 Is it okay? Testing, testing. I hope everyone can hear us. Just give us a minute, please. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you very much. Okay. Yeah. Testing. Okay. Thank you. Excellent. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon and good evening. And thank you all so much for joining us online and all of you who are here with us in New York at the Intercharge Center. We're having a rainy morning at the beginning of the SDG Summit week. And so we look forward to having this discussion with all of you today. So thanks so much for joining and being part of this great discussion. We're organizing this event as a side event to the International Conference on Sustainable Development. This is an event titled Think Globally Exystemically Driving Sustainable Change at the UN SDG Summit. So you're joining us live in New York and online. With our discussion here today we want to make a contribution to the momentum that we hope will be created in the international arena with the UN SDG Summit and the UN General Assembly that are taking place this week in New York. Focusing on climate resilience, human and planetary health and the characterization of cities. This event will showcase how systemic solutions can drive transformational change. The three thematic panels will facilitate the exchange of perspectives and ideas identifying crucial linkages and potential for collaboration. Supported by Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the event is convened by Arsinoe and Impetus, EU funded projects on climate adaptation in Europe. A couple of words about these projects. So the Arsinoe project is the one that is aiming at creating climate resilient regions through innovations and systemic solutions. With Arsinoe, the idea is to shape pathways to resilience by bringing together the systems innovation approach and climate innovation window, and we'll hear about these in a minute. So the aim is to build an ecosystem for climate change adaptation solutions. This approach is showcased in nine demonstrators or case studies. So as a proof of concept with regards to its applicability, replicability potential and efficacy. On the other hand, the Impetus project's objective is to turn climate commitments into tangible urgent actions to protect communities and the planet. Much of its activity centers around what is called resilience knowledge boosters based at the project's demonstration sites. The resilience knowledge boosters provide a place for stakeholders to engage and create together as a network that will provide routes for knowledge flow and for successful climate adaptation approaches to reach other communities that need them. Sofia and I here today are from UNSDSN standing for UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. We are partnering both Arsinoe and Impetus projects. And we are the world's leading network of knowledge institutions that promote integrated approaches to implement the SDGs, as well as the Paris Climate Agreement. And we do so through education, research, policy analysis and global cooperation. For the next few hours, we will be discussing the role of systems thinking and tackling climate change, improving health and transforming cities. So to start, Kirsten Dunrup from EIT Climate Kick will set the stage for the discussion by highlighting the importance of systemic approaches. In the first panel on climate resilience, Arsinoe and Impetus speakers will be joined by the representatives of their sister projects, transformer and resilience, to show us how an ecosystem of multi stakeholder projects contributes to transformational change. In the second panel, we will shed light on the role of system thinking in transforming cities and communities, where we will hear from different perspectives from the CDS 2030 project, the EIT Climate Kick, the Bolivian Private University, as well as Monash University. The third panel will focus on the systemic risks to human and planetary health, providing insights from Columbia University, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Ministry of Health of Brazil and healthcare without harm. Lastly, we will be hearing from Sir Andy Haynes from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who will be providing us with some closing remarks. With this, the hybrid part of the event will officially conclude while in-person participants will be invited for a networking lunch. We will be having then another session later on in this afternoon, starting at 1.30pm New York time on the role of multi stakeholder partnerships in addressing complex challenges, a case study inspired by the Spanish example. Finally, let us show you a few housekeeping rules. After each panel, we'll have questions from the audience. If you join us online, please use the Q&A function. And those present in the room, please raise your hand and we'll pass the microphone to you. Please also note that this event will be recorded. Now without further ado, please welcome Kirsten Dunlop, CEO of EIT Climate Kick, Europe's largest climate innovation agency and community. Her career spans academia, consulting, banking, insurance, strategy, design, innovation and leadership across three continents. Her vision for EIT climate kick is to offer capability in systems transformation, resilience and regeneration through innovation. Kirsten, please the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Good morning everybody and welcome to a strangely empty, busy rainy New York with the streets beginning to be shut down. There's a word in English which comes to mind when I think of what is happening this week, what has been happened, what has been happening with the review of the global stock take, what is happening in the discussions that are happening across this entire city and across the world. The word is discombobulation, a sense of confusion, alienation, competing tendencies, tensions and a deep unease about how we find paths forward, find ways to do things that are profoundly structurally different to the ways in which we have been working until now. I wanted to open this conference with some reflections on the importance of starting New York climate week with a session that welcomes and argues for how we might shift our paradigms, not just of emissions and of ways of living but our paradigms of working towards that. And our paradigms of mobilizing policy decision making funding and action and engagement at multi scale and multi level and multi actor ways. The observation I would make is that at the moment we continue in large measure to iterate on a system that is broken. And in particular we iterate on a system that is mechanistic and that is grounded in principles of mechanistic logical linear thinking. If you look at the patterns around climate action, climate investment and climate innovation, they are still fundamentally grounded in the individual sectors, the sectoral logics, the individual budgets, the treasuries and ministers across all governments in the world are responsible for dealing with. They are grounded in the silos of our thinking about the ways in which the world is stitched together. And they are grounded in the fragments of what people can get their hands on or an individual impact theses attached to a desire to be able to point to something and say I did that. So ultimately we end up with a patchwork of individually important, but nonetheless not sufficient initiatives. We are not managing to get the entire system of effects to go fast enough, far enough or fair enough. And that gives us a design problem and implementation problem, and a fundamental paradigm shift problem when it comes to the way in which we think about resource mobilization incentives benefits and underlying mechanisms for encouraging people to work. I wish to introduce into this two terms. One is holistic. The other is systemic. They're not the same. We need to do both. We need to work on changing whole places. And we need to work systemically in those whole places to unlock and tap into the ways in which the dynamics of interconnectedness and interrelatedness begin to work with us and for us and on us. And that requires us to shift our understanding of the ways in which we think in a European context much is being done on a place based focus for many reasons that ultimately boil down to something that has to do with the power of intuition. If you work with people in a place, the abstract constructs around systemic thinking systems innovation dissolve into a practical sense of yes I know if I live in a city stuff is connected, that if something changes in the way in which garbage is collected or something changes in the way in which planning laws are enforced, other things get affected by that it is related. And it is much easier to work ground up and bottom up with communities and top down with policymakers and sideways with industry and SME in ways that practically begin to connect the notion of holistic, the notion of systemic with a notion of actions in which people can participate but most importantly relationships that they have to start negotiating and contracting around. So there's a plea and a recognition that this is something we need to learn how to do, and it does require us to unlearn some of the assumptions and habits we have in the ways in which we assume success can be achieved. The second reflection I wanted to make has to do with the ways in which we have constructed narratives around change. Our focus has been on emissions. Rightly so, because at this particular point in time, looking at the latest scientific evidence for feedback loops globally in terms of climatic change, we have to get emissions down as quickly as possible. Or we lose the social stability, political stability and economic stability that gives us space to do anything at all. And I think they're one of the things we really need to think about is as conflict and as fear and uncertainty hit us in increasing waves of frequency as we find that less space to recover from each event, less time. It becomes harder and harder for us to act with ambition with vision with courage and with spaciousness. We need somehow to buy time for that spaciousness. And there I think one of the challenges we have is by making it all about emissions, by making the stock take all about a focus on what hits emissions. We continue to slip sideways from the problem that this is about people. It's about something that has to achieve human, human transformation, which requires a very different way of thinking about discourse and narratives. In Madrid, we are wrestling with the fact that the latest story, the latest meme circulating on the streets is that the idea of a 15 minute city in which proximity is a mechanism for reducing the demand on resources and emissions is a European plot to lock people up in ghettos. It's the kind of anti-constructive, anti-collective, anti-transformative narrative that begins to stick for people because what else is there? Where are the alternative narratives of what it means to transform that is about people, that is about well-being, that is about living in a sustainable world that is attractive, aspirational, beautiful and significantly better than the current ways in which we are living. Without those narratives, without making this about people, we are stuck in a technical discourse of exactly what net zero means and what that ultimately arrives for for people. There is something in here about shifting the way in which we are capable of bringing our innovation approaches to envision alternatives and to demonstrate those alternatives. And I think you'll hear a lot this morning about different projects that are attempting to do exactly that. Remembering that 80% of emissions are locked in at the design stage of product services and policy decisions. 80% we have a huge challenge to get upstream of ourselves and of our own assumptions. And lastly, I want to bring in a reflection thinking back to my sense of coming into this week with a sense of on the one hand an enormous force of will in optimism and hope and the determination to make something happen. And a recognition that that stands on a knife edge with despair. That for me personally for every single one of us, I think I experience a daily walking on an knife edge a daily experience of needing to reinvest in my own resilience my own capacity to hold firmly open the determination for optimism and for the possibility of doing the impossible. And you'll hear about that in the message about the European missions and what Europe is attempting to achieve. I think there are two things that matter enormously here. When you look at the investment of time that many of us are making, many of us are still competing, competing to fundraise, competing to raise awareness about our individual activities, competing to speak about one method versus another method, investing an enormous amount of time in a friction cost we can ill afford. The time for deep collaboration in order to achieve deep systemic effects into relation relationships. The importance of into intervening on the parts of our cities and our regions and our countries and our industrial value chains on the relationships between those parts on the rules that govern those relationships and on the mindsets that look for and assume what to expect. That is essential. And the work that we need to do needs to be multi scale multi actor and multi level empowering people to make decisions flexibly quickly and in context. This I hope is what many of us will be discussing. Not the theory, but the practice of how to try to do that and how to try to continue to learn how to do this with all of the failures, the successes, the adjustments and the sense of determined optimism and hope in trying and continuing to try. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mrs. Dunlop for these very inspiring words of hope, above all, and for giving us a sense of connection that we need to be creating between holistic systemic between the emissions and humans that we all should be changing and working on. I won't be, I won't be very long so let's move straight away into our first panel that will be moderated by DSDS and vice president. Maria Cortez pooch. We'll be focusing on a building climate resilience through systemic solutions. So just please give us a moment and we will get started with our first panel and first discussion. So, we will be welcoming several speakers here in person but also online. Thank you very much. So, thank you everyone who made it through the rain and those that have been waiting for us to start online. So the, this first panel is going to be discussing climate resilience. It's going to be discussing it under the framework of four European projects are Sinoe impetus transformer and resilience. These projects have our sisters projects and this is an attempt by the European Commission to indeed break what Kristen call this patchwork of individually great projects. These are massive projects with between 30 to 40 members, each of them that are also collaborating across each of them to try to share learnings to make sure that we are not duplicating to make sure that we are finding levers levers to to break these negative cycles. Before we start with Chrissy last be do. She coordinates the arsenal project. She's the professor at the University of tessaly and vice president of research and technology at water Europe and I think Chrissy before you start with your few words about the project that specifically how does the project use the systemic focus. I want to ask you just for one minute to tell us about what's happened in your university, which clearly illustrates what we are facing and perhaps puts us a little bit in this despair mode, hopefully only to turn us into the hope. