 Okay, now just before giving the floor to Professor Hoar Franken just a few few words to acknowledge his presence here and his His trajectory. It's a very big pleasure Professor Franken Hoar to have you here I'm very glad that you could arrange for a long for a long time We have been trying to arrange the presence of Dr. Franken in this meeting but there was a meeting was overlapping with a very relevant another very relevant Meeting and we thought that it was not going to be possible But few weeks ago we received an email from Professor Franken saying well this the other meeting has changed the dates You can make possible So it's we are extremely happy that this became Reality, but I think this is one one of of the slides that I had in the back up And then I think that the the presence of dr. Franken here especially for important for several reasons one It's it's in a way Personal for the ES global team and for myself Professor Franken spent two years or six months of sabbatical In in ES global with us And we became very good friends and colleagues will learn a lot from him and then having the opportunity to have him here personally It's very enjoying and and rewarding The other thing it's it goes back to the first slide that I put you that is the planetary health report And some of you there was very small letters Some of you could have realized that Professor Franken was on one of the authors of the report so Two years ago, we see it one day together for a lunch It was our first lunch and then we realize how close were our interest in this field And I was extremely Happy and excited of sitting with one of the authors of the of the report and in this sense I think that it's because planetary health became an inspiring idea for planetary well-being. I think that it's very good that we have a person like Professor Franken who has been in the origin of the idea with us and talking us directly to that The third reason is that in the meanwhile at that time when he was here Professor Franken was in a sabbatical after finishing a period of Dean of the School of Public Health in the Washington University He has a long career of research in occupational environmental health And he was also I think director of the in the US of the National Center for environmental health And then he came here with a periodic of sabbatical and then Things change in life and during this period. He was attracted by welcome trust in UK to take the direction of the Planetary Health Initiative is called our planet our health As you know welcome trust is one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the world and Planetary health is among the priorities And then I think that we cannot be more privileged in Having you here with us and giving us your views on planetary health and thanks again for the For the presence and for the opportunity to explore collaborations in the future. Thank you Well, thank you so much for that nice introduction rector Distinguished colleagues. It is a great pleasure to be back here partly because I get to see so many old friends and make new friends Partly because this city is absolutely fantastic Francesca I saw the pictures from the late 19th century and it reminded me of my first visit here in the late 19th century and things have changed and Partly because the work here at the university and at IS Global is so inspiring I just to summarize what I heard in the last few minutes There was a lot of talk of urgency which is entirely appropriate given the scale of the problem There was talk as recently as in the last two minutes about the need for a Mission a university-wide mission based in service to the world and that is a really inspiring thing to hear from a university There was talk of the need for knowledge Transformation now lots of people give lip service to Interdisciplinarity to the need for complexity But thinking about ways to reorganize knowledge at the level of the research enterprise is Absolutely necessary given the scale of the challenges we face that implies institutional transformation and hearing the commitment to multi institutional collaboration hearing the Commitment to moving beyond the usual institutional Territoryality with which we're all familiar is also very inspiring and then finally big dreams Big problems require big dreams and looking at the aerial pictures of the campus and of the vacant land and of the buildings That may be given a new life Is it's evidence of big dreams that are again commensurate with the scale of the challenges we face so I'm feeling happy to be back here and inspired by what I've heard so far and I'm glad to have a few minutes to talk with you And I'll try to be as brief as I can knowing that I think the next step is the coffee break. Is that right? So I will be unto the person who sits between us and the coffee break Finally an apology to those who prefer Katalon or Castellano. I will speak in English I have a disability which is that my English is so much better than the other languages And so for those of you who have the reverse preference. Thank you for accommodating me Well, let me begin by setting a little bit of context about planetary health Building on the context that's been said already I'd like to introduce our program at the welcome trust and then talk just for a couple of minutes about the direction of the field of planetary health in coming years as we see it at welcome and As an offering to the thinking that you are all doing here This story begins with the great acceleration the ramping up of the scale of human Activity on the earth these pictures are from the Stockholm resilience Institute And they're probably familiar to most people measured by any possible metric by the extent to which we use energy by the extent to which we