 Ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to all of you joining us from around the world. I see people from Ethiopia, from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ghana, Laos, PDR, the whole world. My name is Susan Nyango and I'm Global Communications Coordinator for CFOAcraft. I'm speaking to you from Nairobi, Kenya, and I will be your moderator today. This afternoon in Nairobi, morning or evening, wherever you are, we are here to officially launch the Transformative Land Investment Project. We have with us a great panel of speakers drawn from partner organizations and representatives of governments and the private sector. Our agenda will include opening remarks, a presentation of the project, commentaries by those representing countries and the project funders. We will use a Q&A in the Zoom platform to ask your questions. We will take this at the end while others will be addressed as we go along. And to start us off, I would like to invite Ann Larson, the project co-lead and head of CFOAcraft's research team on governments, equity and well-being to give us the opening remarks. Welcome Ann. Thank you so much Susan and thanks to everyone for joining us at the launch of this exciting new project on transformative land investment. This project was born almost two years ago now when the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, SDC, released a call for proposals on responsible land-based investment. The process was on the VGGTs, the voluntary guidelines on responsible governance of tenure, which provide clear guidance for respecting and securing land rights, but have not been widely implemented, especially by investors. What struck us most about this call was what we at CFOAcraft see as central for an effective approach to sustainable food systems. This approach requires the integration of multiple priorities rather than addressing each of these separately, specifically land rights, smallholder inclusion, food security and environmental sustainability. The call also recognized some of the fundamental challenges in land investment currently, particularly the power imbalances underlying land governance and the importance of addressing these power imbalances as well as collective action as key for finding solutions. CFOA reached out to a consortium of like-minded organizations to respond to the call, all of whom you will meet here today. And looking at a longer term vision, longer horizon, which is encouraged by SDC and so rare among donors, we quickly resolved that the idea of responsible investment wasn't going to be enough for us. Responsible investment might just mean doing no harm, or maybe even doing a little better than that, but we wanted to go further. We wanted to promote a longer term vision focused on transforming land investment. A vision that is committed to social inclusion and that targets the transformation of the way land investment currently operates in support of people-centered food systems that respond first and foremost to local needs and priorities. We're fortunate to have a highly committed and engaged donor with a similar forward-looking vision. So it won't be easy. It certainly won't be fast, but we hope that you agree that this is a worthy goal. And you'll hear more now about how we plan to start on this pathway in the first phase of TLI from the project Leads and Partners. So I'll hand this back over to Susan. Thank you Anne for giving us insights on the project. So why TLI? And now I'd like to invite the next group of speakers to go into details on the project. And in order of how they will speak, I would like to introduce George Schoenewald, C4Acraft senior scientist for value chains, finance and investment. Kate Rikasi, Managing Director for Land Equity International. Ruben O2, Senior Advisor for Forests and Climate Change at SNV. And Delia Katakuten, Principal Scientist and Country Representative Philippines for C4Acraft. And now I'd like to remind you to please use a Q&A for your questions. And over to you George to start us off. Welcome to the global launch of TLI. In this presentation, we'll outline what TLI aims to achieve in the next three years and how it will foster genuinely inclusive investments on the ground. TLI is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and falls under its program for global food security. The primary objective of TLI is to help countries that manage to attract considerable investment in land better leverage those investments in support of the sustainable food systems transition. It will do this by helping investors strengthen how well they contribute to tenure security, environmental resilience and social inclusion with particular emphasis on investments in agriculture and forestry. In addition to that, TLI will aim to support investor compliance with global as well as national regulations and best practices. Under phase one of the project between 2022 and 2025, TLI will be led by the Center for International Forestry Research in collaboration with World Agroforestry, Land Equity International, Burkhoft and SNV. In the first phase, it will focus on five countries, five countries that have managed to attract significant investment in land and at the same time also demonstrate considerable capacity and willingness to promote more sustainable agro and forestry investments in their countries. So what does becoming transformative mean to the TLI project? This is based on our own repeated observations. They're companies that are considered to be green or responsible that do not necessarily make positive net contributions to host countries and societies. Often their policies and practices are associated with trade-offs and produce unintended effects. For example, a company that may look to green their supply chain may need to exclude small marginalized producers because they are expensive or difficult to trace and monitor. So to prevent these unintended effects from playing out, companies need to take a more realistic systems perspective that accounts for all different sustainability dimensions at the same time. That means that social inclusion, environmental stewardship, good governance and contributing to society at large should be very much part of the fabric of how an investor does business. This also means that unintended consequences need to be more actively monitored and addressed and