 Thank you. So welcome everyone to this lunchtime seminar. We are very pleased to introduce and welcome Gunnar Shalin, associate professor at the University of Gothenburg's Director for Environment for Development Initiative. We met some time ago and we felt after talking for some time that, well, I felt first of all that he's an interesting guy and you know how it is when we meet interesting people from other places. We invite them to come and tell us a bit more about what they are doing and he accepted that but also because I could clearly see some potential for collaboration. As you know in our strategy we are seeking to increase collaboration with universities and I know we do already have some work together with Gothenburg but we have we feel that we have opportunities really when we look forward and it's really interesting to see how you work on the STGs and INDCs a little bit more as you know focused from the perspective of environmental economics. So we look forward to your presentation. I think what you have said is that you will invite people to comment as we discuss but otherwise we have also some time in the end for additional questions and so on. So a warm welcome and give him an applaud. Thank you. Thank you, Johan. And thanks for being here. As you answered we this is really this whole seminar is a way of of introducing the Environment for Development Initiative and I hope that as an outcome of this meeting and this presentation we will find some areas of overlap where we can collaborate in the future. But before I introduce the whole initiative maybe I should say just a few words about myself. So I started to work in in development back in 1987 in Ethiopia and I've been working on environmental issues natural resource management in developing countries since then. As a PhD student we started this capacity building work together with the support by CEDA on environmental economics and a dedicated PhD program. The first thing I did when I finished my PhD way back in the 90s was to start the Environmental Social Science undergraduate program in Gothenburg and when people started to graduate from the PhD program in on environmental economics in Gothenburg I felt that we didn't get as much traction from this capacity in developing countries as we had hoped for. So then I spent another two years in Ethiopia 2003 to 2005 and and the outcome of that is the Environment for Development Initiative. So I hope that you will recognize yourself here in in our kind of theory of change and I would like you to think about how different we are in kind of in practice on the ground in trying to address more or less the same issues. So I would really like you to just you know interrupt me as we go because maybe there won't be much time at the end to really retract and go back and that makes it also more enjoyable. So you might think that this is just a simple country road in Africa but as you will see this is the road to to impact for research to to contribute to policy policy. What we what we found of course in Sweden we have all our commissions and so on but in in in many developing countries there are a lot of stumbling blocks and potholes in this road on how we as academics can contribute to to impact and what this presentation is about is how we in our initiative are trying to to address that because this is some pictures of two different sides of the mountain in Ethiopia. So one side is completely degraded and the other side is really lush. This is just a few kilometers away from each other and of course the the background to this is that there are a lot of you know policies and investments and and things that that we can do to to change the management of the environment. So it is our belief as as dedicated environmental economists working in this area that if we could just put our knowledge what we know about these things into the policies and investments that are being done then these resources could be managed much better to increase the sustainability of the resource use and to increase growth and decrease poverty. So that is why we we call this environment for development because we believe that if you just manage that environment then we can have that as a as a dynamo for for development. So our theory of change is is deceptively similar to you. So we want to to bring knowledge into the policy process and and have impact. So the stumbling blocks that we found was that there was very little human capital in the countries we were working in. So our starting point was capacity building program. I'll tell you more about that. Then even even those that were trained they did they didn't have the resources to to do the analysis that is necessary and also what SCI is is all about doing right. So so so there was an analytical gap that we tried to address with our research and research collaboration. And maybe the most tragic of all is even when in those few cases where you have the capacity in the country and they do relevant research not even then you know you reach through. They are marginalized in various ways this local capacity and they don't reach into these policy processes. Instead you know people like me and you can be flying in there and and trying to to fix the problems. I'm going to Ethiopia tonight as one of those missions. So we really we believe that the kinds of capacity that that you have here and that we have in Sweden that is actually much needed in every country and they need that capacity locally in order to not only come up with the solutions but but continue and maintain and ensure that they are being put in place and being adopted. So for that to happen there needs to be very strong research policy interaction and that is typically not the first thing that an academic institution would invest in. Although SCI is is doing a lot of that. So underlying all this was an institutional gap. There wasn't really any platform for the human capital to meet the research do the research and and to have that kind of interaction. So what I'll start with is to tell you a little bit about our institution development program setting up these EFD centers all around the world. All right so the institutional development but this is from the roof of the Ethiopian Development Research Institute in Addis Ababa. And this is the centers that I'll briefly go through. So we started out in Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa. We