use water By the extent to which we manufacture things like paper by the extent to which we build McDonald's restaurants every metric of the human enterprise has expanded Explosively in the last couple of centuries and that is due to the availability of cheap energy So we're basically having a party now. We've been in a party for 200 years Using unprecedented amounts of energy and if that has consequences for earth systems So we've seen climate change as we've heard about this morning ocean acidification loss of biodiversity That massive expansion of the human enterprise has led to massive and rapid changes in the earth systems So it's no exaggeration to say that we are living in a different planet than the one that our grandparents lived in and it's not Excessive to say that this is an existential challenge to humanity Calling for the sense of urgency The changes in the way we think and act in the big dreams that we've heard about already this morning The best known of these crises is climate change. This is a picture of co2 emissions Deconstructed by color according to the source of energy that gave rise to the emissions and no surprise to anybody here Most of the sources of the co2 emissions have been fossil fuels. We've burned those fuels at a very high rate If this is the best known challenge to humanity, it certainly is not the only challenge to humanity We heard a little bit earlier about the Biodiversity report that came out from the IP BES earlier this month The numbers are incredible a million species at risk of extinction But in further evidence of alterations to our planet Three-quarters of the land-based environment across the planet have been deeply altered by humans Most of that by the way for producing food Much of that for producing livestock Two-thirds of the marine environment has been altered by human activity 7% of marine fish stocks that are now being harvested are being harvested sustainably Meaning that 93% are either being harvested beyond Sustainable levels or at sustainable levels So we have a whole complex of planetary changes that together Form the basis and the need for planetary health You'll see climate change in the upper left followed by biodiversity loss But look at how many changes there are depleted fisheries alterations of nitrogen and phosphorus the geochemical cycles that drive earth systems and have since the beginning of time The loss of soil and the changes of land use But probably a better way to show you this picture would be like this Because everything is connected to everything the first law of ecology Why do we have biodiversity loss well in part that's climate change and in part that's habitat change Due to human driven changes in land use in fact It would be possible to draw lines from everything here to everything else here Meaning that the complex systems approach that Jose Maria talked about it is exactly necessary All of those changes have led to the so-called Anthropocene a new geological epic characterized by the fact that human Interventions are now driving Many of the characteristics of the planet. It's just amazing that one species is able to do that But we are And we are bumping up against limits This is the picture familiar to everybody of the notion of planetary limits That there are limits which if we transgress may lead to irreversible changes in earth systems And not only that are likely to lead also to changes in the human condition and that gives rise to the link to planetary health so as you saw from the earlier slide in 2014 Richard Horton the editor of the Lancet published what he called a manifesto And it was interesting to use the term manifesto. You all remember That Karl Marx used the same term with the Communist manifesto the sense of radical change of huge High-impact historical trends that need to be confronted was the sense that animated Marx and whether you think he got it Right or wrong that same sense of global scale historically mandated urgency is what mandated the birth of the term planetary health a Year later followed the Lancet Commission, which is pictured there and that gave rise to this field of planetary health So what is the field as the university and as IS global proceed with the program? It's worth I think stopping and pondering what this means as we do at welcome trust in as many do around the world In the first place, it's an aspirational state The phrase from the Lancet Commission is the health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems on which human civilization depends so this is really a state description and what it implies is harmony between the human enterprise on earth and Biogeophysical processes in the earth systems But it's also a scientific framework or a paradigm if you will it's the combination of biomedical sciences with physical environmental and social sciences Using systems thinking this is a new way of doing science that planetary health is also a scientific paradigm But it's also an institutional thing. It is an emerging scientific field Based at universities and research institutes and government agencies characterized by meetings and by university departments and by Professorships this part is only just emerging But it signifies a change in the way universities do business and we think that the institutional manifestation is an important part of this and Finally, it's a movement. It is increasingly moving out of the world of academia and research institutes into the popular imagination and into policymaking as People across the world understand that we need to redefine our relationship with the natural world So planetary health is many things from a philosophy to a scientific enterprise to a popular movement We need to embrace each of those things as we advance the field We