 our series, organized in partnership with the Ford Foundation, the Land Portal Foundation, the Tenure Facility and the Thompson Reuters Foundation. The series promotes, as you will know, the recognition of the land rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities as a prerequisite for achieving national and international goals. So for many of us, for forest governance, for others, for food security, for climate mitigation, economic development and human rights, we're interested in them all. There will be four webinars over the rest of the coming year from May to November, each tackling a different topic. My name is Frank Pierce. I'm a British journalist and author and I'm delighted to be your host today for this first of the series. And we're going to be discussing post COP26 reflections. It will be a focus on opportunities for customary land rights opened up by COP26, another recent event, in recent events. 2021 was a year of big promises. Many of you will be aware of them for tenure rights. At COP26 in Glasgow, the Climate Summit, an unprecedented $1.7 billion was pledged in support for ancestral community land rights, we might say. Good news, I'm sure, no doubt we'd all agree about that. But there are questions, of course, who gets the money, where does it go? When and how funding will reach communities, will it reach communities? And how it can be used, how will it be used efficiently? And now we have another overlay of other global activities in the new context of rising geopolitical tensions that have left the world scrambling to wean itself off Russian gas and thinking about all sorts of other issues that may put land rights and climate change a bit on the back burner. And of course, we have the reality of what we hope is a post-pandemic world to think about too. So to discuss these issues, where we stand today, where we're going, I'm joined by a terrific panel, I think you'll agree. I'll introduce them in a moment. They will make some opening remarks. I will perhaps ask them a couple of questions and we'll gradually enter into a discussion. And then from about an hour in, we'll be taking questions from you, the audience, if that's not too passive a notion to describe people with many views and perspectives. So the webinar will take place in English. I'm sorry for that, for those of you, it's not your first language, but it seems to be the most universal language, but we will certainly be simultaneously interpreted to Spanish, French and Portuguese. And to access the interpretation, please use the channels located at the bottom of the screen. You'll see one marked interpretation. If you have questions for the panel, then please post them using the Q&A button. Don't use the chat box feature, we're trying to use the Q&A function and subsequently I will put those to the panelists later on. Feel free to tweet using hashtag Earth Day 2021 and hashtag land dialogues. And you can follow the tweeting from the LAN portal and from a tenure facility Twitter accounts. Finally, I should point out that you're going to be on the record. I should say that today's session is being recorded, but of course you can check it out afterwards and you will receive the link after the event. So first I'm going to introduce briefly our panelists who we're going to be talking to over the next 90 minutes. And we'll be asking them about their many and varied experiences. So first up we're going to have today Myanna Cunningham Kane who's from the Indigenous mosquito community in Nicaragua in Central America. She's a teacher and a physician who's been working for two decades to, she's been working for two decades to advance the rights of Indigenous women and knowledge on Indigenous peoples and the impact of climate change. Among her many international roles, she's currently the president of the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean Filac. Not second, but second in my list, Conrad is going to be fourth. We have Conrad Henser who's currently at the geography department of the University of Bonn. He has a strong interdisciplinary background so geography doesn't really cover easy using geographical data to address land rights issues and indeed conflict resolution. He did a PhD using remote sensing for mapping Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform so he's no stranger to controversy. Our third speaker will be Victoria Stanley, a senior land administration administration specialist at the World Bank. She's worked in more than 25 countries over the years especially in Africa. Her current focus is on women's land rights and gender inclusion and prior to joining the World Bank she worked for several NGOs and indeed for the US Department of the Interior. So again a huge perspective, a huge range of perspectives. And our fourth speaker, finally another geographer, John Uluru of McGill University in Canada who has over 20 years experience designing and implementing post-war recovery projects on land tenure, food security, natural resources and agriculture and no doubt the big trick is to integrate all those issues. So he's been in nice quiet spots of the world. He's been in Syria and Yemen and Sudan and Liberia and East Timor and I have a list of a number of others that I won't go into. He's worked with the UN, the World Bank and many others. So again a huge range of experience. But let's start. I want to start with Mauna. From an indigenous perspective I guess you'd have to say, Mauna what were your thoughts when you heard of the 1.7 billion dollar pledge coming out of COP26, the pledge from governments and funders to support forest tenure rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. There was much detail that I saw of exactly how it was going to be done. So Mauna do you believe it? Do you fear how that money will be spent and who will be in charge? Maybe you've seen some of it or maybe you haven't seen any of it yet. So Mauna please please talk us through where you stand on this. Thank you and thank you everybody. I greet you for in my language of the Miskito people of Nicaragua. When I heard about the pledge I said, okay at last we are beginning to harvest more than 100 years of international advocacy of indigenous peoples. We have been all over the international organizations trying to prove that indigenous peoples are in the first place in urgent need. Because despite the world's increased attention to the concerns of indigenous peoples and our priority, we still face discrimination, exclusion, criminalization. Second I consider that the time is right. It's important if we can really receive some of those resources to be able to continue doing the work that we have been doing in our community protecting biodiversity, protecting territories and also if that can be implemented with a human rights-based approach of course it will help to solve some of the global problems that we are feeling. And I also thought that it was an opportunity to scale up and see real impact because we have been with so little resources that it's impossible to scale up and it's impossible to see the impact. And it's also an opportunity to innovate to do things in a different way that can really find solution. And my second thought is that the capacity is there. We as indigenous peoples and the foundations and the governments that pledge we all have the capacity so it's an important moment. And of course when we see these kind of pledges we do not believe it totally in it because we have received so many promises over the 500 years of colonization that it's very difficult to believe. So here we are waiting to see what will happen with that 1.7 billion. But you're waiting. You haven't seen the money yet? Not yet. We are beginning to see maybe interest. Some went to one or two of the organizations that we know about. We saw a very small list of one of the NGOs but we are still waiting. And this makes it very, very complicated because we believe that this is a big opportunity. But we need to see accessible mechanisms put in place by the different organizations and institutions that have pledged. These mechanisms have to be inclusive. They have to be flexible. And we need to see changes in the way bilateral approach indigenous peoples. We need to see changes in the way multilateral approach indigenous peoples. And of course we need to see the goodwill of the private donors that also participated in the pledge. And I think what is important is that we as indigenous peoples have been able to gather evidence to prove that we have capacity. But usually they don't believe in our capacity. So what we need them to understand is that they should build on the knowledge that we already have. And they cannot pledge resources for indigenous peoples to advance our rights on our territories if we are not in the leading position. So we have seen a lot of organizations trying to put one indigenous person or trying to put two or three in their governing body. This is not the solution. The solution is that we should be in the leading position not only as a token but also participating in the decision. We need