This series is sponsored by GIB AM

The year 2024 was the hottest on record and the first to officially breach the 1.5°C global warming limit set by the Paris Agreement.

As the climate crisis deepens, strong leadership is crucial to enabling the systemic changes needed to protect our future. While new generations of leaders face the growing impacts of climate change, they have the advantage of learning from, and building on, the work of the trailblazers who have come before them.

So, what can we do to ensure the next wave of climate leaders is ready to take on the biggest challenges of our time? Climate change is a global problem: no one state can fix it, no single action is enough.

How do you bring people with you? Where are the opportunities for collaboration, and where are the networks to tap into? How do you make your career the most impactful it can be? Climate change isn’t just a topic of conversation- it’s a call to action.

In this sixth and final episode of the Women in Climate podcast, host Naomi Kerbel, director of communications at SEC Newgate UK talks to Sherry Madera, chief executive of CDP, Anna Pot, the Netherlands' national co-ordinator for the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Marina Antonopoulou, chief officer for Climate and Conservation, Emirates Nature-WWF.

This series is sponsored by GIB AM

Finance is at the heart of all discussions around climate action, and it is thought of both as an opportunity and an expense.

At Cop29, an agreement was reached for rich countries to provide developing nations with $300 billion annually to help them decarbonise, through a mixture of government and private investment.

As trillions of dollars are funnelled into climate action over the coming decades, how do we make sure this money is well spent? What are the principles that should direct these investments to ensure equitable climate action? What are the blocks to moving finance and how do we make sure that the people most impacted receive the support they need?

The fifth episode of the Women in Climate podcast series delves into the complexities of sustainable finance with three trailblazing women, exploring the evolving ESG landscape and the critical role of financial institutions in driving decarbonisation.

We address the challenges of balancing compliance with genuine commitment, and examine the need for greater transparency and accountability.

Our discussion highlights the progress being made in places such as the UAE, while also confronting the global policy shifts and the importance of a holistic approach to ESG, emphasising human rights and the impact on developing nations.

We explore the idea that the transition to sustainable energy is not always a clean one, and that we must be aware of the effect of our choices on developing nations.

We also explore the idea that business can play a much larger role in the transition, and that we need to move away from a system where everyone is pointing at each other, towards a system where we are all working together.

In this episode, host Naomi Kerbel, director of communications at SEC Newgate UK, interviews Victoria Barron, chief sustainability officer, GIB Asset Management, Habiba Al Mar’ashi, president and chief executive of Arabia CSR Network, and co-founder and chairwoman of Emirates Environmental Group, and Avery Johnstone, manager at KPMG’s Global Decarbonisation Hub.

With more than 300 million people globally in urgent need of assistance, the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is struggling to meet growing demand and operating under severe financial constraints, the UN’s humanitarian chief has said.

In an interview with The National’s Editor-in-Chief Mina Al-Oraibi, the UN’s Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher emphasised the importance of making humanitarian operations more efficient by cutting bureaucracy and diversifying funding sources beyond traditional donors.

As he completed his first 100 days in office, a period marked by escalating conflicts in the Middle East, Mr Fletcher said he had visited Gaza, Syria and Sudan, and described Gaza as “worse than anything” he had ever seen.

Turning to Syria, Mr Fletcher urged the international community to engage in reconstruction efforts as the country emerges from years of civil war and sanctions.

He also praised the UAE’s growing leadership in humanitarian aid, noting its significant role not just in funding, but also in bringing innovation and problem-solving to the sector.

We are now on the brink of a technological revolution that has the possibility to transform our approach to climate action.

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, AI and other ground-breaking technology have exploded into the mainstream, reshaping industries and offering new tools to tackle climate change.

But while these advances hold incredible promise, much of the world, especially the global south, has been left behind.

The fourth episode of the Women in Climate podcast series discusses what this new technology mean for climate action in reality, asking if they will help or hinder the fight against climate change. Can the pace of innovation match the urgency of the climate crisis? And will it be worth the cost to move the dial faster?

In this episode, host Naomi Kerbel, director of communications at SEC Newgate UK, interviews Jane Burston, chief executive of the Clean Air Fund, and Francesca Brady, co-founder of AirRated and Stealth Startup.

This series is sponsored by GIB AM.

Women excel in environmental reporting and governance teams and yet remain underrepresented in leadership roles. So, what does it take to break through these barriers and drive meaningful change?

The third episode of the Women in Climate podcast series moves beyond talk and dives into proven action. We uncover how leaders push ambitious sustainability goals from within massive corporations – implementing radical change top-down and bottom-up.

We explore how company initiatives, personal action and leveraging networks at scale is working. We delve into how the legal profession is driving climate solutions — from boardroom negotiations to courtroom battles — and why vulnerability can be a leadership superpower at getting this done.