have thought hard at welcome in our program our planet our health about what the world needs What should we be delivering to the world and this builds on the commitment to serving the world? Part of the scientific output has to be diagnosis if you will Characterizing what the threats are to human health and well-being of planetary changes But we can't stop there. We have to talk about prevention How do we identify mitigation strategies to control? Climate change to stop biodiversity loss to normalize biogeochemical cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus and so on In ways that not only protect the planet, but that also protect human health. We need to prevent Worst changes from occurring. This is sometimes known as avoiding the unmanageable At the same time we have to manage the unavoidable We need science-based guidelines for adaptation So how do we cope with and protect people in the face of the changes to which we are already committed? This is a part of our scientific agenda Communication is key. We need to understand how best to frame and communicate these issues to the public on a global basis In the same way if we were selling automobiles or selling clothing or selling computers We would carry out very deliberate research market research And we would advertise and sell the products accordingly We have to do that with the concepts of planetary health and there is a research agenda involved in learning how most effectively to communicate From this we need to move directly to policy. This is not science for the sake of science This is science for the sake of making change so there is a policy agenda and a policy research agenda so that we understand approaches to governance and approaches to policy that will implement planetary health findings And finally there's action. How do we turn the policy into action? implement policies and then test the policies that are implemented to see what works Using the emerging field of implementation science so that we can correct course when we need to So this we think is something like a scientific agenda for planetary health Let me tell you a little bit about welcome We have a program that began several years ago called our planet our health Embracing the paradigm of planetary health it began as a relatively small program a 75 million UK pounds over the course of four or five years We work in three domains one is climate change one is food systems and one is cities So I regularly hear accusations in two directions one is this is much too broad How can you possibly make change and drive the science and implement findings in all three of these areas? The other accusation is this is much too narrow. Where's biodiversity? Where are the oceans? Where are chemical pollutants? It's an intrinsic challenge of doing planetary scale science that you want to be both simultaneously broad Broad enough to encompass complexity and narrow enough to have impact and we're still working on that We recognize and celebrate that each of these three domains is deeply connected with the other two And so this really is a connected body of work We began the program in 2015 and 2016 by making 15 pilot grants. I don't know if you can read the titles of some of the papers From from your seats, but you'll see that some had to do with climate adaptation and mitigation Some had to do with food systems. Some had to do with cities So this was a very good way for welcome to dip its toe into the water of planetary health funding At that point after this round of grants the decision was made that we would move toward funding large centers of excellence At a higher level of funding for long-term funding. This was felt to be the way to build a field And so six research partnerships two of which the two in London are linked into a single partnership were formed and those were funded beginning in 2017 2018 and you can see that they are all in Wealthy nation universities, but all of them have partnerships with universities and research institutions in low-income countries and They span both Cities and food systems. We didn't find any that were explicitly focused on climate change And so in an effort to rebalance the portfolio We made a third round of grants this year on climate change in health and these were smaller grants These were just announced in the last couple of months and I'm showing you here The names and the locations of those grants to give you a sense of the breadth of the field that we're funding Several of them were in climate change adaptation What are the best ways based on evidence to adapt to climate change? And you can see some of the examples here the first one as an example is Focused on low-income country manufacturing workers How do they adapt to heat? They the garment factories in Bangladesh will never install air conditioning. So what are the most protective ways to maintain? safety and health in that industry We looked at the health benefits of climate change mitigation something sometimes called co-benefits and Funded several projects that would quantify the co-benefits. This is important because as we drive policy toward climate change mitigation We want to document and optimize the health benefits One of the ones that you see here has to do with reducing meat intake This is a nice example of co-benefits if we reduce meat consumption in the high meat consuming countries the UK Spain the US Brazil Argentina Then we both improve health for the people who eat more plant-based diets And we greatly reduce the carbon footprint in the land and water footprint of food production But quantifying those benefits is an important scientific challenge And finally we funded a couple of projects that are about developing tools. These are projects that rely on data science Very