Global News Podcast - COP29 climate talks open in shadow of Trump victory

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

COP29 has kicked off in Azerbaijan, with finance for developing countries at the centre. An Indian court rules that entering a hotel room with a man does not equal consent. Also: We hear from the director of Squid Game.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. The head teachers of all the primary schools in the Irish town of Greystones got together. Concerned by anxiety levels among pupils, they asked parents to delay buying their children's smartphones. I'm Beth MacLeod and I'll be asking what the reaction has been from parents and pupils. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Moss and at 1400 GMT on Monday 11th November these are our main stories. The latest COP summit on climate change is underway in Azerbaijan with a stark warning.

From flooded homes in Spain to forest fires in Australia, people are suffering in the shadows. An Indian court has ruled that a woman going to a hotel room with a man does not constitute consent to sex. But why was such a ruling necessary? And did Donald Trump really call Vladimir Putin to talk about Ukraine? Also in this podcast, Indonesia backtracks after appearing to accept China's territorial claims in the South China

Sea. And we hear from victims of one of the most prolific online child abusers ever to be convicted. It was a pretty doom-laden way to begin. Welcoming delegates to the 29th COP meeting to tackle climate change, the incoming conference president painted a stark picture of where the world was heading as a result of global warming. And Mukhtar Babayev made clear this isn't just a problem for the future, but one that's all too present. Climate change is already here.

From flooded homes in Spain to forest fires in Australia, from rising oceans in the Pacific to barren plains in East Africa. Whether you see them or not, people are suffering in the shadows. They are dying in the dark and they need more than compassion, more than prayers and paperwork. And they're crying out for leadership and action. Thousands of delegates from around the world are in Baku. One of them is Catherine Russell, Global Head of the United Nations Children's Charity UNICEF. She explained why the well-being of children should be high on the agenda at a climate summit.

Roughly half the children in the world live in countries that are at extremely high risk of climate hazards. And the challenge for us is that climate problems have a very different impact on children than they do on adults. And in other words, children are smaller, their lungs are more susceptible to things like pollution, they're more vulnerable to heat. The second challenge is that children are very dependent on government services. So that's health care,

education systems, schools. And those entities are very vulnerable to things like flooding, right, or cyclones, all sorts of challenges that we're seeing in the climate as a result of increased climate challenges. So what we're saying to countries is as you do the work, the incredibly important work on carbon emissions and reducing those emissions, also understand that children are at particular risk and they need to be at the centre of these conversations so that we can protect them going forward. COP summits have a reputation for producing all sorts of commitments to tackle climate change and to help those affected by it, but with few of these actually materializing.

This COP, though, begins with a particular source of pessimism. The world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the United States, has just elected a president who's on record saying that climate change is a hoax. Plenty for delegates in the summit to chew over. But as our climate reporter there, Esme Stalart, told me, first of all, there are questions of cash to be settled. The two main issues is first of all this new quantified goal for finance. And effectively what that means is that countries are looking to agree how much money rich or developed nations are going to give to poorer countries. You may remember a few years ago there was this goal to raise

a hundred billion dollars by 2020 but that goal now needs updating. We've seen a very early draft text brought together by the co-chairs on this issue, UAE in Australia and they're putting figures in there close to one trillion dollars, even two trillion dollars and developing countries are saying this is very much needed as the impacts of climate change are ramping up. So that's one key issue. The second key issue is something we called Article 6. Effectively, that is a global trade for carbon to help reduce emissions in some areas of trade, but also to help countries reach their key climate targets.

And what about Donald Trump, whose election I just mentioned? I mean, are you hearing people talk about how that's going to affect the effort to stop global warming? I don't think that's hanging over the conference. I think everyone's very aware of that. I think the main concern is that on that goal for finance that I mentioned, the US is a big contributor to that, or could be a big contributor. And the concern here is that the US delegation can't commit to anything because the administration is changing in January. However, having

said that, I spoke earlier to Catherine McKenna who was Canada's Minister for Climate when Trump was last elected and she said delegates here need to take hope from the fact it's not just what the federal level does in the US but what states are doing. California for example is a massive economy and they're forging ahead with action on climate change. So she says, you know, we need to look at that and also the fact there are other countries here that have a massive impact. Canada previously partnered with China, who is a big player, so I think we'll wait and see, you know, if we'll see any commitments on that finance goal,

