The world is filled with complex and challenging issues, this weeks episode looks at the context in which the Women Emerging Expedition is taking place. By discussing some of difficult and traumatic situations leaders must lead through, along with helpful tips and insights from some incredible female leaders across the world.

First we speak to Francesca Cavallo, an Italian bestselling author, entrepreneur and activist and Twila Moons a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center about climate change and how they are managing to lead within it and the difficulties they face.

Then we speak to Claire York PhD an author, academic and advisor specialising in the role and limitations of empathy and emotions in security, international affairs, politics, leadership, and society about the new international order and the wars taking place around the world and the impact they will have.

And finally Sheila Paylan, an international criminal lawyer and human rights expert looks at the legal framework we are faced with and how that impacts us all.

[00:00:32] We'll be successful so that women the world over will be able to say if that's leadership, I'm in.

[00:01:12] These two episodes are devoted to, to really giving again, we did it earlier this year. We're doing it again now. Two episodes on giving people a sense of the context in which we will be meeting in Bellagio. This first episode is gonna go into a number of subjects. Firstly, the climate change. Two extraordinary women, first, Francesca, and then Twila who're gonna talk about the climate change issues. Then, because that obviously leads into this, produces a huge challenge for the new international order, Claire is going to talk about the wars that are currently going on and the impact that they will have on the international order. And then I suppose that sort of leads logically into what is the legal framework in which the world is currently working. And I think Sheila will make the case that we have a weakening legal framework.

[00:02:41] Just before you listen to the Francesca interview, an apology, the audio is not as good on this interview. Um, there's nothing much I can do about it other than to say, do not switch it off. She, Francesca, is completely fascinating.

[00:03:13] We are the only species that is incredibly good at this. And the other thing was the reflection on the fact that over the past few years, the vast majority of communication around climate change has been to share visions, apocalyptic visions of what will happen if we miss the goals that were set with the Paris agreements, but there was not, um, enough effort on communicating the vision of what happens if we do actually meet those goals.

[00:05:24] But what if we start focusing on resources that are abundant? Naturally abundant and we put the effort not in the accumulation of scarce resources, but on the distribution of abundant resources. So this, this is one of the questions that the podcast raises.

[00:05:49] Francesca: And the second episode is about the sun. The underlying thesis of the episode of the sun is that the using solar energy is a great way to promote peace because no country can forbid the sun from shining. One problem with the communication around climate change has been that the energy transitions and green transitions were framed as the punishment that we deserve for having been bad in the past. And this sort of storytelling doesn't work with the vast majority of people. So part of the, the other, the effort of the podcast is to frame the green transition, not as the punishment that we deserve, but as the greatest challenge that humanity has ever decided to face.

[00:07:05] So if we were inspired back then by the opportunity to put the first human being on the moon. Now we should be inspired by the opportunity to save the planet that we live on. And if we frame it like that and we start telling people, look, we do have a chance to fix a lot of what's wrong right now, a lot of what's making us miserable because having a more sustainable society means to reduce the gap between the super rich and the super poor. Part of the, the, uh, challenge and also the opportunity with renewable energy is that if we move away from fossil fuels and we move to a world where every country is given the opportunity to produce the energy that they consume, this means that even countries that right now don't have access to energy will have access to energy, but that also means that if we want to do this and if we want to become autonomous energetically, we need to learn how to reduce energy consumption because right now we...Over the past, one thing that [...] it is just a, a very recent thing, like the past two generations have learned to take it for granted that we can keep the lights on as much as we want. We can use as much hot water as we want. And that is not necessarily a good thing but we also need to remember that it's not like it's always been like that. We can learn how to use in a better way the resources that we were, we made available for, for ourselves, keeping in mind that there are other billions of people that require the same amount of energy that we need.

[00:09:22] Francesca: Uh, what I see is that there is, uh, sort of three generations that are involved here. There is, uh, very young generations, so gen, gen Z and then is people, the women that are now around 50 years old, and then there are the grandmothers. Now grandmothers and Gen Z, on the sustainability issue are closer than the generation of their parents is with Gen Z, which is an interesting phenomenon.

[00:10:59] So it is more challenging to, to sort of put the paradigm upside down and to turn it upside down and question it, because it is an identity matter. So I believe that there is a lot of need to speak about these issues with an open mind and without, both from Gen Z and from other generations, to not assume bad faith from any of the people involved. This is increasingly more important because, um, as we live in a incredibly polarized society where, um, people want to overlap completely, entirely with the party that they vote for or their system of beliefs, that leaves too little room to grow as a society and to understand that we don't need to agree on everything to do something together.

[00:12:17] Twila: Right now, I fear that we move more towards division as we are dealing with the impacts of climate change as we are dealing with droughts and floods and, and impacts that are very different on a country to country level and across, um, rich countries and, and those who, um, and poorer countries.

[00:13:21] In many ways, we actually do see some reductions in the division regarding the truth of climate change and that humans are causing it and that it's a serious problem, but there's still ample room for division on the means of addressing climate change. And this is where I work towards helping people understand that there we're in an all hands on deck situation, um, where we do need action from governments, from businesses, from individuals, um, from communities. And I think that there's still, um, divisions that might say, oh, this is a fully, uh, open market, uh, situation, or governments need to do all of the work. This, these sorts of divisions on, on how we respond.

[00:15:11] And I think it can be hard to understand both how much change is possible over a short period of time. Humans tend to underestimate how different things will be 10 years from now than they actually will be. So we do have a tendency to underestimate the change possible, but also people are so busy these days. Busy just rolling balls or keeping them all in the air and in that way, uh, years can tick by very rapidly.

