 Seven Latin American countries committed that by 2020 they will restore 20 million hectares of land. By restoration we don't necessarily mean it goes back to pristine forest, it could go into productive agriculture, it could go into mixed use, but essentially taking land that is today degraded, that has very little economic value and has very little ecological value and turn it into something that is good for people and very good for the planet. Well this is the first time that a region has got together and set themselves a target and we expect Latin America to do more, we just have seven Latin American countries, we expect that to grow. You'll remember that at the time of Ban Ki-moon's climate summit in September the goal was that 350 million hectares would by 2030 would be restored and this is part of two billion hectares that we at the World Resources Institute have now mapped. Two billion hectares in the world that's twice the size of China has degraded. It used to be forests and now it has very little value ecologically and economically and so the opportunity to restore land is one of the most wonderful opportunities that we have in the world today. Not only to sequester carbon and it could almost close the carbon gap on its own but in addition to that it provides food security, income, greater resilience of agricultural yields and so on. We currently have about 60 million hectares that are committed for 2020. The goal for 2020 is that 150 million hectares would be restored so the important thing about today is that seven nations, seven ministers got together and they said we get it and not only us but our cabinets and our heads of state get it and this is very, very important because if the revolution is going to take place and it will require that it's not only a ministry of environment or even a ministry of agriculture actually the minister of finance has to understand this, the minister of planning and indeed the head of state and that's starting to happen and it's a very, very exciting thing. We need all hands on deck. Government ministries have to operate differently from the way they've traditionally operated. In most countries government ministries and departments don't like to share information with each other they have their own flags that they want to wave and they need to learn to work differently so too financial institutions, the multilateral banks, the donors and the private sector need to operate differently and even civil society quite frankly and research institutes need to operate differently we need to operate in a way whereby the whole adds up to the sum of the parts because actually on a Monday morning it's very difficult to actually do the restoration the good news though is that we now have examples really all around the world of governments that got serious about restoration demonstrating it can be done and that's terribly important that we have that demonstration so a country like Niger as you know through smart policy reform has been able to transform rural development through bringing trees, shrubs, bushes and carbon into the rural landscape so the way you think about restoration is you have a fairly serious analysis of who are the players who are the landowners and what are the financial mechanisms that exist are there constraints to make this happening what is clear is that the economics of this is very very attractive we've done a lot of work on this and you can really show that for really any ecosystem really in the world almost that once was forest that actually restoration to various degrees has a very very high rate of return it also has a high rate of return for the individual but also for the nation and the region it also makes the land more resilient, it improves food security so I think the intellectual battle has been won the political battle winning the political hearts and minds is still very much open I mean most countries still when they think about investment and capital they think about who can we get to come and build factories and when they think of capital they think of physical capital whilst actually on their doorsteps in their backyards are hundreds sometimes millions of hectares that are degraded land which is capital which is going to waste and you can restore that capital and turn it into something hugely productive