Kumi Naidoo:
[0:13] Welcome to Power, People and Planet. I'm Kumi Naidoo. Today we ask a very key question.

Kumi Naidoo:
[0:22] What international solidarity can still mean at a time when multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, United Nations and so on are under strain, inequality is deepening and many of the systems created to enable global cooperation are being questioned by the sometimes of the very countries that play a key role in determining that system. Today, I am so pleased to be joined by Sir Suma Chakrabarti, an economist and an international development leader who currently serves as a chair of the board of trustees of ODI, Overseas Development Institute Global, and is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, where I'm his colleague. He previously served as a President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and has held some of the most senior positions in UK public service and international development. And would it be correct, Suma, I think to say.

Kumi Naidoo:
[1:31] You hold people know USAID as the big name right now because of what's happened with the in the US so, Suma essentially was leading the British equivalent of USAID and brings really very important knowledge to this conversation so Suma very very warm welcome.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[1:56] But before we go into the details,

Kumi Naidoo:
[1:58] I just want to, of the subject at hand, I just want to talk about your journey and what first drew you into the world of development and public service and how has your understanding of international solidarity evolved over the years. But I'd love for you to tell us your personal journey.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[2:17] Of how you got to your

Kumi Naidoo:
[2:19] Point as well.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[2:20] Well, good to be with you, Kumi, as well. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I guess when I look back, the thing that got me interested in development was really essentially a picture in my head in 1969 when I came back to India as a 10-year-old with my parents and saw this railway station in Calcutta with essentially a lot of very poor people begging and lying on the floor. And I was terrified actually by the picture. It was like a, I don't know if people have seen Hieronymus Bosch paintings from the Middle Ages of Europe. It was like that. It was a Dante's Inferno sort of picture. And that image stayed with me Well, in, you know, through my teens into my 20s, and I think it was really a spark for why I wanted to do something that would try and tackle deprivation and poverty, essentially. And that's how I got into this. And then I studied economics and politics in developing countries as part of my course at University of Oxford. And then I went on to my first job as an ODI fellow in Botswana as well. And that is actually an episode in my life, which taught me a lot about development. Maybe we can talk a bit about that in the coming questions.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[3:42] But that's how the journey started, really.

Kumi Naidoo:
[3:44] So let's stay with Botswana a bit, if you don't mind. That gave you some important insights that you've carried through your life. Can you just share what you got out of Botswana?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[3:54] What is unusual about my career, in a way, is that although I have led a bilateral development organization, DFID, Department of International Development in the UK, and then a multilateral European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. I actually started my career by working for a recipient of development finance, the Botswana government, and I was part of the civil service. That is quite an unusual thing to have done if you become a head of one of these organizations, International Development Organization. Usually, very few of them have actually worked in the field for the countries that they're financing, if you like. I learned a lot from Botswana. I learned about how decisions get made, how policy choices get made. I learned a lot about the importance of local leadership, essentially. So when people talk about country ownership as they do, this glib, in my view, rather glib phrase that people use, I actually have sensed that and experienced that by actually having worked together. For a machine that was very good at running government. Botswana has an enviable track record, as you know, in terms of

Suma Chakrabarti:
[5:04] Both economic development, but also, lastly, I think, political development, interesting recent change in Botswana, change of power, and a peaceful change of power as well. It's a very interesting country, actually, and I think a lot of the lessons about development that I've learned have come from that experience, actually, and building on that since.

Kumi Naidoo:
[5:26] You know, Suma, that reminds me of.

Kumi Naidoo:
[5:30] Jim Wolfensohn when he was president of the World Bank. And I was then Secretary General of Civicus World Alliance for Citizen Participation. And one of the things we were doing was trying to open up more meaningful space for civil society to be able to engage with the World Bank. And I got actually quite close to him. People were a bit surprised because we had, of course, differences because I was always challenging the lack of democratic governments of the World Bank. But he was quite an honest and open person. And I don't know if you remember what he did when he became the president of the World Bank. He actually sent he was making it like a rule that people had to go at least for 6 weeks or 4 weeks a year and work in the global south experience, so you were privileged that you started off there, you had the on the ground experience.

