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00:00Well Madam President. Lovely to have you with us. Indeed the first woman elected president of Ireland the U.N. commissioner for human rights. That's that's not the end the U.N. on the way to the Great Lakes which are that group of countries in Africa and a major peace building mission. So the first U.N. mediator in a peacekeeping mission the U.N. on voice for climate. And as the football discussion was taking place Mary leaned over to me and she said well you know I'm the chair of the Global Center for Human Rights and sport. And I said Of course you are . But she is an extraordinary woman of achievement achievements that have benefited all humankind. And I've been wondering Mary I've been sort of following you for a longtime and did the young Mary Robinson aspire to a career in public life . Well the first aspiration that I recall having was I wanted to be an astronomer and study the heavenly bodies. That was when I was five and I got terribly teased by my brothers I hated the fact that I said that because they teased me unreservedly but I never know why I came from a family that wasn't in public life. I was the daughter of two medical doctors and I had these four brothers two older and two younger than me. So hence my strong interest in human rights and gender and we use it using my elbows than any of us understand. That's so you have since those early years and frustrations with your siblings become a model for leadership for leadership in general but for particularly for women's leadership. And I wonder why. Why does women's leadership matter. Certainly we all know to deprive a woman and of her bringing her contributions her whether her talents her experiences or perspectives to any endeavor matters greatly. But we have a lot of men in this audience which is terrific. Why does it matter to men why does it matter to society in general . I think of particular because women tend when they get into positions of leadership to be problem solvers to be less hierarchical to be more collaborative. To think that it's more important that the problem is solved and that I get all the credit. Willingness to share some credit and a lot of men also lead like that now but I also think that women are more conscious of criticizing themselves in the way they do it. I am aware of when I'm with a group of women leaders. Very often we spend a lot of time saying you know I shouldn't have done that I should've done that better. You're nodding you understand. There is a there's a real willingness to critique the way of leading because we haven't always assumed and you know we still joke about the fact those young men assume they have all the qualities for whatever job it is. Young women say do you think I'd be able to do that . It's very different and the thinking I'm able to maybe it means that you can critique afterwards and probably do the job better . So we're here at the Bloomberg equality summit. You have been a powerful voice for equality for gender equality and yet if you look at the record the gender gap exists in every country. The gap between men and women and their progress on education or in economic participation political participation at the World Economic Forum says that the gap for women in the economy the economic gap will take 100 years to close at the rate we're going. We've been talking about equal pay. They claim at the rate that we're making progress on equal pay it will take 200 years and yet this is a conference in many ways buttressed by data and all those data points that are evidence based and we have lots and lots of data about women's economic participation political participation peace building participation with outcomes that the world critically needs. And yet what is it going to take to accelerate this progress. Well that's in a way what I am interested in. Well for it. I mean we have a huge issue that has been known about for quite some time and yet we have not moved in the way we need to. And that is the existential threat of climate change. I know you've had Patricia Scotland the secretary general of the Commonwealth speaking and I know because I know Patricia she will have been speaking about climate change at we have to think differently. And that's really why I kind of wanted to participate in this conversation to really think about where we are on climate change. I participated as Malone said as the special envoy of the Secretary-General on climate change Michael Bloomberg was the special envoy on cities and indeed still is. But I was on climate change and Ban Ki moon told me to actually do it the climate justice way which really was looking after those who are most affected by climate change . Small Island States Least Developed Countries indigenous peoples . And I was delighted to have that focus and I noted two big frameworks being agreed in in 2015. The first was in September negotiated the 2030 Agenda with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. And I try whenever possible to wear this pin. First of all because it's the only U.N. pin I've ever liked. It's a good good reason to wear it. But also that's a very important part of the way forward and the rest of it was the Paris climate agreement and the only reason we got that language about the goal and the Paris climate agreement that we have to stay well below 2 degrees and work for one point five degrees was because Tony de Brum in particular for the Marshall Islands and all of the presidents and prime ministers of Small Island States were pleading for one point five to be in the text. And then last October we had the report of the scientists the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which told us that actually