that issues of agroecology, smallholder productive integration, supply chain shortening and circular production amongst other things need to become part of investor business models. Helping investors become more transformative is more urgent than ever. We face multiple crises, a food price crisis, a climate crisis and now also a supply chain crisis. This is happening in a context where many rural producers are already confronted by a host of market failures. Many don't have proper access to inputs, markets or technical assistance while the claims to their farmlands continue to be insecure. These insecurities are only rising. As populations grow and investors increasingly look to developing countries to develop plantations for agriculture and forestry, farmland is expected to become more scarce. This not only puts pressure on small scale producers, but also results in a conversion of important ecosystems, which results in biodiversity loss and reduces the capacity of countries to deliver on their climate change mitigation targets. With climate change not adequately addressed, smallholders face additional insecurities. They are more vulnerable to drought and flood and changing temperatures and agroecological suitability. This is affecting food and nutritional security, which may further marginalize small scale producers and increase the inequality gap. These challenges are expected to worsen in the future. By 2050, 60-70% more food needs to be produced. By addressing these challenges in isolation, it is likely going to be inefficient and produce a host of trade-offs. Because they are so interrelated, we require an integrated systems approach, one that is multi-sectoral and multi-scalar in nature that is grounded in large scale coordinated action. The need for greater coordination across governments, civil society and private sector is increasingly recognized, as is evident in the large number of different stakeholders rallying around the unifying framework for food systems transformation. Working on a more sustainable food systems together should focus on four key elements, on promoting healthier and more nutritious diets, promoting the uptake of agroecological production, making markets more inclusive and having a food systems which is better governed. There is a critical role for business to make land-based investment more transformative towards sustainable food systems. It is estimated that the level of investment needed for systems change exceeds resources available to them by about US $350 billion per year. There are social and environmental hidden costs of the global food systems market that outweighs the market value by $2 per tonne per year and these hidden costs require the right controls to minimize costs and investment risk. However, the private sector is uniquely placed to support a food systems transition by acting on opportunities and incentives supported by government and civil society. With a transformative land investment approach comes opportunities and risks and these need to be an acceptable ratio for business investment. Opportunities such as improving smallholder market access, adapting practices and technologies at a climate spart, increasing smallholder competitiveness, improving food safety, infrastructure and not the least reducing supply chains. The risks however are thus an increase in orienting food production to the export market. The produce is leaving the country in most cases where people may already be food insecure. Often there's also been a risk that there's a focus on the wrong commodities and competition from investors rather than an integration with smallholders in situ. We acknowledge that there are existing efforts towards responsible agricultural investment and sustainable food systems although there can often be weak alignment between the different initiatives. Manifested in this is placing a stronger emphasis on the different food systems dimensions with the overlapping approaches and purposes that can result in competition. Failure to take a holistic food systems perspective implies trade-offs might emerge. For example, zero deforestation commitments and initiatives may compete with and lead to an exclusion of smallholders since these are comparatively difficult and expensive to monitor. Many initiatives are voluntary and like dedicated independent reporting and verification, nor are there adoptions of incentives for many and thus enforcement challenges emerge. With so many different principles and criteria circulating, investors often struggle to make sense of the complexity and many also lacking the capacity to integrate more than one into their business operations. This may result in investors opting for the lowest common denominator. TLI strategy to deliver systems change involves tackling transformative investment issues simultaneously from various fronts. It aims firstly to prevent negative impacts from playing out in first place. Control on how positive and negative impacts play out and encourage investors to adopt business practices and models consistent with TLI and support investors in adopting, integrating and implementing better practices and models. Let me just introduce you to a few terms, the RRM, the risk-reward model. This is a model to evaluate whether a proposed investment project is socially and environmentally desirable, helps to support decision making, prevent negative impacts from materializing in the first place. The multi-stakeholder platform, the MSP, is a planning structure cutting across sectors and stakeholder groups that could collaboratively develop better coordinated and aligned policy and regulatory frameworks to control how investment impacts play out, as well as co-developing incentive mechanisms that better encourage investors to adopt and comply with better practice models. The COP, a community of practice, is a community of civic actors that are capacitated and coordinated to engage in more effective collective election and advocacy in order to better support the development and implementation of other components. The BTL, or the Business Transformation Lab, is a technical support structure that helps investors close capacity and resource gaps to more effectively improve their practices and business models. The simulation model for appraising land acquisition and business risks and opportunities under different