had the first center in Central America and now it's being added to Colombia and Chile. And in Asia we started in China with Peking University and now we're just these days expanding to India and Vietnam. So I'll go through that quickly. And I'll start with Ethiopia because it is where it all started some 13 years ago. But it's also where most of the action is now because I don't know how much you've heard about that but Ethiopia is completely kind of taking on this green growth agenda. So in in Germany in 2011 they presented their climate resilient green economy strategy and then in Lima, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, UK, US all are supporting the implementation of that. So we have now revamped our EFT center at the Ethiopian Development Research Institute to address this climate resilient green economy strategy. And the strategy is well it's one of those McKinsey products, right? So it's kind of a black box if you like and it's extremely ambitious. So they want to have continued rapid growth lowering middle income country by 2025. By 2030 they think that they will have that high you know population growth and economic growth and still have the same absolute greenhouse gas emissions that they had in 2010. And they are selling this product this development path to all you know donors that won't like to invest in this. So what we have done with with that was that the Norwegians supported the very very elaborate policy research review on these six sectors of the Ethiopian economy. So it's what is the the the plans and investment programs for energy, every culture, forestry, water, urbanization and industrialization. So we've gone through excruciating detail everything that is being you know said in the policies in the CRG being pronounced in the second growth and transformation plan down to the actual projects. And then we have identified a research agenda based on that in order to be kind of the knowledge backstop to the government and the donors when it comes to how this is going to be implemented because if you're going to throw this kind of money at it you better know what you're doing you better you know know when something is working and something is not. So we were so impressed by that this is as you will see a very different approach to research than what typical research in in academic institutions do. How do I write another paper right? So what we're trying to do now we invited people from all the EFT centers to come to Addis for the launch of this research program and we've asked them now to develop each and every one their own policy research reviews. And the first thing and this is kind of the invitation I will give you at the very end of this lecture by identifying the needs for knowledge in these larger processes and strategies then relate that to their own research and capacity come up with where the policy research priorities for the centers and that we also will have as a guide when we give out money from the EFT research fund. So already the first one out is of always in our case Katya they're really on the ball they identified that this is going to be quite a broad research agenda to support those policies. So they would like to invite other academic stakeholders to take part in that research agenda and this is where I'm now trying to rally support from other actors because this is so huge we cannot take it on ourselves but we feel that we can contribute to what is important. All right we'll come back to that hopefully at the end. So let me just run through the center to introduce and this is of course the objective of today just to give you a feeling of the kinds of capacity we have out there in order for you to maybe think that thought if you have a project running in any of these countries. So in Kenya we have some we are based at the first at Kipra but then we moved over to University of Nairobi the director of the EFT Center is also the head of the School of Economics Jane Mariara and we have a nice example there we teamed them up with international researchers and they start to look into the distributional implications of the tariffs of water in Nairobi and it actually led and this is not every day that happens it actually led to reform of those tariffs you know after only a year typically it takes some 10 years to really work an authority and then of course some work on food security climate change and and also forestry work there. In Tanzania it's at the Department of Economics University of Dar es Salaam and they have very very strong policy connections they have a policy advisory board that is linked to the vice president's office is responsible for environmental policy but also to the development systems group and on environment and NAMC and others. So so they've been working a lot on forest management increasingly on energy you know that they've found gas outside the coast of Tanzania so there are a lot of issues at stake now on the environmental arena in Tanzania. In South Africa so some of you might have heard of the African Economic Research Consortium and they have masters and PhD programs. Now the University of Cape Town School of Economics has been kind of at the core of a lot of that works they have a big big body of PhD students there and they have a strong faculty so they have like three four really strong areas that work a lot in conservation and biodiversity on fisheries also some experimental work. On energy we talked before they have big RCTs now on various nudges to decrease electricity and water consumption in big residential areas of Western Cape and they also have they're linked into major climate change initiative for Africa that it's based at the University of Cape Town. China started out the strong focus on forest they have big panel data sets on the community forest tenure form and the state forest tenure form. Increasingly now they have been working a lot on transport issues air pollution and increasingly on just general energy issues. It's based at the National School of Development at Peking University but we have three faculty at Renmin and in the Energy Economics Department there and a network beyond. Are all these self funded? Pardon? Are they self funded or? So yeah so one of the we have ever since the beginning since the capacity building program was supported by CEDA and then we have this special environmental