[00:17:13] And so if you're young, and you understand this, you also can't really see yourself being able to, in this short period of time, step into all of these different points of power to feel that you will, will be able to undertake those change yourself. So there's real dependence on older generations and people in power now to do something because we simply don't have time to totally move um, but generationally are, are, um, people in power.

[00:17:53] Twila: Climate change brings us into a constantly evolving world. I sometimes hear people talk about a new normal, and that's not a concept. Leaders are going to have to be conceiving of the work that they do within this ecosystem of change now and change expected to come. Without being able to know precisely what is that full range of change to come. But knowing that we have to work our darnedest right now to minimize the change. So it's a lot of parts moving and I think it also connects with a wide range of emotional spaces that leaders have to be aware of, um, for those that they're leading because there's a need to give space to negative and fearful and difficult and angry and sad emotions.

[00:19:52] Julia: Thank you. Twila. Onto Claire. Twila, you bring up the issue of nationalism, um, which I know that Claire will pick up on. But first, let's pick up this issue of how likely is it that we're gonna see a cooperative international order? So, Claire, if, if Twila talks about a cooperative international order, how likely are we to get one?

[00:20:37] And as a result of that, there's a number of shifts that are gonna take place at an international level. Every region of the world has been affected by this, challenges that these wars present. For example, there's gonna be food insecurity. Added onto that, there's also going to be the continued pressures from refugee flows. Added onto this again, there's also, I think, the emotional dimensions. If you have this scale of conflict and this scale of uncertainty, you're going to have to deal with trauma. You're gonna have to deal with the legacies of what this means for generations of people, for children, for people who don't have a place they can call home, who don't feel like there is a space where they can feel at ease and that they can feel they can settle.

[00:21:45] There's also different worldviews and visions of what the world should look like. China and Russia have been working together more collectively to offer a different vision of the world, and they're building alliances not just between themselves, but also with a number of other countries in Asia, in Africa, to try and create more of an alliance of states who want to see an alternative to the traditional western order that we've seen for the most part of the last hundred plus years.

[00:22:30] And so addressing those different perceptions is gonna be very hard to reconcile. There needs to be someone and some groups of people who are able to try to find common ground between them when different sides are calling out the other for their actions, for their histories, for their intentions. And normally we would see in the international order, it would be dominated by um, America, Europe, Canada, this kind of traditionally western, so to speak, alliance of states, but these countries too, have experienced a huge amount of instability in recent years. There's a lot of people who are feeling marginalized by the political system, by the economic system. By systems and structures that they do not feel work for them.

[00:23:44] So there's this kind of reckoning about, well, what does this future look like? Where do we find the security and stability? And it's as much as it's a issue of international order and the international system, there's also a huge amount of work that has to be done to stabilize the domestic front in a number of countries around the world to make sure that the foundations are far stronger for the international order, to make sure that people have the capacity and the desire and the intent, and the ability to be a collaborative and cooperative actor on the international stage. Because if you have too much dominating the home front, it makes it very hard to commit resources and people, or time and effort to collective solutions.

[00:24:35] Claire: I think western countries, especially European, American, North American countries, need to learn to listen and speak with all states and not just between the great powers. Climate change is one of those areas where we're seeing a lot of smaller states coming together to say, you are not listening to the concerns we have.

[00:26:16] There's no one state that can act as guarantor for everybody else. They have to work with others, except that maybe others have far more experience or knowledge of what it means to live on the front line of poverty or a climate crisis or a health pandemic, and learn from that. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges, especially for the big states who are really used to having the loudest voice, the biggest say, the biggest stick in those international fora.

[00:27:14] Julia: What's next on the list?

[00:28:07] Julia: And women?

[00:28:44] Julia: Thank you, Claire. I fear we started this podcast episode with Francesca painting a picture, which was immensely positive and inspiring, but um, certainly there's a deep sense that achieving it is pretty tough and we're very much up against it.

[00:29:23] And to be honest, Sheila's response was not terribly encouraging. Have a listen.

[00:30:38] You know, what the, what the law says, how it's being applied. There's, there's a, there's a gap, a dangerous gap. So some places are doing better than others. Um, in the sense of, you know, there, there have been a few international tribunals that have been set up. So the situation, let's say in Rwanda, former Yugoslavia and even so late, like the situation in post Khmer Rouge, um, there's accountability. That there's an accountability mechanism that that has been set up for these countries. And so these people have the benefit of having been able to go through that process and watch the, the major perpetrators of the crimes of these great crimes in their settings be punished by the international community.

[00:31:37] Julia: And women?

[00:32:45] Julia: Why?

[00:32:52] Julia: What's your hunch?

[00:34:16] But, um, yeah, I think that there, it, it's still too early for some people from like old mentalities who think, well, that's just not a priority, you know. We're here to investigate murder. What are you talking about this, like sexual and gender-based violence, you know, but it's, it's, maybe it's just a matter of time, like we just need to, to fight back more and be braver and, and stay at the table. Demand our seat at the table and keep it, you know. We need to start making more space at the top, uh, for women instead of just being satisfied with a big bunch of women in like middle management. It's not enough. What, what is in us, what we're capable of, we, we haven't even touched on the, the tip of the surface, what we can do and just, you know, talk to a, a survivor of conflict related sexual violence, you'll see how un un... what is it, indomitable we are. That's the word.

[00:35:26] Sheila: It's not the law that's the problem. It's the application. It's the people who, it's... the law is actually fine. Um, It's the people who break the law and the fact that they get away with it, that's the problem.

[00:36:21] Thank you for joining. Look forward to next week. Sending you much love.