but it definitely is a topic for discussion at the moment. There has been lots of criticism of the fact that the whole conference is being held in Azerbaijan, which is a major fossil fuel producer. I wonder, does that actually affect the course of the proceedings, though, and what kind of outcome might be expected? I'm not sure it does. So this is the second year in a row where there's been a major oil producer hosting it. Just to explain to listeners how it works, every region in the country hosts a COP in successive years. So it had to be the Eastern European region's turn this time around and all countries have to agree who hosts, which is quite a difficult situation. But actually what Azerbaijan is

saying is, you know, well you use our gas, Europe, this is what they're talking to. So it's not just about us cutting our production but other countries committing to not using it. And I think that's kind of the key issue here rather than actually who is hosting it and how much oil they're producing for example. Esme Stallard there. One place where climate change is already making its presence all too felt is South Sudan. A BBC investigation has seen evidence that flood water there is spreading deadly pollutants from the country's oil industry and that flooding is itself linked to global warming. It began in 2019 and at its peak nearly three quarters of one state, Unity State, was underwater with more than 700,000 people affected across the country. Nawal Almaghafi has this report.

South Sudan's largest refugee camp in the city of Bentu is home to 140,000 people. Many have escaped extreme flooding made worse by climate change. The BBC has seen evidence that this flood water tainted by pollution from the oil industry may have resulted in health problems in the community. David Beaujolais-Joux is a former engineer for GPOC, an oil consortium that now runs the Unity State oil field. He alleges that GPOC mismanaged facilities, polluting the environment. He shared videos he recorded when he worked there. Two peer-reviewed scientific studies in 2014 and 2017 found increased sulphate content in water near oil wells, as well as high concentrations of heavy metals in human hair samples,

which could increase the risk of genetic abnormalities in babies. However, it's rarely possible to know for certain the cause of any congenital disorders in a child. Mary-Eyan Majok is a member of the government. She's been raising her own concerns. I've seen myself, my own relatives, giving birth to children born with deformities. I know that also in most of the villages, it's only areas that are around hospital where those cases are reported, but most cases are not reported. South Sudan's government has commissioned an environmental audit of the impact of the oil industry, but the results are yet to be made public. We contacted the office of the impact of the oil industry, but the results are yet to be made public.

We contacted the office of the president in South Sudan and GPOC, but they both did not respond. Nawal Almagathi, to India now, where there's been a court ruling you might be surprised to hear was necessary. A judge in Bombay has ruled that if a woman enters a hotel room with a man, that does not constitute consent to have sex. Now, this came about because of a previous ruling in 2021. A man and a woman went to a hotel room, supposedly because he wanted to discuss working abroad, but then he allegedly raped her. The case was dismissed because the woman was ruled to have agreed to sex by virtue of being with him in the room. I spoke about this to our correspondent

in Delhi, Umang Poda, and asked him why this clarification was necessary. So as you know, mostly in rape cases, there's like less material evidence at times. So therefore you have to rely on circumstantial evidence because it's mostly a question of he said, she said, and usually it's happening in like close quarters. So therefore these things like the conduct of the two people before that incident happens comes into play. Like there are times when courts also as we saw in these case end up making presumptions that okay because you booked a hotel room together that means that you consented to have sex and sadly it can take like in this case up to four years for a high court then

to overturn it and now the trial will start again. I saw that last month there was a move to make rape in marriage illegal in India but that failed which I guess to some people suggests that the attitude is well a wife is there for a man to do what he wants with sexually whether she consents or not. Yeah you're absolutely correct like this is something which has been happening for a long time the movement to have this exception go away that if a husband rapes his wife, it's not rape, but it will be considered a grave assault. But just one clarification.

The reason it failed was because the Supreme Court didn't have enough time to hear the case. But yeah, that doesn't take away from the fact that this case has been pending for a really long time. And the last time a court decided on this was a couple of years ago and two judges were of mixed opinion therefore now it's before the supreme court. Now Monday also marks the start of the trial of the man who was accused of raping and murdering a doctor in a hospital in Kolkata. That case led to all sorts of protests and it was suggested it would change

attitudes to violence against women. Do you think that's happened? Well, not really, because a decade ago in Delhi, you had a gruesome incident of a rape of a student. And then that led to like nationwide protests. And still, if you talk to anyone about the Nirbhaya case, like everyone would know because it was in the headlines every day. But if you see after that like lots of legal changes were also brought but the number of rape cases have not reduced. In fact, they've increased. So this case also I think a lot of the protests around that have died down.