program yeah and passions so that was the start and we only gave them like hundred thousand dollars a year to set up their center and then we have a research fund at the moment it's like almost a million dollars a year that goes around the centers but then we have as an indicator of sustainability you know how much they can pull in. So for example China is we're paying basically for their room some lunches and stuff like that while I mean it's amazing I just passed by China the other week and and now they have their big new initiatives that 49 graduate students coming in from all over the world is as part of an initiative that they just launched a year ago. The things they do there is just at scale. So the degree of self funding differs between them but we're mostly the icing on this cake and we're putting kind of the glue in the system giving them core support and some research money but most importantly linking them to this international network. Central America is a good example of that. So it's based at Katia which is set up by the Organization of American States it's primarily in the Agriculture Forestry Institute but now with with Francisco Pissar who graduated from our program in Gothenburg they have a very very strong socioeconomic part that is part and parcel of the FCE Center there. They had a lot of emphasis on payment for ecosystem services now climate change information for example big projects by Conservation International and IDRC in the order of $500,000 a year to to work with farmers to reduce well to help them with the adaptation to climate change and water access and so on. Chile is it's an interesting case they they added themselves to this. They got local funding from Chilean Government Millennium Fund and then they wanted an international network so they've contributed greatly and our annual meeting this year will be in Pocón organized by the people in Concepción. They are really strong in natural resource management particularly fisheries policy etc. And then we have two centers kind of added on to this Gothenburg but also resources for the future so they've been there with us from the beginning supporting this so resources for the future is the most the oldest founded in 1952 best always voted the most influential think tank in environmental economics and we have taken kind of a subgroup of those that are interested in developing initiatives and they are then collaborating with our centers and then of course Gothenburg which has one of the strongest environmental economics and behavioral economics groups in Sweden and by far the one that is mostly focusing on developing countries. So that's the presentation I didn't say much about the three new ones but they are also very strong so we have a process now of reviewing them and bringing them into the family so it's for India as a network situated in the Institute it's in Vietnam at the economics University of Hushimil City a very strong group I visited them last week and in Colombia it's also going to be a network for Colombia but hosted by the University of Los Andes also with very very strong academic groups also with a lot of you know lab in the field experimental experience and so on. I feel I'm talking very fast but still time is passing so should I speed up even more hmm 20 past academic training so I told you about the the the capacity building program so CEDA has supported an environmental economics and development PhD program in Gothenburg started slowly beginning of the 90s from 97 we've had like full cohorts every other year and out of those 35 that has graduated so far 32 are back in their countries and that's not just by coincidence it is because we looked at that why are people not going back from the US from UK you know other capacity building programs and then we start to think well can they make a living out of their research can they do research can they continue to collaborate internationally can they make a difference so it's really to to deliver on our promise to CEDA that this capacity would go back and make a difference that is why we set up these centers but it's of course also benefiting a lot of other people so of course our graduates is just a small subgroup of everyone who's going back and when you talk about as you do capacity building and everybody's talking about capacity building you have to have patience we have patience we started in 91 and we're still working at it now we're supporting the academic institutions but it just you know you have to realize it takes 25 years to go from you know starting your bachelor's to becoming a full-blown professor being able to run your own you know PhD programs and so on that's just how it works so those are the kinds of time perspectives we need to have if we want to make a dent and give these countries the capacity that they deserve so here's the first graduate 98 graduated before me huh so what we the model we've had in Gothenburg is that we are in the whole program it's really focusing academic programs when we talk about capacity building it is typically you know undergraduate master's PhD programs and our PhD program has then invited people not only in our program but also others that are taking their PhD in other places but don't have those kinds of specializations and they come so hundreds and hundreds have come to those and then we are now trying to support similar kinds of programs locally and what this means is that we're talking just economics here right economics is so mainstreamed all over the world now two years of courses two years of thesis writing first year is micro macro econometrics means some extra math second year you specialize and these are the kinds of things that could make a difference for a whole academic career so we give them a whole semester of valuation climate modeling natural resource management policy instruments choice etc and with that they can start to write their thesis and the whole trajectory of their academic career could be changed because of this then we're our dream right now so we're been working for some time we don't have the funding for this yet if you can send a good word what we would like to do given the need and I'm sure that you've also seen that in many countries that you work at I mean the need now for for people from these countries to be part of climate negotiations to develop their own policies and strategies to develop