much aligned with the plans here to help create these analytical tools that other investigators can then use and share So this is where we stand now with our work The countries that are involved in this last call are shown here and this emphasizes that Our part of welcome trust has an aspiration of being more than a UK based donor We very much have an aspiration of having a global reach We've also funded a couple of large investments. One is the eat foundation You may have seen the eat lancet report on the planetary health diet that was published early this year That sets planetary norms for diets that both protect the environment and protect health And the lancet countdown is an annual publication in the lancet at the time of the UNFCCC COP meeting that documents human progress in climate change and health So all of that together is our portfolio But we're about to enter our next five years where our level of funding will increase by two to three fold It'll become a much larger program We'll continue in these three domains We will fund additional centers and part of our conversations now. We're about the potential for a center in Barcelona And we will expand our work in developing nations as well What do we see as underlying our work in coming five to ten Or longer years the first is system science I'm going to give you an example of this as I'll give you an example for each of the directions that I'll discuss Clearly everything is connected to everything and we need to think in terms of this mental model Rather than of conventional linear biomedical research in the work that we support The example I want to talk about is nuts Now if you're a dietitian, you know that eating nuts is good for health. Does everybody here eat nuts regularly? I'm seeing some nodding heads and smiles. Nuts are delicious, aren't they? Well, there's a large Nutritional literature pointing to the dietary benefits of eating nuts Nutritionists love to tell us to eat nuts. Nuts are good for health This has moved from the scientific literature to the popular literature So that's a good thing And some of the scientific questions that still exist in the nutrition and nut agenda Are what components of nuts? Why are nuts good for health? Can we develop healthier kinds of nuts, especially given climate change where we know that the nutritional content of some foods is diminishing How much should we tell people to eat nuts? What's the optimal dose? How do we persuade people to eat more nuts? This is a behavior change research agenda These are the questions that you typically hear answered But in the context of recommending eating more nuts, there's one question that you almost never hear asked Where do nuts come from? Does anybody know? Well, the answer is obvious. They come from stores and they come in little bags and you buy the nuts and take them home and eat them But actually if you move upstream from there, nuts come from farms, nuts come from trees And the farms that grow nuts are large orchards pecans Almonds, walnuts shown here. These are actually very beautiful although monocultural ecological systems The bulk of the nuts in the world can be Identified in terms of place you have almonds on the left and you see that the majority come from the u.s You have walnuts on the right the majority come from the green is the u.s And the blue is china So let's go visit the places where nuts come from This is a picture of the u.s And it's difficult to see but there are blue dots Along the central valley of california Where 80 or 90 of nut production in the u.s Therefore the vast majority of nut production in the world takes place This is where nuts come from. This is where those farms that I just showed you those orchards exist Now this is a problem This is a picture of the water footprint of nuts and you can see that The water footprint of nuts is second only to that of cow meat Nuts are an extremely water intensive product to grow Higher for some nuts than for others So what we're seeing is that we are growing a water intensive crop In california and what we know about california is that it is experiencing prolonged and severe drought And not only has it been experiencing prolonged drought for the last decade But the forecasts given climate change are that water will become more and more scarce in california There will be more chaotic weather The droughts will be more severe and the major source of water in california Which is snow melt from the mountains to the east will decline as the snowpack declines in those mountains So here we have a perfect storm. Don't we we're telling people worldwide to eat more nuts The current approach to producing nuts is to grow this water intensive crop in a water deprived area And so the advice if it's only nutritional advice Doesn't take into account the complexity of producing and delivering nuts to people This has led to some very interesting Speculations and these questions are exactly on target Is a cardio protective diet sustainable? Are we thinking enough about the environmental footprints the carbon and water and land footprints Of the crops that we recommend to people for nutritional purposes? Well, this is not to discourage eating nuts This is simply to say that for this important question as for almost any important Question in diet in urban design in transportation in energy We need to think as systems thinkers because if we only ask a narrow part of the questions We won't get the answers right So system science secondly transdisciplinarity The example I want to show you here Takes place on the Senegal river at the Diyama dam. This is a relatively small dam built in 1986 It's only 15 or 20 meters high But it's high enough That it blocks the incursion of tides upstream on the river and creates