to build real and trusted partnership for the first time we have the opportunity. And of course we see this as an opportunity to finance what are our priorities. And customary land is our first priority. If tenure is not secure we cannot advance in solving climate change, in solving biodiversity loss, in solving restoration or degraded land and water sources. We have to combine tenure with our traditional knowledge with community ways of management of those resources to make it sustainable. And of course we need resources to strengthen the indigenous peoples organization capacity. It's an opportunity for women, for youth and problems to be addressed. And so I see it as a huge opportunity but I do believe we need to move very fast. And these organizations that have pledged these resources needs us to bring us into the conversation as soon as possible so we don't lose the opportunity. Do you fear that the old kind of way of doing, handing out money, a sort of top-down arrangement is, do you fear that the donors are persisting with that approach rather than the partnership approach which you say is necessary? And I wonder if there are only, if you do think that, if there are exceptions to that. If you can say, yeah but somebody has really got it, somebody understands what is required. Do you see good guys in here or how do you see it? I would say that we have seen a trend of some especially from the private sectors that have been trying to understand that philanthropy requires human rights-based approach. And they have begun to approach indigenous peoples in a different way, in a respectful manner. And because of this we have been able to create, for example, indigenous-led funds, funds that receive resources and are managed by indigenous peoples and have this trust and this relationship. For example, I have seen that the tenure facility, that it's the first financial mechanism that has been established to address the issue of tenure in indigenous peoples and local community have received part of these funds. And we are now in the possibility to scale up the work that we have been doing in the first years of the tenure facility. So we do see that there are some changes. We do see that there's an interest in supporting indigenous-led funds and there's a, I would say, a position of organizations that understand that money is not only money, it's also partnership, building this assistance and working together. And at the same time, understanding that there are reciprocal responsibilities and they're gaining some cultural sensitivity. So I do see that there's a change in organization, but I still fear that it's more in the private sector and not among the bilaterals and the multilaterals. And I think that's where we can find the money that can complement this pledge and make it sustainable because they also are the ones that advise member states, they advise the governments and that is an important leverage point that we need. So we need all of them to come in together and understand that this is the opportunity to change the way in which they have been addressing land rights and customary land issues of indigenous peoples. And if we do not do it in a different way, we may lose the opportunity. Did I hear you say that you thought that some private philanthropists were more advanced in their understanding of what was necessary than bilateral agencies? Is that right? Yes, yes. Of course, that's what I said. And I put the example of the tenured facility, the tenured facility have received funds, receiving funds from this movement of Ted Audacious have received resources from Bezos fund. And I think these are changes that are important, but we need to see more of that going to more indigenous organizations and we need to see mechanisms set in place so this can reach the local level and other indigenous led funds. So it can have impact. So I do see some changes, but as I said, especially in the private sector. Do you think that the multilateral agencies are capable of following or are there institutional barriers that may be insurmountable? I would say that they are capable if there's political will to solve the problem. And because we are capable with this capacity, sometimes some multilaterals have tried, for example, I'll give you an example of ifad. I have followed a lot of the work of ifad related with indigenous peoples and there's a policy in place for their work with indigenous peoples and there's a facility to support indigenous organizations at the local level, but it's still small. So they have been able to be more flexible and to create this mechanism that secures resources to indigenous peoples, but we need it to grow. We need to see more commitment and more resources coming into this type of facilities. So I do believe that they have piloted some initiatives that have proven that if they are flexible and if they establish mechanisms they can reach indigenous communities. We need to see more of that with more resources. One last question. We have Victoria coming later who's of course from the World Bank. As you all know, how do you feel that the World Bank is shaping up? I still think that they are very, I would say that we have lost them in the last years. I think there were some years in which the banks were very, I would say they were receptive of indigenous peoples concerns and there were advances in establishing standards and mechanisms to listen to indigenous peoples, but I think that is not advancing as fast as possible and I think they need to advance faster. Thank you. I will ask Victoria about that later. Thank you for that observation and obviously we can talk about this further later on. Okay, Minor, thank you very much for that now. We'll come back to you later on, but for now I'm going to move on to John. John, I'll ask you the same question. What were your thoughts about the $1.7 billion pledge coming out of the COP? Do you think it will generate opportunities or since this is I guess your area of expertise, is it in danger of unleashing new conflicts, which you'll then have to go around and try and resolve? And if so, how will you resolve those? So from a conflict resolution perspective and your others, how did you feel in response to all this people suddenly talking about billions of dollars? Well, thank you. I'm delighted to hear it of course. As Dr. Cain said, it's a beginning. I'm very interested and curious to see where the money will go and how it will be spent. For me, one of the priorities is to have a recognition, of course, go go on about the existence of customary land rights and customary law and how it operates. That's been a primary challenge. That state law, statutory law, has difficulty recognizing the reality of customary law and customary tenure. The demarcations, the decisions of ports, who owns land and how and where. If this goes unrecognized by statutory law, then we continue to have a problem. So that disconnect is a primary challenge and a real opportunity would be to examine cases that are successful in integrating those two or deriving a successful interaction between customary tenure and statutory tenure. Some have argued that that can't do it. These two are incompatible in terms of logic, in terms of their objectives, etc. I might suggest that there are cases, many cases, around the world where this interaction between state law and customary law in terms of recognition of customary law has been quite successful. It can be, in one says, a technical, legal endeavor. Where's the boundary? Who is the actual owner? How are things owned? Sometimes from a customary context, these things don't intersect well with statutory law. What we have found many times is that it's much, much easier to change statutory law than it is to change customary ways that have been in place for a very long period of time and are durable because they actually attend to people's real needs up on the ground. It used to be thought that statutory law is there and it's easier to change customary behavior. We've now learned that it's actually the reverse. That's a primary opportunity. As the last speaker said, there's good opportunity in terms of the money going to indigenous and local communities for technical support. How are boundaries recognized? Dispute resolution, local courts, and then the recognition of these things to statutory law. For me, it's incredibly exciting that this kind of money is, for now, pointed in the right direction. We all hope it gets there. Then there's some priorities for, perhaps, considering how the money might be used from my perspective. It's that interaction of doing customary and state law in sometimes challenging contexts that would be a primary way forward for some of this money. Thanks. Whenever there's money, there tends to be conflict because people go chasing the money. Are there dangers? I don't know whether the money will land up going through state agencies, giving primacy to state law over customary priorities. Can that be circumvented? Is that being circumvented? How do you see that playing out? I don't wish to be cynical about these