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for this. Yeah, I totally appreciated the fact that the this feeling of despair and I must say, it is not shared by everyone which puts us in a difficult position. We go through crisis. So I am at the University of tessaly and our region tessaly was hurt enormously these past. I mean it's been about, I don't know, 10 days or something like that, that we had unbelievable damage we had floods. The whole villages got buried under water and mud. Our university has been non operational. Since then we, we will see where the, the all the funding is handled in the research committee. They had two meters of mud and water. So, and it looks like the 1000 year storm happened, but in 2020, we had something of lesser importance but lesser severity but still very, very damaging so it is obvious that you know these events will become more and more frequent. And we as scientists need to adjust our models because the 1000 year things will be happening every 10 years and it looks like, and the, the damage in animals because tessaly is the most agricultural region in Greece the basic where everything is produced. So, I don't know how many thousands of animals are dead, and all the crops of course are damaged. And I don't know how we will recover this comes after extreme fires that we had in Greece and a large part of the country, especially where I come from, I mean I live in tessaly but I come from Thrace which is up in the north. And in the last part we had this very precious forest. There was a very, like I said very precious ecosystem that a large part of it is burned from forest fires so we either go from forest fires to floods, which in the heat we had extreme heat also. So it looks like the we are facing constantly crisis we need to get used to this mode. And now the winter is coming, you know, and even in places like Greece, not many, I don't know a couple of years ago we had extreme snowfall. So even in Athens where you would not expect that but the whole city got paralyzed and people were without power for a week or so you know, because of extreme snowfall so things are getting extreme and I'm worried a little bit personally actually you know what we are giving to our, you know, to our children, what kind of world we're giving them and how we're going into the 2030s and 40s and 50s and where the models look very grim you know the situation does not look good and you see that the, you know, the mitigation is not taking very seriously. Okay, let me go back now to speak about Arsinoe and what we are trying to do so Arsinoe is a great, great project very ambitious. 15 million euros 41 partners, really, you know, diverse we have nine case studies as was said before, we are designing innovation solutions for climate adaptation, adaptation of course is done locally in the communities. And we are, even though traditionally you would have the scientists and the technology providers bringing in the consortium of their students beforehand, so when you write the proposal you decide what you will do in each case study in our case our innovation is that we did not pre decide that but we put together a lot of effort in bringing the stakeholders together and creating these living labs where they all interact and where they all understand the problem they define the scope, they develop a vision of where they want to be. And then we see how how to get there but this is not our so so it is very very bottom up and we've been bottom up in other projects, but this one is real, because we don't know beforehand what we are implementing, and we're letting the people, the stakeholders decide. This is not easy, not in a country like Greece where you know we have a case study in Athens, where you know I am leading. And that is, you know, our societies are not so, I mean there is all this conflicting interest and they're not so mature in sharing and opening up even the data, their ideas and looking for this common good. And we are looking into why this is more so you know it may be in the south so I will even say that that even in the south of Europe, you might see that maybe because people go through very difficult, also economic situations for years I mean the environment and all these things take a little bit of a second second chair so they're not on the top of the agenda. So, so this is, it is not easy to bring these people together to make them interested to make them talk about the threats in a way that the new crisis help us. So now it is becoming like guys come on, as you see we're not joking here. The next crisis will hit you, you know it will hit you you will not. Maybe this time you didn't but the next time you will be hit and so you need to act. And we're trying to engage the community which, like I said is not easy but this is what we're trying to do. And then we have the climate innovation window where we are trying to bring in all the innovators with their ideas and bring them in contact with the problem owners so create this bridge which is not so easy to cover. We have open calls where, so the living labs the society decides what the innovations want to be. Then we issue a call, and we invite all these innovators to come and submit their ideas and increase the TRL of their technologies. And this of course is really speeds up innovation and speeds up what, you know what we want we want also to to innovate to create opportunity and all that stuff and then we decide the pathways. How can we get there now that we know what the innovation is what are the socio economic what are the financial pathways, how do we fund these solutions. And that's when the, the cities and the regions get interested when you tell them we will design for you a way to actually finance the solutions, then they get interested in the money is there we just need to be more mature with the projects in order to be able to do this but this is this is just the first thing so let me stop here. Right. Thank you very much Chrissy and I think it's an already mentioned that it's not easy to work in this new way collaborating breaking sectors, but this is a very interesting project where this is happening. It's, it's hard you've said it it's a bit chaotic but we're seeing it in practice how this can actually be done. And I'm going to pass the floor to Johanna Diaz-Pont who is senior researcher in governance at Eurocut and water, air, and the water, air and soil you need. And she's going to actually tell us a bit more about that from the impetus perspective. Thank you Maria. Well, first of all, thank you so much to UNS, DSN and ICDS for giving us the opportunity to share these, these projects and these initiatives in this panel and in this specific environment. I'm hearing representation just as my colleagues at the research foundation in Catalonia, and also representation of impetus, which is exactly a project similar to what we're talking a project with 32 partners in eight European countries in Europe. And that include organizations ranging from research, regional government, businesses, utilities, citizens, and many more, like local communities and so on impetus is precisely about thinking systemically we think to, while we use these words to co-create knowledge and to co-create innovative knowledge for climate adaptation. Systemic thinking in, in this project is also I think we think is understood as sharing a common body of knowledge. And I wanted to focus this intervention on this because sharing a common body of knowledge is a challenge that started when we started talking about sustainable development in the 80s. Social scientists and I am a social scientist myself. We know that knowledge is aligned with the social orders where it is produced. But as I like to mention Eleanor Armstrong because she's a woman and because she she's worked with all these things about communal resources. She said that social sciences and natural sciences have developed independently from ecological sciences and their integration is precisely I we think the problem that we are discussing here today. And because systems thinking is key is key to see reality as a as a unity. Disciplines cannot work in isolation we see that in this sort of European projects huge projects where many disciplines gather together. And the concept emerged the concept of sustainable development emerged in the in the 80s. We saw, we already saw that it was it was a knowledge intensive process. And here we are 30 years later, admitting that it was a tougher challenge than than expected and that many concerns exist just as Kristen said in in her beautiful presentation so the EU has devoted millions of euros to this and is still investing a lot of money in this through programs like horizon or the Green Deal and impetus is one such effort just like Arsinoe and others that will be presenting here today. The project well, we're talking again, just as with Arsinoe about seven demo sites in different climatic bio climatic regions of Europe. This demo site will work for three four years to scale up innovative solutions and to support businesses and communities in climate adaptation. So impetus is about co designing at the end and implementing a digital platform so when we talk about what what this going to be people ask us but what's impetus going to be in the end well. It will implement a digital knowledge platform with tested climate adaptation solutions for key community systems such as water, agriculture, fisheries, infrastructure, health and wealth is by regions include the continental coastal weather, the Mediterranean weather, we were listening to this devastating stories from from Greece, the Atlantic weather, the Arctic weather, the boreal weather and mountainous region so you see the variety is enormous. We're talking about by regions, finding solutions for absolutely different realities. And so this truly is a beautiful project, we think it will test and share techno a technical and non technical innovation so it's not all about technology and ranging from solutions to fight coastal erosion to early warning systems for bathing or drinking water to adapt to water supply scarcity which is a problem like for example, myself, coming from Barcelona we have the opposite problem water scarcity for agriculture and a flash flooding from irregular rainfall, which is also what we're seeing today. And well as well as dealing with the land use conflicts arising from all these problems and economic impacts of the economic activities that suffer the effects of all this. So, well, the project is all about systems thinking because it integrates research decision making active communities, especially local communities so the people the citizens. Localized communication, which is something that we also think is very important and very many different disciplines from natural sciences, social sciences, artificial intelligence real time data sets, data sets as my colleague Laia will will tell us right now. So well yes, systems thinking, which is the issue here today. Well this morning can be seen as a very abstract thing in practice. I was talking to Chris say just a few minutes ago about how social scientists tend to be very abstract about all the things that they tend to theorize and very much and and talk and talk and talk and write, but it is a powerful framework to avoid reductionism. And there is one thing that I would like to point out in this short intervention just to finish and trigger discussion later. This technique systemically requires a social culture based on shared principles and priorities. This is what can facilitate co creation in the end. So sharing certain principles, being agreeing on certain priorities, which is something we've been fighting in the whole world, we will see this these days here in New York. When we talk about impetus, what's at the heart of this project is seven bio regions in Europe with totally different cultures and totally different climate adaptation challenges, but aiming to share values and priorities to co create this systemic image, which I, which we think in the project that this is, it's actually the true sustainability challenge and what we're excited about facing the very many difficulties that we will surely find in our way. So, I'll leave it here. Wonderful. So let's go directly to, to Laia, Laia Romero is the co founder and CEO of La Belia Earth, also part of the impetus program go ahead. Thank you so much. We are partners in the impetus project. And we are climate experts, we are oceanographers, physicists, mathematicians, experts on forestry, agriculture, vulnerability, developers. And what we provide is an evidence based approach to these design decisions. The fact that design decisions are locked. It's a very important fact that Kristen mentioned in the introduction that I think we all appreciate it a lot. And an evidence based approach helps a lot in unlocking these decisions. And when we talk about design, we talk about adaptation design, and also mitigation but mainly an impetus adaptation. And one thing that I would like to, to bring to the discussion is the fact that we are discussing here projects in which Europe has invested largely in development of these, of these solutions, and that it's very important to remember that this investment that investment in adaptation brings benefits, brings savings, and most importantly, brings social resilience. And so, because there is a whole speech about these are huge projects, but they are extremely important. And an investment goes way farther than this. This is just the beginning really as we are, as we are saying, and it's needed. And what we provide an impetus is the data from Earth observation, climate data, economic impact data vulnerability information on different demo sites. And we're looking at things like, well this is a satellite observation on the grease flooding that Chrissy was mentioning. As an example, but we're looking at flooding for the implementation of nature based solutions we're looking at what is stress for ribbon and pre-European development. We're looking at the impact because extreme drought and heat extremes produce an impact which creates conflict socially and economically. So we're providing data on that as well, how hazards have a very clear impact on the design of new critical infrastructure. And basically that like evidence based data and information that it is publicly available. And it's important to count with the with experts that will help in a multi-actor environment, take these design the solutions and do those implementations. Thank you very much. Let's move along to our colleagues online. We have Jan Kuhls, who is a research manager at the University of Antwerp within the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development. He's going to tell us a bit more about the Transformer project also one of the sister projects. Jan, over to you. Well, thank you. Thank you indeed. Transformer is a sister project so you will recognize that we will do like a similar approach. And that is also I think like an innovative thing in Europe that we want to have like research projects that bring practical applications, right? So if you talk to like authorities, sometimes they don't have like see the practical value of research projects. But in this project, in Transformer and in the sister project, we do like to work together to make like some change. And we work as as you realize to get together with like local authorities and local actors or at well at the local level. And that is like particularly challenging because they are of course like most struggling with the with the climate risks, but also they need to take action. And that is often where we're also a bit of bottleneck is right like like a lot of the data centers a lot of the early warning centers. They are not at the local level they are nationally managed or managed by an authority. So what do local actors do then basically to use like an early warning system so so in terms of as an example like early warning systems of course a digital solution. So one aspect in Transformer is that we see okay how can we respond basically if you get like, like, like responses. Another thing that also Chrissy already mentioned is like like pathways where do we want to go. So in many countries like like, you know, like in Europe there are like adaptation plans already sometimes at national level sometimes it's a city level, but often they're made by like an adaptation unit so that is like one one department or something of two or three people or something. And that that doesn't mean that they get implemented. So, so what we do also in these projects is looking at the local level okay now how can we not move what's now needed and then in Transformer we the same as the other projects. We look at like which technology can work like censored early warning. Stormwater treatment we look at at financial aspect as well how to attract more money. Like for example, Guadalupe is one of our cases and overseas area that is like, more or less in the New York time