land investment scenarios. It enables investors and government agencies to have quick access to information required for approving and regulating large scale land-based investments. For businesses, it enables them to select the most viable business options with less impact on environment and society. The model uses existing data such as investment siting plans, land use land cover data, sensors data and other socio-economic data to generate information of potential land-based investments, and this is done proud to the systematic environmental and social impact assessment process. This helps to also generate information required for state agencies and civil society organizations as well as financiers to provide a more targeted support to investors in the land-based sector. The multi-stakeholder platforms to be established under the project will aim to facilitate learning and co-creation space for governmental organizations, the private sector and also civil society organizations. The platforms will help to identify challenges relating to national level food systems. They will also set priorities as well as evaluate entry points for improving existing enabling and regulatory systems under the transformative land-based investments. The multi-stakeholder platforms would help in co-developing strategies and action plans to improve existing enabling and regulatory systems. The platform would also help to strengthen the alignment and coordination among existing initiatives across scale in each country. They will help in testing the viability of these action plans, but also identify and pursue opportunities for funding mechanisms that will help implement some of the strategies and action plans. Business transformative laboratories will be established in each project country and they would consist of the project team as well as country level experts. These will provide technical support for agricultural and forestry related investments. Specifically, they would assist investors in identifying bankable opportunities for improving their practices as well as business models. They will also support investors in developing strategies for realizing those improved practices and policies and business models related to large scale land-based investments. The business transformation labs would develop partnerships or to facilitate partnerships among investors, public sector institutions and financiers in a kind of a win-win situation that will help build a value network towards the common goal of transformative land-based investments. And during implementation, the business transformative lab will be available in providing backstopping towards implementation. One of the things that the TLI project is doing is supporting community of practice or COP. This is aimed to facilitate co-learning and to provide a planning space for civil society organizations. To collaboratively identify common concerns and opportunities for harmonizing and aligning existing initiatives and resources. Also to co-develop joint strategy for supporting and or informing the MSP, the RRM and the BTLs. Also to facilitate joint project identification and fund generation as well as on training on effective private sector engagement. So who would be involved in the community of practice? So these are the governments, the investors, the civil society and host communities. Each of them would have benefits from being in the COP. Another thing we're looking at is a global alignment around TLI in order to facilitate exchanges between responsible businesses, food systems, agro-ecology rights and environmental movements to explore opportunities for building horizontal synergies and coordinated action, develop harmonized indicators and metrics to evaluate and report agro-business performance, upscale national business ecosystems development solutions to the global scale and develop tools and guidelines on transformative business ecosystems. Who would be involved? This will be development financiers, responsible business platforms and investors. Each of them will have benefit from being involved in this global alignment on TLI. So as our next steps, the TLI project would be busy with implementing the following. One is to parameterize and validate our model with all the stakeholder groups in the countries involved, to co-design the BTL support strategy following our investor needs assessment, to formalize or inaugurate the MSPs following our systematic review of enabling environment and opportunities for coordination. We will also start developing the theory of change with MSP stakeholders, establish the COP and co-design COP collaboration and engagement strategy, as well as to develop an online platform to facilitate virtual dialogue, information sharing and transparency. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much to our speakers for starting us off. And I can see the Q&A is very active. Keep the questions coming in. And now I'd like to turn to our country representatives to give us their commentaries and I will introduce them in order of which they will speak. First will be Tewodros Zaudi, the president of the Ethiopian Horticulture and Producers and Processors Association. James Dadson, executive secretary, Ghana Lands Commission. Kamal Vaz, CEO of VADS Azul in Mozambique, a private sector organization. We are deputy director, land corgis, and Suvanane Keotama Vong, head of sustainability of Mekong timber plantations company limited, and please take the floor. Tewodros, are you there? Yeah, shall I proceed? Yes, please, please proceed. Thank you very much. And thanks for inviting me. As you all know, land plays quite an important and pivotal role in our livelihoods, especially in Ethiopia, where more than 100 million people are relying on land. It has also impacts on our ways of life, culture, social identity, and many people across the country are facing their livelihoods from it. It's been also quite a political issue. So starting from the 70s till today, and despite critical issue, and it has been a fight of all of contention with our politicians with regard to the tenure system in the country. So designing such type of interventions is quite important to address the concerns of the community, the concerns of the people, and the concerns of election actors as well. I think the design is quite important because it has taken into