fresh water Habitat which is perfect for snails now the dam is a great thing It provides irrigation and provides a little bit of electricity. It's clean electricity But it provides snail habitat and the expanded snail habitat that developed after the installation of the dam Led to a rise in schistosomiasis That's because as you may recall the snail is an intermediate vector for schistosomiasis And this isn't the only dam in warm parts of the world where once it was built The result was an expanded Range and severity of schistosomiasis in the local communities Well a solution was found And the solution is being held by this gentleman. This is a prawn. This is a very large prawn So prawns were colonized into this body of water upstream from the dam The lucky thing is the prawns eat the snails And so with the introduction of the prawns the schistosomiasis rate went way down that the snail population declined Schistosomiasis declined But more good things happened The people were able to eat the the the prawns as a dietary protein source and health parameters improved And they got such high production of the prawns That they were able to sell them as a cash crop And the financial circumstances of the people there improved This was all documented in a brilliant series of papers from investigators at stanford university In collaboration with senegalese investigators It was transdisciplinary This research was done by river ecologists and epidemiologists and microbiologists And anthropologists and sociologists who were able to design and document the benefits of community-based Aquaculture and economists who were able to document the economic gains It's a perfect example of a planetary health approach in a particular place Blending ecosystem protection In health So multi-disciplinarity The third direction that we see is solutions science So not just diagnosing the health threats of planetary changes, but documenting solutions The example that I just showed you is a nice example of solution science Here's another example low emission zones. Does everybody know what a low emission zone is? This is an urban policy That's been implemented in many cities across the world You can see them moving down from the upper left from german cities to rome to madrid and just last week Amsterdam in honor of mark newenhausen announced that by 2030 All internal combustion vehicles will be banned from Amsterdam It's a phased in ban. So it begins with moped's and with boats and with Buses and trucks and eventually will be cars and motorcycles as well So this is very encouraging, isn't it? except It's been well studied in places where it's been implemented and it turns out that in almost every place studied with the exception of some german studies The improvements in air quality are only marginal And the improvements in health are almost impossible to document So solutions science needs to document both positive solutions that work well as in the case of the senegalese river And also purported solutions that don't work well So that we can correct course And achieve the outcomes we want in this case better health outcomes solution science focusing on getting to solutions Links to narrative the example I want to use in narrative is plastics now You all know something about the plastic story plastics are a key part of our World these days here. You see plastics and they're all over we use them a lot World plastic production has increased phenomenally since the second world war and it is continuing to increase with major upscaling of plastic manufacturing around the world Now About 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year most of it goes to landfills But something like 10 million tons is thrown into waterways Where it moves downstream in rivers In bayous and in river deltas it forms clusters of Plastic that are almost as big and impressive as islands and from there it washes into the oceans It's picked up by ocean gyres. There are five major ocean gyres, which we now know are huge repositories of plastics and micro plastics The highest concentration of plastic ever documented on a beach. Does anybody know where it was? Henderson island, which is 5000 kilometers from the nearest human habitation Indicating that this is truly a planetary scale problem Now Not only are plastics ubiquitous in the world, but they are ubiquitous in our food In our water and in a recent small study in nine countries in europe in our feces So plastics are very much a part of the environment Both biological and human Now that's worrisome not only because plastics may not be good for us But plastics are very good carriers for organic chemicals the persistent organic pollutants that we know are endocrine disruptors and otherwise biologically harmful And plastics are about 7% on average by weight Plasticizers additives and other chemicals that also have toxic properties So this widespread dissemination of plastic around the world is worrisome in human health terms That gives rise to tables like this from a scientific publication on threats to human health And i don't mean for you to read this picture But i mean for you to have an emotional response to this picture Which i suggest will be Oh damn another complicated diagram. This doesn't touch me in my heart. It doesn't touch me in my soul This does This is a famous photograph of an albatross that was found dead and was opened up and this is what was found inside the albatross Has anybody seen the blue planet series by sir david attenborough? I'm seeing a few nodding heads This was an amazingly powerful film if you haven't seen it. I recommend watching it Millions and millions of people viewed the film worldwide and this is what helped make plastics become an issue It wasn't the scientific data about the