Is COP still worth it for small nations?
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 November 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The president of the Pacific island nation, Palau, considers whether COP is still worth it. Also on the programme, thousands of flights have been cancelled or delayed in the US on the first day of reduced air traffic caused by the government shutdown; and, the so-called "Google Maps" of Roman Roads -- the most extensive digital map that reveals hundreds of thousand of kilometres of old roads.
(Photo: Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez embrace next to European Council President Antonio Costa and Para state Governor Helder Barbalho as delegates attending the Belem Climate Summit ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) gather for a family photo, in Belem, Brazil, November 7, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.3 | Hello, I'm Celia Hatton and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:14.2 | I'm coming to you live from Central London. |
| 0:17.4 | Well, in today's program, we'll be going back in time for a fresh look at the vast network of roads built by the Romans. |
| 0:25.4 | And then we'll go into the near-ish future when Elon Musk's Tesla robots could be put to work in ordinary homes. |
| 0:33.9 | More on those stories coming up a little later. |
| 0:35.9 | But first, let's focus on the present and what's happening now in Brazil. |
| 0:41.0 | This year's climate summit is happening there. A lot of coverage so far has focused on the leaders from wealthy, industrialized countries that are at the meeting, including the UK, France and Ireland. |
| 0:53.4 | And a lot has been said about the leaders from other major states who aren't there from the U.S., China, India, |
| 1:00.2 | big emitters of greenhouse gases who've decided to skip cop. |
| 1:04.7 | But what about countries that are much, much smaller than that? |
| 1:08.9 | Countries in places that could be swallowed up by rising sea levels. |
| 1:13.6 | Is it really worth it for them to take part in the COP process? |
| 1:18.7 | The Pacific Island Nation of Palau is one of those smaller countries. |
| 1:22.5 | It's made up of 340 low-lying coral and volcanic islands, and it's home to just 17,000 people. |
| 1:31.7 | I spoke with Palau's president, Serangal Samuel Wipps. |
| 1:36.2 | He's in Brazil, and I asked him to explain what's at stake for his country. |
| 1:41.3 | Well, we have islands that will disappear. We have food resources, which are |
| 1:47.5 | our taro swamps, will be inundated with seawater and people living along the coast of our main |
| 1:53.7 | islands will be deeply impacted. We have loss of life when it comes to fish and corals and jellyfish, all important to our |
| 2:07.1 | biodiversity and important to the tourism industry that we have. |
| 2:11.3 | The reality is the increasing number of storms, drought, and extreme heat. |
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