E3G

BBC Radio 4: John Ashton interview

By Quentin de Molliens

E3G Founding Director John Ashton has been interviewed on BBC Radio 4 about his new role as a Special Representative for Climate Change at the UK Foreign Office.

The interview text follows below. It is available on the website of the British Embassy in Berlin. You can also “listen again” on the BBC Radio 4 website. The interview can be found at 07:18. by clicking on John Ashton’s name in bold.

Interview with FCO special representative on climate change, John Ashton

On BBC Radio 4 Today Programme,
22 June 2006

Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, has appointed a Special Representative on Climate Change. He’s John Ashton a career diplomat by background who left Whitehall to work on change in climate and energy between particularly developing countries but now he’s back on secondment to Mrs Beckett as Special Representative and he’s with us here. To do precisely what?

Good morning Jim. It’s now clear that this problem of climate change is bigger it’s more urgent it’s on a scale even greater than we thought it was a few years ago and the fundamental challenge is to mobilise a much broader, a much stronger coalition that will enable us to respond with the urgency that we need. That has to be an international coalition and I think the core of my new job which I’m very excited to be taking on today is to help Margaret Beckett and her colleagues across Government mobilise that coalition.

So you’re dealing, clearly you’re working for the Foreign Secretary, you’re dealing with the international coalition, international agreements not with a question of what we’re doing here to cut our emissions?

Of course they’re connected because everybody has to play their part in this response and it has to be a coherent response but my focus will indeed be on the international dimension. Part of what I will try to do is to make sure that in the decisions that we take domestically we make a clear assessment of the way other countries are going to react to our policies.