 Hello, very good morning to all of you. And thank you, Gretchen, for having me here. I've been working with NatCap project indirectly for the past, I think, five years when we had your team visiting India. And we rather requested them to come along with us to Periyar Tiger Reserve. And they've developed three models for us for Periyar and Kanha Tiger Reserves. And we definitely like to enter into formal collaboration to much larger work. So I'm very happy that you could have me here. It's my first exposure, first experience with NatCap team and meeting with larger population of people who are actually engaged in NatCap project. It will be a great experience for me to take it back to the country and do much larger work. Well, as Bhaskar Ali said, the tone of this presentation, it's been a work of past 20 years. I don't know how much justice I would do with the work that we have been doing. And yes, of course, it is difficult to convey this language across the people in the financial sector, the ministry of finance, the ministry of environment, forest and climate change, and a couple of other ministries. But having done this kind of a work and scientifically proving the contribution of natural capital towards the livelihoods of people and towards improving the lifestyles of not just rural communities, but the urban populations has been a great experience. I'd just like to put a snapshot of what we have been doing for the past 20 years. Well, I must also confess, must also say in the very beginning, being an ecological economist, we are supposed to be notorious people because we assign value to whatever exists on earth. I think that also makes sense because this is the best language you can convey through across the stakeholders and people are able to understand the worth of something. And definitely we are doing a very, very focused manner trying to convey the investment in natural capital, how a return can be obtained in a much larger way, what is understood now, what if you are able to internalize these values, able to assign values to these ecosystems, definitely people will understand this whole approach much better. So this is, I've been given to speak on the whole journey, but I'll just quickly pick up the few change makers, which I understand as change makers in terms of putting across the ideas to the policy makers, decision makers, and the larger community of stakeholders. From urban wetlands to tiger reserves, decision making and the policy formulation in India based on the paradigm of conservation and development as against, people think if you are developing, you are compromising in conservation, if you're doing conservation, you're compromising in development, it's not so. If you maintain the stock of natural capital, it provides a base for whole developmental activity, that's what is the intent here. Our institute, it's own mission, this is a Sanskrit slope, it talks about pragati mulam prakriti, which means native provides base for development. If you don't have natural resources with you, you no longer will be able to develop. That's what we, not just profess, we also practice and try to take it forward to different set of stakeholders. The whole snapshot of studies that we have, they're not going to read through everything, but just to, because presentation is there, definitely everybody will be getting this. Just to give you an idea about the whole work that we have been doing for the past 20 years, very intensively to demonstrate the value of natural capital and the importance across the livelihoods of populations across, you know, the living, to make living more enriched, much more exciting if you are able to conserve your resources as well. So recent publications, which talked about the net present value approach that we have done for government to find the administrative environment for us in climate change, the work for tiger conservation, work for the finance commissions, and that's what helped us convincing these populations to understand the whole approach very scientifically and also demonstrating through the economic values. For such case, the place where I live, I've been living there for a very, very long time and I was surprised at the shock to see how the very important resources, we have the largest freshwater lake in the country and capacity is of course, is known to everybody because of the tragedy we had there, but it is one of the most beautiful cities of the country having the largest freshwater lake and it is a man-made lake and has a very large water spread area of 31 square kilometers and a catchment of 31 square kilometers. And I've been watching that over the years, the water quality of the lake is dwindling a lot and there's a lot of encroachment happening. And incidentally, a project happened in the city called as the Bojvetlin Management Project with the help of Japanese government. The loan was given to the country to improve the quality of water supply, to treat the catchment and to make lots of interventions into the lake. So what I did, I just submitted a proposal to the World Bank Project was going on in India Environmental Management Capacity Building. So this project got through and we did pre-consultation to the government and of course wanted that government should understand the issues and able to take the suggestions forward. So what I did, I listed, this is the, it looks like a sea coast, it doesn't look like a lake. We had a yacht club which got actually demolished in one of the floods we had in the lake. But we, I listed the number of ecosystem services, the major ones in terms of drinking water, fresh, we could fish supply, chestnut production, micro-limit stabilization, nutrient cycling, non-conservative one, recreation, biodiversity, aesthetic and education. And at the same time realize a lot of challenges that the lake faces and accordingly you require interventions in terms of projects to be developed which can handle all these kinds of challenges and check the burden off from the lake's ecosystem. So we listed these threats as well, there's a lot of sanitation happening, solid waste, pollutants are flowing into it. You would not believe this is a lake which supplies 40% of the population city, the drinking water. And it receives a brand of supply of sewage, supply of, lots of such burdens are there in the lake, the medical waste flowing into it, a lot of encroachment happened and many such things which led to the decline in environmental quality of this lake. So we just listed all these threats and to scientifically understand, demonstrate the damage which is being done on account of these threats, we developed a water