5% of our national budget can automatically be triggered by the declaration of a state of emergency to respond to disasters. And I think this year we're going to have to raise that threshold because now it's become too small
in terms of, for example, last year, three cyclone events. We're currently dealing also with another disaster, which is an ashfall from one of our volcanoes that's affecting a whole side of one of the islands,
as well as the El Nino, the drought that started and then now the flooding. So you're continually dealing with this. And if you're not, if you don't have systems for development which allow you to factor those into anything you do,
then we're not going to get very, very far, very fast. In fact, we may be just speaking about going around in circles. So at the COP, where you and I were both present
and filling out different roles, we did manage to have a decision that hopefully will mean that the world eventually
will move away from oil and gas. Certainly this is the ambition of many, many countries. And what we did get
was a decision for the first time ever, a little bit crazy that it should take 28 meetings for us to get to where we are now. But for the first time ever,
we actually did deliver in the sense that the text addresses the source of the problem, which is primarily the burning of fossil fuels. So coal, oil and gas,
as mentioned, we have to transition away as a world from those sources of energy. Now, I would have liked the language on this issue to be even stronger. I'm sure you would agree. But nonetheless,
I do think it is a historic decision and I'm very happy that we were able to make it. Now, of course, the challenge is, how do we make sure that it is then also implemented?
And even though your country and the other small island states are not, as I also said earlier, part of the problem in the sense that you do not emit a lot of greenhouse gases and you haven't done
so historically, still, I know that you are engaged with also bringing your own country and helping others in your region to a place where you have more sustainable energy sources.
So you want to be a part of this transition. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you're doing that? I know that you also this week or last week, I think it was, took up the chairmanship
of the Pacific Small Island Developing States Group. Is this also a place where these discussions take place? Yes, well, the Pacific Small Island Developing States Group
is the most ambitious group when it comes to international diplomacy and climate change. Like at the COPS, we are really at the front and we're pushing IOSIS most of the time. We're the most ambitious group within that.
So we continue to, and that chairmanship passes every year. So we got it this year, but next year will be passed on. And so that's a lot of that group is specifically about climate diplomacy.
In terms of the energy transition, yes, the countries in the Pacific, apart from Papua New Guinea, none of us are fossil fuel extractors. We don't drill oil or have production of oil or so on.
We still, of course, use fossil fuels. But last year we came up with a roadmap for a transition, equitable and just transition to a fossil fuel free Pacific.
A roadmap to get us to 2030 to not be relying on fossil fuels for electrification, for example. And in Vanuatu, for example, we have our national energy roadmap,
100% electrification from renewable energy by 2030. And we are on track to achieve that. Mostly it's small household solar. We're getting more and more grids from renewable energy.
And one of the good things is that we have low level of access as well. And so we can build access based on renewable energy rather than having to transition from fossil fuel dependent grids
and then turn them renewable. We can just install them from renewable in the first place. And so we have the whole combination of solar, wind, hydro, so on. We also have access, of course, to geothermal resources. In my country, we haven't been able
to access them yet, but it's a huge potential resource. Really, it's a matter of being able to get the right combination of finance to roll that out. In a sustainable way.
And one of the things about energy is that we really depend on private sector actors working in the space with the governments to make that happen and make it sustainable. The hardest sector is, of course, shipping.
For us, shipping is probably the hardest sector to transition off diesel. But there's great strides being made there, especially by the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
which is leading a group of Pacific Island countries called the Six Pack, which have a lot of energy and it advocates at the International Maritime Organization for a transition away to renewable sources for shipping.
But it is a success story for us, in a way, because we are on this low emissions development pathway. We aren't going to... It's almost like when we talk about
telecommunications in the Pacific as well, we leapfrogged over landlines straight to cell phones, right? So it's a bit the same. We're going to leapfrog over the whole fossil fuel energy dependency thing and go straight to renewables
as the first energy source for most people. This is fantastic, and I hope it will also serve as an inspiration for other countries, other places on the planet.
Obviously, we have to acknowledge that many places, it's not a question about the lack of political will. I actually see many, many leaders in developing countries wanting to do the same as you're planning to do,
but not being able to because it's not possible for them to find the financing, to mobilize the financing. And sometimes it's due to lack
of the enabling environment in their own country, and they need to also remedy that before it can change. And we need to, as an international community, help them do that as much as possible.
But other times, there's no real rational reason for it not happening. So I very much applaud the good example that you're setting, Ralph.
We have to finish our conversation in a few minutes, but I want to just ask you, we've talked a little bit about the COP now already, but what would you say
is the takeaways from Dubai? I mean, I mentioned the historic decision to include fossil fuels. How do you see that? But also on the more negative side,
where did we not reach the progress that we should have? And what does that mean for the years to come? The COP 29 in Baku
and COP 30 in Belém in Brazil? I think the decision on fossil fuels phase down, along with the historic coalition
to triple renewable energy, was a good combination. That is the thing that we need to talk about when we talk about phasing down fossil fuels. You need to realise that there are countries, developing countries,
that have fossil fuel resources that they haven't really started to exploit, and they're seeing this as their source for development. And so it really has to be an international discussion where the countries
that have already are sort of coming off the fossil fuel have developed, particularly the European countries and so on, using the fossil fuels and are now talking about phase down. They need to be working with the countries that are now moving into
development to say, we've all got to move away from fossil fuels together. We've got to help each other to do that. You very rightly pointed out that the financing is a key missing element in a lot of this discussion
because we've got to make sure that we can transition and we've got to have the resources to do it. And many times, just saying we're going to phase out fossil fuels isn't very helpful for countries that
don't have any resources apart from fossil fuels and they can go there and they could go there if they wanted to. And many of them have the political will. We saw, for example, in COP, and that was very inspirational for me,
the president of Colombia, you know, announcing that they are going to start to move away from the fossil fuel and they're one of the biggest coal exporters in the world, you know, to make that political statement
that we are not going to, we are going to stop taking stuff out of the ground and try and find an alternative pathway. And we need to work with all countries in the world to do that. This is the kind of leadership I think we need at this stage in the COP movement.
