Brazil and the World

THOMAS: All right. Good afternoon, everyone, both here in Washington and also online. My name is Jessica Thomas, and I am managing director of strategic initiatives and diversity, equity and inclusion business partner here at the Council on Foreign Relations. And it’s my absolute honor to welcome you all to the Twelfth Annual Conference on Diversity in International Affairs.

Now, this conference brings together participants and speakers from a wide range of backgrounds, including those that have been historically underrepresented in the international affairs field. This is an important conference, and we’re so thrilled that each of you could be here and join us for it. Now, as you connect with other conference participants and you take the opportunity to learn a little bit more about roles and careers in international affairs, we hope that you’ll also find yourself inspired by the role that you can play in international affairs. Now, for those of you who are joining us here in person, we will have—CFR we’ll have individuals here tonight and tomorrow as well to share about internship opportunities, career opportunities, fellowship opportunities, that are here at the Council. If you’re joining us online, of course, you’re welcome to check our website, CFR.org, for both opportunities and, of course, great content.

Now, we are so pleased to partner with—to collaborate with two very important organizations, ICAP and GAP. ICAP is the International Career Advancement Program and GAP is the Global Access Pipeline. For those who are unfamiliar, GAP is a consortium that builds a pipeline for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds in international affairs to find leadership opportunities in the field, both in the nonprofit space and also in the for-profit space here in the United States. ICAP is a professional development and leadership program for highly promising midcareer professionals in international affairs, both here—excuse me—here in the United States as well. So I want to thank both ICAP and GAP for their work in partnering with—and collaborating, excuse me, with us in this event.

I want to especially thank Bunmi Akinnusotu, Zarina Durrani, Ayla Francis, Maleeka Glover, Hermes Grullon, Wagaye Johannes, Lily Lopez-McGee, and Norma Toussaint. And, of course, I want to thank Tom Rowe, who provides oversight for both organizations and does a fantastic job. I also, of course, want to thank the CFR meetings program and our events team in our studies program, especially drawing thanks to Teagan Judd and Dinah Lakehal. Also, Brianna Ryan, Sydney Rankin, Stacey LaFollette, Nancy Bodurtha, Isabelle DuBard, Krista Wessel, and Shira Schwartz.

Now, without further ado, I would like to turn things over to Bay Fang, who will moderate today’s panel on democracy in 2024. We really appreciate your being here and joining us online. And we hope that you enjoy. (Applause.)

FANG: Thanks so much, Jessica. This seems like a wonderful conference. I can already tell by the energy in the room that you guys will have some great questions. And I just wanted to thank our panelists for being here for today’s CFR Conference on Diversity in International Affairs plenary, “Elections in Flux: The State of Democracy in 2024.” I’m Bay Fang, president and CEO of Radio Free Asia. And I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion. We’re joined today by conference participants here in Washington and on Zoom virtually.

So I’ll start just to my right: Ebenezer Obadare, the Douglas Dillon senior fellow for Africa relations at CFR. Jessica Keegan, a senior advisor for electoral integrity at the International Republican Institute. And Shanthi Kalathil, who’s visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., and also the mastermind behind the Summit for Democracy—the very first one, a few years ago. So we’re very excited to have all of you here.

So I wanted to start with you, Jessica, just to set the stage a little bit. Can you give us just the lay of the land of what’s transpired so far this year? We’re about—almost halfway through the year, election-wise. And what kinds of trends are you looking at?

KEEGAN: Sure. First of all, I just want to thank you, and thank CFR for the invitation to be here today. It is an honor. And I’m very excited to talk about global elections in this really watershed year for elections.

I think I’ll start by saying that half the world’s population will be involved in an electoral process at some point this year. It’s actually quite a watershed year for elections. And it’s happening at a time when autocracy is on the rise and illiberalism is on the rise, and political polarization is also on the rise. At the same time, we have seen a surge in global conflicts. By most measures—and leading indices indicate that authoritarianism in particular has seen a surge since the mid-2000s to last year. There’s also been a three-decade high last year, in 2023, in conflicts. And so this year of elections is taking place at a really pivotal time for democracy.

The other thing that’s happening is the rise and emergence of technologies, and the role of technology in campaigning. This is really the first election cycle where some of the new technologies will be tested. And where, in many cases, there are very few guardrails in place to determine their responsible use or to govern their responsible use. In terms of elections that we’ve seen this year—so, the really, I think, important and monumental thing about this year is that three of the world’s largest democracies will hold or will have already held an election.

So the United States, Indonesia, and India will all hold an election this year. In India, where 926 million people are expected to participate, it’s going to be one of the, I think, most monumental event in terms of people and sheer numbers coming out to the polls. Modi is expected to win. And his BJP party, which is the largest party in the world actually, is expected to win. However, civil society and others have decried what is perceived as an increase in authoritarianism or authoritarian actions in India.

In Indonesia, the president—the newly elected president of Indonesia has committed to a good neighbor policy. So there will be implications for trade and foreign policy in Indonesia. And, of course, in the United States our elections here will have a big bearing on development assistance. As with any American election, the outcome of this election will chart the course for the—for America’s foreign assistance policy moving forward, as well as our security posture in places like West Africa and Sudan, and our posture in Israel and Palestine.

Other elections that are taking place this year that are really important to watch are Georgia. Georgia’s upcoming election in October will either—the country will either go, I think, towards European ascension or potentially capitulate toward Kremlin influence. Moldova is also an extremely important country to watch. Moldova secures Ukraine’s second-largest border—shares Ukrainian’s second-largest border. So the outcome of Moldova’s election will have a direct bearing on the security and stability of Ukraine. European union elections—the European Union parliamentary elections are coming up as well next month. And that will determine the voting bloc’s posture also on Ukraine, as well as development assistance.

In Africa, we have really important elections in Ghana, in South Africa. Both countries have seen democratic backsliding in an already fragile region. And so instability in the outcome of these elections in South Africa and Ghana could have a ripple effect. Other countries, Tunisia. We’re looking at—Tunisia was once a bright spot for democracy in the Middle East but has seen a real precipitous decline in democratic governance. And in Mexico, whose elections are also coming up, there have been attacks on electoral institutions, which threaten, you know, the integrity of the electoral process and the transparency of the process.

So that’s a snapshot of, you know, the countries that will be holding elections. I mean, I think the really important thing is that what transpires, the quality and conduct of these elections that take place this year, will have immediate bearing on global economies, on domestic and foreign policies. And it will impact not only the citizenry, but geopolitics and democracy, writ large. This is all, as I said, transpiring at the same time of the emergence of new technologies that have been untested. I think we’ll get into some detail—we’ll talk a little bit more about some of the positives and negatives as a result of technology and campaigns. But I think there’s reason for concern as well as optimism.

FANG: Great. Thank you. And that’s a great segue to Ebenezer. Your focus is on Africa, where I know there are nineteen elections going on this year across the continent between presidential and general elections. And as Jessica said, South Africa’s election later this month could bring momentous change for the country. So I’m wondering if you can give us the state of play of what’s been happening so far, and then generally do feel like what’s been happening makes you optimistic or pessimistic for the state of democracy there?

OBADARE: Thank you. So it’s a mix of both. So I’m going to encourage you, as you sit in the audience, to picture a map of Africa. So at the westernmost tip of West Africa is the country called Senegal. And I’m sure some of you must have been following events in Senegal. The good news is from Senegal. Senegal is dishing out good news right now. So why? Last year, President Macky Sall decided that he was going to run for an unconstitutional third term in office. And then something happened. Students of Cheikh Anta Diop University, members of civil society, elements of political society, the United States, France—everybody basically doubled down and said: No. You can’t do it. Young people were killed on the street. but eventually President Macky Sall had to leave.

I think it’s important to sort of reflect on that, because it has several implications. So of the ways it’s good news is, one, the president did not get his way. We have a forty-four-year-old, Bassirou Daye, young, smart, forward-looking. I think it’s extremely positive news. Two, civil society prevailed. Young people, members of trade union, teachers—everybody who felt that the fate of Senegal, as one of the few countries in Africa to have never had a coup d’etat, that was important to keep the record going, that they succeeded. And I think it’s a success that should be celebrated by all of us who care about the state of democracy, not just in Africa but across the rest of the world.

Three, the judiciary, right? It’s true that people protested in the streets, people were killed. But up to the very last minute that was fear—genuine fear that President Macky Sall was going to have his way, until the Senegalese Constitutional Court said: No way. You’re going to have an election or you’re going to leave office. So think about it. The judiciary came through. Civil society came through. Political society came through. All of those elements working together converged to produce what I’m calling the good news from Senegal.

Now, don’t get ahead of yourself. (Laughter.) If you look at the place where it’s called under the shoulder of—you know, under the elbow of Africa—so there is Nigeria, and then two countries away there is this small country called Togo. Now, what’s going on in Togo? President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who passed in 2005, took over power in 1967. His son succeeded him. The son has been in power since 2005. So the Gnassingbé Eyadéma family has been in power in Togo for fifty-seven years, right? So and the (man ?), Faure Gnassingbé, has just organized a sham of a parliamentary election that is going to see him stay in power for the foreseeable future.

So on the one hand, right—so this is the good news and the bad news. The good news is coming from Senegal. And say, hey, look, there’s something here to bet on. People actually who want to be governed according to their own constitution. The media is important. It’s important to invest in institutions. But the magnitude of the challenge also comes from a place like Togo, where a dynasty that is masquerading as a democracy has been in place. And it’s a reminder that it’s not just in Togo that this is going on. If you look across to Chad, the same thing is unfolding.

There’s so many places in Africa where leaders have been in power for, you know, since Noah built his ark. (Laughter.) Uganda, Museveni, Rwanda, oh what’s his name, Kagame. You have the Nguemas in Equatorial Guinea. You have Paul Biya in Cameroon. You have—so on the one hand, you know, the positive news is there, and it’s very clear. And then you have the challenge. And I think it’s—the challenge for us is to make sure that while we, you know, focus on the positive news, we don’t also ignore the challenge before us.

FANG: Thank you. That was great. Shanthi—full disclosure, Shanthi is Radio Free Asia’s board, so I know her well. But I know you’ve done some groundbreaking work on disinformation in the past, especially around China and Russia. And I was wondering if you could expand our focus a little bit and talk about some of the broader forces that you see shaping democracy around the world.

KALATHIL: Yeah, I would love to. Thank you so much, Bay. And thank you so much to CFR. I have to say, for those of you here that are aware of the CFR Term Member Program, I was a term member many years ago and just got so much out of that program. So would highly encourage anybody who’s curious about it to check it out.

This is a great conversation to be having. I’ve actually been having iterations of this conversation for the last several days at different events. And I think it’s really important to take a step back. Because I think if you look at individual elections, you look at specific countries, sometimes it’s hard to kind of see the overall trends. And I think, as both Jessica and Ebenezer have alluded to, the overall trends have been a little challenging of late, right? I mean, we are in the midst of a secular democratic decline. There’s no way around that. It is not a good place for democracy at the moment. That doesn’t mean there’s no hope, and I can get to that in a little bit.

But one thing that I’ve been looking at, and Bay alluded to this, is at the same time that we’ve seen the secular decline in democracy over almost two decades, you’ve also seen a rise in the power and influence of the big authoritarian regimes. So particularly the Russian Federation, the government of the People’s Republic of China. Those two in particular I’ve taken a specific look at. And I would say that I see the rise in their power and influence as being linked to the concomitant rise of the power of technology and networks. And I can say, full disclosure, I look at this quite a bit. I think I support RFA’s work, because RFA is actually working in this information and technology space to push back on this.

But I did research about twenty years ago and particularly what the PRC was doing what the government was doing to harness, at that time, what was a new technology, the internet, right? This was before even the world wide web. This was literally bulletin boards and things like that, and things were just getting started. And at that time, I think there was a lot of skepticism that authoritarian regimes could actually harness the power of new communications technologies, because it was thought to be antithetical, right? If you are a locked down, big, stiff, and unyielding authoritarian regime, how are you really going to harness this powerful new network technology?

But what we’ve seen in the intervening years is that, in fact, especially Russia and China have been able to do just that. And so I see some of these trends going together. You have individual dynamics within countries around elections. You have polarization. You have a lot of these challenges. But you also have the rise of authoritarianism and the rise in the power and the influence of these big actors who also can then fund smaller actors, and really work in a networked way around the world. Because, as you know, globalization and the rise in technology has really powered networks. And so we’ve seen these authoritarian governments really take advantage of that power of networks.

Now, on the flip side, I think, you know, I want to end this on a positive note—at least this first interjection—democratic actors are also networking. They are coming together. They’re working—particularly in some of the instances that, you know, we’ve already alluded to, they’re coming together and especially working around elections to be even more powerful. What I would like to see, though, is more democratic solidarity and networking around the world, so that that’s actually a transnational network, and it’s able to meet the challenge of networked authoritarianism in the same way that those governments are doing.

FANG: Yeah. It’s interesting because around that time I was based in China, and I remember covering President Clinton’s, you know, sort of speech talking about China joining PNTR, which is the precursor to WTO, and saying that if China was going to try to control the internet it would be like throwing spaghetti against the wall. And, you know, obviously, his words have come back to eat at us. But so I am curious on the technology front, where does AI come into play in all this, and the disinformation, or in, you know, as you were talking about, the campaign work?

KEEGAN: I can take a first stab at that.

FANG: Yeah, sure.

KEEGAN: I think that’s really—you know, if you look at technology, we’re so focused on generative AI right now. But generative AI is really the newest development in what has been a long line of technological developments that both democracies and authoritarian regimes have taken advantage of. With generative AI, though, the ironic thing is that it has small-D democratized this technology. And so it’s made it much more available to anybody that might want to use it, both for good ends and ill ends. What we’ve seen happening is there has been a marshaling of these types of new capabilities to put forward more plausible disinformation, to really take information manipulation to a new level.

I would say, actually, we are in a very interesting inflection point where it hasn’t hit this critical mass. I don’t think we’ve yet seen the use of this technology to fully upend an election. But we’ve certainly seen uses of it in elections this year. And also, we’re seeing development of this technology. And we know, in particular, the PRC is seeking to develop generative AI to really move ahead in the AI race. And I am worried about how we’re going to see this evolve in the future, because you do have a lot of capability, and you have a lot of opportunity. And so I don’t think we’ve quite caught up. As you said, those guardrails aren’t quite there to protect against the effective use of that.

KALATHIL: Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I agree. I would add that there’s, I think, positive and negative potential consequences for generative AI. We haven’t really seen it play out to the scale that I think some thought it might be so far this year. There’s still plenty of time. I think what concerns me is less the opportunity—less the ability for the citizenry to recognize a deepfake, for example, than its ability to undermine more generally an electoral process or confidence in the results. You know, I think there’s debates on how convincing some of the generative AI can be. But I almost think it doesn’t matter, in the sense that a lot of the generative AI plays off of fears. And, as we know, fears are, you know, extremely motivating. So, that is what concerns me in the generative AI space.

I’m also concerned about the disproportionate impact on women candidates. Data shows that 70 percent of deepfake attacks and AI attacks are against women. We’ve seen that in Ireland, and in Moldova more recently—on the presidential candidate in Moldova as well as candidates in Ireland. I’m also a bit focused on what I call sort of advertising or scenarios, and that is kind of going back to this idea that it doesn’t matter. The ability of generative AI to create content that is so compelling that an apocalyptic event will happen if you don’t vote for the right candidate really plays to the electorate fears. And I think it has the potential to disrupt electoral processes, to sow chaos, to potentially turn citizens against each other, or against election commissions. And so that—we haven’t seen that, thankfully. But it does concern me.