one point five is the only safe world we have to stay at that because in between one point five and two degrees very bad things happen. The coral reefs pretty well completely disappear. The Arctic ice disappears and the permafrost begins to melt very rapidly and increase the emissions and bring us into blowback territory which the scientists don't want to go into for obvious reasons. So the safe world for the whole world not just for Small Island States is at one point five. And then the scientist said it's doable but this is what it means we have to reduce carbon emissions by 45 percent over the next 11 years . They said twelve years but that was last October. It's now 11 years to 2030 and worse. And we're in May of 11 years. So that to me is something that requires women's leadership in particular but actually a bottom up pressure a climate justice movement of pressure to convince the delegates who negotiated the 2030 Agenda and the Paris climate agreement. These are no longer voluntary or almost voluntary these are imperative. We have to implement them. And that's what I'm really interested in so to do that we need a sense of global solidarity. We need a sense of what we owe each other. We need political will . Would a revolution of women perhaps begin to contribute to that in a significant way. I think there's a bubbling uproar going on. That's all I can describe it as we see the schoolchildren . Gretta Tandberg and she helped greatly the message about climate justice because she and the millions of children now who are using their Fridays for future to come out of school because they're not being protected and saying to the adult world you need to do more because we don't have a future we can't do it at the moment. We're asking you and we're coming out of school today. The injustice the intergenerational injustice has mainstreamed the injustice of climate change in a way I really like. I mean I really think we owe it to those children that they've understood and made us a justice issue and made it a human rights and justice issue as well as an issue of that biodiversity and ecosystems. That's one piece of it. Young people the extinction rebellion who are prepared to go to jail but also women's leadership. When I'm with African women now and you'd feel the same in Milan because you know them very well . Climate change is top of their agenda not quite far down unfortunately in Europe and the United States. It's a world of me to talk about women's leadership is a bit like you were talking about when are we going to get there. Where are we going to get the equal pay. And it's and then we talk about education and health and somewhere quite far down the list is climate change. That has to change completely. This has to be top of the agenda because if we don't get this right. Nothing else is going to matter and we're not going to have a livable world within the lifetime of young people. And within the absolute lifetime of children of young people and and their grandchildren and my grandchildren. I mean it is strange that as a human species we've got ourselves into this ridiculous mess because we avoided dealing with this issue . We've known a known unknown. Yes there are deniers and I've called deniers. I don't mean people who are ignorant of climate change because I've met women in Africa who say is God punishing us because they don't know what's happening. But the denial we're talking about is the deliberate of obfuscation the deliberate denial at the high political level at the fossil fuel level. And I call that now malign and even evil. I mean I'm calling it I was at the stage because it's too serious and we really have to know what we're doing and what were the world we're living in and where we need to go. You know Mary we often read and it's rightly the case that women are among the most vulnerable to the climate changes in the world. And that's absolutely true. They are on the front lines of the consequences in many ways whether it's agriculture and the loss of livelihood or whether it's the disappearance of natural resources etc. But we don't talk to them. I talk about them as the solution makers as import into the solution. And that's what this book I have to pull my book up on climate justice . This is a story book. There are 11 stories in the book nine of them are about women who are fighting back exactly as you said didn't know what was affecting completely changing their circumstances so that they didn't know how to put food on the table to know when to sow to know where to harvest had to go further. Water had to go further for firewood and so nine of the stories are about women there are also two good men in the book but I'm trying to bring home through storytelling the reality that we don't appreciate enough in parts of the world that are still benefiting from the kind of temporal climate. Somebody said to me the other day maybe the way to explain the problem is to sort of think about us all being in a high rise building we're up in a penthouse at the top of this high building but down below it's already on fire. And as we throw our garbage down we accelerate the fire but we're at the top so we know what we should know what's going to happen and you know we need to have these images somehow to bring home to us that we may not be feeling it as much as for example Mozambique. Grass and Michel is a fellow Elder I am now chair of the elders. I was with her actually in Abidjan recently as a male Ibrahim Foundation meeting and she spoke about having come from Basra in her country Mozambique a city of three million people wiped. She said you know it was extraordinary . Everything was gone. The houses were gone the place was flooded . There was no insurance no FEMA