consideration a number of pertinent stakeholders and issues. And the strategy that is employed is also quite important as it is trying to address the negative impacts associated with land-based investments. This is also critical. We have a series of issues with regard to land-based investments in land with the political turbulence in the country. A number of investments have suffered because their properties are burned down to the ground because proper strategies were not in place. The lab mute issues were there because some people were displaced from the lands. So I think it's quite topical and important topic at this juncture. And they have tried also to engage pertinent stakeholders from the public sector, from the civil society and from the private sector, and the multi-stakeholder platform is also quite important. So as a private sector operators, we are happy to be part and parcel of this initiative. We can attract quality investments that can transform lab dudes, that can create win-win scenarios for themselves. Investments are important for Ethiopia, but they can create jobs, they can bring in technologies, resources and the like. At the same time, we don't need to compromise social and environmental sustainability issues. So we need to have the balance. Protecting the investors is quite important. At the same time, putting in place standards that can ensure proper utilization of the land is also quite crucial. So the project for me is quite timely and the design is also quite interesting. So I hope that it will be implemented in the right way as per the strategies that are set, as per the inputs that are collected from the pertinent stakeholders and the like. We can develop if we have proper utilization of our land. So my team, this project will contribute to it as well. So without much ado, I better wrap up and I would like to thank the designers as well as the country team of SNB of coming to this pertinent intervention. Thank you very much. Back to you. Thank you very much to Wardros. And now I'd like to invite James Dadson to take the floor. And please, for our audience, put your full name in the chat so that we know, not in the chat, but against your name so that we know who you are and which organization you're coming from. Over to you James. Thank you very much. This is James Dadson, the executive secretary of the Lands Commission of the Republic of Ghana. The commission socially is responsible for the management and registration of title to land throughout the country and the same body that provides advisory services or land policy and administration to the government to be various institutions and traditional authorities and other non-governmental institutions and individuals as well. On the policy framework to be followed for registration and management of all the lands within the country. And on record that the Lands Commission is happy to be part of this global launch and more especially as Ghana has been selected as one of the countries to participate in this project. The TLI project is very much in line with Ghana's and the Lands Commission's drive towards responsible life skill investment in land within the country. As a country, we in 2020 passed the Land Act at 1036, which is responsible for sustainable land administration and management in the country. It was thought that the legal framework within which land administration operates across the country needed to be standardized, hence the passage of this act. And that's a consolidation of many new ideas and experiences within the land sector. Provisions in the new act cover many contemporary issues we face in the land sector as a country, including acquisition and registration of land for investments. This act has come in to complement the Lands Commission's own guidelines for life skill land acquisition document. This came into being as a result of challenges that were being faced as a result of lands life skill land acquisition, creating landlessness among others. Now, for us any life skill land investment, which is detrimental to efforts aimed at poverty reduction, secure livelihoods, climate change, and food security is regarded as irresponsible and unacceptable. So for the TLI project to succeed in Ghana, stakeholders must take into consideration the land tenure, the land tenure system in our country, which makes provision for various bundle of rights and various levels of tenural arrangements within the country. The Lands Commission is of the firm believe that the country's development as well as that of Africa hinges very much on a sound land administration system characterized by security of tenure, access to land, development in a sustainable way, and most importantly, capacity building of the industry players. This is because land plays a vital role not only in the development of Ghana but Africa in general. We see a number of benefits from the TLI project. We are optimistic that the project would establish the platform for continuous learning, mutual understanding, sharing of experiences, and knowledge from diverse institutions, and the countries that are participating within in the project. And also to help in documentation and implementation of best practices to have a transformative investment in land, secure livelihoods, food security, and land rights. Again, address inequalities in land ownership, especially customary laws that limit women and youth and the vulnerable access to agricultural lands. This is what will ensure efficient land administration, not only for the current generation, but also for future generations as well. Finally, on this note, and on behalf of the Lands Commission, we pledge our support towards implementation of the project in Ghana, and we hope to be very much a part of it. And at the end of the day, share in the success story of this project. Thank you all. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much, James. And now I'd like to invite Kemal Vaz from Mozambique. Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for the invitation. Thank you for putting together this challenging proposal. I think the, the access to land is one of the most important issues that probably the process is that we take to access to land and also being the cause for the failure of many projects and communities. I would like to bring to this presentation an experience that we summarize synthesized together with other colleagues on a symposium organized in South Africa, a symposium on resettlement and livelihoods. We took more than 250 practitioners and more than 42 countries have attended this workshop. And I think this is very appropriate because it summarizes some of the key issues we call it the five big teams that emerged from all these experiences presented in this symposium. The symposium was organized by the International Association of Impact Assessment, and it's still very valid, and I would like to stress those big five teams that emerged from this symposium. First, land access and resettlement practice falls short of community expectations with negative impacts in livelihoods of displaced people, absence of meaningful involvement by communities in decision making and inadequate benefits from projects. Second, the best practice standard of IFI are converging countries are also increasingly putting in place legislation, like we heard my colleague that presented before, but there remain significant scope to improve legislative frameworks and align them closer within the national practice. And third point is livelihood restoration is not being properly planned or implemented. Finding replacement land is increasingly difficult and more in most developed countries. And because development projects always fall in crowded places. This is a big challenge. Women and youth and the vulnerable need more of a voice and more livelihood support. Lively wood restoration is a long term process and can be better integrated with broader community development efforts. The fourth point is projects need to start planning and engagement early and more thoroughly. And the fifth and last point, resettlement practice is improving but requires more resources. So these five points are, we can also develop in more extensive way, but it summarizes really the big challenges that most development in the vision has faced. We have seen a lot of failures, most of which is one example, big projects that have closed down because of this access to land process. So I would like to stop here and give the floor to my colleague. Thank you very much, Kamal. And now I'd like to invite so do what deputy director of the land core group over to you. Thank you so much for having this great opportunity. Let me straightforwardly touch on the point that why land investment is timely and salient. And in this case that just polite to reflect from the country specific perspective. Yes, the current situations. In our country. Many government in their periods. They are inviting the investors in the name of development of the country or economy of growth. And all these investors mostly use the land for the investment where these smallholder farmers that ethnic communities and women sacrifice their right and their 10 right and the opportunity for the name of development and they are suffering for decades until now. Then it causes the mistrust between the government private sectors and the communities. This has been have this has been the happen in country for decades. And then it has been trying to reduce and he do this issue by using many development projects and other resources and something even the CSO of government or UN agency or something like that. And then it seems to be gradually getting improved but until now, until the recent years, we have observed that the legislations, the authorities are in favor of the investors. For the development, why the voices of the civil society farmers and communities are much not hot and also not much taking to concentrations. So, in this case that just like to highlight that when they're thinking about the investors and also the smallholder farmers and community civil societies. And every event that the voices of the civil society farmers are not prevailing especially the government legislations and the investors prevailed so that when I see this project. The point is that when the inner lenses is highlighted the power imbalance. So this is this project will bring the power and also knowledge, and the wisdom, and the opportunities for the civil society out the position themselves very well to be able to work together with the government and the private sectors. At the same time, just like to highlight the legislations. And in this is also challenging to hold the history the legislations in Myanmar are in favor of the private sectors. This is almost obvious, and it has been tried to improve it amended it many times are, but the progress is very slow. However, in the last year, political crisis happened in Myanmar, then is also causes all the problems of the civil society's and some other institutions to move forward in the land sectors, and even the investment sector as However, in this context, the government institutions are still continuing working on their own agenda. Well, the other people will not have a chance to know it very clearly. So, in this case that this type of behavior administrative behavior, the legislations are also have a negative impact, and compounding impact in the investment as well as the right of the farmers and the communities. So, these impacts happen, or we can find it and we can see it in the people and the country itself and also for the land based investment sector as well. However, when we're thinking about the responsible agricultural investment principle for an eight. It's very important. We have already discussed about that one recently that so this is also the opportunity where the project is going to use this principles. And in order to achieve its goal one outcome one two three especially I wanted to highlight one two. So in this case that this is quite relevant to this case. But one comes to the questions that is it timely, of course it's timely, if there is no political crisis in Myanmar. So the political crisis is challenging it again, so that this is a team opportunity for that one. So system changes or safeguarding rights and SMB is this is to be considered in this case that this project is really useful, maybe very useful and wish to be useful and carefully designed for that one. And it itself is a good project. And if it's carefully designed, I'm sure that it will be bring the goal, the best result, especially for the country of Myanmar, but we cannot push this project activities. As much as we are in the name of the ambitious