the proposals to the Green Climate Fund to implement these I mean they need a lot of of hands on the ground here to make that happen and we believe instead of having these kind of two three week courses with podiums and stuff invest in dedicated master's program building on what they have and in two years time you would have a whole new crew out there really making a difference and if we pull together the skills that we have and the methodologies we have and and provide them to these centers we think we can make a real difference but the key issue here is actually to give the teachers in these universities new pedagogical tools to to make use of all you know the videos and MOOCs and stuff out there and bring that home to their degree programs and empower their students with new skills and ideas so this means that that of course Gothenburg is only the tip of the iceberg but really the work being done now is that all of these centers have links to master's and PhD programs in most cases and those are of course the next generation that will work on these issues and we try to link them also to the research that we do so applied research anything more academic capacity building at one point or another we should talk about what you do on academic capacity building and if there is any anything we could we could work together on there so we basically have two major strategies kind of in-house to deal with the analytical gap we have a small research fund and and we're also supporting collaborative research and learning between between the centers and I think my my expectation is that you know if you read your strategy and our strategy we're trying to do the same thing in our research identification process the big challenge for us over the last ten years have been to get the academics out there and really carefully not thinking about the next paper to write but really careful listen about what is what are the knowledge needs out there so the big difference for us has been to to grow these big big big ears and create these interfaces with local policy processes to understand what the knowledge gaps are and I think that is become the strength of the if the initiative now those kind of day-to-day interactions with policy makers but then of course as I told you about the policy research reviews we need to match that with the skills and interests of the researchers we match them them up to the international researchers they have collaborators from all of the world and sometimes we also lean at the international processes where I think that you are particularly strong kind of having this feeling for what's happening in the world so well a lot of these researchers in the past kind of just made ends meet by you know they had their teaching and they did some consulting and so on there wasn't really always a research environment for them what we have put in place is a it's a cycle where every year they start to think about new projects and have these kind of interactions with policy makers and then we have our you know typical academic process of identifying or scrutinizing their proposals right and then we select a double peer review we have research committee and and presentations and are a new meeting and all that so some of the some of the produce come through and then the next year they do their data collection and their analysis and then once again when they're starting to to be finished with their papers then we're once again we have peer review and copy editing and all that to make them publish internationally which means that all of this of course you know there are like five of these every year and of course every year you both think about new research you do your accepted research and you disseminate your old research so from kind of nothing in some places we now have a buzzing research environment where people are constantly thinking about new research idea implementing research and and disseminating old research and we're very very proud of that so this is the research committee we have for the for the selection of proposals and then of course we have a research director and me kind of following the process so we've had our own themes in the past I'll show them but but what have become apparent to us is that what I can do as a director for this I can push these researchers to to look a little bit beyond their own research interests their own research interactions and also bringing on the bigger agenda and what we what we have seen on this demand for for analysis has led to in the past has been a lot of a poverty focus a lot of agriculture green issue focus but increasingly we see of course an interest in in climate climate change climate adaptation etc at the beginning we hardly had anything on urban issues but now sustainable citizen communication we we are really gearing up particularly with the addition of centers like you know Beijing now Delhi etc so these are the old kind of focus areas agriculture forestry parks while policy design climate change and so on it is coming much much more bigger so from this research process so far we've got some more than 300 peer-reviewed publications out and if you put that in the perspective of you know so ISSC just had this review where they were complaining about how little of global change and climate change research was done in developing countries and and similarly IPCC has really voiced this so this is our attempt to really get them on to this process and and involved in it and it's an increasing scale so we have a lot of of our international peer-reviewed publications but also our own discussion papers book chapters etc okay so so the research fund and also these policy research reviews will then feed into our priorities in in the research fund the other thing that we haven't capitalized on enough I think in the past it's the fact that we are this network you also network and I don't know how much SCI is actually making use of the fact that you can draw on capacities all over the world so we've tried to do this in some areas like adaptation climate change we're in protected areas optimal pricing of parks forest tenure reform and I'd like to tell you about two more recent initiatives so the one is the first one is ecosystem services accounting many of you have probably heard heard of waves wealth accounting evaluation of ecosystem services this is kind of the new thing after natural