no you know nothing to fall back on no plan B. And she was watching her desperate fellow citizens and she kind of said to me this is the am I really fully understood just how serious climate change is and that you know was from a woman who's very accomplished and very aware it takes a firsthand witness sometimes to bring home just how serious it is. But it's not just women leaders and young people and extinction rebellion and the rest. But it's also business leaders. I mean I've been very impressed by the business leaders and the B team that I'm very linked with as an elder in a Paul Pullman and Richard Branson etc. who's who in January of twenty fifteen in Davos and I was there said that there are corporations and their supply chain they would commit to being net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and do it the climate justice way with just transition. Nobody else was saying that . Christiana Figueres was delighted because it meant a lot to her in her role as executive secretary of the U.N. after policy at the time. Now I'm glad to say more businesses the whole of women business is committing to be net zero. We're seeing corporations calling on governments to be more ambitious. We're seeing cities being more ambitious. We're seeing states in the United States despite the bad federal leadership saying we want to move ahead and that's what I mean about the bubbling up . There's a real awareness and what we need is that this impacts and I understand that. And I don't know whether the parliament here has passed a resolution here in Britain. Certainly the parliaments in Ireland recently passed a resolution. I'm a bit cynical about that because Ireland is not so good on climate . Only our prime minister RTS described us as some part of a laggard on climate change in the European Parliament last year . And we are because we have lobbies that influence the other big agricultural sector that's important to the economy and we haven't really until recently. But it's changing. I can see it every day the government taking much more seriously. So we have time. It is doable and think I women's leadership is going to be absolutely crucial in just pushing this forward as an absolute priority. And what does it mean. It means we have to change from the total consumption that drives economies production consumption consumption consumption. Black Friday is going bye bye bye. No we've got to move to more quantity. And you know we're talking about fashion taking on the issue we're talking about food and getting rid of food waste a whole behaviour change who changes behaviour. Women and I might do this podcast as you know because we've podcast together called Mothers of Invention and Our byline is that climate change is a manmade problem and requires a feminist solution. And I explain it. I do it with a young Irish woman called me Higgins who was a very successful comedian in New York. She was eight years old when I was elected president. And she's half respectful which makes it very funny and she is a very funny comedian. But I explain that manmade is generic. So both women and men contributed men contributed more because they had more power to to the damage of the greenhouse gas emissions. But we're all responsible and a feminist solution definitely includes as many men as possible and a feminist solution tackles patriarchy tackles a capitalist system that has lost the social contract dimension that gave it legitimacy. That's a rampant sort of capitalism that leads to the kind of gross inequality that we see in our world today. All of this is going to have to change if we're going to first of all get out of fossil fuel by 2050 completely and do it by 45 percent by 2030. That means we really have to change our ways. And I believe women's leadership is going to be very key on this. And if I may Milan I know I'm hogging the show here but yet that's your heart. But I say to audiences now whenever I have a captain captive audience that you're a captive audience just for the next few minutes I say three things. First of all everyone everyone has to take climate change seriously personally in their lives. And that means you've got to do something you weren't doing before I give an example. I've become a pussycat Aryan. I've given up all meat. I actually love lamb from the west of Ireland. I'm still in withdrawal but no I'm not gonna cheat. That's me. And when you've done something you know be more efficient about energy recycling more carefully whatever it is then say OK I'm doing my bit and then the second thing is get angry and get active. Get angry is get angry with those who have more power and who are not doing enough. Governments at all levels including in cities and then industry particularly fossil fuel agriculture particularly agri business transport etc and then get active in supporting those who are fighting for biodiversity for conservation who are voiceless for climate action for climate justice support them. And then the third thing . Believe it or not I think now this third thing is the most important because it's the one we're not really doing enough about. And this is where culture and art and cultural institutions come in. We have to imagine this world that we want to actually get to in a hurry. I hear so many people say you know climate is so terrible and we'll have we'll have no life you know because we'll have no car we live. That's nonsense. We will have a much healthier world because we won't have the air pollution we want to the water pollution. We'll have a much fairer world because it means we'll have clean energy for all which is what the 2030 Agenda has committed to and that means that the billion people who never switch the switch for electricity will have