MA: I was going to say on that point, Olivia, I think developing nations have been rightfully scathing of what's been put into this initial draft text of the Glasgow Pact, as you're calling it, and as it's being called over there, but to your earlier point, it is still early days as far as COPs go. Tracey, just to bring you in here, from your vantage point, what have been your highlights and lowlights so far?
TD: Well, I think, you know, in the initial stages, we obviously saw a huge amount of flurry, as it was called in the media, pledges and fantastic announcements and we had our South African team going out there and looking very slick and well prepared. But now, as Olivia says we're coming down to the crunch and this is when the nasty stuff, and the self-interest starts coming out.
So, I mean, on my way to work this morning, the headline in the news was South Africa has not signed up to any of the pledges at COP26 and those are just the pledges, you know, the non-binding pledges.
So I think that as with everything, when you start looking into the detail of these, it's quite scary how many caveats and kind of backtracks there are even on the consigning coal to history list of countries that signed that, you know the main ones are missing, including South Africa.
And many of the ones that are on that list have signed up with various caveats. The big announcement about the financial sector commitments at the start of COP actually don't mandate anybody to stop investing in fossil fuel expansion.
TD: So I think that the positives have been that there is such an enormous focus on the crucial nature of this, that it's been covered in the mainstream media to an extent that has never happened before. And that people are very aware of the gap between what's being said and what's being written down on paper and committed to.
And I think that it is now up to, you know, really kind of sounds a bit cheesy, but to the citizens of the world, to demand that their government's close that gap.
Ending fossil fuel subsidies, agreeing on end dates for coal, and not resorting to kind of self-interested cop outs which I think is a lot of what South Africa is doing at the moment.
Yes, we're a developing country but we're very happy to place ourselves in the same category as all the other developing countries that don't have any coal fired power generation, when actually we're the world's 12th largest emitter and we should be stepping up in a much more significant way.