resource accounting and and so World Bank has has kind of been driving this more than 60 countries have signed on yes we will include ecosystem services in our national accounts but we don't know how to do it so so what we have done is that with special money from from SEDA and with the involvement of of the resource for the future and Swedish EPA we have now six postdocs in our original centers working for three years to develop just for three ecosystem services methodology that would work and give good that is compatible they're not going to do the national accounts compatible with the national accounts but in a way that makes it possible to extrapolate and use this information more structured way to build a methodology that can be used for bringing ecosystem services into the national accounts so this is what we can do when you have kind of a tightly knit network and another example that is more recent is something called sustainable energy transition initiative we've had a lot of ad hoc studies on adoption of improved stores renewable energy etc in all our centers so now we're trying to bring this community together and we'll have two meetings a year and identify the research gaps and the knowledge gaps that they need to address in order to for the the countries to to really jump onto this transition and I'll show you just one figure that this group developed so this is just the the energy consumption per capita in log format and this is the the GDP so you see Ethiopia for example at very it's very at the bottom but it's moving fast some places like like Kenya is not moving much in these 20 years while others look at Vietnam go here right so of course in many of these countries we have kind of similar patterns similar things happening and for us to understand what is driving these changes and learn between countries is is a great opportunity that we will try to capitalize more on in the future finally something that you guys are very good at and that that academics in particularly in developing countries really suck at is to be out there and presenting their research and investing in that kind of communication so that's where we use the the seed of money to really invest in that and one one very kind of hands-on way to do that is through edited volumes where you pull things together so I particularly like this example so Thomas Turner he had been arguing for for carbon pricing field taxes ever since the the 80s and every time he came with that argument oh but think about the poor think of the poor was kind they're not gonna get to to to work and so on so obviously it's an empirical issues after all this time you know he pulled together data and and did you know similar analysis for 25 different countries and it showed that the poor the country the more progressive of course these taxes are right addressing kind of the arguments that that people were throwing back at them and and this is of course more timely than than ever now with the big carbon pricing initiatives going on at the moment and and really taking on what are the concerns in these countries so one of the things we will talk about in the coming days in Ethiopia is is you know what are the the distributional implications of the carbon tax for Ethiopia as part of this bigger carbon pricing initiative what did I do that yeah so similarly a lot of our past work has been on the agriculture investment productivity and also drawing together the the experiences of the the devolution of harsh management in many countries which is very similar and it's striking how little they know about the experiences in the nearby countries not to speak of between continents once again this is probably an area where where we should be able to to collaborate we have come a long long way compared to where we were some 10 years ago in in sensitizing the researchers to the importance of our of listening and also investing in professional support to do this and I feel that we have a particular strength here in having them nearby the policymakers in these countries and being able to maintain the dialogue not only when the study is being presented but in future kind of workshops and dialogues so on there's always a challenge I'm sure that you have the same challenge in in say but what have you done have you these outcomes that we have to report to to see that etc and and and we are we are of course very humble if you if you look at these policy processes and democratic systems if we would run a regression and look at the kind of the impact and see what is our effect on on on the on those policies it would be very difficult and should be very difficult to pick up the impact that that our initiative would have so what we're trying to do is to develop these stories is that tell you know the story about how we identified an issue the kind of interaction have been the the analysis have been done how that has been being played into the policy and and and the outcome and so that is how we are trying to to present our impact and and we have I don't know many 70 80 maybe 100 of these stories now on our website so just in a glimpse what we're trying to do for the center we work on the concentration long-term commitments in particular sectors we have close dialogue so so here's Francisco has been working a lot in in in with parks in in Central America for two decades now same thing with Jintao following the forest reforms in China and becoming the the the strongest support they have in in understanding their own reforms now the state forest administration out of Mekenda he was the head of the Department of Economics now he's the state secretary for industry and innovation in Tanzania so that's a close dialogue and then we have our international scholarship have completely invested in these kinds of of collaborations like like Salvatore the Falco is now the head of the Department of Economics at the University of Geneva we are using more and more focus on impact evaluations so for example in in Ethiopia where Alamo is from there's a lot of of clan impact evaluations of these sector programs and then we're trying to to bridge this gap we have all these household service experiments and so on at the grassroots level and we're trying to connect that community with our friends at UNDSA bring growth knowledge platform etc maybe tomorrow even at SCI so so here is the here is the the call for for