On the flip side, there are, I think, some very positive implications for artificial intelligence, particularly in the campaign space. The use of AI generated music, or images, for example, or robocalls to engage voters at very low cost, in some ways, can be a great equalizer, I think, for under-resourced candidates. There isn’t a lot of focus on that yet. We have seen some novel use of it in the United States for good—I think, as a force for good. But this year really presents an opportunity for us to examine and learn from how it’s being used—how AI is being used for both positive and negative.

OBADARE: So you’ll forgive me for having a different set of anxieties. (Laughter.) So there’s a BBC poll conducted about three years ago. I’ve cited it a couple of times in my blogs. It’s a poll of young Africans, a thousand of them across the continent, ages eighteen to thirty-five. And the question was about, you know, their material circumstances, education, and, you know, the way they think about the future. And about 90 percent of them, they would leave the continent if they had the opportunity. And so the person doing the polling was, like, why would you leave? What was the problem? And they all zero in on what are called infrastructure. And they’re asked to break down infrastructure. It came down to two things: internet, electricity. Internet, electricity.

I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about AI yet—(laughter)—in a situation in which people don’t have electricity, in a situation in which people don’t have internet. And I would be selling off young people in Africa if they were to hear me say, oh, the next threat to elections in Africa now is AI. They would say, oh, yeah? But we need power, right? (Laughter.) So and I think the larger extrapolation from that has to be, even when we talk about technology generally—whether it’s AI or not—it always has to be socially and culturally embedded. It’s always people live in a specific sociological circumstances who make use of technology. And I think it’s important to keep that in mind.

FANG: Mmm hmm.

KEEGAN: And I have two quick points to add. On the positive side, I think there have been some positive developments that private media companies have taken this year. In particular, recent voluntary commitments in Munich, and that the private sector platforms have really, I think, done a fairly remarkable job so far trying to stay ahead of potential troubleshooting, not just with voluntary commitments but with other working groups and mechanisms to try to thwart, you know, malign information or mis- and disinformation around elections. So that’s one point. The second point I would make is I also think that the community of democrats, and the journalists in particular, what we’ve seen have done a fairly good job at pointing out false information, both online and in sort of the smaller corners of the internet on, you know, X and other platforms. And I think that’s really positive, that journalism and independent media have taken a real active role, but also a responsibility, in debunking false information.

KALATHIL: Can I just respond to one point Ebenezer made?

FANG: Yeah, please.

KALATHIL: Which is, your remarks really resonated with me because just yesterday I was on a panel about the digital divide at another conference that’s happening in town. This is the Special Competitive Studies Project at National AI Expo. So it’s all AI, all the time. This panel was so interesting. There were several people from different African countries, particularly Kenya, Nigeria. And we talked about that. And we talked about how, OK, we’re talking about AI at this level, but you still have this basic infrastructure need.

But I came out of that panel actually quite hopeful, because there was actually so much dynamism and innovative energy coming out of that space. Where people were saying, yes, we need the basic infrastructure, but we have a lot of talent here. And AI can be seen as a way that can really help countries in Africa empower themselves. And there was just so much enthusiasm there. So I know I tend to fall on the skeptical side, and I made that point before. But this is such a great discussion. And I really came away from it thinking, OK, it’s not all about mis and disinformation. You know, there’s actually really good potential there as well.

FANG: So, at this time—wow, time flew—I’d like to invite participants both in person and on Zoom to join our conversation with their questions. A reminder that this meeting is on the record. And we’ll start with a question from here in Washington.

Q: Hello. My name is Alexia Butler. I am finishing up my master’s at the School for International Training’s Graduate Institute in Diplomacy and International Relations.

I just finished the latter half of my master’s degree in South Africa, where I actually learned about the push for continental solidarity, Pan-Africanism Movement, the AUCC strategy, Agenda 2063, and, and, and. And basically one thing that I really found interesting was the whole resource curse, if you’re familiar with it, I’m sure, where, you know, Africa and its countries hold the most resource-filled lands in the world, yet there’s so much, you know, corruption, loadshedding, water cuts, millions in poverty, things like that. So my question is, what do you think is the future of continental solidarity and Pan-Africanism in Africa, given the prevalence of corruption and inequality in many countries domestically? Thank you. (Laughter.)

OBADARE: That’s clearly me. This is a minority position. And I think if you put all of the Africans coalesce together, maybe only one will agree with you. I don’t think Africa should be united. I think it makes no sense. It’s a large continent. Each country should go at its own pace. See, there is—there is a fool’s gold—there’s an attraction to say, because everybody in Africa is Black—and the most people in Africa are Black—then we should all come together. It’s absolutely—it makes absolutely no sense. (Laughter.) If you look at Nigeria—let me give you Nigeria, right? Nigeria could be two countries in terms of development. All the indices, right? Nigeria itself does not march in unison, and then you’re asking fifty-four countries to come together, right?

Look, there was a time in the ’60s when the Nkrumahs and the Sékou Tourés thought that would be the way to go. I think we’ve passed the idea of that. The best thing is for each country to attend to its own problems. If you do that, even in the context of West Africa, you’re going to see remarkable progress. African countries don’t have to come together. I’m not a believer in Pan-Africanism. I think we should go in the other direction. That’s a minority position.

Q: Thank you.

FANG: Please.

Q: Hi. My name is Kay Rollins. I am a junior at Harvard College, going into my senior year.

My question is for anyone on the panel. There’s been a lot of skepticism, both in the United States and in the international community more broadly, about the benefits of democracy versus authoritarianism. You know, authoritarianism, oh, you get things done faster, particularly with the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a lot of dis- and misinformation out there about, oh, democracies aren’t handling COVID very well. How do the democratic networks of the world, democratic countries, or even just individual leaders in the democratic space within countries make the persuasive case for democracy at a time when countries like Russia and China are pushing their case so aggressively?

FANG: Great question.

KALATHIL: OK. I’ll take a stab at that. You know, it is—it’s a hard question to answer. I guess there are two things that come to mind. First is that when you look at polling, there is actually still a lot of support, groundswell of support, for democracy out there. It doesn’t always manifest itself in a structural level. But I am always heartened by seeing that, because I think actually the demand for democracy out there among populations around the world remains strong. That said, there is a narrative out there that authoritarianism delivers a democracy is chaotic. Now, that is a narrative that’s being very deliberately pushed, right?

And I think one way that democracies can show that this isn’t the case—first, they have to get in the game and push back on that narrative. So I don’t think this is a passive thing. I think if you believe in democracy, you have to stand up and fight for it. And you have to make that case. And I think governments need to show that it can deliver for people. I mean, you mentioned the Summit for Democracy, which when I was in the administration, you know, we worked to put together. This was something that came up again and again, the idea that if democracy doesn’t deliver for people, it is going to suffer, and people will suffer.

It doesn’t have to be only national-level policies, though. I think one of the most remarkable things that I’ve—you know, people that I’ve come across that are doing really remarkable things are often working at the sub-national level. They’re working at the city level. When we convened for Summit for Democracy, we had mayors on the same panels as heads of state, which was nerve wracking for me as an organizer. (Laughter.) But it was wonderful. And I think that, again, really helps renew faith in democracy, when you actually see somebody that can work the levers of democracy to deliver. And we need to be—we, as democrats, need to be doing a better job at both doing that and showing that.

KEEGAN: Yeah. I would just add briefly to that, that youth are going to—there are hundreds of thousands of youth who are eligible to vote this year. There are millions, in fact, of youth who are eligible to vote and who will be participating in elections this year, and elected. And so the autocracy sort of versus democracy narrative, I think, one other way to help support, you know, democracy narratives, is also to support those newly elected to ensure that they have the support they need to demonstrate that democracies can deliver. And this is particularly important for young people who are getting elected for the first time into office, who are voting for the first time, participating in elections for the first time.

OBADARE: I’ll give you a paradox and two—(inaudible). There is the paradox; you know, the part of the world where people are disaffected with democracy and they are yearning for autocracy is in the West. You know, the part of the world where people want democracy and they will break people’s heads in order to have democracy; the parts of the world where people don’t have democracy. So let us think.

Two—(inaudible). Lincoln, who should know one or two things about democracy, said—(inaudible). Napoleon, we should know something about totalitarianism, said it’s an adventure that—(inaudible).

Q: Hello. Brander Suero from Open Society Foundations.

I’m much less hopeful than the three of you on the status of democracy. Can we even call India a democracy today? I think it’s government as engaging in opposition suppression, is trying to exclude millions of people, and excluding its Muslim community from even having a right to vote. And I think in the U.S., the world-leading democracy, we see a lot of internal struggles. I think that the current administration is moving on from its base in the minority community. We see police going into college campuses and arresting student protesters. So there’s a lot of worrying trends are currently happening in the two leading democracies in the world. So how can we be hopeful in that?

OBADARE: It would be absolutely bizarre if terrible things did not occur in democracies. They are run by human beings. The opportunity you have in a democracy is that you can talk about it. Can you talk about what’s going on in China? Can ordinary Chinese talk? Can you talk in Russia? That’s the fundamental difference. Democracy does not guarantee that life will always be good, but you always have an opportunity to talk about it.

Q: It’s becoming increasingly difficult to even talk about it.

OBADARE: And the answer to that is to double down on talking about it. (Laughter.) The alternative—hold on. There is no alternative, in that sense. There is no authoritarian El Dorado where there is one gray man who is going to give the law to everybody like Moses, and then everybody’s going to be fine. (Laughter.) Democracy is hard work, is full of frustrations. The frustration you’re experiencing is meant to be channeled into the institutions within the system. Bet on democracy, it works. (Applause.)

FANG: Anyone else? (Laughter.)

Q: Thank you all for coming in. My name is William Oestreich. Recently got off the Hill.

But I was wondering, for all of you, we’ve talked a lot about AI, social media. I was wondering, is there any progress we’ve seen in legacy media? Cable news in the United States has done a lot to undermine the legitimacy of elections, tabloid journalism in Europe, cable in India as well. BJP has used that to great effect undermine a lot of democratic institutions. So I’m wondering, have we seen any progress on that front with traditional media? (Laughter.)

KEEGAN: Well, the situation with traditional or legacy media around the world is pretty dire, as you alluded to. This is partly because the business models that we thought would carry media through collapsed, right? I mean, those business models did not survive the advent of social media. And I think what really worries me is, if you look around the world, it’s that collapse of local media around the world. People often don’t have the ability to have access to their local communities. I know that myself, you know, my hometown newspaper has shrunk dramatically. I don’t really have a great way, even here in this area where we’re, you know, blessed with resources here, I can’t find out really reliably about what’s going on in my community, and much less in places where, you know, the resources are much less abundant.

So it is a big worry for me. And I really would exhort people to be part of the solution there, to be honest. The good news is that I do think that this is on the radar of philanthropies, of funders, of governments. There is a groundswell of thinking and momentum to try and support local, independent, credible media around the world, which I think can go a long way to actually supporting the kind of democracy that you’re talking about, enabling people to have a voice, and to be informed. It’s incredibly important. I see Bay nodding, because, you know, she says all the time. But, you know, it really is an incredible mission. And it is—it’s something that does worry me.

FANG: Yeah, this was actually discussed at a CFR event also on elections and democracy a couple days ago. But, you know, one point that was made was that the money that used to go to newspapers and kind of more mainstream media is now going to social media companies because of digital advertising. And, you know, social media companies have not been as responsible in, you know, sort of policing for disinformation and figuring out safeguards around that.

So actually, we’re going to go to a question on Zoom.

OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Khadejah Taylor.

Q: Hello, everyone. My name is Khadejah Taylor.

Can you guys hear me? OK. So I have a differing opinion regarding the state of our democracy. I do think democracy is failing. The current war in Gaza—or however you want to call it—goes against what a lot of people think is OK. And our politicians aren’t voting in a direction where human rights are being respected. Even the citizens of this democracy, the majority of them—at least a CNN poll said about 66 percent of voters don’t agree with the amount of aid being sent to Israel or just America’s foreign policy approach to the situation. Yet nothing has changed. The United Nations, which is an institution that was to further democracy has really showed us that what’s winning is power, and what’s winning is money, and instead of the freedom to say what you want you’re actually being penalized for saying what you want.

And that’s why we’re seeing a lot of children and innocent people being bombed, being killed. Because I think a lot of us aren’t being real with the state of our democracy. I think it’s failing. And when we kind of move around certain issues, we’re not really helping the people who need it the most. Yes, AI, artificial intelligence, has caused a lot of disinformation regarding this conflict. And it has made a lot of people not really understand the conflict through social media. But I think it’s a bigger issue. I think it’s our foreign policy approach that has caused this issue to become a bigger one, that really seems like there’s no end or any positivity towards this—towards this issue.

And I was really surprised no one mentioned the Gaza crisis regarding our democracy, and how our votes—when I voted for Biden, I didn’t think he would give Israel billions of dollars. I’m pretty sure when a lot of people voted for Trump, they didn’t think he would support Israel in the way that he did before, and how he’s said he will support Israel in the future if he got—if he gets elected. And I think this ongoing crisis kind of shows that democracy is not as effective as it should be, or as we think it should be. So what do you panelists have to say about the Gaza crisis and the state of our democracy?

FANG: Whew. (Laughter.) Wow.

OBADARE: Yeah. Thank you, Ms. Taylor. Yeah, I can speak to that. I think you’re giving up too soon. The United States has been in existence as an independent country since 1776. I hope, for the sake of the experiment, that it’s going to take more than one stumble for all of us to just come to the conclusion that democracy no longer works. I think at every point in time, in any country, in any society, you’re going to come to a point where a segment of the society is totally disgruntled and disaffected. And what I’m going to say is that, you know, speaking to members of your generation, one, welcome to reality. (Laughter, applause.) Two, it’s a challenge to you to also jump into the fray and try to achieve the kind of society that you want to achieve. You should—it’s a challenge to actually strengthen the institutions of democracy, not to come to the conclusion that democracy does not work.

KEEGAN: Yeah. I’ll just say I think—I understand it’s a frustrating time. And it is—it’s easy to come to the conclusion that democracy is failing. Ultimately, democracy is not an end state. Democracy is a process. Democracy is something that you utilize to continue improving your society in the way that—and make it the way you want it to be.

So that is a very frustrating and unsatisfying thing to hear because it’s much easier to say, I don’t like what’s happening and therefore our democracy is terrible. But democracy is really—you have to think of it as a tool that you use to better life for yourself, and for your society, and for people around the world.

You know, I think that—Ebenezer said it in a much more punchy way and—(laughter)—and I don’t—I just will echo him in saying that I don’t think you should give up hope. I hope that people here double down and really get involved. You know, when I—every generation has these challenges. I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, and we worried—we had to get under our desks in case a nuclear bomb was dropped on us at any—we lived with this existential threat hanging over our heads as children, and we knew it was ridiculous to say, OK, I’m going to get under my desk—(laughs)—if there’s a nuclear bomb. That, too, is not terribly wonderful, you know, to grow up with.

Every generation has these things hanging over its head. You’ve got to use democracy to get to a society that you want.

