Just as our lunch date is due to start, the waiter arrives with a message: my guest will be delayed by 25 minutes.
Mafalda Duarte sweeps in only eight minutes later, having made good time after her appointment at the UK foreign office overran. She is in London as a stopover en route to Portugal after a trip to Brazil, where she met officials involved in the planning of this November’s UN COP30 climate summit.
Duarte is the head of the Green Climate Fund, the $21bn investment vehicle of the Paris agreement, the landmark global accord signed almost a decade ago to tackle climate change. As the world’s largest multilateral climate fund, the GCF is tasked with driving green investments to developing countries.