Kumi Naidoo:
[6:34] So let's get into it then Summa so, I mean, for many of our listeners, they will not have a real sense of what it means to be inside leading both the national development industry and a major, multilateral development bank. And what does that teach you about the gap between policy language and real outcomes?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[7:03] So in most of these organizations, and I'm sure we'll talk a bit more about this, power essentially resides with, if you like, the advanced economies who are providing most of the capital to these institutions. And I think my experience in Botswana made it somewhat different for me in that although I'm a British citizen and you know I had a DBRD I think one of the things that stood out for me was I was essentially championing the emerging markets who were borrowing from UBRD rather than representing if you like the G7 or the major shareholders of these institutions there was That was a plus point in many ways, but it also made my life quite difficult at times as well, and those are my management team.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[7:52] So I think one of the things that I learned particularly about Botswana and I took into these jobs

Suma Chakrabarti:
[7:59] That what fundamentally determines the fortunes of poorer countries, essentially, and I'm thinking particularly as a political economist, if you like, is their leadership, their policy choices, and of course, global conditions, you know, conflict, geopolitics, trade issues, and so on. And what the multilateral or the bilateral development organizations are about, and have to recognize, is they can make a difference at the margin, but they're not a fundamental players in this progress. They need to be humble, therefore, and not over-claim in terms of how much they've done to make a country develop faster, slower, whatever.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[8:43] Secondly, I think a big task if you're leading these international organizations, you need to understand the policy choices that leaders of those countries are making. And you need to, when you think those choices are good choices based on worldwide experience or what's working well, you need to back them as well and back those choices as well. And you need to provide that long-term assured finance, which you can't get from the private sector very easily when you're around these multilateral or bilateral development organizations provide. So that's the approach I took to those roles. As I say, it makes you very popular with emerging markets. It doesn't necessarily make you very popular, frankly, with the advanced economies of providing most of the capital.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[9:32] So it's a conundrum. And I think it is, of course, if you look at the heads of all the multilateral, big multilateral development finance organizations, like mentioned the World Bank, There's only one of them that is currently headed by someone from emerging market, really, and that's the African Development Bank. All the others are all headed, essentially, by people from one of the major shareholders.

Kumi Naidoo:
[9:57] The same with the Asian Development Bank, right?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[9:59] Absolutely. Asian Development Bank, obviously EBRD, also even the Inter-American Development Bank. The Americans have got to sign off on the last American person who's going to run that bank. And of course, the World Bank, the IMF, we know the situation there as well. So it is, therefore, I think one of the interesting internal tasks is for the management of these institutions almost to amplify the voices of the poorer countries. Because their voice is not going to be amplified by the major shareholders, generally, because they don't know them very well, for a start. Their representatives on the boards are usually from ministries of finance, usually. And so the knowledge is thin at governance level of what is happening in many of these poorer countries and the management of these places do have that knowledge and need to be a counterweight almost to the voices of rich NHS.

Kumi Naidoo:
[10:57] So, you know, one of the big fights we used to have, the World Bank, and thankfully when Wilkinson was there, he took it on and he engaged. It shrunk after Wolfowitz, the other Wolf. Yeah.

Kumi Naidoo:
[11:15] But, you know, just for those who don't know, we have a very, when you say conundrum, I think it's exactly the right word. Because, you know, we have the World Bank that almost through a so-called gentleman's agreement in 1925, the president has to come from the US and then the deal was done that the IMF managing director must come from Europe and that has not been broken since. In fact, Wilfinson told me a story about how he was an Australian citizen and he gave up his Australian citizenship to get American citizenship so that he can be the president of the World Bank. So apart from that, which seems weird given that 88% of the world lives in the global south and 12% in the developed economies, it's also.

Kumi Naidoo:
[12:14] The question of, you know, the $1, one boat essentially. So for the folks in the Global South and especially civil society advocates, we've been trying to highlight for a long time now that it doesn't make sense that you have people, an institution making decisions for the rest of the world, but... But come from such a small concentration of people. And that struggle to say the World Bank and IMF, the heads to be appointed through an open global process, not just nationality, is a struggle that continues. But that's a good segue to the... It would be nice to just go a little bit inside those...

Suma Chakrabarti:
[13:01] Yeah, I'm happy to talk about that.

Kumi Naidoo:
[13:05] So what were some of the hardest lessons you learned about power and accountability inside these institutions. Because, you know, like, what my experience has been is we've always formed people like you in each of these institutions. You know, like, whatever the institution was saying and whatever its power structure was, we said these institutions have such important impact on our life and we have to find the allies within the institution. And if you can just talk about how it's to be inside and the challenge.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[13:40] So I think, Kumi, there were two original sins. You mentioned one of them, which is how the leaderships get decided. This gentleman's agreement, dating back from the end of the Second World War, Bretton Woods' agreement, that was one. And that, as you say, narrows the gene pool from which you can draw leadership. The second part of that is, I think, the resident board issue. So even if you have a structure which is based on the shareholdings and your votes are tied to shareholding, It's magnified and made worse, I think, by having a resident board. By the way, there's quite an interesting story as to how that happened in 1944-45. John Maynard Keynes, a British economist who was negotiating the creation of the IMF and World Bank, largely with the Americans, the two countries largely leading with the issue. Keynes argued against the resident board. He argued in favor of the board members being in cactus because he thought it should cramp management. He was right. And by cramping management, it, of course, makes it more difficult, as I said earlier, to essentially represent the voices of the borrowing countries. Interestingly, it was the Americans who insisted on the resident board. A guy called Harry Dexter White, who was the U.S. Treasury official negotiating with Keynes. Very interesting background, because he turned out later to be a Soviet spy. But anyway.

