Last year's conference of the parties, the UN's annual climate summit, where global leaders come together

to commit to certain actions required to tackle the climate crisis, was held in the United Arab Emirates,

one of the world's major oil producers.

It was presided over by the president of the country's national oil company. There were many many

stories about the obvious conflicts of interest there including stories that

ran on our website at drilled dot media.

But another issue that came up, which had come up the year before in Egypt as well,

was the limited role that climate activists were allowed to play at this cop. As they were in

Egypt, protesters at last year's cop were cordoned off to a special designated area far away from anyone who might be bothered by them.

One young protester managed to bust into the main proceedings and make a bit of a fuss, but otherwise protesters were largely unseen.

This year's cop will be in another oil state, Azerbaijan. Again, the country's national oil company will be deeply involved,

and again, protesters are likely not to be tolerated. Which begs the question, should protection of protest itself be a topic at COP?

Can we get real climate action absent real democracy.

With all of that going on, it seemed like a good time to bring you this interview that our

reporter in France, Anna Pujol Masini, did with Michel Forrest, the world's first UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental

Defenders.

It's good timing because Forrest released today a scathing report on what he's seeing happen in the UK.

If you missed our episode on that, it came out last week, go and listen to it.

The UK has moved really quickly to suppress protest and even to suppress

what protesters are allowed to say in their own defense in court.

Forst is not having it.

We'll link to that report in the show notes.

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