things, but whenever there's money, there's a lot of people who want to grab it. Certainly, yes. That's a well-founded concern. Certainly, when the money's large, that needs to press more competition for it. That perhaps highlights the monitoring of that money, where it needs to go. I might also suggest that with money targeted in certain locations that assumes a certain capacity, assumes a certain profile, an empowerment that then leads to recognition. For example, if local communities actually end up do receiving a large amount of this money, that's an empowerment. Then others will have to recognize that and what that can do. There's the positive and negative. Certainly, there's the prospect for disputing and for conflict over who's going to get the money. I might argue that to get through that, we might focus on what is it going to be spent on? To simply hand money out to the different sectors without a really good plan as to what's going to happen with it, I think would invite a lot of the conflict that you're talking about. Okay. Well, how about give us some good examples? I don't know. Looking through your CV, there might be a few. I would be interested in Liberia where there's been a lot of discussion about restoring customary rights, customary land rights, and recognizing customary land and forest rights in state law. I don't know if you're up to date with that, but that's one possibility. At any rate, I'm interested in what positive examples you have where this kind of thing really works in your experience. Right. Well, Liberia is certainly a good case, but I'm more familiar with next door in Sierra Leone, so why don't we go there. I recently worked with FAO on a very exciting project there. In that context, there was huge difficulty between customary law and state law and the role of the private sector. So a private sector entity would come in, state law very well intentioned, said you have to go and get the approval of the current inhabitants, right, the customary societies. So you had private sector. So these were forest related mining interests, etc., agricultural interests that would go directly to the customary land holders and make a deal for an amount of land to be leased. So if the customary community held 2,000 hectares, the investor would make a deal for 5,000 hectares because the customary community didn't really know in terms of hectares how much land they had. That meant that the customary community has agreed with a private sector on more land that they have control over, which meant that they have allocated their neighbor's land without them knowing. So this leads to all sorts of difficulty. And so this FAO project wanted to map out the delineation, the boundaries of what are called family lands. So these are large lineage held lands so that as step one, the lineages would know how much land they had and how much land they could interact with private investors over. Given that they only had so much land, they need some land for themselves, they need land to deal with inheritance, etc. So you might think that a quick technological answer would be just to simply fly a drone over the someone's notion of a boundary. That actually, that application of technology would backfire. What's a drone? Don't trust it. Where'd you fly it? Who said where the boundary was? A different application of technology had a much lower tech tablets, GPS mapping device, and then the process was to gather people from both sides of the boundary, including young women who stood in herit land in the future, and they walked around the boundary. And this walking around the boundary meant that they had to agree on it. So neighbors had to agree on it on either side of the boundary from different lineages, local leadership had to agree on it, the youth, women's societies. So it was a large crowd, as you can imagine, marching through the forest agreeing, disagreeing on where the boundary was, whether it was disagreement. Of course, the mapping didn't continue, did not go forward until there was agreement, until there was consensus, and then it would move forward. So this process, interesting, took a little longer than a drone might, but the legitimacy that it brought to bear on this boundary was really interesting, and it had empowerment repercussions that were not foreseen by that project. That's why it was so interesting. That map that was created was then legalized officially by state law, as this is now the boundary that's been decided upon by the local lineages and the lineages that are their neighbors, keeping in mind the interests of inheritance by men and women. And so that was a very empowering and interesting case where we saw an intersection of customary land rice and plain with statutory rice with the immediate application of how to handle large-scale investors coming into a customary tenure context, which is a primary source of deep-seated conflict. International investor versus local customary landholder, that's a difficulty. So anytime we have an example where that has been dealt with successfully, and Sierra Leone is a very good case here, it's really exciting to see the right application of technology and again this technical interface between customary holdings and statutory holdings. So for me, Sierra Leone stands out, there's a couple of mothers I could get into if we have more time. Thanks. Okay, no that's fantastic. It's great to hear a good news story, and I guess it requires state buy-in, but if you've got state buy-in then it works. Or you can make it work, put it that way. Is that the take-home message? That's right, and so state buy-in, the big question there is, what does the state get? The state needs to get a benefit from that buy-in. In the case of Sierra Leone, it got a good interaction with investors. So now you had successful investment customary state relationships being fostered. This increased the tenure security of the investor as well, attracting more investors, which is what the state wants. So the state needs to realize that there are definite benefits to itself, to interacting with customary communities with regard to land rise. Excellent, thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Okay, I'll leave it with you John there now, but you'll be back in later for sure. I'd like to move on to Victoria now. We mentioned the world back a little bit earlier. You may wish to respond to what Menor was saying. But again, I'm going to ask you the basic initial question. What were your thoughts about that we were suddenly talking about billions of dollars for funding land tenure rights and claiming rights and securing rights and managing rights and so on? I'm sure you'll want to talk particularly about what this might mean for women's land rights. Could it be transformative or do you fear that men may still get the cash? Victoria? Well, thank you Fred. And yes, 1.7 billion is a tremendous commitment. Of course, it is at the moment just a commitment. So obviously realizing that commitment is the first step. But I think, you know, Dr. Mirna has put it very eloquently why that money needs to, a lot of that money needs to go to indigenous communities themselves. And that is critically important. But I think for that to be effective, then there need to be facilities and programs in place that facilitate that, right? You're not just going to hand 1.7 billion over to anybody and see that money used effectively. I am not going to speak on behalf of the World Bank. I'm a technical specialist. So I can only speak on behalf of myself and the work that I'm involved in, you know, working across three regions and more than 25 countries in the last 20 some years. We've learned a lot. And I think that, you know, just following up on John's points that statutory and customary indigenous land rights can function in the same space. And we have we have seen that we have evidence of that. We've also supported projects that have actually delineated indigenous territories in Honduras, we're working currently in Colombia with both the government and the indigenous rights indigenous community leaders on, you know, furthering territorial delineation indigenous rights in Colombia. We work a lot in Africa where, you know, 80% of the land is still under customary tenure. So you can't not, you know, look at these issues and figure out how to make this work, whether it's in Liberia where we're supporting implementation of the new Land Rights Act, which includes customary tenure rights specifically, Ghana where we supported customary land secretariats to be developed, and many other cases. So I think that this is something that, you know, we're still learning but we're obviously really trying to learn and to figure out what works. But as John mentioned, it's not possible without the participation of the state, right, because these we're talking about land rights, which is a legal concept. And so if the state isn't going to participate, it's very difficult to realize this in practice. You know, you could there are intermediate steps that you can take. There are things that can certainly be