KEEGAN: Yeah, and just one last thing. I mean, just to kind of recap and also not—not to go back to AI, but you did—you did raise a good point. On the democracy point, it’s messy, it’s hard work. It is not a destination; it is a journey. And yes, there are going to be ebbs and flows, and there are going to be times that, you know, you take two steps forward and five steps back. But this is part of the grand experiment, and it’s great to be in a country where we have the freedom to talk about it.

The second point—you raised something about—mis- and dis-information in Gaza, and in Palestine and Israel. And the false-positives in Palestine and Israel that we’re seeing percolating on social media platforms are happening everywhere—false-positives, you know, that, you know, something happened when it didn’t, or it did happen, or it—yeah, all of that is happening, but right now is the right opportunity to get involved in conversations about how those private entities and those platforms are going to govern themselves and govern this type of information that is spread, you know, digitally, whether it’s through artificial intelligence, or it’s other types of things.

And the reality is that this year poses the perfect opportunity because the private media is grappling with this question now—as is the Biden administration, as is the European Union—on how to deal with this, you know, artificial intelligence, but the governance of that is something that you can get involved in now, and will have an impact on how it is handled outside of the United States, for years to come—not just this year, but in the next, you know, several election cycles.

FANG: Yeah, and just to add to this—sorry—(laughs)—you know, in answer to the last question, if you are talking about sort of the authoritarian model versus the democratic model, I mean, you know, you have a voice, and you have a vote. And if you look at an authoritarian country like China, I mean, try—you were talking about like police going into campuses. I mean, try posting something on social media in China. You will get arrested. Try, you know, unfurling one banner or shouting something, you know, on a campus. You are going to get arrested.

So you guys have the power to organize. You have the power to make your voice heard.

OBADARE: (Laughs.) I don’t envy you.

FANG: (Laughs.)

OBADARE: I said I don’t envy you.

FANG: I know, lots of questions. The blond woman right there in the middle. Sorry, right there, yeah.

Q: Hi, I’m Rivka, easily identifiable as blond. (Laughter.)

So two of the questions that have just been asked, and also your answers, have a lot to do with generations. It seems like also in the comparison of the protests that are going on now, there have been a lot of comparison to the protests in 1985 and in 1968. And in each case, what happens is that people, you know, roughly between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five, let’s say, are disillusioned with what’s going on. They are frustrated. They are angry. They are sitting in the audience. And then people who are, let’s call it fifteen to twenty years older, are on the podium, and say, we were there, trust the system, put the frustration into the system. And so, you know, that moral high ground is always left open because the protesters grow up and put the frustration into the system, and then are sitting on the podium.

So is this just what we do—(laughter)—like every—do we just meet back here every fifteen years? Or do you see some kind of direction? (Laughter.)

FANG: Well, so, could I ask—could I just—(laughs)—put the question back on you, like, what would you do instead? Like people always say democracy is—you actually probably know the—I mean—

Q: I mean, I will answer your question by saying, not my problem. I’m a historian. I just started my Ph.D. (Laughter.) This is—(laughter)—

MS.     : What did she say?

FANG: But if you’re talking about going—

Q: For the record, I would like to hear your answer.

FANG: Yeah.

OBADARE: The answer is yes and no. See, so something I’ve learned—so we have, every now and then—and you know, my colleagues said it earlier—you have this moment where there is a lot of frustration, and you wish you could just go outside, punch somebody, or, you know—you know, enter the Capitol, you know, make your way, and all of that. (Laughter.) Some people did that, right?

But remember what happened a few years ago at the height of frustration with the tax system, the Tea Party. You all remember the Tea Party?

FANG: Mmm hmm.

OBADARE: I don’t know the actual figure, but on the back of those protests so many people entered the House of Representatives, so many people were elected at local levels. There were governors who rode the crest wave. There were politician(s) who rode the crest wave to be governors. That’s the way the system tends to bring in people and remove people at the same time.

We should all feel lucky—listen to this—that each time we think that this is the most important thing to do, that we do not have the means to do it at that time. Think about it. If everybody has their way like what you can do, what you feel is morally superior, is the best thing to do, if you could actually go ahead and do that, you would have a democracy.

The messiness of democracy is this: if and when that thing feels like revelation—I wake up and I have that experience all the time. Everything is revealed to me—(laughter)—but I still have to write to my congresswoman. I still have to write to my congressman, or I have to persuade people to follow me, to believe me. That’s a political marketplace. You have to sell that product there. That’s the difficulty of democracy, but that’s also the beauty of democracy.

FANG: Another question on Zoom.

OPERATOR: We will take the next question from Abigail Hawkins.

Q: My apologies. I have something—some technical difficulties.

Kind of echoing back to the last question, I just want to kind of go back and expand upon this. We talk about how, in this country, we have the right to protesting and saying what we feel to our government without facing fear of arrest. Thirty-three people were arrested at the GW campus in this city in the early hours of this morning. I think, in terms of like bringing into the question of our representatives—we are voting for these representatives to kind of enact the will of the people. Why is that we are seeing statistics and research studies showing that the vast majority of Americans are requesting that we send less aid to Israel?

So I’m just wondering, in terms of what is, then, this definition if we are a functioning democracy that our way to improve the system is to vote within the system? People have voted. I voted in the last election. I voted in every local election I’ve had the opportunity to vote in, and yet the people I have elected to represent the will of the people, the will of the people where I live—that’s not clearly being taken into consideration. So I’m just curious to know what—I guess to phrase it as a question, best I can, what is kind of the democracy state that is, you know, functional in the United States?

KALATHIL: You know, I think it’s easy to conflate a strong disagreement, disillusionment, downright anger at specific policy decisions with a dissatisfaction with the state of democracy as a system itself. And I would urge you to try, if possible, to disaggregate those things. I know it’s not always possible.

But you are—in any democracy, people are going to disagree about policy positions. You are going to have vicious, knock-down, drag-out fights about things that aren’t—don’t even have the stakes of the current conflict that we are talking about.

What democracy does is it enables people to discuss these things, to argue about them, to fight about them in a way that doesn’t involve killing each other, frankly. I mean, I think that that is, to me—and I look around the world—I am not a U.S. politics experts, but around the world, the way you know that democracy is functioning is you don’t have people in the streets shooting each other because it enables you to work out the conflicts—extremely contentious conflicts in ways that ultimately can be constructive outside of military sphere.

I think everyone can get into arguments about this point, about how much you disagree with what’s happening in the Middle East right now. I really would urge you to take stock of the broader conversation—I think a lot of our conversations can get sucked down this rabbit hole—but the broader conversation about democracy is one that I think everybody—you should interrogate it, you should ask why should I engage with this system, but try to take the longer-term view—at least I try to take the longer-term view when I feel disillusioned, and it’s not a generational thing. I think people of our generation feel disillusioned, too, you know.

I think, Bay, you said this before. The problem is there is no real alternative to that.

FANG: Right.

KALATHIL: And so you’ve got to—got to do what you can, and if you don’t like the way that your representatives are voting, I would urge you, really, to run for office, and be elected, and enact the policies that you want.

OBADARE: Can I—can I answer that?

Since we are talking about democracy and the fate of democracy, I am going to recommend one book to everybody. You may have read it, but if you haven’t, the best book, hands down, on democracy and democracy in the United States: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Take it. Always have it with you. (Laughter.) It’s the most penetrating, most insightful analysis of democracy anywhere in the world. And he anticipated many of things that we are talking about today. Believe it or not, he was a Frenchman. (Laughter.)

FANG: Yes, there.

Q: Hi, all. My name is Israa Nour. I’m a policy analyst with Open Society Foundation. I just want to thank you all for this really informative as well as surprisingly motivational—(laughs)—discussion, so thank you so much.

My question is a little bit to interrogate a statement that Ebenezer made about the continent and the generative AI conversation. I absolutely agree with you that, you know, internet, electricity, absolutely essential. But do you think it’s too soon for Africa to not engage in the AI conversation at all? I mean, for example, I mean, Sudan is at war now, hugest humanitarian crisis by scope and just sheer numbers, as well as the largest displacement crisis in the world right now.

During the early stages of the war, the Islamists, who were in control for over thirty years by al-Bashir, were using disinformation and misinformation to basically lead the citizenry to believe that Hemedti, one of the warring parties’—Rapid Support Forces—leader, was deceased or that he was severely injured in the war. And there were even, I mean, you know, recordings where folks thought that, OK, maybe he’s, you know, back. So my question is, I mean, isn’t the sheer existence of AI or the suspicion of the use of AI skewing and affecting conflicts happening right now on the continent? Thank you.

OBADARE: Thank you. I totally agree with you. So using AI, or using any kind of technology, is like being born, right? Nobody asks you, right? Oh, do you want to be born now? No. (Laughter.) Well, you are born. You are here. You find yourself in it.

I don’t think African countries have too much of a choice. The world does not slow down for anybody. It won’t slow down for you, even if you feel—rightly or unrightly—that you’ve been exploited, right? So you can have that conversation. But the world continues and things continue to go on. So it’s imperative that African countries get their act together, provide basic infrastructure, provide electricity, and then, you know, get themselves up to speed.

KEEGAN: Yeah, I would just add that, you know, Africa is not monolithic, but there are certainly countries that are in a different development stage, right, than others.

If you think about how some countries went from being completely unbanked, right—there was no banking system—to then a digital banking system—Kenya I’m thinking of, Zimbabwe. Of course, Zimbabwe has a whole other host of problems, right? But they skipped banking. So I don’t think it’s premature to say, you know, that—you know, we shouldn’t think about this. I think that the context is different for each country, and that it is possible that, you know, you can do both.

FANG: Thanks so much—sorry. I think we’ve already gone over time unfortunately. But we will have a networking reception outside for those of you who are here in person.

But thank you all for joining today’s plenary discussion, and thank you to our amazing panelists. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.

CHAN: Hi, good morning, everyone. How are you? Just heard that you had a great session with Mayor Garcetti and President Michael Froman. I hope you’re all excited. I hope we can live up to that panel. (Laughter.)

Thank you to our panelists for joining today’s CFR Conference on Diversity in International Affairs second plenary, Perspectives on Global Press Freedoms and the Future of Journalism. I’m Sewell Chan. I’m a CFR member. I’m the editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization based in Austin, Texas. And I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion. We are joined today by conference participants attending in person in Washington and virtually via Zoom. And I’ll just briefly introduce them.

Miriam Elder, immediately to the left, is the current Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A really distinguished journalist who has also had the opportunity to lead a newsroom, being a Buzzfeed World Editor and overseeing a team of journalists worldwide that really did a lot of extraordinary investigative journalism during a pretty record run.

Pir Zubair Shah is a very, very well-known Pakistani journalist who has been covering AfPak, South Asia, Southwest Asia, and security issues for many, many years. Is really, really esteemed. And we first encountered each other when we were at the New York Times.

And then last but not least, on Zoom is my dear friend Mohamad Bazzi. Mohamad both teaches journalism and runs the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. Mohamad and I were baby interns at the Washington Post in 1997. Now he’s a distinguished international journalist, and we just happen to be paired together on this panel. So, yes, the people that you know now are people you’re still going to be in touch with in thirty years, and it’ll be really, really fun. (Laughter.)

OK, we have a pretty big subject to talk about today, so I’m going to start with what’s most in the news. We’re at a time of several international conflicts in which becoming—being and serving as a journalist, documenting, chronicling, bearing witness, covering what’s going on overseas has cost a lot of people their lives. That’s happened, obviously, in the conflict in Ukraine. It’s happened in smaller conflicts from Yemen, to Sudan. And, of course, it’s happened a lot in Gaza, where, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists more than ninety journalists and media workers, because that includes support staff who provide linguistic, technical, and other vital services so that journalists can get the stories out—more than ninety have lost their lives since the tragic attack of October 7^th.

And so, you know, maybe I’ll start with Mohamad, but I’d like each of you to reflect right now on the danger and the peril in covering international journalism at the moment, and how you think journalists and correspondents worldwide are rising to the challenge of that peril?

BAZZI: Thanks, Sewell. That’s a—it’s a great question to lead us off. And it’s the most important question, in terms of our journalist colleagues who are out covering all of those war zones. I’ll start with Gaza, because I—that’s the example I know best at the moment. And I think it’s a different example than the others, because journalists from outside have access to Ukraine. It’s quite difficult. Some of the other conflicts, they have access as well, though there are some places—Sudan, for example, not is not a conflict where a lot of outside journalists have access.

But in Gaza from the very beginning the Israeli military decided not to allow access—and access to outside journalists—except for a few embed situations, where very highly—tightly controlled, embed situations, where journalists, often based in Jerusalem, will be allowed in with the—with an Israeli military unit for a few hours. I think we all, all of us on stage, know many journalists whose news organizations and who themselves have tried to gain access multiple ways, often through Egypt, which is also denied access, partly because on the Israeli side of the border they would—they would be turned back. But so it’s left the situation where we are reliant on Palestinian journalists to cover of the conflict from Gaza.

And I think they’ve done an exceptional job. I think they’ve done a tremendous service to the journalism community in the world. And one of—one of the things I regret is, in a lot of ways, the journalistic institutions, media organizations have been really, except for a few exceptions—and here, I think if CPJ, which you mentioned, which has done a lot of work to document the killing of the Palestinian journalists in Gaza—many journalistic institutions have not lived up to their end of the bargain in speaking out in the same ways that journalistic institutions will speak out to Russia imprisoning journalists, and other regimes and countries imprisoning journalists, or cracking down on journalists.

So that double standard that we’ve seen play out in Gaza is certainly something you see the Palestinian journalists themselves, many journalists in the Arab world, and really many journalists in the Global South noting this double standard, and exception. But the Palestinian journalists themselves, despite the most severe danger, you know, of any recent conflict, are doing an exceptional job, under circumstances where many of the journalists, you know, are also experiencing the same experiences that civilians are living through. So they have a constant daily struggle to secure food, to secure health care, if necessary, for their families, or for themselves. So all—despite all of those struggles, they’ve done an exceptional and professional job.

CHAN: Thank you. Zubair or Miriam, do agree that there’s a double standard in holding governments to account in terms of what happens to journalists, and how they’re treated, and what access they have? Please.

ELDER: I think, certainly, it seems like it’s much easier for be it governments—Western governments or journalistic institutions—to speak out when the, quote/unquote—you know, the “offending country” aligns with American values. So, for example, Russia is widely recognized as an antagonist of the United States. So it keeps in line with, you know, the general approach to Russia to call them out for jailing Evan Gershkovich, as well as other journalists. I think, obviously, we’ve seen over the past few months that as the administration wrestles with even their own policy on Israel and the uprisings that we’re seeing, you know, across the country, I think it probably makes it a lot more complicated. It’s hard.

It’s hard not to see that the conflict—and I actually—I don’t love comparisons, because I think horrific things happen on—sort of on their own terms. And I don’t want to take away from what Ukrainians are going through by important—you know, it’s important to highlight what Israel is doing to the civilians of Gaza. The comparison worries me sometimes because I don’t want to take away then also from what Ukraine is doing. But it’s hard not to see the double standard. And I’ll take it back even one more, but this is maybe more about policy than about journalism. But, you know, none of us could say that the discussion of, for example, Ukrainian refugees going into Europe was treated the same way as refugees from Afghanistan, or Eritrea, or what have you.