manner or something like that, but at on plus one plus two based on the current situation to which extent that we can add on this base on this project is really useful that is important to consider. So in short, I would like to say that this is timely, but very carefully to be designed and implemented the country. And to consider the point of salient. It's very important project. And I'm wishing that this project will bring the power balance, especially straightening the right of the civil society and the farmers is that this is a long tenure to ensure the sustainable food security of the country with this project. Thank you. Thank you very much. And now I'd like to invite Suvannane Kirtamavong, head of sustainability of the Mekong timber plantations company limited over to you. Good afternoon from Laos, my name is Suvannane Kirtamavong and I'm a head of sustainability at Mekong timber plantations or MTP. So MTP is a private plantation business in Laos currently managed 24,000 hectares of plantation estate. It focuses on improving civil cultural practices and is committed to meeting international best practices for responsible forest management to ensure that human rights are respected and that the company operates in the socially and environmentally responsible manner. Furthermore, the company also operates a small hunter partnership program under the two plus three model to promote economic development in the community center around MTP operation by encouraging and incentivizing small hunters to grow sustainable plantation forestry. This is in line with the national initiative where the government of Laos has long promoted commercial uses of land for agricultural and forestry investment. Investment in land has enormous potential to promote low economic development. When they are not done sustainably business practices could come with associated problems, just as environmental degradation and impact on human rights. These efforts impact usually hugely go to local communities, particularly groups of vulnerable people whose voice are less briskly involved. Although many investment apply a variety of principles on responsible agricultural practices challenge are still have been identified. I believe that this transformative land investment project will provide great solution and make great contribution to the current national regional and international principles and guidelines to ensure responsible integrated and transformative land investment. The TOI project would identify the root cause of those challenges and develop solution to closing those gaps through building and implementing effective strategies that involve a solid routing in the integrated tools, techniques, technologies, and inclusive consultation and engagement. For MTP and other business, the program would support in addressing the business challenges, strengthen the current sustainability practices and ensure that the company operates with maximum efficiency while minimizing risk and impact to communities and environment. It is also expected that the program will support one of MTP aims in expanding such transformative and responsible initiative into our supply chain, our business partner, as well as strengthen our small holders and community. With transformative practices and models, the approaches can help fight food insecurity in Laos and achieve several SDGs, such as those aiming at enhancing ecosystem health and promoting equitable and gender transformative improvement in food and tender security, as well as livelihood. I would like to thank you for the opportunities for having me today, and I look forward to the run of the TOI project. Thank you. So Vanane, thank you very much. And to all our speakers, we thank you for the insights that you've given us. Now, we'd like to hear from you, our audience. We'll take a few questions from the chat, some of them have already come in, and there will be directed at individuals. So just listening to all the speakers, we've had a lot about the environment, the MSPs, the governments of collaborations, but there's something I haven't heard. So, is the project going to take any kind of gender perspective. And if so, how I would like to direct this question to Kate Rikasi of Land Equity International. Yes, thank you very much, Susan. A very important question. We absolutely will be taking a gender perspective. We know that we are here to try and transform land investments in a way that supports tender security and food security. And that essentially means taking on more than just a traditional approach for predominantly male headed households and business leaders. So we'll be taking specific assessments in each of the countries, making sure that we understand gender and social inclusion factors and challenges with all the land based investments that we're looking through. So producing toolkits, testing them and facilitating the adoption of gender transformative approaches. Thank you. Thank you very much, Kate. And the follow up question directed at Anne Larson. So what do you mean by transformative and how will you bring this about when we have different actors with different interests involved with of course with their various priorities. Yes, of course, we don't expect this to be an easy process. So for a project to be transformative it has to bring about a change in the underlying structures and institutions that are driving business as usual practices. So it begins by changing and institutionalizing norms around what it means to be transformative itself, and these changes need to take us towards a new normal. And these norms means recognizing understanding how things work and why, how power relations drive the agenda, and how starting, and beginning to shift that by working with forward thinking leaders in all the relevant arenas building capacities in the ways that support more people to join the conversation. In this case we're building on principles of agroecology the VGG T's the CFS principles for responsible investment in agriculture. But specifically in the medium to long term we want to see food systems that are designed by local actors for the benefit of local people and local ecosystems. And to do this, as you've heard we have a very multi pronged approach that will work to start with these forward thinking businesses with leaders and forward thinking government actors. In, in