Kumi Naidoo:
[15:05] Oh, really?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[15:06] Oh, yeah, yeah. It's quite an extraordinary discovery later on. But anyway, Harry Dexter White got his way, and so we ended up with these resident boards. And until the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank recently and the New Development Bank, all these banks have got resident boards, 24-7 people in the capitals of where these institutions are housed. And that increases, because they have the shareholding power, the dominance or domination of the agendas of these institutions, in my view, by the non-borrowing advanced economies, if you like. And it dilutes the voice of the emerging markets. And that leads to all sorts of issues. For example, when you're setting country strategies for these institutions from within these banks, you have to be even more mindful of the agendas of the advanced economies as opposed to the agendas necessarily of the emerging market for which you're designing a strategy. Interestingly, ODI Global, the think-tank chair, we do a survey every couple of years of the management of these institutions, but also of the emerging market. More interestingly, the emerging market borrowers, what do they think?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[16:34] Let's take Nishu, you and I are both very much involved with climate change. There is actually quite a big difference between the stress laid on that, let's say, by many of the advanced economies and aspects of that, at least aspects of that, that is laid on by emerging market borrowers. And, you know, you'll find these country strategies essentially are playing to interest groups in the Western global North, you know, rather than to the global South.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[17:05] That is further being, I think, sort of stressed, I think emphasized, deepened by Western civil society, global North civil society agendas which of course are helping to determine the policies of the Global North shareholders in these banks. So another concrete example would be, if you're trying to do a loan from one of these international banks like the World Bank, EBRD and so on, you have to be incredibly mindful that in your due diligence of these projects, of the agendas of those countries, the civil society in those countries will gun for you otherwise and for your institution. And their agendas are not necessarily the same as the emerging market borrower's agendas. And so you can tie up in an EBRD or World Bank the disproportionality that comes from having to apply the same due diligence standards for a very large loan as for a very small one, simply to satisfy the

Suma Chakrabarti:
[18:06] interests of the Western civil society is, I think, another fundamental problem in this.

Kumi Naidoo:
[18:11] So I want to just pause you there because it's such an interesting and important point. Can you just reflect a little bit more and would maybe use one or two examples of how that plays out in practice?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[18:27] Yeah, so you can have a small-sized loan, I don't know, 500,000 euros for, let's say, for some municipal authority in one of the EBRD countries of operation. And you can have a 200 million mining project as well, and you're going to apply the same standards. Now we have tried and I think my success has also tried very much to try and get proportionality into this

Suma Chakrabarti:
[18:58] Because we're meant to ultimately be serving the interests of the borrowing countries in this, I suppose, in the mission and there's been some progress, I won't deny that I think there has been some progress in that direction but there is still this, if you like, whose agenda are you serving? This question's always there in designing these projects and the strategies as well for these countries I can give you another example. It would be quite an interesting one in my own career in DFID when I was Planet Secretary there. We were the champions of budget support, which I think is the closest the development committee has ever got in the West towards backing the quality of choices of developing countries, poorer countries.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[19:40] But we did run up against problems. How can you justify a large budget support grant, let's say, to Malawi, when within the Malawian budget, there is a slug of expenditure, which is to finance high-grade, top-end-of-the-range cars for ministers? Well, that is a choice the Malawian government has made. So if you're really going with the purity of that approach, so be it. I mean, lots of other choices, probably good choices, just because you don't agree with that. But that caused a huge kerfuffle inside the UK machine. You know, how on earth are we going to justify this, the accountability for this, to UK Parliament, UK citizens, taxpayers, when the press are going to run a story? Actually, we ended up using this as a training example for staff as well, how to handle the comms around that sort of thing. But that's another example.