CHAN: Yeah.

SHAH: Exactly. As you said, we see this double standard, you can call it, like, the way things are covered. Some subjects, for example of Afghanistan, it was not covered the way this war is being covered, how the Ukraine is covered. I don’t know what the reasons are. But I think it wasn’t covered. And one reason Afghanistan, the government, fell was lack of reporting, lack of investigative reporting all these years. So we didn’t know what’s going on. No one knew.

Even the news coming from there, and especially from Pakistan—the country which was responsible for the failure of American mission in Afghanistan—there was a complete blackout of information. And the narrative they were promoting, there was no counternarrative to it, because the media was controlled—it’s controlled. Not only the local media, but the international media too. Because first of all, international reporters, they rely on the local reporters. If you have a strong local media, then you can—international reporters can work too. But if the local media is weak, then it’s difficult for the international reporters to really grasp the story.

Similarly, like, when they—for example, when they left—the Americans left, still we see this total vacuum. And I think a lot is going on in Afghanistan in terms of human rights, women’s rights, you know, girls education. But I don’t think there is enough coverage of it. It’s, like, covered, but superficial. It’s not really in depth on the ground, because no one can go there. So there is this lack of access. And so I think, yeah, there is, as she said, it might be more to do with policy than journalism. But we see this so-called double standards, yeah.

CHAN: I wanted to start with immediate threats to journalists—and thank you for addressing them—and then I wanted to now broaden the discussion a little bit. Because if you think about international journalism there’s at least three or four big things going on, right? One is that in much of the world it’s become more dangerous or even deadly to be a journalist than ever before. Mexico happens to be one of the countries where it’s deadliest to be a journalist, partly because of impunity and erosion of state and local authority—especially in places like northern Mexico. So there’s, of course, the violence threat, whether from state or nonstate actors. There’s also increasing repression.

And Miriam made the point in one of our recent conversations that it’s not so simple as a binary between democratic and autocratic regimes. Here even in the U.S., you know, you don’t see journalists—well, there was a journalist killed a couple of years ago—but there was a small newspaper raided in Kansas recently. It was improper. It was thrown out by the courts—violation of the First Amendment, of course. But you saw people trying to, you know, crack down and seize journalists’ records in our own country. And then, of course, you see transnational repression.

And you see—you know, Miriam has pointed out that even in Ukraine, right, which in many ways has welcomed journalists and welcomed them to document the conflict, but it actually hasn’t given them exactly a lot of access. So talk a little bit about that dimension of kind of press freedom, you know, beyond just the physical violence, but the kind of environment in which journalists have to operate and their ability to access getting to places to bear witness. Because as you say, Zubair, so powerfully, when there aren’t journalists to cover a place like Afghanistan, that in the public’s mind—especially the Western public’s mind—that place can disappear.

SHAH: Yeah, I mean, the threat is always—I think the physical threat is always there, which is, I think, still the biggest one. Similarly, exile and displacement. That’s something. But overall, I think the way the governments are—some of these governments, authoritarian you can say, the way they are manipulating the whole information environment, that’s, I think, really scary. Like, for example, in Pakistan, there is no, like, repression as such. You see the journalists. But there is a lot of censorship. You can’t report. You can’t say things which are very important.

And the same is then true with—I was telling her earlier—with foreign reporters. If I am a reporter, a New York Times reporter, and if I am posted to Islamabad, and then I have—like, it’s a big job. But the moment if I can do soft stories, that’s fine. The moment I, like, start investigating stories which will be offending to the military, especially, then you are kicked out. And so you can’t afford it. You need to be there. So you need to be, like, have this self-censorship, where you don’t report on the real stories because you don’t want to lose this position. You don’t want to lose the visa, for example. You don’t want to lose the, like, goodwill of the authorities, yeah.

CHAN: So to protect—to protect access, to protect access to sources, sometimes even to stay in a country, journalists might feel pressure to self-censor, which in some ways is even the most dangerous—like direct censorship is one thing, but it’s almost like next level, right, when you’re, like, everyone’s censoring themselves.

Zubair, let’s stay for a moment. For this group of emerging policy professionals, early career folks, what does that mean? If I’m an independent journalist in Pakistan, I’m trying to report on the ISI, the intelligence services, or I’m trying to describe what happened in the northwest frontier. Let’s say I’m with an independent media company. And I know there aren’t that many. And I try to file and tell the truth, what happens exactly? Does my boss give me pressure? Does my internet suddenly go out? (Laughs.) How does it actually—

SHAH: Actually, what happens—for example, when I first came in 2000—it was in 2012 or ’11. There was a young journalist from PBS. So she had gone to cover the drone war, which was very much in the news those days. And so she couldn’t get the visa in time. She had some specific time to cover. Then she went in Islamabad. So the moment you arrive in Islamabad, everyone knows—especially the ISI knows who you are. They have everything on you. So that girl, she was—like, she was asked to wait for a week. And her visa was expiring. So she was freaking out. And she—a guy was brought in the hospital and told her—they told her that this guy is traumatized by the drones.

And she had, I think, seen her—his ID. So he looked at Pashtun or Pashto-speaking. But when I listened to the interview, that guy was not speaking the language of Waziristan, where the drones are. He was speaking a language from the cities. So either he was not Waziristan, then he hasn’t seen drones. It was, if he has been in Waziristan he was traumatized, but he couldn’t speak the language. So he was not the real guy. But she had no time and no resources to actually double check. She just reported. And obviously people see that, yes, he is traumatizing, he’s in the hospital. But no, he’s not. So these are the tactics they play. They, like, delay your visas. Nowadays, like—

CHAN: Right, so was she manipulated to discredit her? Is that what you’re saying? Like—

SHAH: No, just she couldn’t—she couldn’t find the real person.

CHAN: She couldn’t find the real—got it. Got it.

SHAH: If she had found the real person, and those time people were very much in favor of drone attacks instead of Pakistani military operations—which is like, (Scott ?), you just—the drones were very accurate, like, intelligence-based. So people had these two choices: Either you drone us or you, like, bring the F-16s in, just destroy the whole villages and towns. So, I mean, people were in favor of the drones. But they won’t speak the truth because the military is everywhere, like, so—

CHAN: So, Zubair—and then I want to move to Miriam. Zubair, you’re a Pakistani journalist who was covering the U.S. war in Afghanistan. You’re working with major Western news organizations. Did you feel pressure as a Pakistani—like, hey, what are you doing with these news organizations? How—what—you know, tell us what that was like.

SHAH: Yeah. That’s why I’m here fourteen years, yeah? (Laughter.)

CHAN: Well, tell—yeah.

SHAH: Yeah, I mean, this was—

CHAN: It’s why you’re not in Islamabad, right?

SHAH: I was from the area. And I had friends both in Taliban, and al-Qaida, and the ISI, and the military, and everywhere. And so I had access to information, which they didn’t like, especially when they would take these embedded journalist when they were doing the military operations. And the main thing was extrajudicial killings, which they did a lot, especially with the U.S. funds. So some of our former reporting resulted in withholding funds under this Leahy amendment, the law where you can’t fund an army involved in the abuses. So that was one issue.

And then I broke the story of Mullah Baradar, who is now—he was arrested. And everyone thought, even the U.S. government, that the Pakistan are finally helping us. But you’re not helping the U.S. They were actually—this guy was talking to the Americans, so they took him out of the way and imprisoned him for nine years, and then brought him now for Doha talks. So these were the issues which, like, they didn’t like. And I was—like, I had this protection that I was with the New York Times. But also, that was a problem too, because that was the reporting which really annoyed them. So I left once. And then 2010, before the story would come out, I left. And that was still going on, and continues. And after the American withdrawal now, things are very bad.

CHAN: So for more than a decade you’ve had to report about Pakistan and Afghanistan from exile, from abroad.

SHAH: Actually, I report a little bit. Not that much. I reported from here. I reported sometimes on Afghanistan, or Pakistan from New York and D.C. But usually nowadays I’m just with the personal language services, mostly analysis and soft reporting. Yeah.

CHAN: Yeah. Thank you for your courage.

Miriam, you’ve been reporting from Russia and the former Soviet space for many years. Tell us a little bit about that environment, and what the reporting is like right now, what the experience of getting access to information is on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war.

ELDER: It’s a big question. So I was in Russia for about seven years. I left in 2013. And the time that I was there the threats were varied, but they were far and away much worse for local journalists, as they almost always are. So people being killed, jailed, beaten up. I think, you know, as foreign journalists, you knew that you were being watched. But it’s—you know, you accept it, and you kind of make your way forward with that knowledge. Things get harder as you get out of the cities because then you try to talk to regular people, and they assume that you’re a spy. You know, so these kinds of complications.

But things got really a lot worse after I left, and particularly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So there’s the case of Evan Gershkovich, which is probably widely known. There’s a journalist with Radio Free Europe, Alsu Kurmasheva, who’s also been jailed. Yesterday they jailed a Russian journalist. Last week, they jailed two other Russian journalists. So it’s a really open season over there, and seems like a—you know, a big warning against the media profession in general.

Most of my friends who are Russian reporters left within days of the full-scale invasion, and many of them moved to Latvia and a lot of them came here. And it’s actually been—like, it’s been just beyond impressive to watch the kind of reporting they can do from a distance. And I think this is something that is more and more present in journalism. It’s certainly not something that was around when I was starting out, about twenty years ago. But the kinds of reporting that they can do—you know, it’s almost stuff that maybe you couldn’t even do in person.

I have one friend, an incredible Russian journalist, and the kinds of stories that she has done, and continues to do, on Wagner. This group—you guys know, like, this Prigozhin guy who was killed. (Laughs.) But these mercenaries feel some kind of safety talking to her through the phone. And, like, they’ll just like, hold up their phone, like show, you know, everything they’re doing. This is stuff that she actually couldn’t do in real life. So it is a very grim situation, but it’s also been extraordinary to see how people develop skills to kind of counter the limitations.

And then on the Ukrainian side, I’ll just say, you know, obviously, you know, Ukraine is a very different country than Russia in so many ways, including on its approach to the press. But before the war started, Zelensky, the president, was actually widely criticized for the lack of access that he gave to the media. And that was sort of forgiven, as things are when a huge war breaks out. You know, people kind of band together and realize that, you know, they’re fighting for their survival. However, now that we’re, you know, two years into this, the cracks are starting to show a bit. And there have been multiple instances of when the Ukrainians, and the military in particular, doesn’t like the sort of reporting that gets out, they’ll deny press accreditation.

And this is something that reporters try to keep quiet about, for a variety of reasons. I think some of it is self-censorship, because they want to get that accreditation back because it is so key. But also because we’re operating in an environment where our reporting doesn’t just go out into the world as reporting. It also enters this, like, massive disinformation space. And so I think the other part of the self-censorship, maybe, question is, if I reveal this thing which is unflattering, how will it then be used, you know, by the Russians there, or the Israelis there, or what have you? So things are just much, much messier than they were, even ten years ago.

CHAN: Mohamad, do you want to weigh on that—in on that, either the part about journalists working from exile using tools that, yeah, have opened up—Signal, Telegram. There’s a lot—you know, a lot of reporters can get their sources now to take video, which also poses ethical and other considerations. Do you want to weigh in on that part, or the part about the misinformation? I’d love your take on that, because you’ve been following events in the Middle East, you know, both reporting from the ground but also having to write about areas that are not easily accessible to professional journalists, such as during the ISIS/Daesh conflict.

BAZZI: Actually, I’m going to weigh in very briefly on a point Zubair made just a little while ago on I think the limits of parachute journalism. So his example of the person who was interviewed, and Zubair being able to tell, thanks to an understanding of regional language accents, being able to place someone in the appropriate context. And I think one important trend that we’ve seen in journalism, and in some ways it’s a trend that’s been driven by cost cutting and a pullback from investment in foreign reporting, is there’s a lot less parachute journalism, you know, except in the biggest stories in the world. But there’s less parachute journalism than there used to be.

And in many ways, that’s a good thing. I think it shows that journalists with more regional expertise, language expertise, can get to do a lot of that work, and can also maybe help journalists who might parachute in. We’re seeing better journalism as a result. I think one of the successes—when Miriam led the international reporting team at BuzzFeed, one of their big successes is that they, the journalists she managed, lived in many of the countries that they covered and produced extensive coverage based on being experts. And, in many cases, had language and history and other skills that help them do that kind of reporting. And, you know, it really showed.

It was a successful—although Mariam will—I know will make the point about the financial aspects of the operation. But as a journalistic operation, it did tremendous work. And not, you know, not as an established—sort of, you know, not as a sort of old-guard media institution, but one that handled these stories with the kind of care, and time, and commitment of resources and expertise to them.

CHAN: So, yeah, I’d like to stay on that topic, if you don’t mind, right? So a lot of times historically when parachute journalism—does everyone know what that refers to? It’s, like, oh, disaster happened. An earthquake. And you’re suddenly mobilizing a lot of people to go in. They might not have in language or country expertise. But sometimes you actually just do—it’s a big thing. You need people, like, asking questions. So there’s occasions when that might be necessary. Then you have the kind of model where, it was largely Western news organizations, that did train people and provide some language training. But they’re not from the country. And they moved there from New York or Washington to cover a region or a place. And they’ll have a body of sources. And I think that’s still an important part of international journalism.

I think what Mohamad’s talking about is, like, the next frontier, which is really, frankly, about people being empowered to tell the stories of their own places, countries, regions, and communities. Is that the future of international journalism? Should there still be a role for these international journalists who come in, and especially for the big Western organizations? Should it mostly be, like, a team of editors internationally, but who then help local journalists tell the stories of their own places? How do you all reflect on that?

ELDER: I personally think it should be a mix. I think about, you know, like, the U.S., where a lot of American journalists who cover the U.S. can be blinded to issues that foreigners, you know, see about our country much more clearly than maybe we do. So I think an outside eye can be quite useful. I remember I was—you know, had one reporter working for me at BuzzFeed who’s now at the New York Times. And she had been in Cairo for a while. And then she was in Jerusalem. And then we moved her to San Francisco.

And the coverage that she did of Silicon Valley ended up being just absolutely explosive and incredible, because, she said, I treated it like a foreign beat, like I had to learn a new language. I had to learn the language of Silicon Valley. God bless her. (Laughter.) And—

CHAN: The tech bros have their own—

ELDER: (Laughs.) And but that made—you know, that made her coverage really fantastic. I think—you know, so I do think it should be a mix.

But something that I just—you know, perennially depresses me, is when I moved to Moscow the second time it was 2006. And, I mean, this might shock some of the people in this room. You know, you had—like, the Baltimore Sun had a bureau. Like, the Columbus, whatever, Dispatch had a bureau. Like, all these local papers had bureaus. And now when it’s really just the New York Times and the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, I find that incredibly boring, and also, like, just really unhelpful for our coverage. Because I think when it comes to foreign policy, something happens in this country and people just kind of, like, band together. And there’s just one point of view. And I think it’s really important to have really multiple perspectives. And you just don’t have that anymore.