for cooperation in the future we are expanding our academic network we are working more and more closely with government agencies we do have collaborations with international organizations we're one of the first and most active knowledge partners in the green growth knowledge platforms we have close dialogue with some international organizations but not with you guys and we do look for partners when it comes to to support the implementation of the sustainable development goals in the countries based on our own reading and our own contributions to that exactly how is of course a question so that was really extraordinary it's interesting to hear your presentation because in many ways we could also copy it almost to have a similar presentation well that's yeah it's quite similar although someone more you could say focused on environmental economics and the implications there it's interesting to see how you try to bring various aspects together and be focused in certain areas we have our initiatives now where we also try to foster collaboration within the organization also between different disciplines and so on so I think there are many many interesting similarities just very very quickly when you say you have collaborations with other organizations like you know small ones like WRI and these how do you how how is what is the normal way of that collaboration is that you identify common joint projects and you operate together you know common applications can you just describe how you work with partners in what way yeah so it it depends a little bit I think what is interesting for many are in actual implementation so they they and that is basically what I provide to you too so we have this local capacity and they need that to kind of plug into their programs right so they invite us as being part of the teams in in in doing projects at the local level it's great and I think in our case of course there is an interest potentially also in collaboration in the regions because we have office in Nairobi for instance in Bangkok we are looking at Latin America and so on so I think also established in collaboration there could actually be a potential yeah so questions and comments and yeah well stop everything in between come on guys oh yes of course I can always trust you yeah okay good now thank you very much and finally understand what you actually are doing traveling a lot no but very interesting and I it's interesting to see how this when you work with existing institutions and how you kind of can trigger some additional value to to their work which is absolutely invaluable in terms of data sets and so forth I what I'm a little bit curious about do you perceive or any language barriers because you do work in Latin America and you do work in China and is everything you know I guess your language is English but is there any you know dimensions of this I would like to know it's a good question it's interesting to see what what they decided so so in parallel with us there have been a number of regional initiatives so in the case of Latin America there was a regional let's see it's Latin American and Caribbean environmental economics program and there they decided very early on that they wouldn't go down the Latin route in a way they would take that head on and use English as a common language for all their activities and as opposed to you know in the 70s when there was still kind of an open question would it be French or Spanish or English I think now in academia if there is no question nobody questions that that that English is the the the language for our communication then of course when it comes to the the communication with with policymakers that is always done in whatever local languages right but when when it comes to our communication we it's all in English and and all the literature is in English and our academic programs are in English so so that that has been a very clear decision from the very beginning can you just say I mean it was interesting still to see that I mean quite often you mentioned support from SIDA and so on I mean how dependent are you on this kind of support I mean how much are you trying to make sure that you have a self-sustaining network you said in the beginning that quite small amounts of core was actually going out but is it that you more you are more dependent actually on SIDA here in Sweden or you know what yes so so this could be seen as a public good right so so the communication the glue in the system that is supported by SIDA so so these and and there is a value added of such a public good but but at the moment SIDA is the only kind of the core supporter of that we got some world bank money for the research fund and so on one year but but it's really SIDA was providing that and then you can kind of spice it up with with individual research grants etc but somebody has to take the responsibility for the for the public good I think what is very interesting and exciting and what part of the dialogue will have in Ethiopia now we're trying to get a basket funding for that program and if the donors at the national level come together to support such an initiative then we've come a long long away I think and that's how it should be right yes thanks for a very interesting presentation I realized I was listening with Envy I think that you know a lot of many of us here at SDI work with with natural resources management in one form or the other and very often we don't have the same obvious channel to the the Ministry of Finance that you obviously have and also being embedded in in in lots of the departments of economy which I realize would be very very helpful for a lot of the work we do so that was more of a comment a question though would be how do you manage to do do the more sort of interactions between these different topics that you mentioned I mean you very eloquently listed per SDG or per topic agriculture energy etc. Are you also able to do these sort of integrated projects in your portfolio so first on the first question that reminds me so the Green Growth Knowledge platform had its fourth annual meeting in Jeju in South Korea was hosted by the Green Global Green Growth Institute and there was a lot of kind of soul searching there on where we are in the bigger agenda and I think that there is a hope a wish a realization that now the whole kind of what was sustainable development for the Ministers