Kumi Naidoo:
[20:36] And those both examples are interesting. Can I particularly ask you to focus on, when you say, the disproportionate role almost of Western civil society? Can you just say a little more about that?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[20:51] Sure. I mean, I have worked obviously very closely with Western society. I mean, make poverty history in the UK. These were my allies. But these are my allies in the sense of trying to get more funding for development from the UK Treasury. Into it. So, working with Gordon Brown and Tony Blair and these NGOs, and we succeeded. I mean, they succeeded in increasing the amount of funding available to Diphthid as well. But it comes also with an agenda. Their view is about what is good development. It may not always be the same as what is good development as defined by the countries we're giving grants to. Sometimes it will be and sometimes it won't be. And so there's always that, you know, duality in that relationship, I always found.

Kumi Naidoo:
[21:44] So I want to pick up on the last question, what is good development, right? And you and I have been engaging over the last months about rethinking the framework, and that's why we've called this session, you know, Rethinking International Solidarity, not Rethinking Development. Can you just problematize for us, why the term development today is inadequate and why it needs to be rethought, even though, you know, to be honest, like, I was at an event this weekend in Croatia at the Green Academy, and I was trying to do a critique of development. But unless you said development, people won't know what you're starting. So you're stuck in a macro narrative that is so hard to get out of, but please critique and give you reflections on.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[22:41] So, I'm going to do that from the sort of Western mindset. So, the Western mindset that I've seen throughout my career is that when you talk about development, you're talking about poor countries. So, you would never use that term for, you know, Central and Eastern Europe, for example, after communism.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[23:00] Those people from the country, the governments from this country did not want to be associated with word development because they thought that was for sub-Saharan Africa, nothing to do with them. So there is a sort of, you know, almost a, you know, self-regarding sort of approach that, you know, very poor people, you can talk about development, but anyone else, you can't talk about development, you have to talk about something, you some other. So the word transition, for example, is often used in Central and Eastern Europe, describe actually similar processes of economic change. So I think development has become associated over time with a description of very, very poor people. Now, this irritates me intensely because I've worked, you know, I'm in India right now. I've worked in Botswana and various other places. And these are all from different types of cultures. They may not be economically as well off as some of these other countries. But they have their own sense of progress, their own sense of dignity, which in a way is, I think, downgraded by the word development. It sounds like you've got to move towards Something that I have that you haven't got But actually you've got lots of things I haven't got

Suma Chakrabarti:
[24:17] And so it's not a one-way process In the way the term is used Actually But I think that comes more if you worked in these countries, which I did in Botswana to start my career, you will realize that as well. And I'm also finding it very interesting. You don't use the word development when you're in India. People don't use that word anymore at all. It's now becoming more and more sort of a sub-Saharan Africa term for people in the development industry. They don't tend to use this for India or China. They get the emerging market tag instead um so it's uh it is now almost i'm beginning to think of it almost like a term of abuse actually so i don't like using it very much um and i prefer the word solidarity things like that because the reason i want to be involved in these countries is because i feel a sense of well two things one is solidarity with many of the people there and things uh but also what sense of optimism actually uh that you know that there is a hope and chance of change and i'd like to be part of that, but in a humble way, not in a way that I know best at all. I know something about development, but I also know, you're talking about what does it mean as well? Well, it means many different things now. I mean, 20 years ago, people would just talk about the Washington consensus as being the way forward.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[25:38] The private sector is the only way forward. That is now, in my view, demolished because we have lots of different models, economic models in various countries, and some of them have been very private sector focused, some have not. And, you know, some have succeeded as well without being completely private sector focused. Although, I mean, I personally think the private sector is very, very important in terms of job creation and so on, particularly SNEs. But that's a personal view, which I can also see other people would like to disagree with.

Kumi Naidoo:
[26:14] So, I think it's really... Good that somebody, your experience and track record and, knowledge is adding the voice to opening up a interrogation of what does development mean in the current context. And you and I have been talking about a global solidarity compact and looking for new language. However, I just want to take you a little bit back to a very specific question.