SHAH: Exactly. I think foreign reporters—the local reporters, it depends. But talking Af-Pakistan, for example, I had no journalism education, as such. Mohamad Bazzi was the first—one of the first reporters I met, back in 2001, when they first opened a bureau in Islamabad. But I learned from different reporters, the foreign reporters—mostly American reporters, who would come. And I worked with them. And I would learn from them. So I think—and in my case, I would bring the local perspective, while they will have that American—what they’re looking in the story. So that was—like, we would kind of blend it, and it will put the whole picture. So the bylines would be, like, three, four bylines. One is reporting from D.C., one is from Waziristan, one is from New York, Islamabad.

So I think—I don’t think the locals, unless they are trained, unless they are educated, unless they have those—that kind of education which is imparted here in the universities. Otherwise, yeah, I think it’s good to have foreign reporters. But, unfortunately, it’s, like, this culture is dying. News that they had the bureau—no one else had a bureau there. Even New York Times had a very limited presence. So the budget cuts with all these things I think everything is affecting.

CHAN: So I have one more question that I—and we can talk about the business model—(inaudible, background noise). But I want to ask a question and then I want to open it up to you all. Tell us a little bit about operating—being truth tellers and telling accurate verified stories at a time of so much misinformation.

So you’re dealing not only with state actors. Obviously, there’s a lot of Russian state media. They seem to—you know, if you live in Russia and don’t have VPN it seems you have a certain different reality that’s pretty different from the reality we in more free societies have. You got the state-run misinformation but you also have the doxing and the harassing of journalists.

You’ve got journalists being stalked, their personal information being put online. You got a lot of attempts to question or undermine the credibility or the legitimacy or the qualifications of journalists.

How are you and your colleagues and how is our community—how are we reacting to all that in this age of, like, you know, you never know if—I mean, a lot of the authoritarian playbook you never know what’s entirely real. Everything’s kind of fake. Don’t trust anything. And that, obviously, makes it very, very hard when you’re a profession that’s predicated on trust.

ELDER: That’s a huge question. I don’t know that I have an answer. I think, you know, there’s a couple of ways to approach it.

On the one hand, there are—you know, there are disinformation campaigns that states are putting out there and I think that our industry has been, like, actually horrific at dealing with it.

I don’t know what you guys thought of, like, the Trump or, like, or not just disinformation Trump. You know, like, the Trump fact checks, I—personally, like, I don’t understand who—like, what Trump fan is going to, like, read a fact check and be, like, oh—(laughter)—the press isn’t the enemy of the people. He lied.

So I don’t—you know, I don’t think that—

CHAN: He got it—yeah, that’s in your budget projection wrong. (Laughter.)

ELDER: Yeah. And then on the other hand, you know, we have, like, very heavy-handed, like, government attempts to try to, like, somehow legislate disinformation. A conversation that, you know, I still don’t have the answer to but I’ve thought about this a lot with Israel banning Al Jazeera.

But, you know, the conversation here in D.C. a few years ago was whether Russia today should be banned and some of the Chinese state media and it’s a very, very difficult problem because these people are putting out propaganda and they are putting out, you know, not trustworthy things.

I’m not comparing them to Al Jazeera, by the way. It’s just the concept of it that struck it in my head. But then you ban these channels and suddenly that’s a move against press freedom in its own way. Even if they are not, like, the best journalists in the world you create a bad precedent and then suddenly the move spreads to more legitimate outlets like Al Jazeera, say, you know, in Israel.

So basically I’m saying I don’t have any answers. In terms of harassment it sucks. I’ve just basically gone almost entirely offline. I was hugely into Twitter and all that kind of a thing and I found that not just the harassment itself but then the fear of the harassment led me to change my behavior and I didn’t like that. So—

CHAN: And for women and LGBT, of course.

ELDER: Yeah.

CHAN: Much higher than for—yeah.

ELDER: It’s much higher, and then it’s also connected with other systems, right. So, like, I have done not perfect tweets in the past and then they’re picked up by Fox News and then you’re—you know, you become really in the center of this huge storm and your entire, like, computer becomes unusable for a week.

I think these—you know, these are difficult questions without clear answers, which is why we’re still sort of muddling through it.

SHAH: Exactly. Yeah, it’s very difficult. But, I mean, the thing is that—as she said that with the rise of so many news channels we really don’t even know that they are authentic news channels or not, and journalists, especially like such situation where you don’t have trained journalists and now with the citizen journalist it’s very difficult to really—you can hand a camera to anyone and he can claim to be a journalist.

So I think that is something which is eroding trust in the mainstream media, like, in the traditional media because there’s so much disinformation everywhere. So and with the lack of in-depth reporting, for example, when you don’t show the whole picture so people will take whatever bits and pieces they get from social media, from wherever they get it.

So yes, very difficult but I think we need more authentic journalists and journalism institutions and voices, yeah.

CHAN: Well, Mohamad, I think the term fake news is such a troubling term, right, because it’s used sometimes by leaders who are, like, this is news outlets that are giving me a hard time or that I disagree with so I’m going to label them fake news.

But then you’ve got things that are like so-called pink slime sites, like, things that are being created by actors that no one really understands who they are. They’ve created something that looks like a news site and kind of maybe sounds like a news site but it’s really propaganda.

And so it’s this really weird time where I actually don’t think the label is actually that informative anymore because it’s not clear what’s meant by it, right?

I’d like to open it up to questions. Wow, we’ve got a lot. So I am going to start with you because you had your hand up first and then we’re—yeah.

Please introduce yourself, if you don’t mind. And a reminder that this meeting is on the record.

Q: Perfect. Good morning. My name is Roger Orlando Reyes. I’m an intercultural and international communications major at American University.

This week I attended an event hosted by the Center of Latin American and Latino Studies in Alliance Americas that discussed the intersection between climate change in the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America and journalism.

A word that came up was seguridad nacional, or national security, as a way for those regional governments to limit or deny information to the press. So, from your experiences, in what ways can governments be held more accountable to their citizens to be more transparent about their activities and, moreover, is the threat to journalistic freedom symptomatic of the greater democratic backsliding that is happening worldwide?

Thank you.

CHAN: Miriam, do you want to handle?

ELDER: Sure. Yes, I think it’s absolutely an example of the democratic backsliding. I think we’ve—you know, we’ve talked about it quite a bit on this panel.

But I do think that there is an attempt by governments, you know, from across the range, from authoritarian to democratic, in crisis—I don’t know what we’d call America these days—to really, really control the narrative and I’ll mention, you know, the banning of Al Jazeera again and, as Mohamad mentioned, you know, not allowing journalists access into Gaza.

I think that part of this is maybe a response to the huge earthquake that happened in journalism as a result of social media and stuff that’s probably very, like, normal to you guys because you seem, you know, younger and of a good age.

But, like, we remember the time of before journalism where governments had a lot more say over the thing, right, or at least the contours of it and I think that there’s a huge response now to try to win back some of that control and absolutely you get it through national security alerts and all sorts of things.

You see it in the Ukraine war, for example, you know, where they are trying to just make sure the narrative that they want gets out there and they can use the—it’s not just an excuse the war is going on but they use the reason of the war.

CHAN: Next question. You, yeah, in the pink shirt.

Q: Hi. I’m Ezana Tedla. I’m a senior at Yale College.

My question is there is this kind of monopoly where the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal are really the only ones left while at the same time we have this proliferation of social media so you have a lot of, you know, not refined or just very kind of sporadic perspectives.

What are your thoughts on how upcoming journalists should adjust our education as—like, a lot of traditional media, it seems, is kind of falling apart but the kind of void is the only thing that seems kind of approaching.

CHAN: Mohamad, I’d like you to tackle that because you’re a journalism professor at NYU. (Laughter.)

BAZZI: Yes, that’s—it’s a challenge we face every day. I would say that one way to approach this, and this is less a response to the structural and economic earthquake, as Miriam described, that’s facing the journalism industry but more what you can do as individuals interested in pursuing a career in journalism or around journalism.

And just as an aside to that I think one heartening result of the earthquake and the change in journalism is there’s a lot more acceptance, and my colleagues may disagree with parts of this. But I think there’s been a lot more acceptance to people going back and forth between journalism and other work—human rights work, NGO work, sometimes political advocacy or political work.

You know, in previous decades it happened in more constricted ways. There was often a pipeline between a CFR type organization and government and back and forth and it would happen a little bit with the editorial pages. Columnists would be at the New York Times or Washington Post and then go back and forth into government.

We see it a lot more—we see a lot—I think there’s a lot more acceptance of it by news organizations these days partly because they just have to accept it that the economic underpinnings of the industry have changed.

But because of that, I would argue to all of you that it also means the kind of journalistic training, solid journalistic training that you would get at—if you’re going into a journalism program or I would advise you to go into connected journalism and area studies program if you’re interested in international journalism because that would give you the historical context underpinning language training and journalistic training.

It tends to take more time but it’s worth it. But it also means that you have the skills to take on not just journalistic paths and especially verification but also means that you can take on work for Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, or other NGOs and research from an international crisis group or CFR where those skills, the deep—if you get those deep research and verification analytical skills they’ll serve you across the board.

It’s not just—I mean, those skills don’t just underpin journalism. So solid journalistic training is still going to be useful even as the journalism industry is really imploding all around us.

CHAN: Mohamad, that’s really helpful and I think for this crowd I imagine that a lot of folks here do policy analysis or want to work in diplomacy or international aid, and I’m glad there’s a journalism panel here because interacting with journalists in whatever theater and sector you’re in is going to be really important.

OK. Wow. Lots of questions. I’m going to go to this—I’m going to go to the woman in the back, please, next to the doors. Just trying to get a range of the whole room.

Q: Hi. Thank you all for being here. My name is Abigail. I work for World Learning on the IVLP team, which is a professional exchange for the State Department.

One of the programs that we run is the aptly named Edward R. Murrow program for journalists where we invite a lot of journalists from around the world to learn kind of about the American standard of journalism, programs that we have here in terms of trying to combat misinformation, things of the like.

I wanted to also say thank you for acknowledging the double standard of how Western media, particularly American media, has been covering the situation in Gaza as we talk about the challenges facing journalists in Gaza and even beyond Gaza.

I’m not, of course, telling you anything new but in Jenin, West Bank, Palestinian-American journalist for Al Jazeera Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in 2022 and during the ongoing siege in Gaza we are seeing journalists wearing press vests being targeted. We’re seeing Al Jazeera correspondents’ family members being targeted, which we know is a war crime.

As we’re seeing this, to turn to our earlier discussions and also the mentions of social media throughout this discussion, as TikTok is something that we’re kind of talking about banning we’re also seeing TikTok and Instagram, platforms of the like, being a(n) option for a lot of these on-the-ground journalists in Gaza to share their stories, share what they’re seeing, as we’re not seeing Western media being really allowed in.

CHAN: The question?

Q: Sorry. To get to the question of the topic it’s, like, how do we prevent kind of the silencing of these people on the ground while we’re also combating the potential misinformation or, I guess, mal-aligned actors on these platforms like TikTok and how do we utilize similar kind of strategies for other conflicts in Sudan and the DRC, et cetera?

SHAH: Professor again, yeah. Thank you. (Laughter.)

CHAN: Mohamad, do you want to go ahead?

BAZZI: Why do I get all the tough questions? (Laughter.)

So it’s an excellent question. You have a lot of layers there. I think my—and I’m glad you mentioned TikTok because there is this very serious move to try to ban it in the United States. You know, talk about democratic backsliding. So I think one way to combat this because there are all these bad actors, as we’ve talked a lot about today, that do try to use these platforms to spread disinformation.

You know, one way is to get—I think for news organizations to commit even more resources to—they’ve committed some resources to the kind of fact checking and verification around information that goes on these platforms. So but a greater commitment and a more rigorous commitment, and also to not dismiss outright—I think, one of the things that’s happened, you know, we had—I’ll give you a quick example recently.

We had Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian photojournalist, speak at NYU through my—the center I run and other organizations, and there was a tremendous response at places like NYU. He’s not a traditional journalist. But in both the—our student community, our faculty community, you know, saw him as someone who represents this new kind of journalism and he was, you know, very honest. He was trained as a journalist but he ended up taking on this journalistic role and, you know, he deals—he’s dealt with criticism on—from all the sides in Gaza.

But, you know, this is someone who’s built almost very organically this tremendous following on social media by conveying a sense of what’s happening on the ground. And so the more examples of that, the more examples that we can nurture and see through as opposed to the more suspicious examples the more effective these platforms will be in the long run.

CHAN: Thank you, Mohamad.

In the green, please.

Q: Good afternoon. My name is Mary. I’m a Foreign Service officer and I’m heading to a press officer job in Sao Paulo.

Obviously, not a—such a contentious place. But as a press officer working for a government entity what have you seen are the best ways that—like, things like the embassy or consulates can assist either local journalists or foreign press people in the country whether it be a program or something? How could we support you as the government entity abroad?

ELDER: Well, the U.S. embassy in Moscow was very active and eventually became, like, at the heart of the start of, like, Putin’s kind of crackdown on or, I guess, turn against America.

But I don’t know. You know, the things that I found most useful, honestly, were they would do these breakfasts with the ambassador that were off the record and to me that—like, that was all just having some kind of a relationship and getting some insight in terms of that.

I think in Russia, which is very different than Brazil, at least under this government, you know, it was—one of the struggles was very much being very conscious that the government thought of American media as an arm of the government and that’s never something that any of us felt and it’s never anything we also wanted to propagate.

So I guess maybe being aware of how a too close relationship could also—maybe not in Sao Paulo. I mean, I don’t know. If Bolsonaro comes back it might be different. But how it could also—that could also then affect the journalists because I think the independence is also incredibly important to maintain.

CHAN: Great question. Yes, please. Yeah, and then we’ll go through the end of that row. Yeah. Young man. Go first. It’s fine.

That’s OK. Go first. Go—excuse me. Just go.

Q: OK. All right. Sorry. Hi. My name is Jasmine. I’m a senior at Seton Hall, and I study diplomacy and then a program where we study ancient religions.

And just so far in this conference when we’ve talked about conflicts and actors in diplomacy, I haven’t really heard anyone speak about religion. And I just wanted to ask your thoughts for the future of journalism and covering and not just—not just from religious outlets. Religion from an analytical lens in all of these things.

CHAN: So, in other words, journalists helping to use the lens of religion to better understand human events, conflicts, but really from an informed religious perspective, looking at the substance of people’s beliefs?

Q: Yes.

CHAN: Zubair? (Laughter.)

SHAH: I don’t know how to answer it. So the question is?

CHAN: Should people—should scholars—you know, should journalists, who often are a secular bunch—should they take a deeper look at the substance and the content of people’s religious beliefs and how they might inform their either political actions or how they respond to even events? Do we need to take religion more seriously?

SHAH: That depends. You know, like, if you remember in 2016 there was this Chelsea bomber, the guy in New Jersey who tried to. So I went to the mosque in New Jersey and the guide—they won’t allow me, and I couldn’t lie to them that I am here to pray. I was not. I couldn’t—but I said, you can’t stop me. So I went there and then I had to—I had to, like, look at this was religious, like, transformation; that how from an angry person he became religious, and then radicalized, and then—so I mean, it depends on where you cover. Like, in Pakistan, religion is everywhere. It’s part of the story usually.

So you need to know or at least have an understanding of what will it entail if I ask questions, if I report it one way or another. But I think it’s—yeah, it’s important if you are—especially if you’re in a culture where religious was dominant. It’s part of the story kind of, and I think Mohamad can better explain this.

CHAN: Yeah. That’s not just the geopolitical but also people’s belief systems, their belief structures that help to explain their human behavior.