done, but getting all of these different actors on sides to really work together. And I think the example that John was mentioning is a very good one. But the, well, we was done in Honduras a number of years ago, I think is also a very good example. I could talk more about that later. In terms of women's land rights, obviously legal recognition of indigenous territories or customary areas is critical. But for women, there's an additional step that needs to happen because oftentimes social norms, traditional practices around inheritance, around how land is allocated, it's still largely, though not exclusively, but still largely through the male patriarchal line. So if we don't think about this as we are moving forward with various operations, projects, programs, and really find ways for women to be more empowered and engaged in these processes, then they are not going to benefit. And I think women are critical, critical for the climate agenda. Otherwise, you know, we're not going to make it. So women have to be not only at the table, but empowered to speak at the table as it were. So I can talk a little more about, you know, some specifics there. But I think it's critically important that women are engaged in all of these discussions. And I'll stop there. Well, please talk specifics. But I'll add one question into that. Do you think it's national law, which is holding back women? Or is it customary law? Or does it depend where your customary rights and customary traditions or does it depend where you are? And how do you unlock that? Well, and I think, you know, most legal frameworks, statutory legal frameworks today, you know, are sort of gender neutral, we could say. Some of them are more gender equal, but at least gender neutral. So it's not so much laws. It's really implementation of those laws. And that happens, of course, oftentimes in settings where there is massive informality of one type or another. And so it's not a simple thing to resolve, right? So but we are working in a number of countries. Again, Liberia is an example where the statutory law sets up that that the communities need to have basically structures, community, land boards that will then talk, you know, determine allocations, determine how the land is managed, etc. And women statutory statutorily have to be represented on those committees. But that doesn't always happen. You know, we know that I've seen that. So, you know, Tanzania, another example also has requirements for women to be represented on various land governance bodies. But if that isn't being there isn't someone coming along and sort of, you know, enforcing that but also supporting that, then you're not going to have that happening necessarily. And even if women are on board on board and these land governance structures of varying kinds, whether it's, you know, forest management committees or allocation committees, if there's an actual, you know, allocation process going on, or it's a land governance body that's managing the land for the whole community or parts of it, those all need to include women, but those women also need to be empowered to participate and help make decisions about that land. Where is that, you know, what, how is that resource going to be used? It's not just land, but natural resources on the land as well as part of this. So, empowering women to participate in these bodies and ensuring that they are participating and that they know effectively how to participate and that men are sensitized to welcome that participation and recognize that it is important for the whole community that this is happening. Is the bank able to have an influence on this? I mean, it's always quite difficult because the bank is very remote and inevitably, but I mean, at the technical level, are you able to, or legal level, indeed, are you able to make a difference in these areas? Well, we're trying. As I said, I mean, we are supporting the Liberia land authority, which is doing a pilot on customary land rights right now. And, you know, the idea is to develop a mechanism and a process that is also gender equitable and that women are participating and that they are benefiting. And we're doing the same thing in Tanzania and we're doing the same thing in a number of countries. We have partners in the bank and outside the bank, so the International Land Coalition. We have our Agenda Innovation Lab here in the Africa region, which does a lot of work on this particular issue, trying to actually generate evidence of how do you shift social norms? Because that's one of the biggest issues, right? Is shifting social norms around joint titling or inheritance rights or management of resources. Again, resource equity and World Resources Institute have actually produced a very, very useful publication. I can put it in the chat, which looks at five case studies across the globe, looking at how women are participating in these collective management structures of varying kinds. So, I mean, there are good examples and we are definitely doing our best to implement them. And I just wanted to also mention the Stand for Her Land campaign, which is something that the World Bank is involved with, also with the Land Portal and many of the other organizations that I think are participating today. And that campaign is really seeking to unlock this empowerment of women through implementation of existing laws, right? This is not about reinventing the wheel, but really implementing what's already on the books and doing it well so that women can benefit for everyone. Do you see differences between, I don't know, between continents? Maybe that's not quite the right way of putting it, but I mean, you're clearly an expert on Africa and you've mentioned a number of African countries where you've worked, but you also mentioned Honduras and elsewhere. I mean, do you see differences in the way that these stories play out in saying sub-Saharan Africa compared to Central America or whatever? Well, yes, because I mean, they're different, you know, tenure regimes, different cultural norms. So obviously, it's going to be very context specific. I have worked a bit in Latin America, so Columbia, for example, quite a bit. And, you know, so it really varies from country to country. How well they recognize indigenous or customary tenure rights? You know, do they recognize them as a collective territory? And then what happens inside that territory? You know, that's the indigenous structures to sort out. You know, so there's a lot of variation. And so I think you can't go in with a one-size-fits-all solution. But it has to be, as we say in the land space, fit for purpose. But there are lessons learned. So that is, you know, I think we need to take the lessons learned about what has worked in other contexts and then figure out how to apply them in, you know, existing context. Do you see, just one last question. Do you see cases where, you know, notwithstanding the work of the World Bank or the tenure facility or other external bodies, where women at a local community level have really, if you like, transformed their land rights and their place in society? I mean, do you have kind of, in the back of your heads, examples where local women have really taken charge and have really kind of done it, you know, taken on the men, if you like? I mean, there definitely are examples. I have to admit that nothing is coming to mind right at this particular moment. But there are, you know, women's organizations throughout the world. Actually, Especio Feminista in Brazil is a perfect example. They've been working very, very hard on this in the communities in which they work in Brazil. And so, you know, there, so there are good examples out there. And there are, I mean, Dr. Meirner herself is leading a land organization. So there are definitely a lot of partners to work with. And I think sometimes that's the challenge that we all have, right? So we've got bilateral donors, we've got multilateral organizations, we've got civil society organizations, which have a very rich, you know, expanse of different interests and members. And bringing these all together to move in one direction is a very challenging activity. And actually, that's what we've been trying to do through Stand for Her Land. And we've spent two years just, you know, in a large, to a large extent, organizing ourselves. But we are now, you know, developing, or rather, I should say, there's a country coalition in Senegal, which is actually leading the work itself. And we hope to see that happening in many other countries. So, so we do have mechanisms. But it is challenging. Sorry, I have one other final question. Meirner mentioned that you thought that private philanthropists who are making better progress sometimes than multilaterals. Do you recognize that? Well, they have, they often have a lot less bureaucracy to sort through. So I think, I think, you know, there's definitely space also for the private sector. This is not a one person can do it, or one sector can do it. I think the private sector obviously has a lot to gain from doing this as well. And I think that was the, you know, what John was talking about. If you can find that win win win combination, then that's the best solution for everyone. Okay, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you very much, Victoria. Please stay with us, because we'll be back to you later. But I want to move on now to Conrad, who's our data specialist. I think that's a reasonable way of describing your work. We often hear how you can only manage what you can measure. So if that's true, then Conrad, you have a pretty important role here. Can you just give us a sense of how, you know, we can use data collection and, I don't know, drones or whatever we're talking about. How can you measure land tenure? How can you be clear about who has land tenure and the nature of that? What can data collection bring to this? Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Fred, for having me. Indeed, the problem we face is that land tenure is intangible and not really visible in satellite imagery or drone imagery, as John rightfully pointed out when he made this example. And this means that working with land tenure for GIS or remote sensors, GIS specialists, is a very tedious work, because you can't necessarily determine a boundary of a field, or you can't match the field boundary to a tenure boundary, because you don't know who owns the land, who owns the field, or the common property. So that means we always need to involve local knowledge and have to do some ground truthing or involve a lot of people in mapping land tenure or land ownership. And the other problem is that, as also John already said, if we involve different groups in helping us to determine the land tenure in the field, we have to be aware of the power relationship which comes in. We need translators, because we don't speak the local language. We have to rely on people talking to us and might not necessarily be aware of the power relations in the community itself, because obviously indigenous communities are not a homogeneous group. We can just address and then trust that we get the right information. And the other problem is that once we did all this work, despite that land ownership is traditionalized and kept on over generations, also it changes. The ownership of parcels change, of the tenure changes, the access to resources change, the trade passing rights for people change. And that would mean that we would have to reiterate the whole process again. And I think those are the biggest challenges and lastly, and I think also that became a bit clear with the previous speakers is that we have to kind of align what we map to match the national cadastral system or the national representation of tenure, because it doesn't help us to just map tenure in a certain way, and then it doesn't feed into the national legislation or technical aspects. Do you have good examples of how that's been done? I mean, I can see there very serious issues here about, as you say, about power issues and about meshing with global national system. Do you have examples of when this has been done that can kind of inspire us? Yeah, I think that's the advantage of the age and the technology age we live in. I think there's great, yeah, a positive, we can look positively into the future because first of all, I mean, we see it in our daily lives, the digital gap between the local communities and us as researchers is closed by people having their own smartphones and being more digitally eligible and can just participate in various ways. So we can, for instance, design certain questionnaires or apps people could use to do their own little mapping exercises. And the other advantages that with artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, we can start to automatically at least map out field boundaries and other features in nature which could represent local tenure. But then again, we still have to involve local ownership. I think the nicest example lately out from the science perspective and university is the project It's For Land, mainly spearheaded by the University of Munster in Germany and Trent in the Netherlands. I can also put a link in there and they developed certain tools which help people mapping indigenous tenure and ownership. And also this one. Where was this remind me? It's For Land and I'll just put it in the chat for everyone. Thank you. Research project funded by also the German government. And I think also what is key here is that we have a growing open source technology scene. So even the mapping softwares, the algorithms, the technologies used, they shift from a proprietary monopoly, for instance, Esri to an open source, a very vivid society which just contributes and obviously, therefore increases access to these technologies tremendously. Some communities when they're doing mapping, and I've come across this in one or two stories that I've written as a journalist, some that do detailed mapping, it can take many years and they're mapping sacred sites as well as their own land and the geography and fascinating examples of where they're mapping is much better than the mapping done by their by their national governments simply because they're on the ground. But you talked about open sourcing things. Sometimes they don't want to open source things. They say, I'm sorry, these are our sacred lands. We don't want to share these with everybody. I mean, are there if you like sort of cultural limits to how much data we can or or indeed should share? Yeah, I mean, this has to be figured out with the communities. I'm more from the technical side, I have to say, but obviously that's very true. And especially if you talk about resources and access of resources, if they are shared on a national level or even made publicly available, that this also poses a threat to communities. And that's absolutely true. But I think here, that's exactly what John said in his talk or in his example is that here is the problem where we have to kind of align the national interest with the local interests and have a negotiation process beforehand before we just start wildly mapping out things and then post them somewhere and share them on a broader scale. I suppose the worst thing you want is is a land delineation from local communities which differs greatly from the government mapping. That becomes a source of conflict. In practice, how do you manage that interface between the top-down data collecting and the bottom-up community mapping and maybe the government somewhere in the middle? I mean, are there a good model for bringing this together in a way that's productive for everybody? Yeah, so I think actually, and that's again, this example is a good one. It's for land by these universities. I think with the new technologies I briefly touched upon, we also have technologies which aid us to put the local perspective on a map with various different ways because it starts with people, how would people represent their access to resources or their ownership on a map? So you might give them some drone pictures and they start to draw things manually or you send them with devices into the field, but then how would you put this into a more sophisticated database which can then be used by the state? And I think that's the new developments we have lately in the GIS and remote sensing scene is so that we have automatic mechanisms. So schema is also a project of this bigger example. I shared an automated way to transfer sketch maps, hand-drawn sketch maps into something we can make use of in GIS and computer-based mapping. So I think that's the way to go. On the one hand, close the digital gap between local communities and us technicians and on the other side, use these advanced methodologies to have a more automated process and also be able to reflect the changes of land tenure in a better way. Okay, so do you think ultimately this is about methodologies or about land politics, if I can ask you that? I think it's about technology, but then also thinking on how you apply the technology in a sensible manner and how you cooperate with the people on the ground in the best way possible. Okay, well look, let's stop there. Let's now open things up. I'm going to see if I can establish some questions. Yes, I've got a number of questions in front of me. I haven't had a chance to go through them in detail, but so I'm going to ask the first question, I think, to Mina, if you're there, Mina. We have the question to you. Do you think that the policies of the Latin American government's supporting extractivism are an obstacle for indigenous people to use these funds effectively? And the questioner asked, because mining oil and agribusiness companies are advancing, as we all know, onto ancestral territories with the support of governments. So the questioner asked, what is the use of these funds in cases such as this, where the extractivist people are moving in? Thank you. Mina, if you're there, that would be, it would be, it's a tough question. I'd be interested in your thoughts. No, thank you. Thank you for the question. I see that the model of extractivism and the need of everyone to win, as John put it, the