Kumi Naidoo:
[26:47] What do you think, because you have such a deep understanding of development banks in particular, what do you think the future of development banks in this increasingly fractured, world and this very problematic moment of history where a country like the United States who was, playing a disproportionate role in shaping their architecture is now undermining it.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[27:12] So I think this world of control by advanced Global North players of these banks is breaking down. First of all, it's breaking down because already you have the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Chinese-led, 25% of its shareholding is Chinese, and only the G7, and only the US and Japan are not members. I think Japan would have joined if it had a free voice, but it didn't join. But the European G7 members, Canada, they're all members of this bank, and they have accepted Chinese leadership. Now, why was that bank created? Partly because the shareholdings in the existing institutions like the World Bank were not adjusting quickly enough to the rise of emerging markets like China. So the shareholdings were still, they'd been changed a bit, but they still reflected too much how the world economy looked in 1945 rather than today. So I think, first of all, there is a sort of breakaway movement, which is interesting, I think, in itself and shifting power.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[28:21] And the BRICS bank is another one like that as well. I think the second thing that is happening is, and this is one which I think needs working on, Within the traditional development banks, I think the emerging markets are beginning to realize that they amplify their voice if they actually work together much more. Quite often. I mean, let me give you a very concrete example.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[28:48] I hope Trevor Manuel won't mind me mentioning this, but when Jim Wolffington was leaving, I rang Trevor up and said, look, the UK, formal UK policy is we do not back the Gentleman's Agreement of 1944-45. That was the formal policy of the Labour government at the time. And I said to Trevor, why don't you run? You're chair of the development committee. I can try and organize some support for you in Europe, for sure. And it's interesting, Trevor thought about it and probably came to the right decision was that he wasn't going to win. Not least, I think, partly because the poorer countries were not aligned and were not going to come together behind the candidate. And that has happened over and over again with the IMF. You know, Augustine Carstens, the former central bank governor of Mexico, often being put forward as a candidate, but again, They couldn't get agreement. But I see signs increasing that they realize that the weight of their views would be greater if they actually could align more in these banks. And I think the other thing I hope I've got across to some of my friends and leaders of these countries is actually they've been fighting the wrong game. I always said to them, you know, you've bought into this idea of a resident board by simply asking for one more seat for sub-Saharan Africa or something like that. That's actually the wrong fight. You should actually get rid of the resident boards.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[30:11] I know it's nice to be able to shop in Harrods or Macy's or wherever, but you really want to get rid of them because they're actually holding back your power. The more you have governments like a private sector company, the better for developing countries. So bit by bit I do see more and more people recognising that actually they need to hang together much more as a group than they're used to Actually, in the UN, of course, as you know, the G77 does hang together much more as a group than it does in the department banks.

Kumi Naidoo:
[30:46] Yeah, no, that's absolutely a good comparison. I mean, at the UN, I would say it's also not perfect. It goes through ups and downs. And, of course, G77 is often China and G77 together, which also brings a particular.

Kumi Naidoo:
[31:04] Way of moving that forward. I just want to note that some of the language that we use is being contested quite strongly right now, right? Like, for example, even to, say, advanced economies, right? People are asking the question, well, how advanced these economies if they are, stopping from the, you know, military-industrial complex or fossil-industrial complex?

Kumi Naidoo:
[31:35] Yeah. High levels of inequality and so on. And I think this moment, this is how I feel about where we are, right? Because people often, especially since Trump's election a year and a bit ago, There was like a sort of malaise, you know, everybody's like, oh my God, everything's, we're losing on climate, we're losing on democracy, we're losing on multilateralism. And this is and i'm in this role where often i'm called upon in the different movements that i'm part of where people say hey please come and, be honest about how deep a crisis we're in but please help pick people's hurts up because you don't need another voice to like get people to feel that there's no hope right and so what i, say is that it is true that none of us i'm sure you and i never thought 10 years ago we'd be dealing with some of the crises that we are dealing with now, you.

Kumi Naidoo:
[32:39] Know, including the wars and genocide and so on that we are seeing. So that's on the bad side, and we can't sugarcoat that. But there is a positive that I want to lift up, and that is in more than 45 years of activism, I cannot remember any time, Sumer, where the appetite for big structural and systemic change is as high as it is now. And I'm not saying that it's a majority, but that appetite is growing. And I think those that are seeking to create a more just world order must embrace this moment with that, you know, positivity. I'd love to get your response to that affliction.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[33:23] So I agree with you. I mean, as someone who worked in, let's say, DFID or VBRD, the first response when you see, say, USAID being destroyed is a great sadness, in a way, and also a fear of what it might mean in terms of lost lives and so on. But this is an opportunity as well, actually. And I think we have to recognize there is an opportunity to come out of this challenge. I noticed, particularly in many sub-Saharan African countries, a renewed change. Focus out of this crisis on actually doing things to sort out resourcing domestically. So the focus, I'll give you a great example, the focus on tax revenue, which had just basically disappeared in the days of masses of aid coming in, has reappeared, rightly so, and people are asking about fair taxation, things like that, and these are good questions to be had, actually. I think this comes not just from the reduction in international aid levels. I think it also comes from looking at examples of great success amongst poorer countries as they advance. I'm using the word poorer and advancing in terms of protecting and nothing more than that. And, you know, I think China's success in lifting so many people out of poverty so quickly is a very interesting example for many poorer countries, thinking about how could they do this, you know.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[34:49] And the third element, I think, is you touched on. I think, actually, there are overlapping agendas between countries in the global north and countries in the global south. So child poverty, which is a big issue in the UK, you know, how best to deal with that? Well, it's a similar problem in many poorer countries as well. And policy design is actually quite similar.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[35:14] When I was in the Ministry of Justice in the UK, we designed this, the first ever social bond idea, which was to reduce re-offending by using civil society, essentially, and social entrepreneurs to work with people coming out of prison. And if they kept them out of reoffending for two years, they got a profitable return from the state because they had saved the state a lot of money. Now, this was the first time ever done. And now that's taken off. That sort of outcomes-based financing... And took off in the whole development industry as well. And so I think there are lots of these crossover issues, which we can no longer think of as just something for the South, not for the North. I think they're actually, they're now sort of embracing each other on these issues. So there's issues, there's success stories. And I think, you know, a renewed internal focus on doing things for ourselves, which is actually quite uplifting you know i think a feeling that own resource your own resources is going to really solve this problem rather than some aid budget it's going to come from abroad