Yes, please?

Q: Hi. My name is Dove Weste (ph). I’m an attorney with the ACLU.

And I just wanted to ask about something you mentioned earlier about the relationship between local journalism and international journalism and whether you could elaborate on that relationship, and also how the death of local journalism is affecting press freedom globally.

CHAN: Well, maybe I can grab that, if you don’t mind, just because I work in local journalism currently.

I think boundaries between local, domestic, and international are kind of blurred because we don’t really go through our lives thinking, OK, what part of my day is local. You know, the coffee I buy or maybe how my street is cleaned or how my kid is educated, pretty local.

But we also, of course, exist as national citizens and then, of course, we exist as members of the global community. So what I think in brief is that the erosion of local news in the U.S., which I know best, I think is pretty foundational and contributing to the erosion of democracy.

We know that when you ask people do you trust in the news, unfortunately, a lot of Americans say no, thanks. We also know that when you ask them further what they mean by that, when you ask people do you trust in the media often their first association is highly partisan cable talk news where a lot of people, frankly, are debating with varying degrees of agreeability.

When you ask people about local news, about people who cover weather or education or public health in the community, you get much higher levels. People are, like, oh, yeah, they cover my county commission. Yeah, I know. They’ve been at the school board. So a higher level of trust.

And so one reason I’m where I’m at is that I think that that state and local level is essential because right now Americans are getting a distorted view. I don’t mean ideologically. I mean from the federalism perspective all they’re hearing about is Washington, congressional dysfunction, the president doing this or that, other president doing this or that, and it’s almost like state and local is left out of the picture, and I think it’s giving you a distorted view of democracy.

So, in my view, journalism has to serve at all levels, right, because, yeah, like, whether the water contract should be issued to this company may not seem like affairs of, you know, war and peace but actually they matter a lot to the people on the ground and if people on the ground have a sense that because they know what those issues are in their community, they have a sense of democratic efficacy as citizen, then they’re going to become more responsible citizens and then a lot of the bigger debates are then informed by a set of values and knowledges.

Because trust, I don’t think, comes from Washington. I think trust has to kind of come from communities across America where people have a sense of they know what’s going on and they have a stake in what’s going on and that will, hopefully, trickle up to the national space. That’s just my point of view.

Yes?

Q: Hello. Thank you. Yes, I’m Keegan Scott. I work with the Institute of International Education, specifically in the Fulbright Program, and I’m very excited to be here today.

My question was about AI. So what are the approaches? I’m wondering what the approach is or, rather, how international journalism should approach AI and if there are any implications for press freedom in that discourse.

ELDER: Do you mean, like, using AI to produce our journalism or how we cover the emergence of AI, or both?

Q: Whatever you’re—however you want to respond.

ELDER: Thank you so much. (Laughter.)

I mean, first of all, you know, I think that we’re all sort of starting to formulate our thoughts on this so I’d be curious to hear, you know, what others think. But I think, like, the biggest change that AI is going to make to the industry is not going to only be to foreign journalism.

My real worry is, like, for what happens to entry level jobs which is where you get a lot of your training on how to do the thing. I have no journalism training. I never went to journalism school. I just graduated college and two weeks later I was, like, I’m doing the thing, and I worry that those entry level jobs will be replaced by AI.

In terms of covering AI, though, I think, like, it is a perfect international story. You know, Sewell and I were talking about this but, like, the story I really can’t read enough about is—and Time magazine had a story last year. The Journal had some things recently about, like, the use of, like, super, super underpaid people in Kenya to, like—you know, to actually go through and, like, make—I don’t know the words. I’m not an AI person. To make the AI or whatever, you know. But the way that people across the world are being used in just, like, the worst labor practice sort of way.

CHAN: To code and categorize.

ELDER: Yeah.

CHAN: And to also consume really awful—

ELDER: See the horrific things, which is what happened also with social media moderators, right, more like in the Philippines and stuff. So it’s such a deeply interconnected story so I think the place for coverage is very, very rich.

CHAN: Yeah. I think it involves labor and involves regulation, and AI is going to change a little bit of how we do what we do. Not all of it has to be bad. I think there’s too much focus on generative AI, like, are AI going to tell the stories?

Well, I hope not right away because I definitely don’t have trust in that yet. Can AI do more to help us analyze records, visualize data, comb through transcripts, take 50,000 pages and help summarize themes? If it can do that, that could actually help a lot of our journalists.

So I think we have to look at it in both—you know, through both dimensions but it’s a very evolving discussion. I got time for two more questions. Yes?

Q: Hi. My name is Brielle. I work in communications at the University of Virginia and a proud graduate of UVA.

And my question pertains to local journalism because after college I actually worked in local news and a local newspaper in Charlottesville for several years. But because of the low pay, sadly, and ongoing instability in journalism I made the switch to communications last year.

So my question is with so many local newspapers shutting down, laying people off, and even big news outlets like Vice, BuzzFeed shutting down or laying people off so many other young people are just leaving journalism.

So my question is I’d like to hear how can the job instability in journalism, especially local journalism, be addressed so people even want to be journalists anymore and, you know, actually want to be reporters.

CHAN: Mohamad, do you want to take that because you’re—or do you want me to?

BAZZI: I think you should take it, Sewell. You run a journalism organization. You have it.

CHAN: First of all, stories like yours are so common and I’m sorry to hear that. I do want to say that just journalism isn’t, like, an exclusive license like law or medicine that’s, like, you’re—if you’re not a full time paid journalist then you’re not a journalist.

I think people can engage in journalistic activity from all over, whether it’s the TikTok person doing all this work from Palestine, citizen journalists. There’s people who do their own blogs in Substack. There’s a lot of ways for people to express themselves, to gather and convene verified, accurate information, to do that, to write stories and also to do that within settings.

I’m a big believer that there isn’t, like, oh, you’re a journalist or if you work in comms you’re on the dark side. That’s BS. That’s BS. Anyone who’s committed to truthful, accurate, verified information is on the good side and if you’re not committed to those things then we got some problems.

So, first of all, I would say, you know, think about all the ways that you can use your storytelling powers and your skills as a journalist to continue doing, you know, truth-related activities. I mean, like, UVA needs positive stories told. UVA also needs, you know, people like you who understand what the press need and actually how UVA’s story can kind of be best told in the world.

So I think that’s part of it. On the local front you’re seeing some initiatives like Press Forward, which is trying to bring together 3(00 million dollars) to $500 million to kind of plant local newsrooms in so-called news deserts around America and these deserts are real—try to get more—Report for America is placing a lot of trainees in journalism.

So there’s some bright shoots. It’s a hard landscape but there’s some bright shoots.

Now, just one more. Yes, please? And thank you for that question, by the way.

Q: Hi. How are you doing? My name is Randolph Smith from Morgan State University.

My question is on when it comes to, like, you know, not just with politics or even stuff we’re going, like, so forth—my question is as a journalist what needs to be done to find the truth and knowing, like, how to also be protected because we talk about actors—we also talk about the public safety. What more as journalists can we have, like, our own protection when finding the truth and also making it explicit for the world to see?

CHAN: That’s really interesting. Do you want to mentioned Dart Center, either of you? Where do you want to go with that?

ELDER: I could.

You know, I think questions of journalists’ safety are evolving. The internet has really absolutely changed everything. I have found, like, one of the interesting discussions around, like, the protests on campus right now how mad certain people are getting that people are, like, masking their faces and that seems like a complete denial of the world that we live in now, which is if your face is on social media, you know, it doesn’t only open up, like, government retribution but, like, random people can come after you.

What’s been happening over the past few years that I have found helpful is stuff that can empower you maybe personally so that you feel more confident as you do your job. So we’ll just mention there’s a great center at Columbia called the Dart Center. There’s a group based here in D.C. called the International Women’s Media Foundation. They conduct various trainings to teach you how to, for example, both deal with your physical safety but also your digital safety. If you are in the middle of, like, a doxing attack and they provide all sorts of resources.

I think the main thing that has to happen is, you know, just this continuing loud conversation that journalists have a right to do their job. Journalists cannot be arrested including in America, including student journalists, if they are doing their jobs. You know, that’s the main thing is shouting about the protections that we have as citizens.

CHAN: Thank you all so much for joining today’s plenary discussion around global press freedoms and the future of journalism, and thank you to Miriam Elder, Mohamad Bazzi, and Pir Zubair Shah. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.

SENGUPTA: Hello, everyone! Welcome to the last panel of this afternoon’s program at Council on Foreign Relations. My name is Somini Sengupta. I’m the international climate correspondent for the New York Times.

I am really delighted to learn from our panelists today.

Luisa Palacios, you’re a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy. Just recently you completed a two-year period on the board of directors of Citgo Petroleum Corporation. You know a great deal about Brazil and the world.

Monica de Bolle?

DE BOLLE: Yeah.

SENGUPTA: Did I get that?

DE BOLLE: You got it right. You did. (Laughs.)

SENGUPTA: OK. You told me to ignore everything other than that you’re a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. (Laughter.) You’ve been there since January 2017.

And joining us online from Kigali, Rwanda, where it’s past dinnertime—well past dinnertime—thank you for joining us, Natalie Unterstell. You are currently serving as the president of Talanoa, a climate policy think tank in Brazil. Thank you for being with us so late in the evening.

We’re going to have, you know, a conversation that I hope will be rich and engaging for all of you, we’ll open up the floor for questions in about a half an hour. So please prepare some. And then it will be my pleasure to close our session and invite you to a cocktail reception. (Laughter.) So I want you to both open up by really telling us about Brazil being under the spotlight between now and COP-30, right? We’ve got a year and a half. What does President Lula and his administration have to show between now and then?

DE BOLLE: OK, I’ll begin. I think several things, but notably—I mean, we have seen in 2023 a very, very significant reduction in deforestation. That’s very welcome, of course. It is something that we would have very much liked to see earlier. Unfortunately, that did not happen. But that is something that needs to continue and actually needs to accelerate, because the goal that we need to reach—we are at a point where the goal has to be zero deforestation. We can’t have it anymore.

And the scientific studies that we’ve seen and things that have come out even recently, there was a very good study that came out in Nature, it was actually the cover of Nature, a couple of weeks ago by some Brazilian scientists discussing precisely what is the state of the Amazon, what is the state of the art in research in analyzing Amazon tipping points? So this idea that, you know, once you’re past a certain threshold of deforestation, the rainforest can no longer sustain itself and it automatically starts turning into savanna.

This paper actually was extremely good because it discussed—it discussed the fact that there’s not just one tipping point, there’s several, because you need to understand the rainforest as a connected web, as a sort of a connected—it’s an ecosystem, but it’s a web of ecosystems that are interconnected. And in fact, you know, when you look at the data, what you see is that in some areas of the—of the rainforest, the tipping point—we’re already past the tipping point. So the rainforest is actually emitting more carbon than it is capturing, which is not what rainforests are meant to do. And in other areas, there’s still some resilience.

So what I believe President Lula needs to come up with, based on the science, based on these studies, is how is it that we’re going to get to, yes, the zero deforestation point, but at the zero deforestation point, while maintaining the resilience that is still present within the Brazilian Amazon? This is critical. And he needs to lay out a clear policy plan for us to get there. We’re lacking that part.

SENGUPTA: That is his main challenge—zero deforestation by the time the climate conference gets underway next year, and a plan on how to get there.

Natalie, what’s your take on this?

UNTERSTELL: Thank you so much. And thank you for having me. It’s such a great honor to be with you and to answer this particular question, which is exactly the work that we do at the moment.

So I absolutely agree with Monica, that deforestation—tackling deforestation is at the bare minimum of what Lula needs to deliver. We cannot expect deforestation to go to zero next year. I think that would be—well, not a dream, but it’s not realistic to expect that to happen in one and a half years, especially after what happened in Bolsonaro’s years. But, yes, there are—there are good chances that deforestation will go down by next year in the Amazon. And, of course, the direction is already set. The Lula government is already committed to zero deforestation by the end of this decade. And there is a plan underway.

What I am concerned are the other bits of the climate policy, which are not in place. So for instance, when we talk about the race to zero—the race to net zero, we talk about the energy. And let me be clear with you, there is no transition happening at the moment. Actually, what is happening is that we are doing quite the opposite. We are adding more gas. And we are striving to become the fourth-largest oil producer by 2030. So this is one very big thing. And of course, it’s not possible to change course from now to 2030 because it’s been contracted with trillions of investments already. However, we need to discuss what’s going to happen beyond. And this is exactly the conversation that Lulu is opening space to occur, but not necessarily has committed to a real transition. At least not yet.

So we have this very big elephant in the room, which is visible and should be discussed. And just to add to that there are two other points which are somehow related to this conversation. One is the issue of adaptation. Brazil had a very difficult 2023, impacting agriculture, impacting communities, impacting energy as well. So we cannot get rid of it. And Brazil is still doing everything business as usual, climate as usual, government as usual. So it’s a very important piece to get ready for COP-30.

And finally, as mentioned by Monica, we need a policy. Currently, there’s no policy. There’s only a discourse on the ecological transformation plan. But we can barely call it a plan because there are no instruments, there’s no governance, there’s no coordination. So anyways, we need to go beyond the discourse—which is creating, you know, some flanks for progressives—but in the end of the day what matters is what is in paper codified and can be implemented.

SENGUPTA: I want to come back to two things that you mentioned—the energy transition and adaptation. But first I want to ask you, Luisa, top challenges facing Lulu between now and COP.

PALACIOS: So I think one of the things that was discussed in the last panel was the tensions that exist in foreign policy. Those same tensions exist in energy transition, right? And so particularly exactly because what was said, Brazil is an oil producer. Not only is an oil producer, it’s a huge oil producer and exporter. It’s the most important oil producer and exporter in Latin America. And so it is also in the spotlight. So how does an oil producer and oil-exporting country do energy transition? And to me, that is a—you know, once you get into COP, the spotlight is going to be on Brazil exactly on all of these kinds of issues.

It’s not only on oil and gas and refining. It’s also on biofuels. Because the energy transition will—though we think just about reducing carbon emissions in the energy sector or carbon emissions in general, the energy transition is coming with a whole set of—it’s a bigger agenda. It’s about biodiversity. It’s about waste management. It’s about many other things. And so Brazil has a very, very dynamic bioenergy industry. But it is a—it’s an industry that also gets into—I think it’s in the spotlight because of the food versus fuel type of debate. So there, Brazil is—I always use this phrase—is an energy powerhouse in every single way you can think about energy.

Its energy supply and energy demand, production of energy and energy users. But it’s also a very big country in terms of the high emitting sectors in the industry—in iron ore, in mining. Everything that you can think about, Brazil is big on. And so it is—like, it’s one of those places, because the energy transition is not a one-size-fits-all model, to me it’s a very important place from the Global South on how you can actually do energy transition in a way that is orderly, but that you do it, right? And so how do you—how do we do this in the Global South? How do we take—what does just energy transition mean, without this meaning an excuse for inaction? And so all of those things are coming in together. And as the UAE found itself, Brazil is going to be in the spotlight for everything—for deforestation, for oil, for biofuels, for everything.