private, the investors wants to win. They do not want to get a concession and begin a mining enterprise and being forced to stop operating in short after, because there was no agreement. So I think that the extractivism and the model of development and the impact of indigenous peoples will force governments to really advance in tenure rights recognition if they really wanted to succeed. Because what we have been able to see is that when there's no agreement, no previous agreement, no free prior and informed consent process in through which there's a negotiation consultation and agreement between the three parties, no one wins, no one wins. So I think that we are forced in Latin America on the first place, because we have legislation in place in the second place, because there's, there are international standards that are at least recognized by the governments, the UN Declaration, the 169 ILO Convention. And there's also the need to advance in the recovery after COVID. So they need really to, they are forced to enter in negotiations. And this is the opportunity that indigenous peoples can take to really advance in tenure rights. Wow, that's really quite an optimistic message. You're telling us that these apparent threats contain within them an opportunity. Well, I would not call them apparent threats. Okay, real threats, I'm sorry, yes. Real threats, real threats. And because they are real threats, they need to be faced and solved. Okay, thank you. That's excellent. A second question, which is quite interesting and probably several of you might want to have a go at. The question is, could indigenous organizations organize themselves to set requirements to all funding organizations and institute institutions? In other words, you know, we will accept your money if I guess is what the question is asking. Mine is that you're there, your thoughts, but I'd obviously like to hear from Victoria and others. Indigenous organizations are going through a process of trying to fill the requirements to have access to these resources. In some cases, they have created indigenous led funds, funds that are directed by indigenous boards and are filling the trying to fill these requirements. In other cases, indigenous big organizations are also creating their own mechanism to access these resources. So I do believe that we see a movement at the global level where indigenous organizations are trying to understand what are the requirements, what is needed from their side, but at the same time, what is needed from the side of the of the donor community to really begin building a different type of partnership in which they can be accountable, transparent, but at the same time, they can be faithful to their principles of governance of indigenous organizations. Very interesting. Thank you. Victoria, if you're there, do you have any thoughts on this question on how indigenous organizations can organize themselves to set the terms of the debate? Well, I think, as Dr. Mirna has already said, I mean, a lot of indigenous organizations are already doing that. I think there is, I think there probably is space for more support for that because, you know, there's been underinvestment for so long that, you know, now there probably needs to be more investment in capacity building for indigenous communities to, you know, have the systems in place to actually, you know, take in these some, you know, if we're talking about $1.7 billion, that's a lot of money. So you need to have some systems in place to, you know, take in the funds, account for them, etc., etc. And so indigenous communities certainly can do that. And some of them are capable of doing that right now, but others may need more support to develop those systems. I actually just wanted to pick up on a point that Conrad made, which I think is really critically important. So let me just diverge for a second on that, which is the issue about, you know, maintaining the data, right? So there's a lot of work going on right now. The technology is there, right? The technology has advanced leaps and bounds just in the last 20 years that I've been working in this space. You can do all kinds of things on a handheld device nowadays with a satellite lake. I mean, it's phenomenal. But the issue is that that data does need to end up at some point in some central state-sanctioned repository for it truly to be secure. Again, because these land rights are connected to legal frameworks that exist at, you know, national level. So I think it's really, it behooves all of us who are working in this, particularly people who are working, you know, on it with community-led kinds of processes that we have to find a way to get the state to engage and to, you know, basically take on that data as a value to them too. And we need systems that are in place to maintain that information. It cannot just be, you know, we do a big national process. And then 10 years later, we come back and we're like, oh, well, the data's out of date now because all of these things have changed. Constant, you know, there's inheritance, there's marriage, there's, you know, in some cases, there's buying and selling. I mean, that's not necessarily in indigenous territories, but in other territories. There's a question in the chat about, you know, how does this indigenous and urban territories mesh? Well, the peri-urban space is a huge issue right now because there are still customary land rights being allocated according to customary norms in peri-urban areas. And, you know, municipalities don't have any sense of what's going on, nor are they delivering services, right? So there's no roads being maintained. There's no water access, et cetera, et cetera. So we have to start thinking about these things as we have to figure out a way how to come together with all of this valuable information and, you know, building national systems that are delivering services to the people who need those services at the point where they are. It can't be, you know, you have to go to the capital of the province to get a land service. That's crazy. So again, you know, this is a long-term program, but something that, you know, we are trying to work on in the bank. You're following up on your point. I mean, it's not on our list of questions, but I think it's quite interesting. Is do you think that customary land rights in peri-urban areas, if you like, part of a problem, we're used to thinking at least in our community of customary land rights as something good to be cherished and supported. But it sounds like you're giving an instance where that might not be the case. Well, I don't want to say that because the customary land rights have social legitimacy, right? So you can't just ignore that. People go and also, quite frankly, they're going to the customary authorities to get a land allocation because they can't get one any other way, right? Without a, you know, seven months or three year process that costs, you know, money that these people don't have. So I mean, if you're living in suburban, you know, or peri-urban areas in many African countries, your only option is to go to the customary authority to get a land allocation. So we have to recognize that it's socially legitimate. It's responding to a need, but we need to figure out a way to bring this allocation into some kind of a system that will allow states and municipalities to understand how their footprint is growing and, you know, create either some better, more flexible planning standards that allow that to happen, but also to provide services. Because the alternative is that, you know, some, you know, informal settlement upgrading project comes along 10 years later and tries to fix all of this, at which point it's really, really challenging. So we need to be finding better solutions of bringing, as John has mentioned, bringing all, and Conrad and others, bringing on, bringing all these players to the table now to discuss how we do this going forward. So don't tear down the informal settlements, build on what they have and the social capital, if you like, that they have. Thank you. John, I'd like to move on to you now. We have a question for you, somebody from, I think, from South Africa is asking, can you give examples of successful merging of customary law and state law? And the questioner is asking, because they're looking into such cases in South Africa and they feel that examples of something successful would be really useful. So John, can you help with that successful merging of customary and state law? Sure, there's a couple. You sort of find them in bits and pieces. In other words, you find them, say, in a country where there's a really good example and the same country, other things are more challenging. So I go to the examples of Zimbabwe and Zambia, earlier in their histories, I haven't really kept up so much, but both those places early on have what we're called land boards. These land boards were recognized by state law. They were filled by local chiefs or lineage leaders. And so that was seen as this interaction between customary law and statutory law. So this was a way