quality based model using stellar software. So we looked at the basin map, one third of the catchment is urban but two third is rural catchment and we were very enthused that we would be able to, might be able to implement new kind of model here. We experimented as well but still things are required to be changed drastically in terms of institutional restructuring of the country to accept such kind of approaches like that. So we looked at the basin map, we looked at the, we collected a lot of data, there was a lot of quality monitoring stations across the lake so we collected data from them. It looks quite a messy slide but there's lots of things into it otherwise if I put single slide there have been so many numbers. So we developed a water quality based model, parameters based model which we can consider 10 water quality parameters and develop this like a transportation map of a city. This tries to express a single intervention being or a single threat which is in terms of flow of sewage to the lake, how it changes drastically the entire ecological pattern of the lake. So we connected with this with the interventions which are being made by the bridge between management authority to improve the water quality and we found there's no perceptible change happening because the intervention is not prioritized. They were just trying to do catchment treatment definitely but not to the intensity to which it should have been done to actually control the entire flow of sewage. They were doing oxidizing of oxidation of lake was happening and they were beautifying the area. A couple of such interventions were made but not enough to make a perceptible dent in terms of change in the water quality. So we did what we typically follow mapping, modeling, measuring and monetizing of the bridge between ecosystem services. So having done the modeling aspect, we also did huge consultation process across the city. All the households on a sample basis were actually contacted to understand how they also contribute towards the conservation of the lake because we always talk so much about our rights but nobody talks about the responsibility. So we said, if you go to Bhopal, everybody will take, Bhopal's lake is right of the city and you will take all your guests over there and enjoy the scenic beauty of the lake but what are you doing towards this contribution and the money which has come to you from Japanese government is not a grant, it is a loan given to you to return back this loan as well. As a surprise you see there was no such policy being developed, there was no such program was there with the authority to also look at the maintenance aspect of the lake once these capital projects are over and then how you're going to manage the lake in future. So we conducted a survey, we did the whole lot of evaluation exercise having done the modeling aspect. Modeling outcomes are used as scenarios used and we had a typical picture postcards to express the impact of modeling, the impact of interventions on the lake's water quality and took it around and assimilated the values for every development exercise for drinking water quality in terms of revenue by the organizations which are running lots of activities around income to fishermen, chapter cultivators, income to people who are actually the washer community, washerman community and then income to roadside vendors, couple of such things were done and to understand to work out the sort of conservation fund for the lake or future management we conducted a willingness to pay survey and really surprised to hear from people that if you are asking us to pay an increased amount of tax, we will not come forward because you don't know how this tax is going to be parked, maybe used for buying cars for the corporators buying laptops for them, but if you create a participatory management agency like this, which is in management society will be able to contribute voluntarily in a huge amount. So the huge, if you look at the figures here the in terms of payment of taxes it was very, very small amount so that people are willing to pay but in terms of voluntary contribution there's a huge reflection was made by people. So that's what we had done here. The ultimate uptake of the entire exercise was to actually it led to intensification of cashmint treatment and water quality improvement because we prioritized, reprioritized these projects and government had taken them forward and the case was actually used by the government to seek arms as status for these wetlands because we expressed through our work the richness of biodiversity and its values. It led to ultimately what we set as a society it led to creation of a lake conservation authority which had lots of committees which took actually into consideration various set of stakeholders the citizen advisory committee, cultural heritage committee recreation advisory committee like that and model was replicated across the country in the number of wetlands and me and one of my colleague Dhaval sitting here now moved to TNC after working in IFM for a very long number of years. We developed, we published a paper also in hydrological sciences journal. That's what is the kind of uptake we had from that particular study. Well, the project which, study which Bhaskar talked about the very first search of his kind it happened along with the Bhojvetlin project when I was doing this I was offered to do this small assignment with DFIT and IID UK. They were having a Himachal Pradesh forest restoration program going on as a part of they talked a lot about policy changes policy climate and changing the whole structure of management regime in the state but they also realized that we should also try to work out the value of forest of Himachal Pradesh. So I was invited to do this work. So the first time collecting the secondary studies done by our prime minister is done by many economists from different ecosystem services. I collected the information and also got data from the department and worked out the value which ranged from actually almost 10,000 US dollars to 11,000 US dollars across different forest types and density classes in Himachal Pradesh. And we don't just ended our work there. We made a point to let people understand what the state contributes towards in terms of these ecosystem services. So it led to creation of an instrument called a SCLAIR composition for the loss of ecological services and further rigor was to actually do further studies on resource accounting of Himachal forest. Net present value estimate using Himachal values which actually was internalized by the Supreme Court to central empowered committee and NPV was