Throughout COP26, our own Peter Willis will be talking to thought leaders about climate resilience in this daily video-podcast, hosted by the COP Resilience Hub.

In the fourth episode, Peter talks to Wanjira Mathai, Africa Director at the World Resources Institute.

Wanjira Mathai detects levels of ‘smoke and mirrors’ in the way adaptation finance is being negotiated and calculated, which echoes the low degrees of trust between South and North. She highlights the importance for the negotiations of acknowledging the climate ‘loss and damage’ that is already locked into the climate system and which will be picked up by the global South. It is, she says, an issue not only of solidarity but also of the entanglement of African minerals and products (coffee for our COPpuccinos, for example) in global supply chains. Wanjira believes the best indicator that someone is genuinely switched on to resilience is that they are losing sleep over the very low levels of climate finance for adaptation in the global South.