zone. And that's it's it's it's under the French Ministry of French Island right so that we are setting up an adaptation fund and an adaptation fund this is in a way an innovative financial vehicle that that brings like that that pulls basically like the resources, because you can imagine it can be agriculture can be water can be smart city can be whatever, but if they're all in different departments. Then of course they each do their own bits and that is going to be a bit too slow and that and then they don't evolve like more. So, in addition, we try to to bring the pooling to be pooled the resources of various ministry but also companies to bring the money together and come up with like a joint project. And the idea is that we set it up with Transformer but of course they bring in their own money it's not that that we are like a like a setting up like an envelope or something. Let's see. Another aspect, of course, is also what what what can private citizens do. Like in Finland we work with the city of La Perante. And they also have like issues of course not with heat waves and so but of course there's a lot of flooding as well. And if you want to invest like in nature based solution or you want to retain water or make like reservoirs or so. The public, well they are the government they normally invest on their own land, but of course there's so much private land so and so we are now also seeing in Finland. What can be done basically on private land, how could we convince like citizens what what what are they willing to willing to do what how could they even invest on their own land so so and so these are like examples basically. And now we can make a change like a systemic change all the small bits in a bit. Like maybe like all small pieces but but I think in Europe with this ambition of the adaptation mission there's like progress that we are making and we do seem to go forward, even though this summer has been like a bit disastrous in terms of natural disasters everywhere in Europe but also that wakes people up in a way I think. Yeah, so that's a bit in short about transformer. Thank you very much. Again, we're also going to hear from Leon capitas. We should be also joining online he's the project lead of the Europe and the Middle East and climate resilience resilient cities network. Joining us to discuss the resilience project, which is the fourth sister project. Yes, hello, hello everyone and I'm sorry and it's a pity that I cannot be there. So I'll talk a little bit about resilience. As we said it's a sister project but it's a little bit different. The other three projects presented are innovation actions from the commission so the commission is funding research to be done and be quite applied. We are a coordination and support action. What does that mean from the commission. It means that we don't want to produce primary research we want to understand the innovations whether they're technological policy related business model related innovations and to see how they can be understood by other regions and reproduced. So when I was invited to this panel, I thought, what is our actually a role in systems thinking. And I thought that it's a bit like a fractal. If you guys, these other projects are creating innovations, how do we scale this up and have the similar structure of innovation. That's a system as well. So what we do basically is package this knowledge that the projects this project are producing but also other relevant projects funded by national governments or at the EU level and take them to the cities to the regions. For instance, we do this through different channels and different formats it could be workshops, it could be mentoring programs between city officials, but helps a lot with capacity building. It could be through twinning activities between cities as well. So, as you know, cities don't learn better from a scientist, they learn from each other, because they think in the same way. We also have produced materials learning also from the innovation actions on how we can develop pathways that create projects that deliver against resilience indicators. So we avoid maladaptation. And we do all this aligned to and in support of the European mission on adaptation to climate change. So that is very important that we don't do our own thing. We are all under the same umbrella. And that brings a lot of efficiency. We're also testing these approaches in seven focus regions. We have given an emphasis to the more vulnerable regions and low capacity. So it's a little bit early to be honest to report the results. We're still in the needs assessment phase, engaging with them, coupling them. For instance, we have the European Regional Resilience Forum, sorry, and we do some mentoring activities. That is the first time we bring cities that have developed innovations with the cities that want to learn more about them. So I'll leave it to this. And of course, we welcome any input, new policy innovations or any sort of innovation that you want to communicate. We're happy to hear from you and uplift it. Thank you very much, Leon. So we're going to open up the floor to questions from the audience here, but also online. I think there were three themes that came through all of the presentations that Kristen had also mentioned. So this idea of how do we develop a vision of where we want to go. Jan was saying this cannot be done by a department of adaptation somewhere in a ministry. So these projects have an innovative approach on that. And this idea of working collaboratively that these projects are also very innovative working in massive consortiums but then across these consortiums. And then also this idea that at the local level, is it a city or a small community, the system itself stops being so abstract and becomes very concrete because the interactions are quite clear, right. So, there's a question from in the chat here, and that is saying I see the volume, the value of investing in climate adaptation. And as it means that we would become more resilient, but is it not more efficient and durable to address the root cause of climate change so we would go back to what Kristen was saying do we need to focus on mitigation. Or do we need a bit more of a, not just focusing on mitigation. Does anyone want to take these questions. Yeah, I mean I think we don't have to choose. We should do both. So, definitely not just adaptation. See, the thing is, the more damage and the more we do not restrict emissions, which means we don't focus on mitigation. Our adaptation window is closing. This is a reality so there will not be much room to adapt so to adapt so we definitely need to speed up adaptation, and we definitely should not have to choose one helps the other. There's not this versus that adaptation happens at the local level, the communities develop solutions to survive and mitigation happens at the more global level so this is what happens at the cops where people go, you have the intergovernmental panels you have people from all around the world, committing, you know that we will phase out coal or we will phase out the fossil fuels we will invest in, you know, in renewables or whatever it is or we will invest in nature, or whatever these two, I don't think we should get lost in the, which one, we have to do both, and we have to do them very, very intensely. And as a local community, how much control do you have, what happens, say the US government if they want to limit emissions you know so this gives an opportunity to the local communities to actually do something and take action to adapt because you need to survive. And then we as active citizens, we need to go through our governments and we need to, you know, to take initiative and create the critical mass of pressure to our leaders, because our politicians actually follow what we, the voters asked for, and we should push for also mitigation, but we should not have to choose. Thank you, I think Joanna also want to speak with you. Yeah, I understand that we talk about adaptation and mitigation, but it's two different things mitigation is absolutely compulsory, like it's in, it's indispensable, there's nothing. There's no cure, because we will not be able to adapt at this rate. Anyway, an adaptation is very important because it's, it's not only because of, we are in the phase of climate change and, and these extreme events are happening and are affecting local communities as we are saying it is also because the fact that climate change is happening. It is also wake up calling the way that we do things as humans. And so it is at a local level. We, I, in my opinion, we need to embrace adaptation in order to change that. So, yeah, it's a different concept. Yeah. Well I think this is a very ideological discussion that we always have when we counter talk about mitigation and adaptation, and of course, they go together. But we know that certain voices and maybe this question comes from these voices. Well claim that when we invest in adaptation, we are actually denying, denying climate and just taking for granted that that's what it is and we just need to adapt and that's it. I totally agree to agree with what Christian layer said. And what I would add is mitigation as a way of changing society, changing the economic system, etc. is a very ideological process. That always ends up with words. We know that we know how to figure out specific immediate solutions, innovative solutions for adaptation. And I think those are necessary to trigger mitigation and I will only give an example to see how how mitigation requires an ideological move, following up on what I was talking about sharing a body of knowledge and sharing certain values and ideas in Barcelona. There was recently this policy of, well, taking cars out of the street and getting rid of cards and opening streets to to citizens. And this can be seen as measure, a local measure that combines mitigation adaptation adaptation because you either get rid of CO2 or the most vulnerable groups really suffer the consequences of air quality and mitigation because it's a way of reducing the use of cars in the city. Well, suddenly, there was a lot of opposition from citizens to this measure. But once they've experienced this, the life quality that it means to be able to get out of your house and walk the streets and breathe the air and then move to another street and get your car. Well, the adaptation measure will lead eventually to ideologies that support mitigation because mitigation entails, let's be frank, sometimes serious ideological changes, like getting rid of cars. To name one. So, once the next government has arrived and has said, okay, I'm going to change this policy and get cars back to the streets, citizens that were at the beginning not so happy suddenly say, well, wait, wait, wait. Maybe it wasn't that bad an idea. Maybe we've actually been experiencing another type of city. And maybe I'm ready to change a little bit the way I see the use of the car and so we do need to work both strategies together. But we also need to build on this idea of sharing values and sharing a way of seeing how things need to move on well. Thank you so much. So we have Jan and Leon, and I think after this we'll have to close and move to our next panel. Jan, do you want to? Yes. Well, I'm basically saying the same. What has been said before, like adaptation, like something that people thought to avoid. They say, oh, we will work on mitigation and everything is all but it doesn't go fast and we don't move at the speed that is needed so adaptation comes in and becoming important. But if you talk about that local level, right, and then basically you have to do it together and if you come up with like pathways, like how can our community become better, then it's better that you would discuss both like energy and disaster functions and nature restoration, because that's all a bit, sometimes people don't see basically the difference. Working on climate is working on climate and mitigation and adaptation are difficult terms for many people. So that is basically the message I want to give, like just work with your local regional level, sometimes also in countries on both things together, because if you have two units, one working on energy, the other an adaptation, then of course they do stuff that is not compatible. So yeah, make like integrated plan. Thank you. Leon, do you have something to say? And I have someone in the audience. Yeah, I think it's important to, I think we're asking the wrong question here. We're missing the systems thinking we need to see things as a nexus. So behind this we have the water, energy, food, ecosystems, nexus. And that's important to understand how local decisions are made. Something that is right for Northern Europe might be wrong for the south of Europe. For instance, I'm thinking clean energy production, fantastic, through hydropower, but you can increase flood risk. On the one hand, you have mitigation, on the other hand, adaptation, you cannot co-optimize this. You might have production of biofuels, they're very water intensive. That means you destroy the ecosystem nearby. So always think of the nexus, always think also of local resilience definitions. I think that's something that we need to bring here. And policies won't work in a pan-European level, not even in a national level. They will work in a catchment level maybe. So local communities need to decide for themselves. And we can think of other multiple examples, photovoltaics being installed, wind turbines, they're not the solution to everything, they're not a problem for everything. It's very context specific. Thank you very much. Please. Well, I found very inspiring all the projects and everything that was said here. But this brought me to think about this question about holistic and systemic. That is what we want. And to do that, and I really appreciated very much what Kristen said about that, the question about multi-level governance. Without having this connection, then we have some problems. And on the other side, the partnership approach and now to put really all the actors to work together. And we are speaking about this when we need leadership from the local authorities, and the local authorities are organized exactly on the opposite of that. They were top down, they were by silos, and they are hierarchical, and we are asking them exactly to do the opposite. So my question is, because in all these projects, and that I find really remarkable, but to be able to come to the solutions, because normally when projects are funded, it's expected that the solutions come like this. But what is forgotten very often, and I have worked in all my years of age in many projects, what is expected is that without thinking that you need to work very much on this concept of partnership, on new ways of working, of working with all the actors, and creating really this partnership approach, because you need trust, you need time, you need resilience. And to do this, you really need a hard work. And this is not funded. Normally, this is not funded. So how can you cope with this? Thank you. This question is music to my ears, because within SDSN, I lead the networks program, and it's very hard for donors and for those who have the funds to understand that the network itself needs to be funded, but it's an infrastructure of sorts. So I could not agree more. I think the, do you want to say a few words? And this connects very well with our next panel. Okay, very, very short. I want to say that obviously you, I think you have touched at the heart of the problem. It's not the technologies that limit us. It is the political process. So we, we are hopeful that we will allow enough time, you know, maybe at the last year of the project to focus on that, because you need to understand why the mayor acts the way he acts, who advises him, what, what, what is what are the interests there that are being served, and you need to interject there. And how do you do it? I mean, we are thinking to change things, lobbying, raising it in the political agenda. And if you portray a problem like it's something for the environment, people may not care, maybe low politics, you want to bring it up, you need to publicize it, maybe have the media on your side. So you need to touch and then find the timing, the correct timing, because as I said, most of the mayors and you know these governors work for four years because the election period is that. We have inspired leaders, and we try, we will try to focus on understanding the political process, which is at the heart of bringing transformative change. Yeah, I'm not saying we will achieve it, but this is our ultimate ambition. Very, very brief thing because it's it's very important from the scientific side. The question applies equally 100% because events are not isolated events create a reaction, a chain reaction many times so cascading effects between these events like the social economic hazard, the connection between these events and what they cause is very important and it's not so figured out yet from a scientific perspective. So just want to say that it applies to every level of discussion in the topic. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you everyone for joining us and staying with us. Jan Leon, thank you for joining us online we continue with our next panel that will be focusing on the unit of cities. And I want to welcome Julio Lumbreras Oscar Molina Christendor. And John Swades. Hi, good morning everybody. Well thank you for joining this session both the people here in person and also the around 50 people online, or no more now 84 so have lots of people online. Welcome to this new technologies and I assume today we expected more people in person but rain has challenged everything and it's a messy weekend and day, but we are so happy having you here. So I'm from from one perspective now to thinking on how systems thinking can really transform cities and how important this is right so I'll do a very brief introduction, and then I'll give the floor to my colleagues who will talk in detail about the different levels and actors that can play a role in transforming cities. So, I think we all agree that we need a systemic thinking or systemic approach to transform any city right because a city in the end of the day is a system of systems. We have all the services that the city provides so we have transportation we have energy in many different kinds we have health we have education. And if you think about all these services or all these woods that we have in a city. Food anyone is, is a system right if we think about education we are here for example in the university, and to be here, we, we have a system behind this right and a system that it's connected with other systems so we are here thanks to also the energy system we have electricity here have some coffee thanks to sdsn but also thanks to the food system right. We go to the restaurants and we have water and so on and so forth right so every service we are enjoying a city is thanks to the system of systems and when we think about the city, as we were talking before, we cannot just think about the local environment we need to think about the metropolitan area and the region, we won't have any electricity without the power plant that it's probably 50 miles from here, or we won't have water without the dam that it's elsewhere right so. So, it's impossible to think of a city as a very constrained space in in a place right. So having this in mind, I think it's clear that we need this system thinking to transform any city. But as we were also talking before it's so easy to say that but so hard to make this happen and so hard to really implement and think differently and do new ways and fun as you were saying before this new ways of working. And now today, hopefully will be inspiring and energizing to you because we have some examples of how this is actually happening and how these things are really changing and transforming our cities. I think we'll hopefully after this session will go energized and thinking okay that's possible it's not only important and it's not only nice and interesting but it's possible, and we only need to replicate to scale up to do it in many other places around the globe and and even more knowing that we are now today or almost today at the midpoint of the agenda 2030 right so we only have seven years ahead. So we need to change at a scale and not a pace that sound that's unprecedented, and we cannot make this without cities and without the systems thinking. So we need these examples and, and we need to do extrapolate and to work across the globe in a different way. As I said that, I'm so thankful for your participation because we have an incredible panel today. So you probably know all these three amazing colleagues that are here with me but I'll briefly introduce each of them and I'll give the floor to each of them so first. Thank you so much, Kristen is the CEO of climate kick you know is the largest innovation initiative around climate change in Europe was doing an amazing job. And I'll give you the floor, Kristen to start talking about how this is important at the city level the systems thinking on what's what are you doing in Europe to make this happen. Thank you. Thank you very much Julio. I'm going to test out our capacity to put some slides up and see how that goes. Yes. Okay, fantastic. And just see how this it would be pointing here or here. Perfect. Okay, so let me just introduce there are many many things happening in the European context with respect to large scale transformation and the 2030 agenda. This particular initiative I wanted to pull into this panel because of the degree to which it is driving extremely dramatically different, or at least seeking to drive dramatically different scale pace penetration and structural order of change. This is explicitly framed up as the notion of a mission. Europe has borrowed a leaf out of the book of Kennedy and launched the notion of something that is designed to create a leap forward well beyond what we currently considered to be possible. It is very clear that what we are leaping for here is not currently possible in the managed stage transition that most countries and most regions and cities are planning for. This is a mission to mobilize hearts, minds and markets. To do so above all through the notion of really mobilizing a learning mechanism for a constant iterative peer support cohort learning and experimentation and demonstration of what's possible. So explicitly what this means Europe has launched five missions. One of these is focused on more than 100 cities 100 in Europe and 12 on the edges of Europe, committing to decarbonize by 2030. No offsets actually carbonization. This is scope one and two, but obviously for cities that makes it very difficult not to start drawing in scope three. It represents 18% of Europe's population. And it represents in terms of emissions avoided just on scope one and two point seven gigatons of emissions avoided by 2040 if and as we can pull this off. So it's a not a small deal. Once you start really adding adding in a lot of the then co benefits and collateral effects. It starts to get extremely important. It clearly exposes immediately and this is one of the things we already see one year in the key areas of absolutely essential nexus systemic change necessities between the built environment and everything that has to do with construction materials planning incentives and access permitting and so on. The differences in laws. Why is it possible for for a legislative framework to determine exactly how streets are to be structured or laid and the energy system to be laid out in relationship to it, but freedom given to developers on determining materials and energy of buildings or how that might be achieved. So cities are already arriving at a point of saying, we may need to really look at how some of the coherency of these frameworks and permits are arranged. It clearly exposes the critical element of energy systems, not just the provision of renewable energy sources, but the infrastructure the design decentralized distributed grid mechanisms how do you genuinely create energy communities quickly enough to shift mindsets of residents and communities on the possibility of what this means. It absolutely throws up immediately financial mechanisms. Most people do not have 70,000 euro to retrofit their homes. So that means something shifts in terms of who receives alone, not the home resident but the home, the building structure, long term slow release structures that start to shift the way in which we think about ownership and benefit and the securitizing of future value. It starts to shift massively the evidence around plastic waste in the system dealing with last mile all of the things where when you really work back from an actual physical place and say by 2030 this has got to be different. So we're finally dealing fully with almost every element of the system. Now this program is extremely bold. It's extremely complex and complicated. It involves cities working in cohorts, learning from each other, focusing on areas where they know they've already got strength to build on and where they can start to implement how they give each other courage to go further and faster. It's looking at how they can actively demonstrate and create precedent for others to follow, because so much of this is about directional signal, and about two markets and to finance and to investors small businesses to try and look at how to bring in the layers of intervention. It's explicitly designed to bring in multiple elements that he's formally produce a climate, a full systems mapping of their current for emissions and baseline. They draw up action plans to look at what would be possible. What would it take to get to decarbonization by 2030. They draw up investment plans with a full economic modeling looking at the business case for costs benefit possible return. They look at governance innovation because much of this indeed comes down to multi level governance and the significant shifts. It takes in city governments and in city, regional, national and pan European governance to make this possible. And all of that rolls up into a climate city contract, which is a formal commitment to actually make this possible, and then a label that then signals to the financial system. This is seriously happening. And it is a very interesting shift when you start to get into the conversations with financial institutions, both public and private, and with industry on the extent to which this is real because it's very different. And it creates a very, very different dynamic. If you think about the supply that these cities require in terms of green materials, logistics supply chain is a totally different market. But all of a sudden it's sitting within a set of nested regulations that makes it possible to start thinking in terms of that scale of market building. This is just to give you a sense of how the system works on continuously iterating around the idea that this is about a learning mechanism using a portfolio logic. So the construct here is that the city, the place constitutes a field of portfolio building, whereby many hundreds of individual projects and innovation positions and actions can be positioned and connected with one another so that you can actually look at the interrelations between this is the impact framework and the monitoring evaluation framework so that you're actually looking all the way along at the interrelations between energy food waste, physical systems, the possibility of rewilding how the structures of planning and resource in urban planning are working. And you can then begin to really look at an iterative process of trying different relationships, looking for the potential combinations and synergies where multiple dimensions of solutions can start to create more holistic multi sided outcomes. And then you are really beginning to work the many present levers for transformation in one place. I know when we describe this because it's my daily job to go out and describe to those who are not involved. This is what's actually happening. I get a lean back in the chair and you're not serious. This is not actually possible. Nor is it in fact something that I representing a company or a bank or an insurer would even know how to engage in. And that indeed is the point. This is a programming logic, a platform, it is supported by a platform made up of many partners working actively together. It digs into years of innovation ecosystem building across Europe at multiple scales, and it is precisely designed to learn how to do this in such a way at a sufficient critical mass that other cities hundreds of other cities can follow as quickly as possible. And one of the things that we are delighted to be doing this week is to be discussing with the US state of California and a number of other cities in the US to explore what might be possible in similar terms in the US, building instead in the US much more from the notion of equitable communities and circularity and circular economy. So it's an exciting proposition. It really leans into dynamic principles of activation dynamic principles of learning by doing and of portfolio construction and management. Not both. I think I also need that. Yes. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Well, after listening to you, it's hard to say anything else because it's amazing. And thank you for your leadership as an organization on this endeavor, because this mission, the platform is a consortium of 33 organizations that is led by climate change. So thank you for that. And as you were saying, when you listen to that you are like, wow, is this possible. And cities, these 112 cities are facing lots of problems right and lots of barriers and challenges in this process. Some of these challenges are similar in a specific context similar in a region or in a member state in the case of Europe in a country right. And that's why the European Commission and the mission asked to create not only the European platform but also national platforms where cities can work together at the national level, overcoming these barriers, all together overcoming the cultural barriers, the fiscal barriers, the economic barriers, and all technological barriers in some cases and so on and so forth, right. And that's what I'm talking because they asked me to moderate as well as present that I'll be very short before giving the floor to Oscar. So, so now I'll, do you have the slide deck if not, no worries I can. Okay, so what I'm now it's going a bit, it's held down, and I'll go to the just one. So yeah next go to the, because I'll go directly to the last one. So move because I don't want to spend keystone already explained the context and why this mission is important so go ahead. These are the other missions, and I only want to go to one slide at the end. Please go ahead. More more more a bit one. This one, there you go. So now, I'll only stay in this slide for the five minutes so. So the point now is, okay, so we created in the European Union this mission. There is 112 cities now, but there is two main challenges right how can we in reality work on this in each city, and they are facing all these barriers, and also the last thing that Houston said, so how can we use this as a first step. How can we use these cities as front runners how can we really engage the other cities that are across Europe right, and the answer to that is, we need to, on top of the work at the European level, we need to create national platforms. We need to create a safe space at the national or regional level to promote and foster this work, right. And this radical collaboration between different stakeholders to really think systemically to really implement the climate city contracts and everything that Houston mentioned before, right. And that's very hard because nobody wants to fund this right. That's why your comment before was so important to me right because it's hard to to fund this but it's extremely relevant. And that's what we are doing, and that's the case the example of Spain, but there is also another platform in Sweden that was, by the way, inspiring for us because they launched this platform six seven years ago. And there is other countries working on this that is Francis Lovina, Germany, Italy, Greece, Ireland, and other countries across Europe working on this. So the idea is, we need to create this infrastructure this safe space where everybody can collaborate right and that's what we call national platform. And a national platform is not an online web place where you go and see documents we also have of course a web, but that's not the point the point is creating this place where people can work together where private companies can work with