distribution of plastics. It wasn't The complicated diagram, but it was the imagery. It was the narrative of how we are fouling our planet And that in turn has propelled policies like plastic bag bands that are now Being developed in many countries around the world. This is an incredible thing This is almost like the chlorofluorocarbon ban a few years ago that helped to mend the ozone hole We are arresting the littering of the world's oceans with plastics. We still have a long way to go But if you turn data into narrative And narrative into policy and behavior change, then we improve the circumstances. So making narrative The last is urgency and you've heard a lot about urgency This morning These problems truly are urgent. This is a situation of our house being on fire And so it calls on us as we develop the planetary health field to act in ways completely atypical For the academic world It calls on us to act truly as if we are confronting an emergency Taking inspiration not from traditional scientists, but from the activists who are in the news so much these days Who are declaring that this is an emergency this ought to set the tone For the science that we do and for the ways that we translate science into action All of this we have to do in the context of propelling hope Because if you are to look in a clear-eyed way at the trends Characterizing earth systems now This is how you'd feel The situation is grim But people aren't motivated by feeling depressed People aren't motivated to make change by a story of despair And deprivation and sacrifice People are motivated by hope There is a lot of good reason for hope the fact that we can achieve something like a plastic bag ban in many countries The fact that electric vehicles are penetrating markets so fast The fact that solar energy is becoming so cheap and displacing fossil fuels in many parts of the world The fact that china one of the larger the largest emitter of greenhouse gases is rapidly shifting There is a lot of basis for hope and we have to embed the science that we do the field that we grow In a sense of hope and optimism because that is necessary To rescuing our world So with all of these as directions for planetary health I want to close congratulate the leaders of the planetary well-being initiative here in barcelona congratulate all of you And and be a cheerleader for the work that we need to do together to save Health worldwide to save well-being and to save our planet. Thank you Many thanks. Howard for this terrific presentation. We have a few minutes for questions or comments Maybe you can raise your hand if you want to ask something This is what happens when you rely on technology I I wanted to ask um, particularly the people in in upf given professor frumpkin Ended with some grounds to hope I think most of which Seem to appeal to technological change right, so there was some reference to activism and some change in um consciousness, but Professor frumpkin also earlier on mentioned marks marks is kind of pessimistic about moral change And behavioral change which isn't connected with technical technological change. So I wondered um, whether In upf the study of technological change played a large role in the initiatives, which are you describing Maybe you should sure Um, my name is andrew williams. I work in the law department. I'm a political philosopher. I also um I'm interested in politics and economics The question was addressed to the upf I I wouldn't say that the The move well the the steps that we have taken are heavily driven by technological Aspirations or capacities I I would say that it's it's probably it's uh It's probably a number of different things, but but what what I think it's probably Uh relevant to understand these initial steps of a planetary well-being initiative in pompeo probably is that we we have Met different people in different disciplines in different departments working in very broad range of issues who share some basic challenges and concerns Some of them are related to the to the ethical or or the social Impact of our work others are related to our methods that we use But that we feel that putting these Areas of work together We can do a good job We can we can make further progress and and here we have we see the confluence of people Doing this type of planetary health things or people doing archaeology in in research for ancient food production practices in in arid climates or people working in synthetic alternatives to pollution But all of us probably sharing some of the fundamental issues that Professor frankin has Has established. I think that it's it's very broad Very still very initial Very broad and probably I think at the at the center of this is the feeling of a A community or a university community a community of scientists and scholars Who need to do an effort of transdisciplinarity of Commitment with the challenges And and commitment with creating maybe a new generation of Of professionals and scientists. I think it's I understand that it's very big answer to your To your relevant question, but as I see this You want to add something Howard Yeah, thanks for the question I Bill McKibbin is one of the best writers on climate change He wrote the first popular book on climate change back in the 1980s. He just came out with a new book Whose subtitle is is the human game over? And he Presents a lot of gloomy information But then he finishes by saying there are two technologies that will be key to our rescue One is the solar panel and the other is nonviolent resistance And he so he uses the term technology in a kind of a A euphemistic way But in a sense you can think of it as the hardware and the software that we do need technological change But we also need changes in human systems That we may be seeing