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Lindsey Hall: Hi. I'm Lindsey Hall, Head of Thought Leadership at S&P Global Sustainable1.

Esther Whieldon: And I'm Esther Whieldon, a Senior Writer on the Sustainable1 Thought Leadership team.

Lindsey Hall: Welcome to ESG Insider, an S&P Global podcast, where Esther and I take you inside the environmental, social and governance issues that are shaping the rapidly evolving sustainability landscape.

Esther Whieldon: Climate Week is taking place in New York City, September 22 through 29. This annual event has taken place for more than 1.5 decades, and it's a big week for the sustainability world. Thousands of stakeholders come together for hundreds of events across the city.

Lindsey Hall: And all this week, Esther and I are in New York covering many of these events. Today, I'm sharing my conversation with Helen Clarkson, CEO of Climate Group. This is the nonprofit that organizes Climate Week in partnership with the UN General Assembly and the City of New York. I sat down with Helen on the sidelines of Climate Week's opening ceremony, which took place Sunday, September 22. Okay. Here's Helen.

Helen Clarkson: I'm Helen Clarkson. I'm Chief Exec at Climate Group. Climate Group is a nonprofit organization, we work globally. Our mission is to drive climate action fast. One of the things that we do is every year, we run Climate Week NYC, that started today here in New York, so we're here kicking that off.

Lindsey Hall: That's right. We are having this conversation as you can hear from the background noise on the sidelines of the opening ceremony where you've just provided the opening address. For our audience who couldn't be here in person, what should they understand about those opening remarks?

Helen Clarkson: Yes. So I was really talking there about urgency. Our theme for this week is "It's time." There's lots of really important announcements that made, people talking about 2030, 2050, but we sort of feel we're losing that sense of what we need to do right now.

One of the things that we've done today is launched a global to-do list. It's several things that we think can happen in the next year, which would really make a difference. Big things like banning relining of blast furnaces, that's really important in the steel industry. So things are actually quite concrete. Also in the opening remarks, I was also talking about higher-level principles in that.

What should be behind all our climate actions, and taking the theme of its time, where we're talking about things like it's time to pay up the Global North, it needs to take its responsibility for paying and providing climate finance, we need to be listening to citizens. Most people actually want their governments to do more ambitious things. Those are the sorts of things we've been covering today, high-level, big picture thinking and also some of the specifics.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. And in terms of some of the trends that you're hoping to see emerge or expecting to see emerge this week, what's on your radar?

Helen Clarkson: The big things I'd say are, first of all, the U.S. election is a sort of drumbeat, backdrop to the whole thing. How important is that? We know it's really important, it's [ path ], critical, which happen -- who comes in will determine the shape of climate change and things the next few years. That's clearly in people's minds, people are thinking a lot about that.

And then there's a lot of conversations around climate finance. That's the big topic for COP29 that's coming this year in Baku. Lots of conversations emerging around that, and things like, yes, how do we share that responsibility? How do we make sure the polluter pays principle is important, but also how governments cover off and actually start to put money into the funds that they need.

Lindsey Hall: And the polluter pays principle is just what it sounds like. If you pollute, you're paying for it.

Helen Clarkson: Well, it's a very old environmental principle, actually, it goes back to things like spills and things like that, and we've just been hearing – I'll mentioned it now because Senator Schatz from Hawaii mentioned it on stage of like, yes, it's about how governments contribute to climate finance, but he was talking about, okay, how do we also get the people who caused the issue to pay, so thinking in those terms.

Lindsey Hall: Yes. And on the topic of COP29, I've already heard that come up quite a few times, and like you said, this focus on finance and people calling it the finance COP. What can you tell our listeners about that?

Helen Clarkson: Yes. COPs are interesting. They run and they can be quite hard to penetrate, I think, from the outside. They run in these five-year cycles, so the big COPs as it were, the ones that end in five or zero, that's because the Paris Agreement set this five-year rhythm, so COP30 next year in Belém is going to be a big, big moment. This year's COP29, it's in Baku, Azerbaijan, so it's one of those COPs that doesn't have this kind of structural piece within it, so it's up to the host of it, Azerbaijanis to set the agenda.

And one of the things that they pointed to that's being really critical is to move this conversation about climate finance on. While there are still going to be kind of technical things that need to happen and kind of the agreements and so on, they said, look, “This is the big conversations we need to have this year.” That's why you'll hear people talking about Climate Week NYC because often Climate Week NYC is like the start of all the conversations that are going to play out across the autumn.

Lindsey Hall: Okay, thank you. So one challenge that I see in some of the sustainability and climate events I attend is this issue of preaching to the choir or a siloed approach. And I wonder what is your thought, how is Climate Week going to get over that hurdle and avoid that?

Helen Clarkson: Yes, it is a difficulty. I don't think it's always bad to talk to the people who are working on this because climate change is really difficult thing to work on. I think there is a value in actually bringing people together who work on it to give them that kind of sense of energy and seeing that other people -- because it can feel lonely, like is no one else thinking about this? I'm spending so much time on it. I don't want to knock the value in that, but we do try and get Climate Week out there, we get other people involved.

This year, there's about 900 events happening across the week. Climate Group organizes a bunch of those, but there's also lots of people hosting their own events. Anyone could apply and get affiliated, we check that climate event and that it's aligned with the mission, but then they can -- it goes up on our website and people can find their way around.