cities, where the funds can work with the NGOs with a civil organization can work with universities and research centers together towards transforming the city in this complex system of systems we were talking before right. And what we are doing in this platform thanks to the funds from the national government and also to the work because this platform is run by climate kick. And I'm from the technical University of Madrid we are running the platform together. We are creating this space mainly with three different types of services we are offering people who are in the space, three different services and they're here you can see which are they they are not linear. So they are not like levels that you have to go to the first and then to the second so we are offering the three levels simultaneously. And we are mainly working on overcoming the barriers I mentioned before right. The first, the main barrier is the silos that we are experiencing in cities right there is silos across departments there is silos across sectors there is silos across stakeholders, there is silos across governance right. So we need to break down the silos so and to break down the silos, the first services to really promote a real collaboration between the stakeholders so what we offer is meeting points or meeting events right. We organize online events, every month we have a climate breakfast, we have in person sessions we have a summer course where Kristen was one month ago with 150 people from private companies, academia, is working together for two and a half days so we have we organize events where people can learn from each other can connect can do networking, and can really start creating the bonds that are necessary to make this happen because the main element the main ingredient for this access of this platform is trust. Trust and connections between people. So that's the focus of this first level of services, but then as Kristen said, cities need to develop this climate city contracts need to have a climate action plan to become climate neutral which is extremely hard right and they need also to find funds they need to develop an economic case they need to develop a financial case for this for this climate city for the for the action plan. And that's what we call the climate city contract and in the platform what we do is we work with the cities and other stakeholders to develop these climate city contracts. We have an economic model where we estimate emissions for the future, the actions that should be taken and the cost, the investments that are necessary, and the benefits associated to these investments. And we support the cities in creating the investment plan to make this happen knowing that the, the need for investment is huge. We need around 10,000 euros per person per inhabitant. So for example a city like Madrid 3.5 million would need 35 billion euros to transform from now till 2030. And this money doesn't need to come from the city from the budget city budget needs to come from all the stakeholders that need to invest in transforming the city right. So how you make this happen is what we work with the cities on the training piece, we create capacities, we change minds, we work with them with the cities in creating this climate city contracts and in developing what they need to transform the cities and finally, what is the most valuable thing from my perspective in this platform, both at the European level and at the national level is the power of the with. We are used to see cities competing with each other, right, because they, they compete for talent they compete for money they compete for different kinds of resources. But what we are realizing is that when they work together and when they collaborate, they go further and faster. And they are experiencing this. And the third level of service is the cities are working together in what we call multi city programs. And they put a challenge, and they start working together. The first program we are launching is a program to retrofit 1 million buildings in the seven Spanish cities that are part of the mission, which means multiplying by 10 the speed for retrofitting in these cities. And why it's amazing, because they are experiencing that when they work together and they are from very different political parties. So very, the political diversity is great the size is different. So they are very diverse but when they work together. In scale, they easily more easily attract private funding, they can change the laws, the regulation at the national level because they have the power to negotiate with the national government. And they can develop new methodologies and new instruments that they can use together, because when they go to the intervention at the city level, you know, the civil servant that is always saying no no no you cannot do that you cannot do that. And it's civil servant faces a new instrument that it's approved and it's being done by different cities across the same country that kind of saying no right. So it's a different way of changing the system working together with the other cities in a region or in a country right. So, as Kristen was saying, the only way we are experiencing to transform cities is doing or applying this portfolio approach. And when we talk about portfolio we talk about different projects, touching upon different levels of change, using instruments, financial instrument regulatory instruments and so on, but working together and to work together. The only way we see is creating these platforms, and that's the example that we are using in Spain and I think it's hopefully inspiring for you. And having said that, now I give the floor to our next next speaker, let me say the chart correctly so Oscar Molina, he's the pro rector or provost of Universidad Privada Bolivariana, which is one Boliviana sorry sorry Boliviana from Bolivia. Who's the, the one of the most relevant universities in Bolivia and he'll talk about the case of La Paz, which is the city of Bolivia. Thank you so much Oscar. Thank you. That's okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. First, thank you for the invitation to Maria and Giovanni. It's a real pleasure to share this floor with Julio, Kristen and John. Of course, I think the most important thing is the context. You said about the context of course the context is very different between of course the cities in Europe, North America, and Latin America. I think in this, in this session, I am the only person of Latin America. I'm not sure. Yes. The only person of Latin America. Okay. Oh, perfect. Let me start this, this presentation by introducing the new symbol of SDS in Bolivia. The SDS in Crane La Grulla in Espanol. This crane for us represent the positive challenge. Let me change this and represent the help and positive change in Bolivia. Of course, I'm sure some quick facts about my country. I'm sure not all of you know much about Bolivia. But for example, in terms of, in terms of size, we are a large country, more than one million square kilometers, more than France and Spain together. But we only have 12 million people similar to Belgium, for example. In terms of GDP, we have more than $9,000 in PPV party purchasing power. And we are a medium income country. But in the recent months, I have been deeply concerned about the state of my country. In our history, Bolivia has attempted to develop by exploiting natural resources, starting by minerals two centuries ago. And more recently, hydrocarbons, specifically natural gas. And it's not a secret that no country in the world has achieved robust development solely by exploiting natural resources. In the short term, let me say you, it's practically impossible to make, to necessary to investment and exploiting the reverse of this situation. At this moment, for example, there are a few years, in the last few years, Bolivia's natural gas reserves have decreased. And the fluctuations of the commodity prices have resulted in the trade and fiscal several and great problems in my country. I really believe that the solution in the short term is change the strategic sector in my country. Of course, it's not that mining minerals of hydrocarbons. I think it's possible to change to this sector, this tourism. I think it's a real offer, a real solution to the sustainable development alternative for Bolivia. Many other countries have several stories about related for the tourism. For example, Mexico and Costa Rica. For example, the share, the average share of the participation in tourism on GDP from 2008 to 2022 in Bolivia is 1.8% for this GDP. And from Mexico, this same indicator is 8.6% for his GDP, for their GDP. Today, we have been working in two important papers. The first is tourism as a key driver of sustainable development, the case of Bolivia. In this paper, we explored the idea that tourism is a critical driver of development. We use a solo model to measure growth and examine the factors of tourism. Our results suggest that tourism, physical capital accumulation, human capital accumulation and the corresponding depreciation rates influence the steady state output level per worker. And in the second paper, this Dutch disease in the Department of Tariha is tourism the alternative. This paper demonstrates that the tourism sector is the least affected by economic sector by the natural gas Dutch disease. As a result, we propose a development model centered around tourism. And after these two papers, and after these results of the orbit and LDCN projects, I really believe that tourism holds the key to Bolivia development, particularly in addressing the short-term trade deficit issues. I look forward to sharing this paper with you soon. Now let me refocus on the main point of this session. The first work of the SDS in Bolivia was the municipal Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals in Bolivia 2020. This Atlas provides information for all municipalities in Bolivia. At this moment, we have 339 municipalities, a huge. And this Atlas shows their progress towards the SDGs. The results suggest that tourism is the most important option for Bolivia. And all three groups economy, society and Biosphere. For example, one indicator of the Atlas is the municipal index of sustainable development. For example, La Paz is the administrative city of Bolivia. It's not the capital. The capital of Bolivia is Sucre, a small city in Bolivia. Receive the highest score with 80.2 points bigger than Bolivia Averash. The Bolivia Averash this indicator is 61.7. But the interesting thing is this score from La Paz is like the score of Scandinavian countries. For example, in the global SDGs index. Based on these results of the SDGs Atlas, we have decided to promote tourism as a key of the sustainable development in Bolivia. For example, we have created Orbita. This project Orbita is the first Bolivian observatory for sustainable tourism. We launch a competition of sustainable tourism solutions in Bolivia. And we calculate the first municipal index of tourism potential in Bolivia. In the Orbita project, we finance the research of 25 student thesis related to tourism, gender and sustainable development. And we publish monthly tourism intelligent bulletins. Additionally, we provide business advisory services for more than 50 women-led tourism enterprises in my country. These bulletins are very interesting because it provides easy information for the tourist community. For example, some highlights that tourism is particularly beneficial for gender equality. It's interesting. For example, at this moment, look at this graph in the last century, all business related to tourism was slated by men. But at this moment, it's slated by women. It's very interesting. One critical variable is investments. For example, La Paz is the municipality that invests most in tourism. But less than half a million dollars per year. Five hundred thousand dollars. But with that modest investment, a municipal tourism GDP is more than three million dollars in only 300 million dollars. Only in La Paz. Tourism, my friends, my colleagues, is not a priority for the public sector. Without a plan like in other countries, tourism generates more money and revenues than other sectors that receive much investments. It is crucial that the public sector consider tourism as a strategic sector for Bolivia and the politicians see the potential of these sectors. All the data. La Paz receives three thousand tourists in one year. Three thousand hundred tourists in one year. Do you know how many receives in Mexico? Mexico receives more than 30 than 31 million tourists in one year. All Bolivia receives 1.2 million tourists in one year. Only Cusco in Peru receives more than 1.5 million tourists in one year. In Spanish, we say para muestra un botón. I'm going to look at a good translation for this in English. I think proof is in the pudding. I think it's very interesting relation from the first place in Spanish. Next month, we will officially launch the Bolivian, the Bolivian municipality index in tourism potential and publish many academic and non-academic papers to support this idea in my country. This municipal index of tourism potential use the same methodology as the SDG index, but with a specific indicator relevant to developing the tourism sector. It is divided in four main topics and 42 variables. This is the four topics. This is the map of all municipalities in Bolivia. La Paz also has this index. This is significant tourism potential for all parts of Bolivia, if you can see. It's very interesting, for example, with only 300,000 tourists, La Paz won their condition as one of the seven new urban wonders involved in the world in 2015. In 2022 and 2023, he has also won as the most biodiverse city in earth in the global natural city challenge. For example, one methodological innovation in the Atlas and this index is using the cartograms. This cartograms is very interesting because show the municipalities in terms of the population and we can see the reality best than only see the maps. The state capitals of Bolivia, this is in the middle of the country. Most people have high tourism potential. A part of this, a few municipalities in La Paz, for example, El Alto is very, very interesting city and this is probably the biggest surprise in these results. To finish, look at considering the 42 subindicators included in the municipal index of tourism potential. This slide shows the 10 top ranking municipalities. All the state capitals are in the top, except Coroico, Paralyze Tropical Forest, Uyuni, the Sal Flats. I don't know if you know the Sal Flats in Bolivia and Copacabana, Tintitaca Lake. Of course, we bid you all to visit my country and I don't have more time, but thank you. Thank you very much, Julio. Thank you. Thank you so much, Oscar. Very interesting. So we, we moved from, from the general idea of systems thinking at the city level, then we moved to Europe to the example of Europe. Now, after that to the national platforms and how cities can work at the regional or national level and now we went in a very detailed case to one city and working in particular on tourism. And thank you, Oscar. And now we'll finish our panel with, with John Twitz. I don't know if I said it correctly, always challenging twice or, okay, yeah. You probably all know John because he's very famous. It's hard to, to introduce him, but just said that he's a professional fellow at Monash University in Australia, and also chair of the Monash Sustainable Development Institute and Climate Development Works Center there. Thank you so much, John. And now he will bring us back to more vision. What's the role of the higher education sector of universities in transforming cities using this systemic thinking approach. Thank you, John. Thank you for you. Well, thank you very much, Julio. And Twitz is a hard word to say in Spanish and it's even harder in Portuguese apparently. Look, it's great to be here today and to talk about the role of higher education for thinking systemically to transform cities. I'm going to start though, by my previous role, which is as a government minister and 20 years ago I was actually minister for planning for Victoria and responsible for the plan for Melbourne, which was a 25 year plan. I came to see Melbourne as a system of systems, as you talked about, to connect the transport, the housing, the energy, the environment, the emissions and the economy with outcomes that were very