The state government tried bringing a law as a result of this but that was also severely criticized and that law also is still pending. So I don't think that this one particular case has changed and a result of this, but that was also severely criticised and that law also is still pending. So I don't think that this one particular case has changed and a lot of experts say that you need more structural reforms to bring some long-term change. But usually in these cases you see that there's always a knee-jerk reaction to sort of quell the public anger surrounding this case. So that's what ended up happening in this case as well. Umang Poda. Has Donald Trump been sounding out Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine happening in this case as well. News Agency claim that Donald Trump spoke by phone to Vladimir Putin and warned him against escalating the conflict. Moscow however has denied that any such conversation took place so did it happen? Now Europe regional editor

Danny Eberhardt says there's certainly evidence that it did. The Washington Post said it's spoken to several people familiar with this alleged call. They said it took place at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Resort in Florida on Thursday, so just two days after the actual election. And he apparently advised Putin not to escalate. And he also reminded Mr. Putin, according to these reports, of the U.S.'s sizable military presence in Europe. And the two are said to have discussed the goal of peace in Europe with Donald Trump expressing an interest in follow-up conversations about resolving the war in Ukraine. Now the Washington Post also

said that this call did not take place with the support of the State Department and that there were no official US government interpreters there so this is independent, this seems like more than a congratulatory call if indeed it did take place. Yes, I mean you've got the Washington Post and the Reuters news agency both normally pretty reliable saying that the conversation took place. Trump's campaign team refused to deny it took place, then the Kremlin come back and say it didn't happen. What do you make of that?

Yes, well in some ways you'd imagine that the Trump team would keep things close to their chests, so if it did take place you wouldn't get many details officially. Donald Trump of course is not in power until the 20th of January, so at the moment his director of communication said that they do not comment on private calls between President-elect Trump and other world leaders. The Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, President Putin's spokesperson, was very forthright in his denial. He said it was completely made up and false. But the Kremlin also wouldn't talk normally, one would expect, until President Trump is actually in power. So the denials themselves don't throw a lot of light on whether it took place or not.

Briefly, have we heard anything from Kiev? Well, Kiev, according to the Washington Post report, Kiev had been informed that this call was about to take place and it hadn't objected. But Kiev's foreign ministry has said no, that isn't the case. They weren't told of a call, so they could neither support or object to it. And obviously there's a lot of nervousness in Kiev about what Donald Trump's position will be when he takes power. Danny Aberhard. Still to come in the Global News podcast another series of the Korean television hit Squid Game is coming but at what price for the show's director? I read that you were so

stressed during the first series that you lost 16th. Is that true? Eight or 19th. Eight or 19th? Wow. Witness the stories that have shaped our world. On the launch pad, in the dawn light, a towering symbol of an ambitious nation. Three, two, one. The whole of India was watching.

Told by the people who were there. I still don't regret that I was part of the Rose Revolution. I was a witness of very exciting days. Witness History, from the BBC World Service. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. There's nothing quite as embarrassing as signing on the dotted line for something and then changing your mind and wishing you hadn't.

That though seems to be what the new president of Indonesia has done and over a very serious matter. During a recent visit to China, Prabowo Subianto allegedly gave official recognition to China's claim on the South China Sea. Like most Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia has never recognised Beijing's insistence that it has sovereignty over most of these waters, and is now retracted whatever recognition it may have given. Our South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head reports from Bangkok. Indonesia was where the Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched his Belt and Road Initiative 11 years ago and it has been one of the biggest recipients of Chinese investment.

No surprise then that the new president Prabowo Subianto made Beijing his first overseas port of call after his inauguration last month. The two leaders issued a lengthy memorandum, acknowledging the fast-changing state of the world and promising to elevate their relationship to include a lot more security cooperation. But their agreement on joint development of what they called overlapping claims in the South China Sea has set off a diplomatic storm.

