Welcome to Zero, I'm Oscar Boyd.

A couple of weeks ago, we featured an interview with the Barbadian economist Avanash Persaud.

He was on his way to a meeting in Paris hosted by France's President, Emmanuel Macron, and Barbados's Prime Minister, Mia Motley,

with the goal of making the global financial system more relevant to climate change, biodiversity loss and inequality.

That meeting took place last week and more than 40 world leaders gathered in Paris for the talks. Our regular host, Akshat Rati, was also there and so for this bonus episode of the podcast,

I'm catching up with him to get his takeaways.

Akshah, first up, how was Paris?

It was actually fun because on June 21st, there is, as I learned, Feth de la Musique.

It's the one day, the longest day, of course, in the Northern Hemisphere, where all kinds of music is free.

So there were huge queues outside venues where bands were playing and pretty much every restaurant had hired a DJ

and it was a party. I just could not really party at the time. Yes, because you were there for

serious business, not the Fedella music. You were there to attend what is the snappily titled

Summit for a New Global Financing Pact. What was that meeting trying to achieve?

In the grandest imagination of Macron and Motley, it was supposed to be a new pact between

global North countries and global South countries.

Privately I call this the How Dare You Summit?

How dare you? How dare you upset the order? How dare you? How dare you upset the order?

How dare you step out of your crease?

The pact would aim to reform the institutions that are at the heart of making the connection work,

which is the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Of course, it was a meeting of only about 50 world leaders, which is a lot, but not everybody.

And these institutions will only be reformed when all countries vote to make that reform happen.

...