imposed in the range of 6,000 US dollars to 14,000 or 15,000 US dollars per hectare. It further led to revision of the study of NPV values. Me and Thavall actually worked and we had a huge consultation across the country across all stakeholders to get the value. And what was done in the previous study by me only to have only three density classes and six forest types and eight ecosystem services expanded to 14 forest types, four density classes and 12 ecosystem services. We had much larger body of knowledge after having done work in 2005 to 2012. It led to creation of again, the values are reworked definitely because they have much more data available, much more information available, much more improvement in terms of techniques of capturing these values. So we found the values in the range of 8,000 US dollars to 74,000 US dollars if you're asking for a strength for diversion. It led to another study at the same time developing frameworks across 20 bit analysis. I'm very happy to say that only recently the National Green Tribunal issued an order and they had internalized the rate that we had recommended and we also added another interesting thing to this particular approach, not just talk about ecosystem services values but also the position value of land. Once the land is diverted, it's gone forever. It will never come back to you. It's like transferring property to somebody, not just talk about the rental value but also the capital value. So this has also been affected by the NGT recently. The work which Bhaskar talked about, it's quite a challenging work. And again, we started this work for the Finance Commission, the 13th Finance Commission. Tried to use the approaches of opportunity cost of forest ecosystems in the country. And we said that because of the direction from the Supreme Court, because of the direction from the forest policy, you create fiscal disabilities. They have a resource, but they can't encash this resource and raise revenues for the developmental activities. So we had a huge opportunity cost. We made a case for the city's states to compensate on the basis of opportunity cost. They did receive 714 million amount in terms of grant. But a major shift happened when we did a very sophisticated formula. This was the formula for the 13th Finance Commission. We further improvised for the 14th Finance Commission. And the argument that we had given the kind of discussions we have had with Finance Commission, very in a continued manner, ultimately able to impress upon the value of forest in a much larger, broad-based value was considered. And there's a major shift in terms of not just from giving a grant, a very small grant, but the formula was altered. And for the first time, if you can see the next slide, 7.5% weightage was given to the forest cover. Bhaskar said about we have very dense forest, about 40% of canopy cover. So this was included and it was a huge achievement for us. And you can see the perceptible change. What was only just 714 million dollars in terms of grant increased to $19,428 million, which is in terms of devolution of taxes. That's how it happened. But the huge money had gone to states in terms of devolution of taxes, not just in terms of just grant, which is a very musical amount. But another problem happened that devolution of taxes given us a virginity cost value, which did not come to the sector. So again, they face the problem of resource current. So we are further working in the 15th Finance Commission, trying to impress upon, again, that not just you have a virginity cost compensation, but also a grant should be given for management of forest and their continued maintenance. Otherwise, things will go haywire. You're giving on the basis of natural capital value that needs to be maintained for future as well. So that's what we are trying to push forward. And we invited the ministry to also work upon the environmental component and the climate change component. So we are also looking at these two issues besides the forest cover component. Well, the last one, which is also which attracted a lot of attention across the globe is the economic valuation of tiger reserves in India for national tiger conservation in 30. They were quite influenced by the work that we had been doing for net present value estimation. We said, it is kind of return on investment we're trying to work out. So just as they receive a lot of flag that they receive, they are giving so much amount of grant for conservation of tiger, you know, there's a lot of encroachment happening, tiger population is dwindling. So they were wanting us to demonstrate that it's not just for the case of conserving tiger, but the entire habitat. It's like natural capital, which is habitat is predicted. It provides so much amount of values across, they're XC2 values, they go beyond the tiger reserves and transform the livelihoods of populations who are receiving the recipient population from these tiger reserves. So we did this estimate and worked at this stock value of tiger reserves, annual flow values. And that's how we got engaged with an ad kept project. Adrienne was with us to help us out in developing these three models which I just give you a small snapshot of these. So that's what, you know, was done here. We had a huge study visibility, received a lot of attention from the media. Even Prime Minister quoted our study in one of his addresses to the Third Asian State Conference. And it was even compared to the March mission of India that does it make sense to send, you have a mission on March or you should conserve more tigers, tiger reserves. And that's what happened ultimately. We have, this study led to ultimately increase in number of tiger reserves, you know, in the country, huge amount of money was further given for conservation of these habitats. This also is the output. So we also have an ad kept symposium poster. I could not come on my behalf. Adrienne presented it here in 2016. And in fact, tiger reserves are called as engines of economic growth now. If you conserve these, it leads to a huge amount of, you know, support. And it further led to, you know, getting ministry so convinced that they want us to estimate the value of all predicted areas in the country, which comprise of tiger reserves, national parks, sanctuary areas, conservation reserves and community reserves. So they think that it is a very, very useful approach to understand the value of resources, putting them into a accounting framework so that they can make a further work out the whole set of incentives, whole set of, you know, instruments to further conserve these natural capitals and futures. Thank you very much.