Beijing's notorious Nine Dash Line, which marks its claims to almost the entire sea, extending more than a thousand kilometres from the Chinese coast, has always been rejected by other countries in the region, including, until now, Indonesia, and ruled as groundless by an international tribunal. The Indonesian Foreign Ministry has rushed to assure its neighbours that their position has not changed. But some experts argue that having signed this agreement, Indonesia has in fact now given China the legal recognition of its claims that it has failed to get from anyone else. Jonathan Head. It's very much a crime of the modern age and a particularly disturbing one at that. Catfishing is where people create a false identity on the internet to lure people into

relationships and then often to persuade or blackmail them into doing things against their will. Last month saw the conviction of Alexander McCartney, a man from Northern Ireland who pretended to be a teenage girl and tricked children into sending him explicit photographs of themselves. Some of his victims have now spoken to the BBC saying they hope more people will report sex crimes rather than suffering in silence. This report from our Ireland correspondent Chris Page begins with some of McCartney's victims and I should warn you that some of what you'll hear is disturbing. I just felt dirty, tore some of my innocence out. If these pictures are blasted all over the internet I don't want to live in that world,

like that's terrifying. I felt like it just wasn't going to end. I was crawled up against my door in my room crying. Alexander McCartney was a relentless and remorseless abuser. Police think he targeted three and a half thousand children. Ivy was in New Zealand. At 12, I was very much like a nerd.

It was hard making friends. I just remember feeling weirded out but kind of flattered at the same time. A girl's interested in me. It was exciting. She sent images first. She says that when she sent McCartney an explicit picture of herself, he turned on her. I will send these to your friends and family. It's going to be everywhere. Unless you send me more. I was just confused and scared. The victims who've taken part in the BBC documentary series called Teen Predator Online Killer have spoken out in the hope it'll help others.

We're protecting their identities, so we aren't using their real names, but they have chosen to speak with their real voices. I think doing this will help me a lot, too, to feel closure. Just feeling like I'm wrapping up this chapter of my life. Emily's from the US state of Oregon. McCartney used her image in his fake identity online. He used my photos to catfish other girls and it does make me angry.

I did feel trapped and I didn't feel like I could talk to anyone. I was kind of just asking myself like who's doing this? Is it someone I know? At the time I was questioning if maybe it was people from my school doing this to me as like a prank. It felt very real. Where do you state your name and date of birth for me? Alexander McCartney, 2nd of 4th 1998. The series also shows McCartney's police interviews for the first time. Detectives question him about a message a victim received from the abuser who called

himself Chloe. She says there was a message from Chloe. She said, I'm a catfish. Do you know what that means? You have been on the TV show catfish. Do you know what that means? Um, yeah, from the TV show Catfish. What is it? Explain it to me.

Um, no comment. What's a catfish? No comment. Come on, Alex. You know what a catfish is. No comment. At the moment, we have 266 victims. There's six in Australia, two in Belgium, 12 in Canada, one in Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand,

Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and 214 in the USA. Those figures are going to rise. They did. Police say most of McCartney's victims were aged between 10 and 14. He ordered some to abuse other children. Detectives recount discovering more than 200,000 photos on one of McCartney's devices. They were what's termed first-generation pictures. In other words, they were of new victims. I have never seen a folder structure such as this. It's vast.

The first download shows me the largest number of first-generation images to be captured on a device, certainly within the UK, potentially worldwide. Contributors to the documentary hope more people will feel able to come forward to report crimes like McCartney's. Violet says she's glad she spoke to police. People have lost their lives over this. I reported him and he got caught. Speak out because you truly never know the magnitude of the situation you're dealing with.

That report by Chris Page. Japan has a new prime minister. To no great surprise, the country's parliament has confirmed that the leader of the most powerful political party will get to lead the country. And Shigeru Ishiba has quite an inbox waiting for him. Most pressing is the need to pass a budget. But there are also a whole range of geopolitical tensions in Japan's neighborhood. North Korea tests firing ever more powerful missiles. China asserting its naval power. It's a

time when many in the country want a clear sense of direction. But Shigeru Ueshiba leads a minority government. His Liberal Democrat Party shed seats at the general election last month. And as our correspondent in Tokyo, Shyama Khalil, told me, that can only aggravate the challenges Mr. Ueshiba faces. It's not going to be easy. I think it's not going to be easy practically, but also it's not going to be easy because this is very humbling for the LDP. This is a party that has ruled Japan for most of its post-war era, bar a couple of exceptions

that didn't last long. He does get to keep his job as prime minister, but he does it with a very fragile grip on power. Just to show you how fragile this is, the vote went to a runoff for the first time in parliament for 30 years, which means that no candidate got a majority the first time around today. So they have to go to a second round when then he was re-elected. But you mentioned passing the budget.