combination with the whole ecosystem of local actors that should have a say in what kind of investment or food systems they want. muted. Thank you very much and, and there's a question from Lisa core in Ethiopia there are a couple of other MSPs on the topic of area and VGT. Are you aware of these and how are you making sure not to duplicate efforts. Who are you targeting to be part of these MSPs, and I would like to direct that to George. Thank you for the question and a similar question was also asked by Julian one. Well, the focus of our project is not to duplicate efforts or to develop redundancies. So we spend about a year mapping existing initiatives, engaging with these existing initiatives, and finding ways to collaborate with these initiatives. So the entry point is to find opportunities for collaboration and to harmonize a lot of existing efforts. And at the moment this space is there especially the MSP space is very congested, but a lot of it is quite overlapping, and also come with very specific entry points so either 10 year security, gender rights, or gender rights change, for example. So, if we really want to take the systems perspective, then we have to bring these different communities together, and let's take it up and see how we can integrate and align. And that's really our approach also to our global engagement is to find that alignment, and to leverage existing actions and definitely not to compete. Thank you. All right, thank you very much, and I think we are coming close to the end of time and we still have a couple of speakers lined up. So, I suggest, if there's anything else please put it in the chat. I think we're doing pretty well with response with responding to whatever is coming out from the discussions. So the Project Steering Committee is made up of partners who you already seen here, as well as SDC, who will hear from to close this launch event. Three other global partners that are on the steering committee include Oxfam Novib, the Rights and Resources Initiative, and the International Land Coalition. So first we'll hear from Annalisa Mauro, the network and system change coordinator of the International Land Coalition. Welcome Annalisa. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Susan, and good morning to all of you. So my name is Annalisa Mauro and I am the network and system change coordinator for the International Land Coalition, which is a global coalition of more than 300 organizations. I'm very much concerned about the security of land rights. So that's why we are here. And I would like to thank the organizer for inviting us to be here, but also to thanks for the fact of inviting ILC to be part of the of the steering committee of the project. And so why this project is very much important to us. Let me see if I can. Am I sharing my screen with you. So this is the beginning. And so the coalition it's very much aim to ship power to local communities and women and men and we do it by securing land rights and we work a lot with local communities. We in the almost half of the membership of ILC is composed by People's Organization, what we call representing pastoralists, representing farmers, women, youth, indigenous peoples, the one that we work for realizing people-centered land governance. And we were very much many members of ILC were part of the collaboration, the development of the voluntary guidelines that have been mentioned since the beginning of this launch. And that was 2012, May 2012, and very much in support of what was the turning moment of recognizing the importance of land as key pillar for rural development by a global audience. And also a recognition of the importance of securing land rights, as well as for the principle of responsible investment in agriculture, always by the Committee of Food Security. The same group of people have been influencing also the SDGs agenda and some of the indicators that have been picked up. In fact, recognize the importance of securing land rights. So still the process is how do we really influence in Europe or the European Commission is consulting in how to lay down rules for companies to respect human rights and environmental and global value chains. Why? Because the fact that we have very much a reference in terms of framework as I've been highlighted today is not very much translated into practices. As ILC, we have been collecting evidence, but mainly the voice of people we are working for and with of many dispossession, many force eviction, violation of human rights into what it's called a land investment. We have a protection funds for land environmental defenders, and those people are leaders of the community we work for and with. We are usually confronting a big companies, extractive companies, tourist companies, agriculture investment. And so, so we are still very far from making investment very responsible and that's why we are glad that this project is launched with the vision of transforming investment. And by doing so we just confirm what we have been listening in the previous contribution about the lack of compliance of many of the deals with the values embedded into the voluntary guidelines. We have a different system through which we build data and one of these is land matrix and land matrix is monitoring it's done together with partners. And it's monitoring large scale land acquisition above 200 actors. So we started this in the previous food crisis in 2008. And we have been keeping a database informing us how the trends are at the peak the normalization of investment without the consequence the main dimension the implication of investment. And just to echo what I listened from a from Mozambique or from Myanmar. There is still a lot to do in terms of making those investments responsible and especially in terms of land tenure and people not the rights when it comes to rural communities. So we have been assessing the 730 deals in 23 countries in Africa and exercise was in fact match the compliance of the investment with the BGT principles. And what you can see there it's that there is a lack of compliance in 78% of the deals and in 20 in 80 sorry 87% of the country's there is a mistake there is not 84 it's 87. So we say it's still a long journey to transform those investment and that's why we are very glad to be on board of this project. And when it comes to why there is a lack