In this episode, host Naomi Kerbel, director of communications at SEC Newgate UK, explores what it truly takes to be a climate leader with Amanda Carpenter, chief executive of Achill Legal, and Magali Anderson, founder of S4 and former chief sustainability officer at Holcim.

While climate change affects us all, it doesn’t affect us equally. Women, particularly those in marginalised communities, are disproportionately impacted by climate change through the exacerbation of existing inequalities.

Across the world, women depend more on, yet have less access to, natural resources and in many regions bear a disproportionate responsibility for securing food, water and fuel.

As such, the UN has estimated that by 2050, about 158 million more women and girls will be pushed into poverty, and will comprise 80 per cent of the people displaced by the impacts of climate change. Yet their voices are often left out of climate decision-making.

Given their frontline experience, women are in a unique position to drive change. So, how do we promote greater collaboration between genders to accelerate climate action? How do we amplify women’s voices to ensure those affected by climate change are part of the decision-making process? And what can be done to reduce the effects of climate change on women and girls?

In the second episode of the Women in Climate podcast series, host Naomi Kerbel, director of communications at SEC Newgate UK, speaks to Kathy Baughman McLeod, chief executive of Climate Resilience for All, Angelica Andrade, MPhil student at the Sustainable Mining Institute, University of Queensland and Rachel Kelly, Climate Editor at The National.

AI was the talk of the town at Davos 2025, which focused on ‘Collaboration for the Intelligent Age’.

At last year's summit climate change held centre stage, but significant headwinds now threaten the progress that’s been made. A climate-sceptic president has been elected in the US, promising to pull out of international climate negotiations; inaction at Cop29 left many attendees despondent; and, despite a rapidly expanding share of renewables, global emissions are still growing.

When the tides seem to be turning against climate action, how are leaders responding? Are they justifying climate action in new ways and using different language to discuss it? How are they creating consensus for action now that climate consensus seems in doubt? What narratives are unfolding around climate action? And what is stopping more from being done?

For the first episode of the Women in Climate podcast series, GIB Asset Management, a sustainability-focused investment firm, hosted a round-table at Davos where extraordinary women leaders in the climate space discussed how they maintain momentum for climate action within their industries.

Host of the series Naomi Kerbel, who is the director of communications at SEC Newgate UK, spoke to Katherine Garrett-Cox, chief executive of GIB Asset Management, Marisa Drew, chief sustainability officer at Standard Chartered Bank, Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas, chief executive of the Green Finance Institute, and Dr Manar Al Moneef, chief investment officer at Neom.

With public healthcare systems under constant development, AI is emerging as a powerful tool to optimise services, enhance diagnostics and improve overall efficiency.

In this special episode, recorded at the World Economic Forum in Davos, The National’s assistant editor-in-chief Rory Reynolds sat down with Mina Hamoodi, head of health care at Mubadala, to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming the global healthcare industry.

Ms Hamoodi shares her insights on the gradual adoption of AI in health care, emphasising that while the technology will not replace doctors, it has the potential to alleviate many of the sector’s most pressing challenges.

As an investor in innovative healthcare companies, Mubadala is focused on leveraging AI to advance medical research, streamline administrative processes and improve patient outcomes.

Beyond AI, we also explore Mubadala’s global healthcare investment strategy, from the US and Europe to Asia and emerging markets. Ms Hamoodi explains how the company is helping to bridge healthcare gaps, particularly in high-growth sectors such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, while also bringing world-class healthcare services to the UAE.

Delhi, home to more than 32 million people, has long been ranked the world’s most polluted capital city – for years, experts have called it a “gas chamber”.

And while pollution is a year-round struggle here, the crisis peaks every October and November, turning what was once a season of sunny picnics into months of suffocating smog.

In the past, winter was eagerly awaited by Delhi residents, who could step out of their homes and enjoy a warm, sunny day in public parks, with a cool breeze blowing.

But now a foul concoction of smoke from farm residue and firecrackers and emissions from industry and vehicles smothers the city when winter arrives.

In this special episode of the Recorded podcast, host Taniya Dutta reports from the heart of the crisis in New Delhi. She looks at the reasons for Delhi's annual pollution peak with experts, asks if the Indian capital is on the verge of becoming an uninhabitable place and considers what the government can do to clean the city's air – before it's too late.

Over the course of 2023, Sulaiman Hakemy, opinion editor at The National, had the chance to sit down with three international thought leaders, representing the fields of media and business strategy, public opinion and space science.

In this episode of the Big Ideas Edition, Sulaiman speaks to space science expert Prof John Zarnecki, who offers his observations of the UAE space programme, the country’s mission to Mars and its effect on the next generation.