Kumi Naidoo:
[36:25] Absolutely yeah i mean i i have to say that you know, we have been pushing leaders you know in the different movements i i i'm not sure whether you know this but i chaired the global Make Poverty Easter campaign, which was known as the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, and Inequality. And that experience really taught me that, we need to go beyond simply, short-term goals of more and better aid or better trade policy, all of which are very difficult to do, admittedly, but we don't look at the structural and systemic kind of blockages that make everything so much difficult. I want to just move us to what gives you hope about this moment and how you think Thank you.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[37:29] Yeah.

Kumi Naidoo:
[37:30] What do you see in the very depressive moment that many people see it? Where do you derive hope from and what do you see as the most positive ways forward from where we find ourselves now?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[37:42] So you probably won't believe this with me, Kumi, but I'm going to use a Boris Johnson phrase which he used about Brexit, which I was against, but which he used about Brexit, and that is take back control. And I actually think there's a really good phrase to use for how I would like to see countries in the global south essentially start to take back control of their livelihoods and their futures in this agenda and a greater assertion of their independence, but also their belonging in an international system. So I think that is what's giving me hope because I think that That is happening, actually, and I see that at conferences, in digital conversations, and that asserting of our right to determine our futures, but with your help, when we need it, thank you, not when you think we need it. I think that is a good thing, actually. It's coming through.

Kumi Naidoo:
[38:44] An example to illustrate that, right? If you take on the climate challenge we face, right, and the climate emergency, the people that are paying the first and most brutal price on climate impacts are the ones that have contributed least to it, right? Like the people in the Pasapak Island states or the.

Kumi Naidoo:
[39:14] Some young people in Vanuatu were law students at the University of South Pacific, said to their law lecturer, Sir, don't you think we should take the world's biggest problem, climate change, to the world's highest court? And the lecturer said, oh, that sounds like an interesting idea. Let me go speak to the Minister of Climate Change in Vanuatu. And an amazing general minister there called Ralph Regano. And he said, well, let's talk to allies and let's figure it out. Six years later, the International Court for Justice gave a ruling that said states have an obligation to address climate change. And then six months ago, that opinion was put before the United Nations General Assembly and 141 countries voted positively to take that conversation forward. Interestingly, there was a bunch of countries that voted, abstained, and there was about 12 countries that opposed. And it's interesting to note that two of the countries that opposed was the United States and Iran, two countries that are at war. And then taking back control, And in a way, another way of taking back, well, maybe it's not taking back control, but another frame is punching above your economic weight.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[40:44] Right?

Kumi Naidoo:
[40:44] And so if you take the whole effort on fossil fuel phase out, and given that fossil fuel is 86% of what's driving climate change, That leadership for that came from Pacific Island countries, right? You know, they really drove it. The conference that just took place, the first international conference, standalone diplomatic conference of fossil fuels, in Santa Marta, Colombia, at the end of April 2026, just wouldn't have happened if it wasn't supposedly, as some people in dominant countries see, as small countries in the middle of Norway, right? But they punched them off the weight, they took control, and they were shaping the narratives. So as we go to a conclusion, Samar, I'd like you to reflect on that,

Kumi Naidoo:
[41:32] and then I have a few round-up questions.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[41:34] Sure. So I think building coalitions, like in the Small Island States case, is really important. There's also, I think, increasingly signs of leaders from nations that were not really a center of this discourse. before. Let's take Mia Motley from Barbados. She has been shaping the agenda, the Bridgetown agenda, and on multiple development banks. Finding people like that speaking up now, and helping shape agenda, there are more and more of those people coming through. I think sometimes the leaders of these countries were too shy, actually, of expressing these opinions very publicly. But I'm taking comfort that more and more of them are speaking up, either in coalitions or as individuals, and helping shape our agendas. So that's a good thing. And I think it's a task of think tanks like ODI Global actually to try and help amplify that voice through good research or whatever we can do for them as well.