SENGUPTA: The biofuels also, of course, bring some deforestation questions as well, right? You said, Natalie, that Brazil had a very tough year in 2023. Can we just understand what are the main climate risks that Brazil is facing right now? Because that’ll help us also understand what the energy transition can look like, might look like? Monica, I think, you know, you in our email exchange pointed out the crucial fact that Brazil does not have an emissions footprint really from its electricity sector, because its electricity comes mainly from hydro. But doesn’t climate change also pose some risk to hydro? What are the key climate risks facing the country, in its different regions right now? Who wants to take that one first? Monica, you want to take that one? Go for it, yeah.

DE BOLLE: I can begin. So yeah, absolutely. And I think that is a—that is a critical point, because one thing that we have already seen as a result of deforestation—and perhaps this speaks to Natalie’s point on 2023 and how difficult a year it’s been. 2023 was a year where we saw profound droughts affecting various parts of the country. And in part, this is because—in part—well, in part, it’s El Nino. And in part, it’s deforestation, because the Amazon, as all rainforests do, generates its own—its own rain necessities, right? Not all of it, but most of it.

And the deforestation itself, once it reaches a certain point—and the Amazon arguably has already reached that point—starts to affect the hydrological cycles or the rain cycles throughout an entire region. It’s not just concentrated on the Amazon but extends further down into South America. And arguably, you could say, it also extends a little bit into Central America. So some of the issues that we’ve seen, for example, in the Panama Canal—and I’ve written a piece about this. You know, the drought in the Panama Canal that’s currently affecting it badly, part of that may be a result of these changing hydrological cycles.

SENGUPTA: So deforestation is itself changing the weather in the region, even as climate change and El Nino is also changing the weather in the region?

DE BOLLE: Exactly. And then it starts to pose these problems, because it poses problems for the hydro sector. It poses problems for public health. Brazil is going through its worst dengue outbreak in recent history. And the—

SENGUPTA: And that’s because of?

DE BOLLE: That’s because of warming temperatures, and it’s because of the changing patterns of rain cycles. But it’s climate change. It’s all climate change related. And we have already seen how these vector-borne diseases with climate change are affecting different parts of the globe. They’re not just, you know, where they used to be. They’re going everywhere else. So, you know, all of these issues are interconnected. All of them pose a challenge. And in the end, with Brazil in the spotlight, with Brazil, having the largest rainforest in the world, responsible in one way or another for all of these issues that are playing out at the same time, you know, these questions are going to come up. So what do we do?

SENGUPTA: Yeah. Natalie, do you want to talk about the main climate risks facing Brazil?

UNTERSTELL: Yeah, sure. I think there are at least three things that are important here. One is what Monica was explaining in terms of the rainfall regime, which is changing already. And that affects our hydropower-based power matrix, right? We have some indications that for 2040, Brazil will—we will have a dramatic change. Well, it’s occurring already, but by 2040 the projections are that, for instance, areas where we have today, Belo Monte Dam or other, you know, dams in the Amazon, they will have at least, like, 30 percent less, I forgot the name—they will have less water flows by then. So imagine if today we rely on that type of energy, that’s no longer the case. So this is a very, very important topic. There are these other two factors, as Monica pointed out, El Nino and the deforestation, which are accelerating, contributing to this. But overall, there’s a very basic component here.

The other point, which is related to the rainfall regime, is agriculture. So the fact that we are seeing already longer dry days and drier conditions is certainly affecting the south of Brazil, has suffered a lot in the last years, and the Midwest, so the soy-producing areas. They are projected to be extremely affected. So that has prompted some debate around, should we continue doing soybeans in Mato Grosso, for instance? Should we start, you know, having other things? So this is important.

And finally, the landslides and the floodings are certainly the most common threat that we experience in Brazil. And, of course, this is becoming even more difficult to deal with because this is now compounded with things that we never heard of, such as cyclone bombs happening in the south of Brazil. There is a famous singer in Brazil that say that the country is blessed by God and beautiful by nature because we never had the type of things—hurricanes, cyclones. And suddenly we are having to deal with, especially in the south. So the economies are not prepared for that. People are not prepared for that. So there’s a wholesale change in the way that we will have to deal with risks overall. And, of course, there’s a lot to do.

SENGUPTA: Do climate risks pose a challenge for the energy transition decisions that Brazil has to make?

PALACIOS: Absolutely. So—and it’s not only Brazil. It’s actually many countries that depend on hydroelectricity. In the case of Latin America, some of them are, like, really, really dependent. And we’re talking about a region that on average, has—its power sector depends—it’s right now about 60 percent renewables. But most of that—of the 60 percent, 45 percent is hydro. And so in the context of climate change, that poses really significant, I think, challenges about how to continue to be renewable, how to—so the countries in the region, not only Brazil, what the solution—what the solution has been, OK, let’s put much more renewables. And I think the region, and particularly Brazil, has been very, very successful at auctions that bring about non-hydro renewables.

So the region is actually one of the best in the planet. I always use this for students. Latin America is what the rest of the planet wants to be. So we—Latin America in general has a very green electricity mix. It is true that that doesn’t mean the energy matrix. But power is the most important component of the energy matrix. And so in the case of Brazil and other countries like that—Canada is also super dependent on hydroelectricity. So this is a—so how do you deal with a power grid that is now integrating more and more renewables, which are intermittent, and then you have instability in your baseload?

And so some of them have resorted to increasing at least the availability of natural gas. But what that has meant is that the energy transition right now feels like energy addition. It doesn’t feel like energy transition, because the energy transition is about breaking the 80 percent of share that fossil fuels have over the production of energy. But that breaking up is leading first to a ramp up of renewables. And you can see it in the data. That data is telling you that every new source of power electricity—70 to 80 percent of new power electricity is coming—is renewable.

So we’re heading in the right direction there. It’s just a we’re not retiring anything else because climate change—the irony of this as well is it leads to higher energy demand, because heating the planet means more demand for cooling. And that demand is exactly in emerging market and developing economies—

SENGUPTA: Including in Brazil.

PALACIOS: Including in Brazil, that have been these resources to deal with the effects of climate change. So it’s actually—you’re running just to be at the same place.

SENGUPTA: Yeah. So is Brazil doing enough to attract investment in renewables, to, you know, promote renewables?

PALACIOS: This is a—COP-28 ended with many different things, including transitioning away from fossil fuels.

SENGUPTA: Away from fossil fuels, yeah.

PALACIOS: But also, scaling up renewable—clean energy technologies, particularly in emerging market and developing economies. Because this is where the huge gap is. So emerging market and developing economies in general have not seen an increase in clean energy investments. We have seen a significant increase in clean energy investment. It’s just that it’s going to China and advanced economies. However, I will have to say that Brazil last year was among the top ten destinations for clean energy technologies. So they’re doing something right.

SENGUPTA: And by clean energy technology, do you mean—

PALACIOS: Renewable electricity—

SENGUPTA: Like solar?

PALACIOS: Yeah, solar and wind. And—

SENGUPTA: And wind. Offshore?

PALACIOS: Offshore as well, but the second generation, so where—those are the mature technologies. You don’t really have to subsidize that, because we have already—

SENGUPTA: The prices have come down, yeah.

PALACIOS: The price is commercially possible. The rest of the clean energy technologies are more difficult. But I have to say that what I’ve seen so far from Brazil, even though it might not feel that the country is doing enough relatively to the rest of the emerging market space, it is actually really trying to put all the ecosystem in place to attract energy investments. Not only in the more mature renewable electricity technologies, but also in other places. So it does seem that they’re doing something right from the point of view of seeing an increase. The trend is the right place. You’re not anywhere close where you need to be.

SENGUPTA: I want to ask you one other question before I open up the floor for questions. We’re talking about energy transition. Is there a need to also talk about an agricultural transition, for exactly some of these reasons you are, you know, bringing up? Brazil is a very important agricultural commodity producer. That is largely the reason why there’s been so much deforestation in the Amazon and in the sertão. So is that discussion going on? And what are the sort of, you know, economic and political challenges in having that discussion?

DE BOLLE: So there’s a huge political bottleneck in that discussion, because when you look at the composition of the Brazilian Congress at the moment, there is—there’s a large group of congressmembers, who are—who have very close ties with the agribusiness sector, with the agricultural sector. And what we have seen consistently over the past few years, but in particular it intensified last year, is that pieces of legislation that have been put to Congress in order to improve, you know, the conditions under which agriculture is conducted, to improve them in a way that’s climate friendly and environmentally friendly, they’re getting shot down.

So, for example, we had a piece of legislation on regulating very strictly the kinds of pesticides that can be used in crops, because we know from scientific research, again, that pesticides—some types of pesticides actually contribute to climate change when you use them. And this piece of legislation in particular, was to have been a very important one, but it was completely shot down. And it never went anywhere, precisely because of this very strong agribusiness caucus that is in Congress.

So we are seeing a lot of political pushback within the Brazilian Congress on measures that are critical to advance on the agenda, and to actually get to the point that Luisa was talking about. You know, not just running, running, running to stay at the same place, but actually running so that we can—we can strive ahead. There is a very big political bottleneck there.

SENGUPTA: Natalie, you were shaking your head when I asked the question. What’s your take on this?

UNTERSTELL: Look, as deforestation starts to go down, agriculture and land use are going to become the most important source of emissions for Brazil. And since Brazil is also committed to net zero, I think this is not an optional question. I think it’s an imperative, right? But we need to build a political economy around that. As I mentioned in the initial comments today, the Lula government is opening space for a conversation around transformation around energy transition to happen. We still don’t have this political economy, this political space to do this conversation. But that doesn’t mean nothing is going on. For instance, there are fifty shades of green and brown in the agriculture sector in Brazil. And there are good things that I think we need to elevate and we need to, again, create a space for a progressive conversation on this.

SENGUPTA: I mean, I’ll ask it really bluntly. You know, does soy cultivation have to stop expanding?

DE BOLLE: Well, I guess it depends, right, Natalie? I mean, if it’s done in a way that is sustainable—and in many ways, some of the soy sector has moved in that direction—then, no, not necessarily. I mean, we have seen some soy production that these days now uses a lot less land than it used to. And at the same time, it recycles that land use for other purposes. So we see, you know, recycling of crops. You grow soy once season, then you turn to corn, and then you might even turn to cattle ranching because, you know, it helps to sort of reinvigorate the area, or plantation, and so on. So there are things like that that are going on. But there could be more, for sure.

SENGUPTA: OK. Let’s open up the floor for questions. We’re going to take questions from our virtual audience as well as from here. So I saw a hand going up here first.

Q: Hi. Will Freeman, Council on Foreign Relations.

As Brazil has emerged as a major consuming country for cocaine and also a transshipment point for cocaine to Europe and West Africa, I’ve seen more and more reports that drug trafficking organizations are contributing to deforestation in the Amazon. So I’m curious if you can assess how much of the deforestation and environmental degradation that we’re seeing is driven by that type of activity and by organized crime writ large, compared to the deforestation driven by agribusiness? Are we talking about a drop in the bucket? Or is this really a serious threat to the future of the Amazon?

Secondly, now, we’ve heard earlier today that the Lula government has achieved a surprising and rapid reduction in deforestation rates. Is the government so far also targeting those organized crime activities that contribute to Amazon deforestation? Thank you.

SENGUPTA: Who wants to take that?

UNTERSTELL: I can take that. Well, the statistics we have point to a 99 percent of illegal deforestation in the Amazon. So we are talking about very well-organized crime in the region. I don’t think we can say this is driven by drug trafficking. I think it’s an association of different crime, you know, organizations. And, of course, they understood that they could use, you know, land grabbing as a source of revenue too. So there’s a combination going on. And at the core of the Brazilian command and control or the law enforcement policy is precisely this idea, that we are—they are combating the agencies, they are combating crime. And I think they have the tools. The toolbox is there. We have very competent intelligence people working on this. So we are seeing more and more also the Ministry of Justice involved and, you know, the federal police.

So there is a very interesting and collaborative governance around this, which is, I think, well equipped to deal with this. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy, right? Because this business is so well-organized, so well-funded that it became much more difficult after Bolsonaro. Especially because our frontiers, they became much more permeable too. So we cannot guarantee that what Brazil knows to do in terms of enforcing the law will continue to work in three or five years. So maybe we will have also to rejuvenate the way that we combat these types of crimes.

DE BOLLE: And just to add one point to what Natalie was saying, we need to keep in mind that, you know, the Amazon, to a very large extent, is kind of a no-man’s land, literally. The distribution of property rights, and land titles, and so on, is extremely difficult. So you have areas of the Amazon that are so-called public land, but because there are no land titles or anything like that, you know, the scope for illegal activities, in the sense that Natalie was talking about, is immense. It’s huge. And that problem on its own is a massive problem, because look at the size of the Amazon. The Amazon corresponds to nearly a third of Brazil, right? (Laughs.) So it’s a huge area. And so we’re talking about, you know, being able to impose these property rights in a massive area, and actually being able to enforce them. Because imposing isn’t enough. You need to enforce, right? So it’s a very complicated issue.

SENGUPTA: Luisa.

PALACIOS: I was just going to say that part of the challenge is—of the energy transition in emerging market and developing economies, like Brazil—is that it requires actually significant state capacity. Because it requires a lot of times—so, everything that you produce you now have to show not only that you say you produce sustainably, you have to show it. Which means that people have to trust that your certificates are correct, that you, indeed, did not deforest this land when you produced that specific product. So it comes with such a demand for the same institutions that are lacking in these places that I think that to me, the issue is—yes, it’s an issue of finance. But more than—not only of finance. It’s an issue of institutions.

And so, deforestation. There’s academic research on why exactly is it that all of this nature, carbon sinks, if we call them, are exactly in emerging market in developing economies? It is because of a lack of state power. Because if you had a very competent state—I’m not sure it does. I just thought it was interesting, the idea that it is exactly in developing countries where you continue to have this pristine forest, because development has not reached. But now we need to keep them there, but how do we keep them there in a way that that does not preclude the development from those countries?

And so issues like the voluntary carbon markets, that people are—you know, have such an issue with that, to me, this is so important because we do need to create institutions where there have never been institutions. The government now making sure that its pristine forests where there’s no-man land actually are policed. The immense—so much of that is not yet there. The ecosystem, it needs to be there.

SENGUPTA: Yeah. Yeah. We had a question in the back, gentleman in the back.

Q: Octaviano Canuto, from the Center for the New South. Former VP of the World Bank

Two points. Well, fantastic discussion. Very good. I felt the absence of any reference to key critical minerals, which is an important dimension of the green transition. And you know what, recently I saw a presentation by Simon Evenett from the Global Trade Alert, where he depicted the configuration of key critical minerals in many places of the world. But Brazil doesn’t have one official map. The Chinese have—

SENGUPTA: (Laughs.) For Brazil?

Q: Yeah. They do. But I ask of my colleagues on the government and so one, and nobody knows exactly. Somewhere there is a hint, there’s somewhere. Anyway, this one dimension that matters, among other reasons, because of the ESG risk associated with the production of those critical minerals.

So I would have—and the other point is the following, it’s more of a provocation. Which is the following: Even the most optimistic scenarios for the road to decarbonization, the ones assuming, you know, ambitious planners and so on, depict only a gradual elimination of fossil fuels, right? No one can imagine that you may have an abrupt change from night to day. And there are many reasons, difference in cost, and so on. So for the next thirty years, the residual demand for fossil fuels will still be there. And they establish the limits to which we can—we can consider the decline of those.