a rise in the context of all of the demonstrations and activism and so much of the world If those can move government And change policy, then those will accompany the the conventional technological changes And I think that will be the path to rescue. I don't think we can do it with one or the other alone. We need both Manolis Manolis, good you Venus environmental epidemiologist from ice global Howard when I was looking at the list of centers that welcome funded Uh, practically all are in europe north america and australia And if one looks at what the the gates foundation is funding practically all the money is channeled via american North american institutes, so it has welcome thought about how to Develop programs that will increase know how you know outside Europe north america in the centers where you know lots of things are happening And this is also important for upf to know because Developing this center also we develop closed links with specific areas where we We have priority links. So is this important for you? Well, thanks manolis that this is keenly important for us Clearly the the risks of planetary change Hit hardest in the low income countries of the world And the resilience the capacity to adapt to and survive those risks is the lowest in those same countries So it's essential that that we put resources there and build capacity there We uh in our climate change Call for grants the one whose results I showed you we got 450 preliminary applications of those about 30 or 40 were from low income countries and of those One was potentially fundable 39 were not fundable The and you would read the applications and you would think this is heartbreaking. Here is a a bright committed thoughtful Investigator who wants to do this work But just isn't able to describe the methods that need to be used and isn't able to Create a successful application for funding that would survive peer review So that led us to think how do we build capacity? In low income countries so that In coming years the applications that we get from low income countries are the winning applications That means that our vision for these centers of excellence that we fund will include both an established university in a wealthy country In most cases partnering with married to One or more institutions in low income countries And we envision that the training that takes place will take place Across the both institutions So young trainees predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees in junior career or junior Faculty will come from the low income country to the wealthy country and vice versa And the training will take place In a cross institutional manner That's the way we hope to uh to build capacity in low income countries If you pour money into low income countries and there isn't yet the research capacity Then it's probably not a good investment But if you build the capacity and train the next generation of investigators, we think that's a a promising approach Wait, wait, um, let me just we will take a couple of more questions, but the rector has to leave. Um, so Let us just um say goodbye to to how we're good. Bye And Thank you rector. Um, and then Jose you can introduce yourself first Jose García Montalvo from the economics department and from uh, the commissioners for A scientific strategy I wanted to talk about complexity of the future directions that you were Mentioning because they are also interrelated You talk about the importance of activism and Narratives and I agree with that but many times activism is opposite to uh other Solution science because it's ideology solutions by ideology instead of solutions by science How do we put together these two things that do do means? Uh are uh the important thing or objective so should we go for uh helping activism Even though the means are not the right ones, but the ends are the right ones so the the um The challenge in human affairs is that human affairs are complicated, isn't it? Meaning that Activism is messy Democracy is messy It's the worst possible form of government other than all the other forms of government So I think we need to tolerate a certain messiness in the activism. I mean you posited Two polls activism and solutions Uh, and I guess the implication is that Effective solutions are based in evidence and we know that they work And so there's a certain level of truth and effectiveness there whereas activism doesn't always get it right um There's a third piece of the story which would be power differentials and um The the power of vested interests to maintain the status quo So, you know, one of the big barriers to addressing climate change over the last few decades has been the uh Political power of the fossil fuel industries oil gas and coal I don't know where that challenge would fit on the spectrum that you introduced of solutions in activism But one of the things activism has to do is point us towards solutions. Another thing activism has to do is change the balance And dethrone some of the vested interests So that better solutions can arise So do I think we need to support activism? I do. I think it's bringing to the narrative a sense of urgency and a sense of public engagement In a sense of um a problem solving that we have been lacking until now what we've been doing hasn't been working Do I think it's going to be messy? I do Do I think that there will be some indirect benefits because if activism is successful it will change some of the power relationships Displace some of the vested interests that are standing in the way of change and help us get to a space where we can implement solutions I hope that it was a very good question and a provocative question. I hope that was at least a partial answer Thanks, um, I will take the final two questions