of Environment back in in the in the 90s so green growth is supposed to be kind of that paradigm but for the Ministers of Finance and I think that I don't really think that we're there yet but I think we are much much closer to that than before and I think that that is what economics can provide so we have that kind of language and we can talk to the Ministers of Finance and what is striking is that these issues I mean we have many of our colleagues who have become heads of departments of economics in these countries so these issues are rightly much more important and central to to their policies than they are even in Sweden so so yes there is something there and I I feel also very happy that that we have that so if you think about economics and and what you should think about here is that our whole discipline is very much micro-oriented in its analysis but it's really we have a natural focus at the national level because that's where the policies and programs and so on are so so for us life is a little bit easier in terms of and and and that's also kind of linking over to your next question we call us environment for development and then there has been an open issue from the very beginning of how interdisciplinary we should we should be and so this is probably the only time I've been a little bit careful so people said you cannot start six centers at the same time and some that's told me a lot of things I can't do and we've done it but I have a lot of kind of care in in I've been part of many interdisciplinary attempts so and research and typically that takes a lot of time you know you spend a couple of years talking about your context conceptual framework etc etc so that has been something where I think we still have our big challenges in front of us in really reaching out and having more interdisciplinary work and also more integrated work between these sectors so far if you look at our publications they have the majority of them have been very specific analysis traditional kind of economics publications things so we still have a lot to do in more integrated approaches more taking a step back and synthesizing and also broadening the the disciplinary kind of reach thank you thank you for your thank you for your seminar I work with the communications here and I got inspired by your these EFD stories and I just wonder how long you've been working on them and what has been the response how have you been getting people to to read them and to listen to them and what has been been the response maybe you haven't been using them for many years yes so so it's a good thing that you you asked me because I of course brought some and I forgot that so please have some yes so of course if it kind of started as an attempt to to respond to the the need for kind of impact so so it was our but but then this kind of sunshine story concept I think that is something that we really need and also researchers need to be able to show that they've done something because a lot of these things are very abstract so I think it's been it's been probably at least some five six years that we've had this and so then we ask is part of our annual reporting from the centers we asked them for one story that they pick up and then we have people in Gothenburg working on those and and bringing that out and and putting them in our center for three and yeah so that is actually our our main kind of focus now when it comes to to reporting so we were when it comes to impact kind of reporting we are going in two different directions one is more just if the numbers really hard numbers on the one hand and and the other one is this more elaborate stories while in the past we had more you know you had a paragraph of this and that and it didn't really do either of these things right so what's it is asking us for is more of long-term panels on the data and then these stores no obviously I think you know what is nice is that in many ways the way you work and think very similar to how we also see ourselves developing so I think they're as I said I think there are many commonalities in terms of the way to to really set up the research and work and the policy engagement and as you say getting the policy in policy dialogue going already at the inception phase when you define the research I think that is a lot of similarities there but then I also think we complement each other quite well of course as always if the discussion stays between you and me nothing will happen so the question is then how we can find the synergies between individual researchers I think one way of doing it is of course when you have also people here from the different centers that we try to set up you know something maybe that where we where we create interaction but also of course I encourage people here to also visit your centers while they're traveling in different countries yeah yeah so please visit our website so a lot of information is there there is also the film that we put together in the end about our network so here I'm sure that you will find you know if you're gonna work in particular sector in a particular country maybe you will actually find some interesting material or even a potential collaborator and I'm the kind of the boring nitty gritty level what we have done with the seed and money is that we've kind of prompted them to be ready for those kinds of collaborations so we have up and running ways to to send money have reporting on that you know external audit every year really prepare them to be active in international collaborations and we have by now we have actually thousands of documents up on on on our website so I think that is really where the action could be then if you want to have a guide into that system we have the secretary in Gothenburg so we have me we have the research director we have a communications person we have a program manager and someone who can help out with the contracts so excellent thank you very much thank you see this as a way of continuing our dialogue I'm sure we can find really nice and interesting points and actually also talk to see that a bit jointly because I know see that appreciates when yeah different organizations or initiatives that they are funding actually managed to find ways of collaborating I think we might even have the same desk maybe you have okay good anyway thanks a lot really and a warm applaud of course to end this as well