I think COP is a good example of how we can transform our energy systems and our entire way of running our economies so that we can do that transformation.
But it's got to be done by all of us together. And that's one thing I notice in COP is we go there trying to do that. You know, that's the intention of going to COP is we work together as an international community. Sometimes coming away,
you know, in the Pacific, we always have a bit of sweet taste in our mouth because we're all we've made these commitments and we know we're doing it and we see other countries not doing it as fast. And other countries, for example, still talking about phasing down,
but still expanding new production in, you know, from now on. And yeah, we need to get better at working together and as you say, implementing what we say we want to do. Yeah, well, when we look at some
of the biggest emitters in the world, the countries that really need to change if we are to have a chance to stay below 1.5, that bittersweet sense that you that you mentioned is also there because in some
of these countries, actually, the deployment of renewables is record high and they're doing really great. Problem is that at the same time, they're also building new coal power plants. Any decision
that we can make internationally to put pressure is good. And that's also why it's not only was it historic because it's first time it happened, it's also extremely important that we've now decided that
the formulation that we ended up with was transition away from oil, gas and coal and instead, as you mentioned, triple our renewable energy in the world before 2030 and actually also
doubling our energy efficiency measures, which is just as important. And this is real progress. We need to then now make sure that it happens. And that is a combination of putting pressure
on countries that should be doing it but are not. But it's also about making sure that we help countries that want to do it but that cannot do it on their own. My own country, for instance,
we have 24, I think it is now more than 20 anyway, bilateral collaborations with countries where Danish experts, so it's an authority to authority, a government to government collaboration where Danish experts
help share some of the experiences and best practices from Denmark and elsewhere in the world in the transition process of countries. So it could be advising how to best plan energy transition or advising
on very concrete projects like offshore wind projects or how to make a tender for offshore wind. I mean, that alone is very complex. And if you've never done it before, you don't have
the legal expertise. You don't have the financial expertise to calculate what will be the price of this. Is it even rational? You don't have the scientific expertise to make sure that you actually
put this wind farm the right place all of these things. It's complicated. So we need to share the experiences and the expert knowledge that is there.
Denmark is fortunately not the only country doing this. Many others are doing similar good work. And of course, we have institutions like IRENA, the IEA that are also
doing great work. So I 100% agree with you when you say it's a bittersweet feeling that the world we have when we return from makeup because on one hand it is fantastic.
More than 190 countries agree on something. Each country had a veto power. None of them used it which is not to say that all are very happy with the decisions that we made. Of course not. But it shows that we can
as an international community actually act at the same time. It is still going too slow. There's still so much work to do. Fortunately, it's possible to have friendships
even though we live thousands and thousands of kilometers from each other, Ralph. And this means that we can also work even closer together when it's necessary. So thank you so much
for that. And thank you so much for everything you're doing. I hope to see you again soon. Well, yeah, thank you. I mean, it's great to have like-minded allies in Denmark and other countries.
People like yourself, Dan. I mean, we have the same sentiments about having to fix the problem. And we are trying in our own way, in our own countries, in our own situations to do so. And we meet in the international fora, right?
That's where we meet when we're in these intense negotiations, discussions. And the interesting about this last COP was, and the one before it actually, 27. We're actually a lot,
the Pacific Islands is a lot closer in its position to the EU than previously. We seem to be getting a lot closer in terms of having the same ideas about things where previously it was not the case. It's almost like we're making
new friendships in what we see as common objective. And I'm really, I was really happy about that. Yeah, and we also, not only do we share the same ambitions, we are actually
also becoming better and better at coordinating. So we're also playing the game, so to speak. I mean, I call it COP is also a game in a sense. It's obviously too,
too serious to speak about it in those terms, maybe, but nonetheless, it's a negotiation. So it's about how to mobilize the right actors at the right time. And we are both members of something called the High Ambition Coalition,
which is a coalition that in Paris, before you and I were really, I don't know if you were engaged there, I wasn't yet, but they were definitely instrumental there in getting the 1.5 target in the decision.
And this year, or, well, last year at COP28, no doubt that the High Ambition Coalition also played an important part in getting the result that we wanted. So it's, it is possible
for countries, even though we are thousands of kilometers away from each other and don't meet that often, for us to actually align forces and work together in the COP process. So that's fantastic.
Let's, let's keep that conversation going. Keep doing that, Ralph, and thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. Well, it's been a pleasure to talk with you and your audience, and I hope they learned something from our discussion.
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