together. Leila first and Hello, um, my name is Leila Melon and I am from the legal department. So I'm one of the unicorns in the field I'm a corporate lawyer and an economist trying to fight for sustainable corporate law, right? So to try to change the the multinationals and their practices, etc So it is not actually a question. It's just a remark that finally a fresh approach has been also given from a topic that's outside of my topic saying, okay We do need a transdisciplinary approach So everybody needs to start working together despite the fact that the lawyer doesn't know anything about the health consequences But he should read about it while writing the policies Right and the second thing that I really really liked and with what I had the problem with my project because I'm Handling out the Marie Curie project. So it's based on sustainable business, right? What I really liked about what you said is Translating science into common language. I think that's the biggest problem that we have today So we have all of these solutions in legal field Separated from the reality we have solutions in economic sense saying, okay It pays off to be sustainable because it does markets start to pay off Somebody caring about something more than money. But what we're lacking is connecting all of those sciences and selling it So selling what we figured out So I think that the fastest approach to solve our global issues no matter how broad they are in if you're being Accused of being too broad or being too narrow everybody is in my project It is the same sometimes like you're speaking too broadly and you need to focus on one legal institution And on the other side it is but this is not going to solve anything I'm dealing with exactly the same issues But I think that the solution to a fast movement towards action and finally impact oriented research Which has not been the case in the last decade. It's translating into common knowledge what every one of us figured out So I think that those centers and also the Initiatives to create a joint center to deal with planetary well-being or to deal with sustainability It's the only way forward. So that's why I would really say thank you for finally Like formalizing the idea that I think it's been hitting and per pervasively through academia right now. So Just wanted to say that thank you. Well, thank you for the comment just one quick response The um, I agree with you completely that this is about translating science into common language But these days it may not just be common language. It may be images that go viral on the web It may be social media Memes it may be infographics So we we have communications technology that's completely different than anything we've had before and learning how to use that effectively is Part of our dissemination challenge Hello My name is christos o graffos. I work here for the department of political and social sciences And I would from my side that would welcome all this emphasis on activism. I find it very interesting And I also find very interesting all this discussion about power relations And I suppose this connects also to the political economy of of production of specific economic activities and their implications So there's a power issue there You say that activism is quite important in in turning this on its head or in addressing those issues But at the same time I saw this emphasis on nonviolent action that you mentioned, which I think is quite important Still, I think evidence particularly in the field of environmental justice tells us that conflict that is also important For addressing those power in equal asymmetries if you want in So so I wonder whether you have also space in your programs for for research on on conflict and not only nonviolent means of Of addressing environmental issues. Thank you That's a very interesting question we Um To the extent we've thought about conflict as a subject of of grant making and study It's more been in the context that climate change will lead to population displacement Into conflict and sometimes the two together So understanding the dynamics of that process and then understanding how to protect people from the impacts of conflict Has been the part of the research agenda. We've thought about I think you're asking something different which is considering conflict as a means of problem solving and as a path to social change Harnessing conflict almost as a as a Strategy for transformation No, we haven't thought about that, but I will now Thank you And finally francesc. Yeah. Yes the short comment I know that we still don't have the position paper about what planetary well being really is We have a lot of thoughts ideas, but not a formal position. Yesterday. We discussed who is with him Similarities and differences between planetary health planetary well being and so on and so on But I think that one of the key difference And one of the one of the one of the things we have to highlight When we speak about planetary well being is the importance we give to non technological areas to non Physics chemistry and biological areas. It's just it's just I think where we can Enhance more the idea of planetary health and do transform in something Bigger that is what we define as planetary well being And another important thing for me is that the best way to communicate science To society is through social science So if we are capable To join Physical science we can say or experimental science with social science. This is the best way Not just to to reach new Knowledge is the best way to transmit it to the society in my opinion Thank you. So, uh, please join me in thanking Howard for this terrific talk And for coming to Barcelona to meet with all of us has been fantastic. And thank you. Thank you very much for coming