 Friends and colleagues, good afternoon. And delighted to be speaking to you all today, I would like to thank the practitioners, researchers, civil society and grassroots organisations in attendance for their continued leadership on this important agenda. In my role as the UK's international adaptation and resilience champion for COP26, I have spent the last nine months listening to those on the front line about the urgent need for action to respond to climate risks and large-scale biodiversity loss. The impacts are clear. Extreme weather such as floods and heat waves and slow onset changes including sea level rise and desertification are altering landscapes, impacting livelihoods and communities. However, in the face of such adversity there are countless stories of communities displaying extraordinary ingenuity and innovation in responding and preparing for climate risks, from floating schools in flood prone areas to changing crop types to be resilient to drought, to improving management of water resources. I recently had the honour of meeting the Maleku Indigenous community in Costa Rica hearing of their challenges in the face of climate change. These encounters will always stay with me. I am here to stand with those at the forefront of climate change and to be their people's champion. In doing so, I want to provide a platform for stories of resilience from women and girls, young people, Indigenous people and people living with disabilities to be told at COP. Collectively, we are all on a journey to scale out adaptation action to ensure that everyone is resilient to current and future climate risks. We know that effective adaptation requires local leadership. So enabling more locally led adaptation informed by inclusive plans is a critical part of what we as a presidency are seeking to catalyse, to continue through to the African presidency at COP 27. In supporting the LDC initiative for effective adaptation and resilience programme, we recognise that countries and local communities are the experts in determining how to prepare for climate change. And they ought to have the autonomy to make decisions on building their resilience. The launch of principles for locally led adaptation at the Climate Adaptations Summit, signed by over 40 governments, global institutions and local and international NGOs, provide a framework for how adaptation can be delivered more effectively. Through the Adaptation Action Coalition and the high level champions race to resilience, we will hold a set of regional dialogues encouraging both state and non-state actors to champion the principles of locally led action and develop domestic capabilities to transform how adaptation action is both planned and implemented. This means building domestic systems, empowering marginalised groups to be part of decision making and ensuring that finance is accessible to those who need it most. At the Climate and Development Ministerial, we launched the Task Force on Access to Climate Finance. With Fiji and other parties, we will align programmatic support behind national climate plans to improve local level access to financial flows. Research additionally needs to be locally driven, addressing the needs of local communities. And the Adaptation Research Alliance launched at the Gorbashana Conference is encouraging the Adaptation Research Community to endorse its research principles to carry out action oriented research that responds to local needs. In our path to COP, partnerships between local communities, governments and business at a national level and international links to multilateral development banks and climate funds need to be harnessed and solidified. I'm excited for what we can deliver and look forward to collaboratively working ahead of COP26 and beyond to deliver more effective locally led adaptation action. Thank you.