Kumi Naidoo:
[42:34] No, and that's been very encouraging. And interestingly, there have been some really prominent women leaders. Besides Mia Motley, for example, Namibia just elected its first women prime minister. And you know they looked at an issue that is a source of great pain for people in the global south which is that, our brothers and sisters from the global north generally can come into our countries without even thinking about a visa right and we have to apply for like do a meet like almost like a master's application, to to get a visa uh, when we get it um and and so she said no this is wrong we should just have a reciprocal arrangement as some countries do.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[43:23] Right and sometimes did i mean india did that with the uk

Kumi Naidoo:
[43:25] Immediately and with you and with south africa by the way india so so basically she said if the united states government wants namabians to, apply for a visa that's fine then when they want to come into our country they much with the same, you know? Sure. And so, yeah, it's been great to see both, as you say, countries working in blocks, and I think you're going to see more of that, but also some individual agency and leadership that's coming from unlikely places, you know? So now, one of the difficulties about the whole conversation that we had, right, is, That it's so hard for this conversation to move outside of the intellectual space and touch people in the heart, body, and soul. And one of the things that, you know, when you're talking about complex institutions

Kumi Naidoo:
[44:22] with complex governance structures. So I would love to just give you an opportunity to share something that moved you, a quotation, a poem, a song, that helps amplify things in a slightly more accessible way. Over to you.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[44:39] Okay. Well, the quote I have is something that is a reminder to me of, I mean, it's a quote from 1930s, but it's a quote that sort of reminds me of the undertone of this conversation that we're having, really, and as to why we need to keep fighting for this agenda of change. And that is a quote when Mahatma Gandhi, of course, as you remember, he worked in South Africa for a while. But this is the 1930s.

Kumi Naidoo:
[45:10] Well, some of us just interrupt you there and say this, right? You know what? South Africans say to folks in India, we say, you sent us a lawyer, and we sent you back a matma.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[45:26] Indeed, great soul. So, Mahama Gandhi was in London for a conference, one of those constitutional conferences in the 1930s. And he was being insulted by Winston Churchill to naked fuck you and all that. And um one of the british journalists uh asked him what do you think of western civilization mr gandhi and he calls me said i think it would be a good idea and i think in a way i mean i'm told this may be apocryphal my father doesn't believe my late father didn't know he had to get the set that but anyway my father's his story but um in a way it's a very interesting thing Apart from the quick-wittedness of the man, there is an underlying sense of, you know, there is a dominant culture, and you should be rather, you know, in orbit. And he's not. And he's essentially asserting his equality. And I think that undertone has been there as part of the discourse around the term development for a long time. And I think it's been challenged. And I'm glad about that. So that's why I prefer the solidarity concept much more than the old cooperation or development cooperation concept.

Kumi Naidoo:
[46:47] I think that, Mahatma Gandhi quote, which has lots of resonance in, you know, I heard that quote as a young person growing up, you know, like as a young activist. The last point you made, I think, is so important, right? That if you take the wisdom from Albert Einstein when he said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, trying to get different results.

Kumi Naidoo:
[47:15] Then we know that the system that's been in place has not served us well people like you, me many others find that broken system and then we have a very simple choice, we just say oh the system is broken and we don't touch it even we know that system is going to do harm left as it is.

Kumi Naidoo:
[47:36] Or do we say, and as many people have done, let's try to get that system to, have the best possible outcomes, notwithstanding the structural problems. And I think that's what we've done. Many have tried to do with lots of difficulty and maybe not as much progress we'd like to. I'm not saying we should not continue to do that. We should. But we now, I think, also must open up the bigger question about what kind of fundamental reforms and restructuring and transformation these institutions need. I would even go so far as saying whether we need a review of whether all the multilateral institutions that have evolved need to continue to exist exactly in the same way. So if you take on trade, for example, you know, we got WTO, but we still have Umtad sitting there somehow for historical reasons and so on, right? And of course, it plays a different kind of role, some would argue. But I think that the global system that we've been talking about suffers from, you know, a democratic deficit, a coherence deficit, a compliance deficit, because, you know, there's some really good decisions about.

Kumi Naidoo:
[48:52] Taken at G8 meetings and UN meetings and so on. But then if you look at how much of what's decided, what's implemented and complied to, it's very less. And then all of this then gives a kind of accountability deficit and a legitimacy deficit, especially in the eyes of ordinary people. And I have to say that the UN, particularly in the last couple of years with Sudan and the genocide in Gaza and so on, like for ordinary people, they're asking themselves, but the UN was supposed, stop it, but it seems like the dominant nations in the UN, you know, were driving this. But, Sumar, thank you so much for those perspectives. I really think, the time, as you correctly say, is for the global South to take control. And taking control is not to dominate.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[49:44] Right?