It's going to be a bill by bill battle, if you will, for Shigeru Ishiba and the LDP and the ruling coalition because he's beholden to smaller opposition parties now and he'll have to heed their demands, negotiate with them. And this is really, it might sound like this is normal politicking in other countries, but for Japan, this is really unprecedented while the LDP was in power. And what about those international issues? There's an ongoing argument in Japan about

how much it should engage militarily, whether it should expand its armed forces, get involved in other countries. Where does Mr. Ashiba stand on that? Well, look, he's a former defense minister. So defense policy is always going to be forefront of his mind. And I would say it's more about Japan beefing up its defense policy, its defense capabilities, rather than getting involved in other countries. I think we're way off from that as it stands. But when he came to office early in October, he promised that he would strengthen Japan's defense capabilities. He said, you know, Japan is facing its most severe and complex security environments since the end of World War Two, he famously said, today is Ukraine tomorrow, maybe East Asia. And you've already touched on this, it's it's a more assertive China within Pacific Oceans with incidents of Chinese aircraft actually violating Japan airspace. But also there's always the Taiwan issue, the North Korea beefing up its

nuclear program and sending troops to Russia. All of these things are on his agenda and all of these things speak of a very unstable East Asia. Shima Khalil, are you ready for another series of Squid Game, the dystopian South Korean television series? If you watched it first time round you'll know what I mean. Clever, compelling drama, but with it a pretty relentless diet of violence, death and people being forced to perform imaginatively cruel tests to try and stay alive. Squid Game brilliantly satirised the ultra-competitive culture of modern day Korea.

But it was also a huge success for the country, another step in putting Korean entertainment on the global map. But the new series comes just as Korea's film and TV industry faces a serious crisis. Our correspondent in Seoul, Jean Mackenzie, visited the Squid Game set to find out what's at stake. set to find out what's at stake. Squid Game is a dystopian thriller where hundreds of fictional contestants deep in debt fight it out to win a huge cash prize by playing a series of children's games. Only the winner gets to survive. But it's not just the contestants that have suffered in the making. So has its creator, director Hwang Dong-hyuk. I read that you were so stressed during the first series that you lost six teeth.

Is that true? Eight or nine teeth. Eight or nine teeth. Wow. The first series was a social commentary about inequality in Korea. Is there going to be a new theme in the second series? We've seen recently that conflicts in Korea and elsewhere don't just end with the rich and poor. They're playing out between different generations, genders and political camps.

We're entering an era of us versus them. Now, at the end of every round, the contestants must pick a side. Do they want to end the game and survive, or keep playing? Majority rules. I'm told this will lead to more fights, more drama. But it's also to prove director Hwang's point that forcing people to pick sides fuels conflict. You didn't want to do a second series? Yes.

You were adamant. So why did you change your mind? Money. Even though the first series was such a huge global success, honestly I didn't make much. So doing the second series will help compensate me for the success of the first one too." Wang was only paid an upfront fee, meaning he couldn't cash in on the show's enormous success. This is a problem across the industry. Netflix and other streaming platforms have pumped loads of money into Korea. They've bought it worldwide recognition. But because of how they operate, the creators say they've been left with little to show

for it. Here in Seoul, writers, directors and actors have gathered, determined to fight the current system. Korean content is facing a serious crisis, they declare. They want the government to change the law to force streaming platforms to share out their profits. And that report was from Gene McKenzie. And that's it for this edition.

But before we go, we have a correction. Listener Emma Waldman pointed out that one of our guests described Elon Musk as the founder of Tesla. This edition was You can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was made by Daniel Fox and the producer was Isabella Jewell. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Paul Moss. Until next time, goodbye. The head teachers of all the primary schools in the Irish town of Greystones got together. Concerned by anxiety levels among pupils, they asked parents to delay buying their children's smartphones. I'm Beth MacLeod and I'll be asking what the reaction has been from parents and peoples. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.