So there is a way that it starts particularly to move past what we often talk about as that climate bubble, and then we're doing a lot with media and trying to get it out into other channels as well, so one of the things we've launched today is a big video, which we'll be pushing out on our social channels, but I hope that gets -- was written in a way that we can get beyond just the kind of tight technical people that work on it.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. And on this topic of bringing along all stakeholders, Climate Week, of course, happens at the same time as the United Nations General Assembly. What should our listeners know about that and how these two events take place?

Helen Clarkson: Yes. And it's very deliberate. I didn't found Climate Week, but that was definitely the idea was to have it alongside the UN General Assembly, partly so that we could get leaders here. We have the Prime Minister of Bahamas here today because they're in town, and then I often joke, they get stuck in traffic a lot, we got loads of Climate Week signs up around.

So maybe as they're stuck in traffic, they're looking out of their limo and they're seeing climate, they think about climate for a bit, but it's really an ongoing -- we've worked with the UN over the years to make sure the agendas are together, they know what we're doing and so on, and to try and bring those conversations together.

And I think we see from the current Secretary General of the UN a really deep understanding of climate and how profound it is. I'm seeing that built into his remarks, so it works really well to have the two together even if that does mean the whole city is completely gridlocked.

Lindsey Hall: Yes, I had to try navigating the metro for the first time today. It was...

Helen Clarkson: Good luck.

Lindsey Hall: Thank you. 

So I understand that just a few days ago before Climate Week kicked off, a group of 14 mayors, governors, and some national leaders from five continents around the world signed a letter that was calling on heads of state to take ambitious action to phase out fossil fuels. What can you tell me about this, and what should our listeners know about this?

Helen Clarkson: Yes. I think what's really important is they get called, often called nonstate actors. Again, climate world as lots of world do, likes their jargon, but it's -- when you take something like the Paris Agreement, they talk about the parties to the agreement, and what they mean there is the countries, the countries are the ones that have signed the Paris Agreement, but there's all this other level of activity, which is actually what's going to deliver on it.

So you talk about mayors, state governments, regional governments, businesses, they all have touch points with different people and at different levels. So when you think about a national level target, that will often, much of the implementation of that is going to happen much more locally.

And so you see those mayors and governors, lots of them are very ambitious on climate, and they're saying to national governments a kind of challenge and an offer in a way of, “we need you to do more, we want you to go faster, but we're here to support that, and this is how we can help the delivery, what we need from you is more ambition and helping us access the finance.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. A lot of our listeners to this podcast are financial institutions or members of the business community, what's your message for them for Climate Week?

Helen Clarkson: Yes. And I think there's a lot that's happening. We've seen business be one of the most ambitious sectors of the economy, a lot of the change that we've seen has come from business. So really the message is to keep going. I think, particularly, I mentioned at the beginning, U.S. election, it is distracting people worry about that, and they worry about what's coming and the shape of regulation.

But a lot of what's driving this now for global businesses is going to be EU regulation, and you can't just ignore that, so a lot of that is coming already. And I think the message to business is to kind of keep going what they're doing, but also that you can continue to be ambitious on this because there's been a lot of polling that 80% of people in a recent UNDP survey, so they wanted governments to be more ambitious on climate.

And we see that filtering through to what they want to see from businesses. I've seen a report that's coming out this week, it was going to say, people will reward businesses for starting to do the right things on things like fossil fuels, so really, it's kind of keep going, I think, is what my message.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. And I know you're just about to come back on stage.

Helen Clarkson: I've got to run off, yes.

Lindsey Hall: Anything you've heard so far though that you'd like to highlight, anything especially interesting, surprising?

Helen Clarkson: Yes. I mentioned earlier, we've done this global to-do list. I'd love people to look at that, there's a video, you can see what it looked like. But in that, we're getting into some of the specifics around things like methane, things like energy efficiency and saying, “Look, we need to start being specific.” So I'd recommend people look at that because it's good ideas and hopefully it triggers other ideas as well.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. Great. And then final question, is there anything that you're particularly looking forward to in the week ahead, sessions, speakers?

Helen Clarkson: Yes. There's a couple of announcements coming, which I can't say what they are, but there's some good announcements coming. We look forward to some -- we've got some U.S. politicians coming and hearing how they're talking and thinking about election, that's going very interesting. I'm very excited, Wednesday evening, I've got a late night drink which I'm very excited about because that for me will be starting to transition, so yes, that's my eye on the prize.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. Excellent. Anything we haven't touched on, Helen, that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Helen Clarkson: No, I think just tune in while you can. If anyone who's in New York this week, you can come. There's plenty that's happening you can find on the website and just, yes, looking forward to all the engagement.

Lindsey Hall: 900 events. There's lots to choose to them.

Helen Clarkson: 900 events. You can find time.

Lindsey Hall: Well, thank you so much for you time, it's great talking with you.

Helen Clarkson: Great. Thank you very much.

Lindsey Hall: So as you can hear, there's a lot to look forward to in the days ahead.

Esther Whieldon: Please stay tuned as we bring you more special coverage from Climate Week NYC.

Lindsey Hall: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ESG Insider. If you like what you heard today, please subscribe, share and leave us a review wherever you get your podcast.

Esther Whieldon: And a special thanks to our agency partner, The 199. See you next time.

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