the gadgets that exist now the clean lights the the units the solar panels etc. and the two point three billion would still cook on dirty cooking. We'll have the clean cookstoves now moonshot in the next five or 10 years because we have to. And that will change. I think our relationships and we will have to do what I grew up learning to do which is to mend to reuse to hand down clothes to value the things you have rather than to throw away and throw away. So women are so vital to this and I saw an example last November in the architectural be an alley in Venice. I was asked to go along for the closing of it in November because it was being curated by two friends of mine two Irish architects who act as Grafton architects. They are brilliant women. They're very practical. Yvonne Farrell and Shelley MacNamara they had chosen the Earth is our client and asked architects to respond to that . And this gave me a real sense of the future the future of mobility the future of living together the future of and buildings even in a Bangladesh project that I remember of disused saris that had been gathered in four high fashion because the material was still good. They had been just discarded but they could be used as high fashion and all kinds of imaginative ideas. Now just listening to you talk about the integrative nature of addressing climate in everything that we do and I think one of the problems has been that it is a very complex topic. We read about emission standards and carbon taxes and carbon dioxide levels that are rising by the moment . And it seems that as an individual what can I really do about that. And I think that's been part of what's kept in larger numbers of people who say look I'm not a scientist. I'm not an expert. What can I really do. Well as I say I recommend the three things make it personal. Get both angry and active and imagine and think about this world which will be a much better world the world we live in at the moment is a very divided populist angry disjointed not a great world from the point of view of the values that we really should have. But if you read the 2030 Agenda it's full of solidarity it's full of language of leave no one behind prioritize the furthest behind first. That was in 2015. That's not so long ago we kind of were in a bumpy time. We can go back to that framework of the 2030 Agenda and it's 17 sustainable goals deliberately 17 because it is complex and we have to think about oceans that we have to think about biodiversity. We have to think about production and consumption . You know all of that is in the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement now has been interpreted in a very stark way of warning us. We have 11 years in which to reduce by 45 percent our carbon emissions which went up last year and we've just seen the highest four hundred fifty five to eight or something parts per million of carbon the highest carbon in the world for three million years. And when we were there before . None of us were there but when the world was there the sea level rise levels were far higher. So you know I'm not talking you know enough out of evidence. I'm basing what I'm saying on what the scientists are telling us and what the evidence is. And we need to now get the political will. I've just read a book about how we knew for so long. It's called Losing Earth by Sebastian Rich I think was his name. No Natalia Natalia rich and it's all about that we knew it was all about Tim Wirth and Al Gore and the hearings and Congress and all the rest of very American oriented. But it was all about we knew the science for so long and was mostly men at that time who were acting on it. And luckily now we have a lot of women. We have Christiana Figueres we've lost to the ANA. We've you know we've a lot of women leaders who have been leading on climate and I think you know it's not we take over but we certainly have to make our concerns about the fact that we haven't got a safe world for our children and grandchildren. That's the bottom line. It's certainly the bottom line and you're talking about clean cookstoves. I don't know I'm sure so many people in this room travel and in societies particularly in the south where the only way women . And it's always the women cook is over these dirty cookstoves and that spews black carbon into the air. If you go into any of those settings you start coughing your eyes burn but you're not really conscious of what is the cause of all of this. And it wouldn't take that much to make a concerted effort to move from those dirty cookstoves to clean Alix steel. There are a lot of governments I'd NGOs and others involved that's the alliance of clean cookstoves deed. But it's not you know it's getting hundreds of thousands. We're talking about two point three billion that needs a moonshot approach is what Kennedy did when he put a man on the moon. It has to be. It was also raising consciousness. I don't think that's what you've done here today is to raise our consciousness to tell us all we all have a role in this. The situation is dire. It gets more alarming by the moment. We have to have hope and we have to have hope always . So thank you Mary Robinson for always leading the way. Always getting out ahead but really caring deeply about why this matters. So please take care .

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Former Irish President on Feminism and Climate Change

Former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson sits down with Ambassador Melanne Verveer, the Co-Founder of Seneca Women, at the Bloomberg Equality Summit opening night reception in London for a discussion of why climate change is a feminist issue. (Source: Bloomberg)

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