Kumi Naidoo:
[49:45] Taking control is really about equalizing the power because,

Kumi Naidoo:
[49:48] in fact, people have been pushed out. So with that note, I just want to ask you at a very personal level, because I want to close this on a personal level, because, you know, I'm engaging with academics, activists mainly in different parts of the world. And people are struggling with how do you keep a sense of hope and optimism? What gives you open optimism to continue after so many years? I mean, you could just chill out now and say, hey, I did my bit. I'm retired now. Let's see what happens. But you're still continuing. What do you hope to continue to push?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[50:25] So I think at the end of the day, you know, it comes down to a lot for all of us, personal stories. If I think back to 1981 Botswana and Botswana today, that gives me hope because I think it's a country that's been transformed. And if you go even further back to independence in 66 through to today, Botswana gives me hope. It shows what can be done when you have good leadership, you know, people trying to take people with you in a sense as well, in the way you take citizens with you. And you develop an agenda that's quite independent. I think that's what gives me hope, actually. And on top of that, I mean, just on your theme, if we're all waiting to see if these institutions are going to reform themselves, or hoping that the G7, G8 will suddenly come to the rescue, it's never going to be top of the agenda of the G7 shareholders. Of course. Because it's just not.

Kumi Naidoo:
[51:20] Hopefully you fall away voluntarily.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[51:23] Exactly. So, I mean, I know several G7 leaders who think, for example, the stitch-up, the gentleman's agreement around leadership of the IMF War Bank is a ridiculous situation. But that's never going to be number one on their agenda for change of anything. They've got other fish to fry. Now, therefore, it really comes back to this idea of, you know, the other countries, the global south, essentially getting together much more to set the agenda for change. Along the lines you set out, you know, all those various issues, both in the UN system, but also in the development bank finance system as well, too. And I think that's a sort of agenda that should be developed by the global south.

Kumi Naidoo:
[52:04] Wonderful. Now, two final questions. What would you like listeners and viewers to take away from this conversation? If there's one sort of core message from your perspective, what would you like to stay with people?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[52:21] I'd like people to recognize that actually what unites the world is far greater than actually what divides us. So just as we were talking about the various policy agendas, the success stories that people can look at, These no longer divide into a global north, global south type of climate, the agenda you've been working on for so long. I mean, that's a very good example of that agenda or the global public goods agenda. So I think that's the thing I'd like to hang on to, that there is more that unites us, more that we care about together than just seeing division all the time. That's what also gives me some hope.

Kumi Naidoo:
[53:06] Thank you, Suma. One last question. I don't know exactly who the next guest is, but irrespective of who the next guest is, what question would you like us to put to the next guest in the next episode of the podcast?

Suma Chakrabarti:
[53:25] I can think of many, but one would be, I think, interesting because we don't talk about it very much. I mean, I try to bring it up a bit. Do you think civil society in the global north is a force for good or not?

Kumi Naidoo:
[53:38] Ah, that's a great question. So that's going to be a great question. And I think it's a very topical question right now. I'm not going to say anything. I'd let the guest start with it. But, Summa, I just want to conclude by saying, I've known your name for a while, and I've had the privilege of spending these four months together with you as a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy before I head back home to South Africa. And I've been so moved and humbled by your knowledge, your humility, your willingness to look, critically back at your history to see what we can learn to go forward and I've been very enriched by having spent this time with you and I look forward to the remaining weeks and months but also, I hope that everybody's listened to this. I'm enriched by somebody who comes from India, lands up in the uk for studies falls in love with somebody from japan i believe and then.

Kumi Naidoo:
[54:47] Figure out do we go to japan do we go to india you stay in the uk, and then you use you carry your global south sort of experience from india and you go to botswana you reach these high levels of leadership and you stay true to, a logic that we have to have a world where everybody can rise and you cannot have so many people who are shut out from basic needs and then say we live in a world that we can be proud of. So thank you for all that you've done so much in your life, but thank you for what you continue to do and thank you for being a voice of knowledge, introspection, but also provocation. And thank you for that last question.

Suma Chakrabarti:
[55:34] Thank you very much, Kimi. Thanks a lot, Kimi. The feeling's mutual, so I look forward to seeing you back in Berlin.

Kumi Naidoo:
[55:40] Take care. Thank you. Thank you so much. Take care.