for the state to speak to the customary population through these land boards. It was also a way for problems like disputes and other issues to be brought from customary tenure to the understanding and knowledge of state tenure through these land boards. So this requires, of course, the recognition of someone's position. It requires the recognition of a boundary that's there. Zambia, I believe even to this day, has just simply allocated physical areas that are open to national, international, commercial investment, and others that it calls native areas that are not. And so you can't go there and operate a large-scale international tobacco farm, et cetera. So there's some wiggle room there, depending on the participation of local communities. But there it's just a hard boundary. And Canada has those places as well. It's just a boundary. And inside that boundary, it's customary tenure. Outside that boundary, it's something else. Ethiopia had an example earlier on, which is still somewhat functioning better in some places than in others, where it's simply said to the different regions. And Ethiopia's experiment here is that these regions are ethnically drawn, ethnically based. So the Somali have a region, the Imhar have a region, et cetera. And it's just simply said, use your own institutions, whatever they are. And of course, they're customary. We recognize them. We don't know how they work, the state says. We don't really are not going to put a lot of attention into how they work. Just give us the decision. So there, you're viewing customary tenure and how it operates as sort of a black box from the perspective of the state. You don't really know what goes on inside of it. You just want their decision. So that's a way to sort of interact. Zambia has a curious institution where in the colonial era it came on and its idea was to try to change customary law. That same institution stayed after decolonization, but changed. And now it has a role of resolving problems. So this one institution is a colonial relic, new mandate. And its mandate is to focus on the points where customary law and statutory law really have a problem. And to get in there and to try to resolve that on a specific basis. And so here you're not viewing the challenge customary and statutory one versus the other. Trying to meld the whole thing. You're going to specific points. And trying to resolve legally problems that emerge where customary and state law are proving to be very, very problematic. So that's interesting. Coming up with institutions that just kind of handle the issues as they come up. It can be a very wise approach. Okay. Thank you very much. That's very interesting. A question for Mauna now. Looking forward, a question I'll ask. What are the plans of Indigenous groups across different regions of the world for COP 27? And in particular, how to follow up on the big pledges made at COP 26? Is there a kind of developing strategy for doing this? Do Indigenous networks need to get together to, or indeed are they getting together to maximize the chances of getting those COP 26 pledges fulfilled? What's the strategy for COP 27, Mauna? Indigenous organizations have more than 20 years that they have created a forum, a global caucus of Indigenous organizations that prepares for the COP. So, yes, the organizations from the sociocultural regions of the world have been meeting preparing for COP 27. And of course, for COP 27, one of the priorities is related with how this pledge will be implemented. And there is a process of building alliance with some of the private funders, with some and building mechanisms of dialogues with the funders to really agree on how this pledge will become operative. So, yes, Indigenous organizations are preparing for that. And they are trying to find and define mechanisms of how the funds will really reach communities and not stay in the hands of governments or intermediary organizations. That's one of the preparation. And of course, the other preparation of that Indigenous organizations are going through is related to your previous questions. Yes, they are trying in some cases to create their own mechanism, financial mechanism to fill the requirements to receive resources and develop their own capacity to be able to manage those resources. And I would say that there's this other group of institutions like the tenure facility that have already received, the land tenure facility has already received pledges to implement some of these resources. And we are also going through a process of identifying countries and organizations that can really ensure that we advance in tenure rights, in countries in the different areas of the South, I would say, of South America, of Africa, of Indonesia, Papua, New Guinea. So we are working in different fronts, I would say. And one of the areas in which we are spending a lot of our energy is even defining what type of capacity development we do need. Do we need it alone or do we need to teach donors also to understand our worldview, to begin to measure in a different way that can be respectful to Indigenous position? So these are some of the, I would say the four strategies that we are implementing. Thank you. I'd like to extend this question a bit. We have a related question, which perhaps some of the other panelists would like to answer as well. It asks, is there a need for new and stronger accountability mechanisms, including in relation to pledges made by corporations, banks and governments? Voluntary pledges and initiatives are interesting and make discussions progress, says the questioner, but there's no consequence on whether actors comply with them and actually implement them when they say that they will. So what accountability mechanisms should we be thinking about to hold governments, banks, corporations to account for what they mentioned? I don't know if you want to add anything to what you've just said on that. Please do. Otherwise I shall ask Victoria and John and others. Minor first, do you have anything? No, I think the first thing is that we, the first thing is that they need to establish this whole negotiation in a participatory way. We need as Indigenous peoples to be able not only to attend 27 advocating from the different partners and the corridors. We need to be in the tables that are discussing the issues. If not, we will not be participating in defining how these pledges will be implemented. So I think that is the first indicator that things are changing. It's not only pledging and talking. It's really changing the way in which we participate and I think that would be like the first mechanism. And the second is this human rights-based approach. You have mentioned and John have mentioned a lot of this relation between customary law and statutory law. But we Indigenous peoples, we have fought a lot in the last years to bring our rights to the international standards. So it's not only statutory law and customary law. It's the international standards that we need to be respected in the countries. So the other indicator is those governments really implement their international commitments on Indigenous peoples' human rights. Do they apply ILO 169 Convention, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? Do they respect free prior and informed consent? These are some of the indicators that we need to see on the table. Okay, thank you. Victoria, John, do you want to add to that? Victoria, perhaps. Well, I would just add, I mean, I think while we're talking about international conventions and governments actually meeting the commitments that they've made on international conventions, let's not forget CEDAW also. So there is also the need to recognize women's land rights, women's empowerment because those are also conventions that most of the countries of the world have signed on to. So yes, that is an ongoing, I think, challenge for everyone. I don't have very much to add. I mean, I think international, these kinds of financial commitments are difficult to enforce. I would say for all of us who live in the Global North and our taxpayers to the countries that have made these pledges, we do have actually a role to play in advocating that these pledges are met and that they are met in a way that is involving Indigenous communities themselves. So I would just say that. Thank you. John, do you have any thoughts? Just to follow up on Victoria's, certainly it's a challenge. We have a conference, nice pledges are made, everybody goes home, then what? There is no kind of overarching structure that then follows up on all that and goes to country X and says, you pledge this amount of money, please provide it. That's not there. One way, of course, is to essentially advertise broadly, globally, what these pledges are in order to hold them to account. There are a number of very interesting, I call them watchdog NGOs that are very good at pointing out publicly pledges, pointing out publicly the rights and wrongs of the world. Do mention the NGOs, don't we? We do, but there's different varieties of NGOs and NGOs is not an NGO. So I'm talking about a particular