consistent with the sustainable development goals. And it was a good plan. But five years later, there was an audit of the plan. And it found that the plan was very worthy, but implementation fell short, which is pretty typical in government. And there were three essential reasons for that. The first was the lack of clarity of responsibility, who had overall responsibility for implementing the plan. The second was the need for adequate resources, funding and financing. And the third was the need for broad based support for the plan, particularly from local government that had to implement it. And the essential problem was governance. It was a nice plan, but it didn't have sufficient buy in involvement from key parts of the system. And the finance minister to provide the money from transport that had the cloud from business with the jobs and local government who had to implement it. And I take these lessons to my approach to how higher education needs to look at systemic thinking in city transformation. It's not enough to have great analysis of the systems. It's really all about the implementation. And that's why I was very interested in Kirsten's discussion earlier about the cities about multi level governance and climate city contracts. Because I think there are two specific government techniques that can actually assist with implementation. And I might say I'm also the chair of Melbourne's water utility and I've been trying to get contracts with local government for that very reason. Because you need something so that all the parties don't just talk about a nice plan. They're actually signed up to do something about it. Well, what about higher education? Higher education certainly has a very important role to play in transforming cities. And on the right, I've set out some of the positives about higher education. First, higher education provides the knowledge, the evidence, the innovation, the technologies that we need if we're going to transform cities. Second, we train the implementers. We train the planners and the engineers and the social scientists who are going to transform cities. Third, universities have the potential to show cross-sectoral leadership because they're not just part of business or just part of the social sector. They can go across the whole of sectors and show leadership to guide the transformation. Fourth, and I actually think this is probably the biggest thing we can do is experimentation. Universities are good. Researchers are good at experimentation. Probably better at that than they are at implementation. And if we're going to get the sort of innovations to have the big step forwards that Kirsten talks about, in many cases it's going to be underpinned by research on the ground. And finally, I think universities have a level of independence that allows them to try risky things that business or governments won't do. But, and there's always a but, traditional academic structures in universities which are discipline-based and faculties of engineering and science and the arts are not conducive to systems thinking. In fact, they reinforce silo thinking. And I would argue that we need completely new approaches in higher education to support systems approaches to transform cities. In fact, universities have to transform themselves. The good news is, this is starting and we're seeing universities move from traditional discipline-based academic structures based around single disciplines to a transdisciplinary approach, which incorporates not only multiple disciplines, but also incorporates decision making with the community and practitioners. Second, and I think this is a really interesting one, is that within universities themselves, we need to see a much greater collaboration between the traditional research and education components and the operations arm of the university. And the operations arm used to be thought of something, oh, that happens out the back, completely separate from the main part of university, which was about research and education. But universities are very big businesses themselves with lots of emissions, lots of impact on their local communities. And we need to connect the operations with the research and education. But third, universities clearly need to be at the forefront of the commitment to net zero. And that means strong and ambitious net zero commitments that can be implemented in the shortest possible time frame. And fourth, going back to that point about experimentation, universities can be great places to experiment in place-based ways, as Kirsten said. Because we are ourselves part of a local community and often part of precincts involving community and industry. And I'll talk a bit about Monash and Yitz precinct, the university that I'm at. Now, just to help universities at Monash and Climate Works and SDSN, we have collaborated on a guide, a net zero on campus guide. And this is to help universities in their operations become net zero. And we started off thinking, well, this is just about operations. We don't want to get into the research. We don't want to get into the education. Let's just focus on that. But as we produce that guide, we saw, of course, that they're all connected. And that there are huge opportunities for universities as they transform their operations to net zero to also use that as a testing ground for research and education. And this guide has 17 initiatives across six action areas of energy, waste and recycling, mobility, the value chain facilities, and importantly, the last one beyond campus operations. Because once again, as we produce this guide and we did it with universities from all continents, we understood that it's not just about the university, it's about being able to use this as an exemplar for the precinct the university sits in and indeed broader city based transformations. And this has at Monash been part of our commitment to be net zero by 2030. And that involves significant investment in renewable energy in a smart grid and energy efficiency and transport. But it also has got us really thinking about where do we fit in our local precinct. Monash is in a suburb of Melbourne. We sit in a precinct surrounded by industry and residential development. The immediate precinct, the economic, the GDP of that is about $9 billion a year. I mean, it's huge. We sit next to advanced technology centers to industry. And historically, they've really never talked to each other. And the university is a way to get this whole amazing precinct talking to each other and moving as a whole precinct to net zero. Potentially as Julio talked about sharing knowledge, sharing expertise and even sharing smart grids, for example. And we've set up a net zero precinct research project, which has multiple partners, including Angie, the French energy company, multiple universities, the CSI, our Australia's science organization, equally representing local government, but also the local governments themselves. And what we're doing is working in, I think, the sort of way both Julio and Kirsten were talking about, talking not just about the emissions and the net zero, but looking also at the human aspects across the various systems. And we're actually, you know, one of the researchers and a key part is anthropology, which wouldn't have been the discipline I would have first thought of, but actually is very relevant when it comes to talking to different groups about envisaging a future. And so we're putting all that together. And hopefully that will lead to not only a vision for net zero, but most importantly, implementation, which is where I started the focus on implementation. Thanks. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, John. So inspirational and relevant and I suggest you to look at the guy that's really useful and relevant for the work of the higher education sector. So before coming here to the questions in the room, we'll have like, five, 10 minutes. Okay, but so there's a couple of questions from, from the online people who just passed me so let me. I'll read both and then I'll give you the floor, any of you who want to answer. So first is you talked about the US cities to follow the model of net zero cities in Europe. What's standing in the way. And the other one is how do you maintain the momentum and the interest of the cities in the carbonizing despite the election cycles. Other similar is how you can export the model to other regions. Well, in particular the US or it's similar to the first one. So, for us, maybe, if you want to start. Yeah, so maybe how this can be extrapolated to other contexts. That's maybe the main and the generic question. Okay, thank you very much. I think two things. So if I commented from what's standing in the way and how this can be extrapolated. So nothing is clear. Let's, let's be careful. What stands in the way of achieving something like the European mission speaks very much to what each of us has been speaking to. First things first, the degree to which sponsorship is clear responsibility and accountability are clear and is sustained and sustainable through political cycles and at multiple levels. Absolutely essential. And there is in the European context there is the overarching framework of the European Green Deal. There are a series of nested regulations from the fit for 55 all the way through to different value chains supply chains, the climate packed a full European climate risk assessment which is now just being launched and a number of elements that come together. However, if you look at this from the city perspective from the regional perspective and from the regional perspective, there are still and remain very strongly in the same field of policy across the whole of Europe, a number of extreme inconsistencies and incoherencies in terms of how those different policies interact. So one of the principle obstacles is to work on coherence across and the coherence is the incoherence is simply driven exactly as John was describing it by the fact that habitually, most of the European policy units, and and have done their thing, aligned to the particular sectors and interests that they represent whether it's ICT information technology, or it's industrial strategy and a focus on what the internal logic of industrial growth and development needs to be, or it's the way in which education has been managed with a subsidiarity principle so not necessarily responsible at the level of the whole of Europe, or it's the way in which we have thought about culture and creative arts as something uniquely different again, instead of harnessing it fully into the way in which we mobilise a different imagination for the future. So there are fundamental challenges between say the common agricultural policy everything that's happening around food systems, the way in which critical more materials is driving a continuous focus on extractive growth, and the way in which say industrial policy necessarily supports the implementation of something that is sitting at a sub national level. There are challenges in how to overcome that. On the other hand, the success principle here is to start from a different logic, which is indeed place based, and which allows at that scale and in that context to see where those inconsistencies show up, because if you can show it in practice, it's so much easier to then roll back up to what would effectively be a possibility for looking at more aligned regulation. And then there are other the probably the two other that I would pull out financial mobilisation and financial architecture is incredibly difficult. The entire financial system our assumptions about financing again is broken into a set of individual individual sector segmented and deliverables focused assumptions things need to look like bankable assets before finance can imagine it gets there. And that's very very hard when you are talking about the portfolio of a system or portfolio of systems of systems as I was saying at the level of a whole system, we're waiting for the bankable assets is too slow, because you're not flowing the funding in to build up the multi sided business models that are scalable and that can replace our current system, or the temptation as we've seen it now is you invest in the renewable solutions but you're not investing in the infrastructure that makes it possible to scale those solutions across. And this very much strongly speaks to john's observations is mindset capability skills. Take Paris, Paris has 35,000, sorry, 35 million roofs to be retrofit immediately, and there are 60,000 qualified roofers. And that kind of disproportionate number plays out over and over again we simply don't have the professional skills, we don't have the leadership history mindset habits practices of working in this kind of much more holistic and systemic way. And we don't even have the basic technical practical skills to input a lot of the different technology changes so there are multiple barriers but let me just start with those. In terms of how this can be rolled out to other areas or how how the precedent of what Europe is doing and this call to action can be adopted or mirrored in other areas. Many of the tools, the frameworks and the principles of tools and structuring. The precedent is important because demonstrating possibility really does start to open up. We live in a culture where seeing is believing where the first question people ask you is well has it been done somewhere, can you show me. And so being able to actually show this is happening there is a degree of willingness to commit behind something this bold already changes the conversation. There is a suite of very well thought through carefully structured interrelated tools and mechanisms to engage the full system. And that's replicable. And indeed the discussions that we are having with the state of California is looking at how what can you borrow across from a lot of those mechanisms that have to do with framework governance tools policy frameworks, financial plans, economic modeling and so on. And I think the third element is probably what I would describe as the extraordinary capability piece. This is about people learning to do something differently and acquiring a skill and a capability and a sense of possibility, and they are professionals. These contexts are growing multi generational cohorts if you like of humans individual professionals who are experiencing this and are doing this. So one of the things that we are looking at right now in the context of the of the war in Ukraine is to open up the missions as a space where Ukrainians currently in diaspora in Europe are embedded into the mission to learn as quickly as possible, what is happening so that they can acquire skills experience relationships partnerships assets and the opportunities to then imply that as quickly as possible as Ukraine hopefully at some point begins to stabilize enough to do it. So some of this is about sheer human capability. Thank you so much. So, Oscar, do you want to talk about how your examples and can be extrapolated and go across political cycles. Yes, well well your reflection. Of course, once again, the context of Latin America is very different of the Europe, Latin America. The most important problem at this moment in many Latin American countries is this course of the natural resources. Okay, and we need to change that we need to change that we need that many countries found your real potential to to to go to create a way to development at this moment is very important. Another thing that is very another thing is the mindset, of course, but small, the corruption, the corruption in Latin America is the real problem with corruption is impossible to create a planification a strategic a strategic planification and to reduce the corruption to cut the corruption we need to work in the education progress of course not only in the universities we we need to work in the elemental education at this moment. The lack of opportunities in Bolivia and Latin America is of course a problem. The situation in Latin America and in Bolivia is very different. I think at this moment, Latin America countries, it's, it's here and there, for example, Europe, cities and Europe countries are there. No, we have to to reduce this gap and in the short run first before to to to think in another another plans, only with the reflection. I think it's very important the university, the UPV is participating in this program of the campus net zero is very important. And it's very important to measure the situation is very important to to share with the young people shared with universities. But remember, one tree is not a forest. We really need in the base of the pyramid to to to work and to really make challenges in Latin American countries. Thank you, Oscar. John, you want to very quickly in terms of other universities around the world following what we're doing, you can simply go on the website and register and become part of the community practice. And that's what I'd strongly recommend. Thank you. So we are running out of time but if there's burning short question. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your presentation and mostly for for those I the words I heard from john. I think one the key point is right to what what you are mentioned, we are struggling in different contexts about the systemic thinking, because we at university, we don't know, we simply don't know how to teach it. So, we have, I'm from a new university this moment I'm serving as a projector so I feel this every day. I'm trying to think in a model out to include sustainability, not as a set of PowerPoints at the last class of physics or mechanical engineering or medicine or law or whatever. So, I think we universities, we need, like you presented that a nice guide for operations. I think you need to think on a nice guide for the professors because there are lots of them. They simply don't know what to do that, because they are quite old I mean, I, I think on European terms maybe and Portugal in particular the median age, age are not so low. But maybe we can think on this type of guidance on to how to teach this system thinking to transform not only cities, but indeed the world every every aspects of we need to get out for for a new, because I can do that in some programs. But when I go to the economics and business. This is very difficult to introduce that because the mindset there is very old fashioned. So, we need to move forward a bit. I think this will cost between commas a generation to do that. But I think this is one key pillar that we need to go ahead. I don't know if you have any magic bullet in Monash or to do that. We can talk and thank you very much. I wish you've given me one idea. So SDSN has supported a series of guides we had getting started with the SDGs we had getting started with education for the SDGs we've had getting started with net zero on campuses. Now, maybe we should look at something on systems thinking. It's something where yes there are lots of experts across universities in systems thinking, but really I don't think it's something that you can teach normally in a didactic way. It's something that's much better learnt through experience through case studies at Monash. We've introduced something called the Monash Innovation Guarantee where undergraduate students in groups go and work with NGOs or companies on a problem linked to the SDGs. And that is the way to learn about systems thinking because you're confronting a problem, a challenge. But I think it's a great point and I think it's something that we should look at Maria in terms of a future guide. Can I just do a quick build or it's a small newsflash with respect to what's happening this week. One of the initiatives that is feeding into the UN process is a thing called 17 Rooms which is being supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Brookings Institute and room for involved in that is the education discussion. It's basically working on what could be concretely proposed into the UN process to make it possible to get some really structural shifts and literally yesterday was an entire discussion on if there's one thing we have to try and get through into the process. It is that ministries of education are required to start introducing systemic thinking systemic practice across the board. But that won't happen unless ministries of economy and finance require the ministries of education to service completely different paradigmatic models on how we're going to get a transition to happen. So there's a there is a hot topic being discussed on precisely this which could be useful to flow through. Thank you so much and I would add that as you said John, we need to transform our universities as well. If we maintain the siloed based structures and governance systems, we won't change things in the university so we need to really transform our universities. Thank you so so much this amazing panel. We're running out of time so we'll don't have a 10 minute break but you can grab a coffee while the next panel is organized and then we'll have the lunch in one hour so you'll have time to to talk to each other. So now next panel Gonzalo. Okay, thank you. Good afternoon and thank you so much for being here in the in this last session of this very interesting, very interesting morning. My name is Gonzalo fan cool I am policy director at the Barcelona Institute for global health and a member of the SDSN network and together with Fio Cruz and with our colleagues with Maria and Giovanni with our colleagues in the SDSN secretariat. We have prepared this last round table with the formal title of addressing systemic risks to human and planetary health. So the whole idea of our conversation is to bring together a topics related to the health of the persons and the health of the planet. And I know that in academic terms planetary health is a whole discipline in itself but I think that we took it from a from a broader perspective from from a more general perspective here, and we are going to do this with four complete luxury. Let me start here with the ethyl ethyl you know, no, yeah, she's the secretary for the glancia in maybe ambient a which is a I believe the translation could be a surveillance and environment in the in the ministry of climate change in the Brazilian governments, then a Joss Carliner a he's the director of global partnerships in healthcare without harm. Joss, hello, thank you for being here as well. Sarah with me. Sarah is assistant professor in the center on climate change and planetary health at the London School of Hiking and Tropical Medicine Sarah thank you. And then finally online. We have a Salim Salim Abdul Karim Salim is the Capriza professor of global health at Columbia University. Precisely the person from Columbia University is online and the rest of us and the rest of us are here but it's a, it's a, I think that we will enjoy listening to Salim as well so a, a, I apologize in advance because some of the requested to put the slides I I, I'd rather have a more conversational space here today because we don't have such a long time so we prepared a few questions for for all of you, and we are going to start with you Salim if you're okay if you're okay with that. And I know Salim that right now you are focusing part of your work on a, the topic of pandemic preparedness and response which is something extremely relevant for all of us right now, particularly in the aftermath of the of the pandemic although I would like to relate to, to what extent, everybody is as scared as we all were just a few months a few months ago know, but Salim, your work now, as you told me is on the early identification of potential new potential for each of the four modes of transmission that a new pandemic could have no. So my questions are very simple for you. First of all, well, first of all, I think it would be great. If you could, if you could share of us, which are those four modes that you are exploring right now. And then what have we learned from COVID in that regard, what is it that we should be doing differently from what we did before on the basis of your of your research if you can respond to that in this seven 10 minutes maximum. I think we can go I thank you Salim go ahead. So thank you very much Gonzalo, and a very warm greeting to all of you I'm currently talking to you from Durban in South Africa, where I am based at the Nelson Armandella School of Medicine so I'm sorry I'm not with you in person at Columbia University but know that I'm with you in spirit. So I, in, in looking at the COVID-19 pandemic. There are several important lessons that we can take away in order to be better prepared for the next pandemic. One of those is the importance of ensuring that we have in place systems for early detection and the surveillance infrastructure that that involves. Part of my responsibility as special advisor on pandemics to the director general of the WHO is to look at exactly that question because it became clear to us that we needed to have these kinds of early information. We saw that probably most clearly in COVID-19 when it came to Omicron. When we first discovered the Omicron variant here in South Africa. It was within a matter of two to three days from the time we first identified it in the laboratory to the time we publicly announced it. You know the whole world came down on us and instituted travel bands and so that meant now that we couldn't get supplies especially important supplies that we needed for our laboratories to continue our surveillance so we need to do better on that front. So what does an early warning system involve. Well, we need to know what kinds of organisms we are looking for and principally we are focusing on the four modes of transmission so the one that we worry about most is respiratory organisms ones that are spread. Through breathing to speaking through but they come out through the nose and the mouth and COVID-19 is a good example influenza is another example. The second that we worry about is an organism that is spread through gastrointestinal transmission so that's through contaminated water or contaminated food where we eat in the classic example of that is cholera. And the third kind of transmission we are concerned about is sexual transmission. And here we've seen HIV is a good example of a sexually transmitted pandemic and more recently, what we had was the pandemic of Mpox which was being spread through close contact, not sexually, but sexually related through close contact. So that's the third mode of transmission sexual transmission where we worried about gonorrhea syphilis and HIV. And then finally, organisms that are spread through intermediate host and there we most worry about tick born or any other kind of organism. So there we worry about Lyme disease Ebola and so on. And those are spread through organisms through intermediate host. So those are the four we worry about. So when we look at all four, what is the common variable that leads us to identify them early. The common variable and almost every pandemic is first identified by clinicians. They are doctors working in hospitals and clinics that first that see the patient first. And the reason for that is that we actually at that stage to not know what the cause of the pandemic is. So if you take COVID-19, Dr. Lee when he first saw patients at the Wuhan district hospital, and he was very concerned about the undiagnosed pneumonia cases he was seeing. And he wrote a letter to the district authorities, and they ignored his letters. So he went on social media to talk about the undiagnosed pneumonia that he was seeing. It was a reflection of his frustration here as a clinician. He was picking something up. It's something different, something unusual. We couldn't pick it up through a laboratory. Can't be done through it because we didn't even know what the organism was at the time. So clinicians are a central part of our early identification system. When you think back to HIV, we only understood the organism that caused it. You know, about four years, not four years, about two to three years after the first cases. So we had no idea how to even test for HIV. These were cases that were being picked up clinically. So that means we have to have clinicians that are observant clinicians that are looking for unusual cases and looking for clusters of cases. And clinicians when they see these clusters will report them to authorities. And then, of course, we're dealing with the next challenge is that when the health authorities receive such a report that they know how to sift through them because they will just be inundated. They have to work out which of the reports are important that they need to act on and which they can ignore. And once they do that, then they need to have the capacity to investigate and to then take it forward as a potential outbreak. So all of those steps involve the ability of local health services and local doctors to be able to identify these cases and the health authorities to act on them. And principally, if you look at this stage, we have no international early warning system that deals with that because that's just dealt with. That's an individual level country by country or district by district or hospital by hospital. So we have to create some kind of standard, some kind of mechanism, some kind of support structure that would support clinicians with their earlier identification and reporting. Because once we move beyond that, then comes the investigation, then comes the identification of the organism, then comes the laboratory testing that usually follows a little while later. So I hope I have given you some idea of the enormity of the challenge of setting up a clinical early warning system since none exists at a global coordinated level at this time. Thank you. It's really interesting and I think that maybe later if we have the time we could, we could talk a little bit about the component of equity in the investment in these early warning systems and we've been following, for instance, the challenge of early warning systems in South Saharan Africa, which is one of the, I think that's one of the challenges that we have as an international community, and maybe we can follow that. So, Josh, let me, let me continue with you and let's not focus on the role of health systems and the health sector more, more particularly, and I am interested in your in your line of research and work about a one critical aspect of the links between health and climate, which is how to adapt the health sector to climate change, both in terms of making it more resilient, and in terms of providing a role as a decarbonization factor. If you could tell us a little bit more about this. Sure. Thank you Gonzalo. So, it's interesting, I think it when we think about early warning systems, the health sectors had a pretty big early warning that climate change is going to impact human health and our health systems. People in the health sector have been doing this research and building this understanding for more than 25 years. I'm looking here at who is one of the one of the leaders in that effort for a long time. And, you know, it's, it's only been in more recent years that the the sectors begun to pay attention to that. And it's, it's really interesting to have salim talking to us from the Nelson Mandela Medical School and in Durban and that I was there in 2011 for, I forget what cop number it was the climate negotiations but it was the first ever global climate and health summit that we co organized with the Nelson Mandela Medical School there and a number of other partners, WHO and others to begin to sort of raise this issue and raise it up. The pandemic, in many ways, gave us an early warning around climate change, it began to, it showed us what a multi dimensional crisis on a planetary scale might look like. In many ways, the health impacts of climate change will make the COVID-19 pandemic pale in comparison unless we're able to reverse course very quickly and we only have a few years left to do so. So, what does that mean for the health sector itself. Healthcare is impacted by the climate crisis, it's impacted by extreme weather events. It's impacted by the migration of different infectious diseases. Many other health problems are exacerbated by climate impacts, and ultimately as the climate change impacts civilizations ability to produce food and for people to inhabit certain places. We're going to see different serious migration events that are going to impact human health in a significant way, and our health systems. There's a threat of health system collapse over time as climate change continues to generate health problems. So the health our health systems need to become more resilient, and they need to adapt. But the other part of the, the other side of the coin here is that the health sector actually