My point is the following, you cannot simply measure or consider the production of oil of Brazil in itself. You have to put it in this context. There is a market. Hopefully if everything goes all right then the oil producers will have to face a shrinking demand. But measuring the Brazil production of oil without taking this into account, I think it is not appropriate. That’s my point.

SENGUPTA: I want to come back to that point, you know, at the end. But I think the critical minerals question is part of the energy transition conversation, right? Does Brazil have the natural resources for the new green economy? And is it trying to develop those, in good ways or bad ways, in your view? What are the challenges there? What are the risks there? Or does Brazil have the—you know, the old gray economy natural resources only, and must stick to that?

PALACIOS: Do you want to—

DE BOLLE: I can say a few things and then pass on to you.

PALACIOS: OK.

DE BOLLE: So if we look at, for example, one of the areas that I find most fascinating, and that’s been in development in Brazil—and I’m sure Luisa knows more about it than I do—green hydrogen. For green hydrogen, you need these machines called electrolyzers, which basically are going to, you know, take water and separate two hydrogen molecules from an oxygen molecule. You can do that by using certain types of critical minerals, which are not found in Brazil. And those would be the more acidic electrolyzers. So a different—a certain kind. Or you can do that with more alkaline electrolyzers. And those would use precisely the kinds of minerals that you find when you extract iron ore. You know, so those are nickel and other things that are in within that group of alkaline metals. And those, Brazil does have.

Brazil is beginning to develop a green hydrogen industry. Doesn’t have regulation. Still needs to regulate precisely what green hydrogen is going to be. But as Otaviano was saying, and I think Kellie too, China has these things mapped out for Brazil. They know where the reserves of alkaline metals are and, you know, what sorts of electrolyzers you can build. Brazil needs to get a grasp of its own of where its capacity is to do these things.

PALACIOS: So there’s two minerals that are critical for the energy transition. One is copper and the other one is lithium. Cobalt and nickel also matter, but those two are critical—critical minerals. But Latin America produces 40 percent of the copper that is produced on the planet. And it has about 36 percent of the reserves of lithium. So that’s not Brazil. It’s Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia. Those are the three—what we call the lithium triangle. The Chinese are highly invested in the lithium triangle, in part because the way you think about this is that the upstream part of the sector is the raw materials, but all the refining capacities is in China. And so the issue is, yes, Latin America—and there are reserves of those critical minerals in Brazil, not so much copper. And there are the concentration of each of these minerals, and the concentration of the refining capacity is a problem.

It’s not just because of geopolitics. It’s just dependence, such high dependence. It’s a risk management issue, right? And so, I think that what is happening with critical minerals is that how do you do this sustainably? Because it’s—we’re not going to just switch from one really extractive resource to another, and then do other types of harms to the earth. So the energy transition is coming—as I said, it’s not just carbon emissions. It’s coming with a whole set of sustainability things around it. Even the hydrogen, the carbon intensity of the hydrogen, the waste—everything. So it’s a tough one, right?

And so, and more importantly, it’s the not only the biodiversity, the water usage around it, but the human rights component in a lot of this. So that makes investing such a difficult part. Even if you—if you really—you know, there’s a lot of impact investors and energy transition investments. They don’t go to mining. It’s just too difficult. And so therefore, there are concerns about just trying to develop mining in the U.S., the same kinds of issues. This is tricky. This is difficult. These are trade-offs because the energy transition is not cost free. So in order to—so, people want to invest only on the downstream. You want invest in electric vehicles, in batteries. You just don’t want to be on the other part of the more difficult processing of those minerals.

SENGUPTA: Right. I mean, the energy transition is not cost free. That lesson was made very clear to me a few years ago when I went to Chile to write about the lithium mining, and the environmental risks. and the and the concerns that that came up.

Do you want to add something, Natalie, on the critical minerals question?

UNTERSTELL: Yeah, just a quick comment. I really would like to see it as a part of the climate policy in Brazil, and not only as a sectoral policy. We just published a recap of the existing policies applicable to critical mineral minerals as of today. (Laughs.) And they are very conventional, very traditional, in the sense that they’re just replicating what the sector always does. And I think that there are goods and bads in that, but I think we need to look beyond. And one of the challenges that lies at the heart of this discussion in Brazil is that most—well, there’s a gap of knowledge, as was mentioned. But the things we know—or, the areas we know that could be explored, they have a lot of—they are overlapped with protected areas and the ocean.

So we will have to work around that, on marine spatial planning, on, you know, some other forms of negotiations. Because, yeah, we need to deal with that piece. And the other piece is also should Brazil prioritize having this, exploring this? Should we maybe work on green chemistry and other alternatives? So I think we really need to broaden the discussion and, you know, break the sectoral silo where normally these things are discussed and defined.

SENGUPTA: I want to remind everyone that this meeting is on the record. I do want to put out an invitation to our audience on Zoom to submit a question. In the meantime, there’s a question back there.

Q: Hi. Shannon O’Neil from the Council on Foreign Relations.

We’ve been talking a lot about what Brazil can do at home for its green transition, but I would love to take you all to Brazil’s role in sort of global green diplomacy. And so Brazil has long had a history here, right? 1992, the Rio summit started off the whole UNFCCC process. They were a big player in the Paris agreement. And they’re going to host the next COP-30. We know the COP process has kind of lost a little bit of its luster over the last few years. I’d be really interested in sort of where you see Brazil, either in the COP with their planning or in other formats, what can they do? What are the areas where you could see real progress? Or what are the limitations for Brazil as a leader, given it is doing this kind of all-of-the-above energy strategy, and it has—you know, it is a big emitter. It does have some of these challenges that we’ve just been talking about. How do you really see it playing on the international stage?

DE BOLLE: Well, taking this to an area that we haven’t talked much about, but which is very—I think is a critical issue that we often don’t talk about enough with climate change. I think where Brazil can make a lot of strides—and I’m not—I’m not at all positive that they’re going to move in that direction. But where it could is precisely in the area where climate change touches on public health. Because not only does Brazil face the challenges posed by climate change, with the sort of tropical diseases that it sees, and that, you know, it’s seeing more and more of. As I said before, we’re in the middle of the worst dengue outbreak we’ve ever had, but it has the capacity to develop drugs and to discover new drugs, because of the amount of biodiversity that exists. And this is something—this is an economic activity that can happen without necessarily damaging the environment.

So, you know, taking a cue from what Luisa was saying, Luisa was making the point, look, there are all these issues in the energy transition. And we think of energy transition as something, you know, irrevocably good. But it does have a carbon footprint. We can’t ignore the fact that it has a carbon footprint. Well, here’s something that doesn’t necessarily have to have a carbon footprint on the—in the public health arena, and which should be of interest to everyone, because not only are these vector-borne diseases moving elsewhere on the planet—I mean, we here in the U.S. are importing, you know, malaria kits, and dengue kits, and chikungunya kits—stuff that we never did before. I was looking at this data the other day and I saw this ramp up from 2019 onwards. We never had to import this stuff before, but we’re doing it. The European Union is doing it too, because, you know, guess what? Dengue has popped up in Belgium, you know?

So, given this—the placement of Brazil in the international stage, and the sorts of things that it has at its fingertips—it really should be a player that unites the climate change issue with the public health issue, because they’re intimately connected. Are they going to do that? I don’t think so.

SENGUPTA: Natalie?

UNTERSTELL: Well, I have a list of three things. One is the NDC diplomacy. So really, I think it lies with Brazil the responsibility and the opportunity to set the tone on the nationally determined contributions this year. So I think that that’s very important because the Paris Agreement is based on this concept of raising ambition over time, so whoever, you know, elevates the targets, but also the whole policy will probably, like, influence others to do the same, and even to go beyond. So this is one thing, and I’m very confident that Brazil, you know, will take that opportunity to be bold on that.

The second is on climate finance, which is a discussion that’s been very much around the quantum, not the quality. And I think now we have, with the G-20 particularly, a very good opportunity, you know, to have a more structured conversation and move beyond this, you know, Global South-Global North thing. Which I think it’s really outdated when, you know, some of the Global South actors in the convention are petrostates. (Laughs.) With a lot more money than many of the Global North players too.

And finally, on tipping points, we are facing the risk of tipping point in the Amazon. And, of course, we are concerned with all others, right? The Atlantic, Antarctica. So I think this conversation about how we build policies that the international but also at the national level to deal with the tipping points can also be part of Brazil’s presidency of COP-30.

PALACIOS: So, and I am going to touch on something that Otaviano said. I think because Brazil is a petrostate, it’s one of the most resilient petrostate because oil is not the one and only thing in Brazil, it does have a national oil company that is regarded as a very competent national oil company. Therefore, how petrostates and national companies navigate the energy transition is of utmost importance, for many reasons, including geopolitics, and the survival, and immigration issues, whatnot. So, how does a national oil company do that?

It also is by financing the energy transition itself. Either by doing it itself, or by financing the private sector, putting its balance sheet to become and create market. So, for example, in Latin America and many other places, the largest demand for hydrogen comes from refining. So one way in which the oil sector can, you know, really helped the green hydrogen transition, which requires markets that do not exist, is by becoming then themselves the offtaker, by taking the risk of developing this. So there are many ways in which Brazil and is competent technocracy and states can do that. That’s one, the national oil company.

But the other thing, and climate finance is a very, very good example, is investing in green energy technologies in emerging markets is very risky, for a variety of reasons. But Brazil also has a development bank, BNDES, which is innovating in the concept of blended finance. Which—what it does—blended finance, what it does is that it tries to derisk the private sector so that it provides that catalytical finance, so as to significantly increase the availability of finance from the private sector. Because the energy transition is going to be very costly. And most of it has to come from the private sector. But it’s not going to come from the private sector unless we start to derisking somehow the projects.

And so one example that Brazil is doing, and it’s very interesting, the things that are happening in those concepts of blended finance and of using the balance sheet of state-owned companies—which are everywhere in emerging markets—as also part of the way you finance the energy transition.

SENGUPTA: And that’s very interesting. The biggest state-owned oil companies are continuing to expand oil and gas production, including Petrobras. That is not exactly the shift that was agreed to at COP-20.

PALACIOS: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m actually going to touch on that point.

SENGUPTA: I want to come—I want to come back to that at the very—at the very end, OK?

PALACIOS: OK. (Laughs.)

SENGUPTA: But it seems to me that one thing to keep in mind about Brazil’s role in the world is precisely that it manages to talk to a lot of different powers, right, in a multipolar world. Its relationships with Moscow and Beijing and Washington, there are—there are open channels there. So that makes it interesting. That makes it an interesting player in climate diplomacy, particularly if there’s a change in administration in the West later this year.

I think we’re going to take the last question from the hand there.

Q: Hi, there. Elliot Waldman, Point72.

When we talk about deforestation in the Amazon, a lot of the agricultural products that are grown, raised on illegally Deforested land are bound for export markets overseas, including pretty significantly here in the U.S. Curious to what extent you think there’s possibilities, potential to address that issue on that demand side, through things like tighter regulations, closer monitoring of supply chains? Or is that just too impractical of an approach?

SENGUPTA: Well, the EU certainly has taken that approach. And, you know, deforestation and supply chains are going to be looked at much more carefully on some of these crops.

DE BOLLE: Yeah. But there’s an important point here. When you look at the big, big players in the agribusiness sector in Brazil, the really big exporters, those are not the ones doing Amazon deforestation. Including because of where they’re located. I mean, they’re located in the sertão, most of them. The ones that are doing that—that are, you know, doing these activities and sort of going more and more into the Amazon, are the smaller producers that don’t necessarily produce for export but instead produce locally. And there, you know, there’s an issue that really does need to be addressed. The Amazonian states in Brazil are the poorest states in the country, by far. And you need to resolve the issue of poverty if you’re going to address this particular issue head on. Unless you address the issue of poverty, this isn’t going to be addressed. And you’re still going to have these activities taking place, still at the at the margins of the Amazon, which are growing more and more inward, because the outward stuff is already gone. You know, the peripheries already gone.

SENGUPTA: Natalie, do you want to add to that, on the demand side?

UNTERSTELL: Very quickly. I think there’s been a good number of initiatives in the U.S. looking at demand. One is the FOREST Act, which is being considered by the U.S. Congress at the moment. There are some other ideas floating. And I think, yeah, there’s good collaboration. And, of course, since the U.K. and the EU had set the tone on this matter, now talking about illegal deforestation only but also considering legal deforestation, I think the U.S. and even China is considering working on the demand side. So the trend is there. And, of course, Brazil, especially the Brazilian government and the Brazilian diplomats, they hate this discussion. They don’t want—(laughs)—they don’t want more countries, more regions, you know, enacting barriers. Because these are barriers. But still, I think it’s a movement that is unstoppable. And we’re probably going to see more and more, you know, measures like this.

And finally, as you probably know, the EU-Mercosur agreement fell apart for many reasons. But one of the contentious issues was exactly, you know, this collaboration/competition around agricultural products and the way that the EU wanted, you know, to insert clauses on tackling deforestation. So deforestation and trade are super connected, and we’re going to see more and more action in that space.

SENGUPTA: So we are going to end on time, not only because this is the Council on Foreign Relations, but also because there’s a cocktail party after. (Laughter.) So last question to you three, lightning round, please. Just really a yes or no, maybe one sentence. Is it possible that Brazil can demonstrate by COP-30 a plan to phase out fossil fuels in a just and orderly manner?

UNTERSTELL: I can respond.

SENGUPTA: Yes, please.

UNTERSTELL: I can say absolutely—I can say, possibility is there. Absolutely, yes. But we need to really open more and more space for that to happen. It’s not guaranteed. (Laughs.) We are actually not even, you know, considering this seriously at the moment. But, yes.

PALACIOS: To me, this is the wrong question. This is not about Brazil decides one day it doesn’t produce more oil. If there’s demand next to you, it doesn’t change anything. Somebody else who produce it and actually produce it worse. Brazil is not where you have the highest emission barrel. It’s actually one of the countries that produces the lowest-emitting barrel, with low-methane emissions, and does it in a way where it captures the carbon. So I think the point is, how can we phase out not production, demand? That’s what we need. Because if not, if you phase out production without phasing demand, guess what? Oil prices are going to go to 150. So this is a demand issue, not a supply issue. The supply will adjust once the demand is gone.

I’m actually worried what it means for emerging market and developing economies, an oil price that goes to 150 before—yes, before it falls. So for this to be orderly, it needs to be demand driven, because if it’s supply driven it’s going to lead to significant increase in price, like we saw with Russia. And so to me, what is important is, OK, we’re going to have to have oil for a while. So every single barrel of oil, every single molecule of gas, needs to be the least-methane emission intensity and the least carbon intensity. That’s how I think we should think about this. But scaling renewables as fast as we can.

SENGUPTA: And every petrostate will compete to be the last one standing.

DE BOLLE: So I’ll address your question from a sort of climate goal perspective, because Luisa has done such a wonderful job answering from the fossil fuel side. Can Brazil achieve its climate goals or, you know, what it sets out for it, by 2030? Yes. But there’s the big political obstacle to overcome. And we need to remember that there’s going to be an election in the middle of that process. There’s an election in 2026. And depending on which way that election goes, you know, then yes or no. That’s going to be—in the end, the answer is very much going to depend on that.

SENGUPTA: Thank you all very much—(applause)—for being such a great audience. And thank you to all of you. Thank you.

(END)

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