Ms Siobhan Curran:

I can take some of those. Working back, that discussion around minerals and transition minerals and the potential human rights environmental impact is really crucial. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre does quite a lot of research on this. It has been documenting the number of attacks on communities who are basically protecting their land from mineral extraction. On one hand, it is a much bigger conversation about how we have this extractivist model that got us into this crisis and whether we are able to switch from this model as we try to get out of the crisis. Of course, I do not think anyone believes we can continue with business as usual and yet continue to debate human rights and the environment and somehow tackle the climate crisis. Corporate regulation is needed. It goes back to that same point about linking corporate regulation and climate regulation and making sure they are both working in tandem.

The Senator talked about the quality of climate finance in a sense and the guardrails and making sure it is essentially untied. One of the reasons we so strongly argued that the loss and damage fund, for example, should be under the UNFCCC is for accountability. It is the same as how there are lots of critiques of the Green Climate Fund but, again, it is a fund that sits under the UNFCCC. We would strongly argue that the funds that disburse climate finance should sit under the UNFCCC and then the guardrails should be within the UNFCCC. Therefore, if all the finance moves outside of that structure into private finance, which goes completely back to that description by the ONE Campaign as being like the wild west and people just doing whatever, it is not going to work.

In terms of the quality of climate finance, a big ask from developing countries, or communities anyway in developing countries, is for direct access to climate finance so that the finance starts to flow to local communities to respond to what they are actually experiencing. That in some ways is in opposition to money flowing from private interests to make profit or is at odds with what communities necessarily need. Building that quality argument in discussions of climate finance is crucial.

The submissions for the nationally determined contributions, NDCs, are due in early 2025. At the previous COP, there was a lot more discussion around military emissions than I had heard, but it was very much on the sidelines and from civil society, so it did not seem to necessarily be rooted in the formal COP discussions. There is probably room for a lot more work on that and for building it in. The emissions are one thing. A statistic from 2021 shows how €1.3 trillion was spent on military spending and we are talking about €1 trillion needed for climate finance, so there are those parallels.

On the non-proliferation treaty, I do not know what the tipping point is but it was significant that Colombia endorsed the treaty. It is a massive coal-producing country. The more countries like that which support it, the better. What is also noticeable about the campaign is that it feels like it is growing. It is getting momentum. Not only are states signing up but so are local councils, the equivalent of local authorities and parliamentarians.