quasi-aggressive NGO that likes to do just this, hold governments to account by exposing what their pledges have made. So how many people globally know what the pledge Canada has made to this commitment? Myself, I don't know. And so engaging in that, engaging in sort of a public relations idea to get out to, as Victoria said, the voter, the civil society of the world, particularly the countries who have made these pledges and let their populations know these pledges have been made, there needs to be follow-up. I mean, that's a real possibility. You know, sometimes the watchdog NGOs, I call them, operate in a variety of ways, sometimes pledges, sometimes less so. I believe they can have a role in this sort of thing. Conrad, do you have any thoughts? Data collection could clearly be critical to holding organizations to account, but is there any sort of organized focus to do that in these contexts? Not really data focus, but again, I think the digital world we're living now in actually enhances collaboration and international collaboration and uncountability. And if you look at overarching movements like Via Campesina or these watchdogs, as John said, Power Shift or FIAN, the German based NGO, which does actually go to the ground and monitors displacements of people and then presents that to various governments in Europe, I think that's the way to go. Okay, thank you. Well, it may or may not be the last question. We'll see how we go. Somebody asks, apart from establishing land rights, they see that the process to govern territories that have already been adjudicated are yet another challenge. What do speakers think about this? I guess the point here is the establishing land rights is just the start if you're actually going to successfully manage that land and the resources and indeed the communities that depend on them. So what thoughts do we have about improved, I don't know, or maintaining perhaps indigenous governorship over territories when they establish their rights? Minor perhaps, I don't know. Sure, sure, land rights is a process. Land rights, it's not an event or an activity in itself. And when we approach indigenous communities, for example, from the tenure facility, we approach them because they have been already for years, for decades, for centuries, protecting that territory. That's their mother earth and they have been managing it and living with it and combining their traditional knowledge and living in harmony. And that's what they want to maintain. So land rights is a legal recognition of a historical human rights that indigenous peoples have inherently. That is what we call customer right. So that's what the land rights do is only to secure that in the face of the state and the other stakeholders that can approach that territory. But you do not end there. You continue supporting their governance structure that has maintained that territory and protected. You continue supporting their sustainability activities. If they only have the women in the Amazon, what do they say? We want territorial rights to be recognized because we want to continue living from the forest. What are the forest products that we eat? What's our traditional medicine come from the forest? How do we relate with the water? What kind of water are we going to drink? So it's to maintain that type of the life that they can. So when we talk about tenure, it has to be a package where we secure tenure rights, where we support traditional knowledge system, where we support economical empowerment and development for sustainability, and where we support governance structure. And of course, governance means capacity to govern there themselves, but also capacity to relate with the government, relate with other stakeholders. Mino, do you think there are issues about governance in changing economic circumstances? Communities, nobody wants to stay exactly where they are. People want to develop new resources, find new ways of managing their resources, new ways of having better lives for them and their families. Does that involve any difficult changes in traditional methods of land management? Should communities be doubling down on their traditional ways of governing their land, or do they have to rethink it? Governance means exercise of self-determination. It means exercise of self-government. So it means that a community can decide to change but it has to be a collective decision, and they can decide to invest in a different way of fishing. That's why it's important for the pre-pare and infirm consent so they can know what decisions they are taking and why it's important. There are a lot of communities that have decided that they are going to negotiate their carbon stocks, and it's their own decision, their collective decision. I do believe that when we talk about governance, we are not saying that we are fixed to tradition and we cannot change. It means that we understand we are living in a different world where elders, youth, women, men need to survive, and that survival requires a self-government pattern that can change. But if they decide to change exercising their self-government, governance system, we have to respect that. That's why I say capacity development means accompanying an Indigenous organization and an Indigenous community to overcome those type of changes and bringing innovation. They have been including innovation in monitoring in data collection, in relation with women rights, for example, that has been mentioned. So these changes also are very good for communities, but we have to be respectful and not impose them from top down, but build them together with them. Okay, I'm almost tempted to stop right now, because that was a very strong statement, I felt, and thank you very much for it. But I think in fairness, I should give the chance of the other three panelists, if they have any final words. I'll choose the order at random. Conrad, do you have any final thoughts? Maybe I can just highlight again the example I just put in the chat, the flexible land tenure system in Namibia, which is a great example focusing on urban tenure, but to establish flexible mechanisms to kind of work with the situation on the ground and then shift the technology to kind of match this scheme. So it's a flexible land tenure system where people can kind of apply for a starter tenure so that they have a certain kind of tenure security and then start to work on the land and improve their living conditions. And meanwhile, they do this, they can apply for a formalized registration process and later on have a real freehold title. So I think, as we said now several times here in the talk, we need these flexible solutions, both from the legal perspective, but also from the technology side. Okay. Thank you very much, John. Any final perspectives? Sure. The question of governance in customary land tenure is an important one. We have a case here in Canada where a pipeline runs through an indigenous lands. The redditary chiefs and their supporters are against it. The elected chiefs and their supporters are for it. And so that's a governance issue. To look at that and to say, oh, there's a governance failing, right? It is actually a problem. I would agree with Merner that it's a process. And as things change, as the world change, all forms of governance adapt. Sometimes it's a rocky road, sometimes it's smooth, but we have to view it as a process which needs assistance and capacity development as opposed to just dismissing a certain part of a governance problem that we can see from that outside. Thanks. Thank you. Victoria, I'll give you the final word. Any final thoughts before we wrap up? Yeah, I agree with what has been already said. I would just say that, I mean, customary systems are evolving always. I mean, they're not static, and I think that's a misconception that we have. So they're constantly evolving to the changing circumstances. But I think what's critical, what's really critical is this point that was made earlier about boundaries. So boundaries need to be recognized and then they need to be protected. And they can't be protected by Indigenous communities alone. They need to be protected by the state, by international authorities, etc. Because this is an existential crisis for the entire planet. If 80% of biodiversity is being protected on Indigenous territories, if carbon sinks exist primarily on Indigenous territories, then we won't survive as a planet if we don't protect Indigenous territories. So yeah, I'll stop there. Thank you. Fantastic. Look, thank you for all four panelists. I thought you were all brilliant. Lots of really interesting things that we're going to be chewing over. We have to close it there. So thank you to the panelists and thank you certainly to the questioners as well. And to the hidden audience out there. I have no idea how many of them that you are there. But thank you for your silent contributions too. And please look out. This is just the first of the webinars in this series. So look out for the next one. And well, I shall be joining certainly. So I hope you will be too. Thank you all. Bye bye.