of come out compliance and that's exactly what I've been share previously it's first the week or not existence of a consultative processes not even to refer to preparing for consent in the case of the indigenous people's and collective rights. There's a lack of respect of national law and legislation including the one related to investment and tenure. In a law regard for legitimate tenure rights that doesn't mean necessary formal rights when it comes to, for instance, the informal tenure of local communities and indigenous people to their territories. A lack of respect for human rights I guess you know about the many cases that are brought to the media to the pension of us, but also global witness recently know the case of a gamma Tanzania. And there is a lot of impunity attached to the violation of human rights that we need to also question together, and there is a lack of safeguards on lawful expropriation and the minimal application of agreed upon compensation measures that I think was also the point by Mozambique. So I think those are conclusion upon which we can build they are confirming the assumption of this project that we are looking forward to be together in this journey to make sure that those are not the next report that will give us a different a different picture. Another point that is very much important to raise with all of you as audience of these important lunch is the lack of transparency. It's very difficult to access the information and without without information it's very difficult to have any monitoring system in place. Transparency is a key element of accountability and without transparency we cannot make government incorporated association accountable. So we need to make sure that also this is part of the agenda that we can move together had in terms of what we can do. So what are the urgent tasks from an ILC perspective that some of which will be taking together into this and this project is definitely a fast track of land reform, we need to secure the land formally of local communities and men and rural women who are We need to make corporate accountability and I will put they also the government accountable. I'm glad that we have all the government representative here because there is a lot to play in terms of joining the Moving on the agenda of accountability and also making sure that we can access data to monitor the trends to make democracy for bill together. So that's from our side I very much want to thank all of you as as organizer of this big event as a leader of this project and we offer that we really can make it and promote the transformative investment in agriculture. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Annalisa. And now we're coming to our last speaker for today. Hello, Kretas corridor. She's a co head global program for food security with the Swiss Development Agency and cooperation. Mary low the floor is yours. Thanks a lot Susan. Can you hear me and see me. Yes, clearly. Yeah, excellent. Thank you and and greetings to to all. It's a great pleasure. It's quite a satisfaction also to to see now the results of this almost two years of discussion and intense consultation. I'm really happy to see also the interest raised. I've seen about 135 participant quite a lively chat question and answers and to hear also not only from the project partner before we've been discussing for so long but also hearing now directly interested like authorities and private sector, being already part of it and and being very interested to contribute to this very ambitious program. This is this is really fantastic feeling. And Annalisa just made my life much easier with her presentation, because I can explain why SDC decided two years ago to launch this call and why we're here today, and actually is very much in relation with what we just saw in the presentation, we were very much involved in Rome at the CFS with the different policy processes, so mainly VGGT and the right. We supported already from the beginning the land matrix and ILC in this in its different strategies. And actually, a few years ago we said, Okay, how do we move forward. We've been already in this in this logic to bring the different dimension together. But I think what was new was to decide let's let's have more a systemic and a food system approach. So this is now our strategy for the coming years we want to contribute to more sustainable and resilient food systems we put at the center use and and women. We want to look at small producers smallholder producer at the same time, urban consumers, I think we haven't heard a lot about them today but they're also part of these of these efforts. And to do that, we have to focus and this is agro ecology and healthy diet from sustainable food system. So that's the background that's where we come from and very happy to see also very strong in these in these new partnership, the private sector engagement and that also responds to Switzerland international cooperation strategy for these coming years. So I will not make it longer. Very happy to to be here to have this ambitious project starting. And I would like to wish all of the partners, all of the other organization. I was very happy to see these different question how you're going to collaborate with this is also really SDC interest, we are not alone, we are many to, and we want to work together in that same direction. So all the best, and a lot of strengths to contribute to the is transformative effort. And with that I declare the TLI program launched. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. And we just like to emphasize that we look forward to building synergies and creating a community that's larger than the TLI project. We see that we have a broad range of organizations represented here that are part of the project, but we all have a common role within the project so we look forward to working together. And with that, I'm pleased to tell you to announce that the TLI website is finally live. There will we will be making additions to the page I will share it here. The TLI is working progress it never it's never completed in a day. So this is to start us off. And we will make the presentation available on this page, later this week. And with that, I would like to bring this to a close. And thank you very much for joining us today. We look forward to working with you. Thank you.