contributes to the problem. It's part of the problem. So, in 2019, we came out with a study that found that health care's climate footprint globally was the first ever global study of health care's footprint there've been different national studies done was equivalent to 4.4% of net global greenhouse gas emissions. That means if health care were a country it would be the fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. This was a fairly surprising conclusion and finding, especially those in the health sector, because many people hadn't really thought about that before. And that finding was corroborated by a number of other studies and in fact between that was based on 2014 data between 2014 and 2019 health care's footprint actually grew from 4.4% to 5.2% of net global emissions. One of the things that we and our colleagues at WHO we'd healthcare without harm or colleagues at WHO and others set out to do was to begin to put in place a series of initiatives to support the transformation of the health care sector, so that it aligned it's aligned global health goals with the ambition of the Paris Agreement to get to net zero emissions by 2050. So that means health care needs to decarbonize health care needs to become resilient adapt to climate change and get to net zero. That's a tall order that's major systems change. And so, how does that happen. I mean I think that's the question and that's sort of one of the questions of this that you organize this meeting for is like how does systems change like that happen. What you've learned is that and it's sort of an obvious lesson is that you've got to organize from the bottom up. And nobody really knows what net zero health care looks like yet, but there are a number of hospitals and health systems in fact thousands now around the world that are implementing decarbonization method measures, whether that's around clean renewable green and zero carbon buildings transport reduction of waste. There's a certain and transforming the supply chain which is 70% of health care's footprint in other words 70% of health care's footprint is what health care consumes pharmaceuticals medical devices production of food all this stuff right so we have hospitals and health systems across Brazil that are moving in this direction. We have major health systems here in New York City that are moving in this direction in India, in South Africa, in Europe, and so there's a global movement of hospitals and health systems that are that are doing this but. And so many of them have joined the UNF triple C race to zero which is a commitment to to net zero emissions there's 70 institutions representing about 14,000 hospitals and health centers in more than 20 countries now they're doing that. But that's not enough right, I mean that without government mandate and without commitment at that level. You can't have the kind of change that that that we need to see in the world. And so, in the in the lead up to cop 26 and Glasgow, we began working with WHO and the cop presidency UK cop presidency to get a number of governments to begin to be the early adopters that the initial committers around getting to low carbon climate resilient health systems. And we thought we maybe get like five governments by the time we got to Glasgow, but by the time we got to Glasgow, there were 52 national health ministries that made this commitment. And that was a stunning amount. Why people have been waking up right everybody sees the climate crisis is happening everybody saw what the pandemic could do. And people are starting to see that it's possible to make the change. And so all of these factors converged. And we're able to sort of get this commitment that's now up to 76 national health ministries including Brazil which just recently joined what's called the Alliance for transformational action on climate and health which is anchored at WHO. So we have these national commitments. We have the G 20 governments just reinforce that commitment committing to low carbon climate resilient health care. And now we've got to actually make it happen and so the interplay between that action on the ground, and this, these government commitments needs to now spiral in a positive way in a virtuous positive spiral to actually begin to implement this transformational change. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Actually, as you're in your role as a lead of global partnerships. I think we'd be interested later to talk a little bit about this improbable new coalitions that have been formed precisely to to provoke these changes that we are discussing here. Thank you to Sarah Sarah thank you. You are not working on something that I think is particularly interesting for this, for this conversation it is actually very much related to what we have heard in the, in the previous one table which is how to design and implement a effective climate mitigations actions that will improve the health and well being of citizens in cities in particular and this is your, this is your focus now. Again, I wonder if you could tell us more about this line of research and in the context of this conversation. Thank you. Yes. So I think, obviously, I'd like to sort of echo a lot of the points that were made that were made earlier in the first couple of panels I think it's worth acknowledging that without mitigation that the limits, which will be able to adapt to the to the changes that are posed by climate change we're going to have increased health costs and those are going to become more and more devastating so we need mitigation actions that are well designed to make the space for adaptation so we can't have one without the other. And what I think it's worth really highlighting is that the opportunity and the potential solutions that exist within mitigation actions that are well designed across all sectors. And obviously we've heard from Josh about about what can be done in the health sector but those. These actions can also have big health co benefits in the near term as well as reducing the longer term impacts from climate change such as heat and exposure to extreme events. They, these actions can also promote health through things like improved air quality, energy access healthy diets increased physical activity. And trying to do with the at the London school for the last three years is to sort of map the both the modeled and implemented evidence because I think as we heard. We heard earlier what we really need our case studies and examples of these actions to inspire and promote change and also to look at the barriers and potential failures. And one thing that that's really helpful is to look at where implementation hasn't worked. So what we've been doing with the Pathfinder initiative over the last three years is to map both the peer reviewed model evidence. And we've been working also with partners including SDSN C 40 cities, CDP, and the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research to identify implemented actions would have, which have both measured quantified the emission reductions that are that are possible look to the barriers and also look to the health benefits and the and the other equity benefits. And I think just to give you some more highlights our first report will come out in November this year. I think what what you can take away is obviously the context is very important. The context that you work in that your action is being taken in is very important. You need that local buy in to identify them, the actions that will deliver the biggest benefits in your situation. But there are significant health benefits. I think one of the issues that we found is that people are not monitoring and measuring and evaluating these actions at the local scale at the moment. So what's really needed, I think this was sort of also highlighted by the global stock cake that came out last week. We see that it's not just that things have been not being monitored, but that also that the scale of implementation is currently too slow. So we really need to have better evidence at the local scale to accelerate that action and also to know if we're spending the money wisely and to understand the barriers that we face and how to overcome them. And also things like creating just an equitable future. So how do different sorts of mitigation actions affect different sectors of society and how can we include the most vulnerable sectors of society in designing well designed actions to promote health and other kinds of benefits as well. I think we've seen some really good examples and some and some good recommendations on how we need to come together to foster partnerships. And so what we would like to do for the next phase of our project. So this is a bit of a plea and an advert as well is that we we've kind of spent three years looking at what evidence is already out there. We will be sharing that evidence within our reports. So that will come out. We're going to identify. We've got a website to share different case studies and we'll be having some workshops to sort of roll out those studies as well. And we have also looked for good examples, which take a systems approach, which we also think is vitally important. But I think this is one of the challenges you can get. I think that was highlighted early. You can get people together to talk about how you take a systems approach you can get experts. But when you're trying to engage cities to get them to undertake those actions, you need these examples of a systems approach being implemented to really get that action to be taken. And I think, yeah, coming together to foster partnerships between different sectors of society, multi levels, so getting the signals from governments and from international agreements down to take action at the city level is very important. And as I said, understanding fostering a community where we can learn from failures and learn what best practice looks like for different sectors and for different sorts of actions would be very important. And one thing we really need to guard against is both greenwash and health wash with these different actions. So undertaking actions, promoting them as things that are potentially are good for health without understanding whether those benefits are being applied and at what scale they're being realized. So I think what we're hoping to do over the next three years of the project is to become more prospective so we'll be trying to engage with different initiatives like the 100 smart cities to develop guidelines and standards by which we can evaluate these outcomes to help cities to understand the opportunities that they could have and also how to measure and monitor those effectively and cost effectively as well because obviously that's very important. But I think it is worth noting that every dollar, every pound, every euro spent on mitigation actions that also health and equity benefits, we aren't capturing those benefits at the moment so we don't know what those benefits are. We don't know what the avoided health care costs from reductions in air pollution could be from moving towards more renewables, for example. And just to sort of finish up because I know we don't have long. I think it's also worth thinking about that systems approach and taking that planetary health focus. We know that the evidence is quite strong for major benefits in things like the transformation of the food system, physical activity, reductions in air pollution, but there are also real significant benefits from actions that integrate adaptation and mitigation so called by their PCC is now moving towards calling it climate resilient development. I mean land based actions in things like agroforestry could have significant benefits for rural workers protecting against heat impacts, restoring and protecting coastal ecosystems can buffer against extreme events that's been known for some time. But likewise green cities, combining planning infrastructure, improve physical activity, they can also promote mental health and protect against flooding and also reduce things like the urban, the urban heat island effect, but while the evidence is quite good on the adaptation benefits sometimes for green infrastructure understanding the potential mitigation benefits and that whole causality chain looking at health mitigation adaptation together I think is what is one avenue that we could really sort of improve on in the next series and it would be great to see some more actions looking at these in more holistic ways. And I think those are really quite important to to think about those sort of trade offs and uninvolved unintended consequences that we want to avoid. So that's why this is a great conference to be at in terms of thinking about these things in that rounded way so we can sort of minimize the disbenefits and maximize all the different sorts of potential benefits that are on offer. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Sarah. Let us finish the this first round with you. I wanted to finish with you because I think that you have a very unique perspective you, you, you come also from the academic sector. You are also a practitioner. You are you are, I don't know if you are now but you've been a columnist, you've been engaged in the challenge of this information as well in Brazil, and now you are in government in a gigantic laboratory for many of these things that we are talking about, such as Brazil that goes beyond and so my question is very open. What is your experience the lessons that you would like to share with us in terms of what you are doing in the Brazilian government. Thank you very much, Gonzalo. I would like to apologize my English as a native speaker, and I do my best to express myself here. First, I need to give one step behind to explain what's happened in Brazil in the last four years and during the pandemic. There are some concepts like democracy and science we thought that was completely consolidate, but it was, was not. And we have to stand up to to this very important word and concepts. So, and we think as a scientist, the word will be like, applaud us, because so fast has the diagnosis, the vaccine, some medicine so this is a wonderful for the science point of view. But in Brazil, we became a number one enemy of the nation so we were threatened of death. We were constantly afraid of our lives so it's a very complicated moment in Brazil to be a scientist should be to be a people that work with this, this very important word. And we have this misinformation that was spread by the government so it's a completely different from other part of the world because for the first time in our country will have our institution, saying against science and stand up against science so it's. So, we as a scientist you do not know how to manage this because it's a completely different environment that we were on that time in the pandemic. So, this is I think is the, the first lesson that we learn in a very hard way. It's the importance that we have like an independent institution, like few crews few crews play a very important role at that time because few crews stand by the science and with this new government that just starting in January. We have this opportunity with the former president of the few crews became the, the, the first woman minister of health in Brazil so this is like a huge, a huge change for all of us. And the second lesson that I do like to, to, to think about is the way that we are dealing with the Amazon region. And the way that we in this new government diagnosis, the lack of health service, the lack of of laboratory facilities in this area in this very important area for the world. And one quick example, when we, we have this this gamma variant in Brazil. It was detect in Japan, because Brazilian couple travel for Japan and when they end there, they realize that this a new variant so this is the problem that we don't have enough laboratory facilities and health facilities in the in this area. So this is right now, it's a big challenge for our government. We are saying, take this for the president Lula that in this new accelerate program to develop in Brazil, he will put a lot of money to develop this region as with the health facility and lab and surveillance facility in this area. And this means also strain the education in this area to have in at least in every city, one, one, one person that was certificated as a field epidemiology to make this this. So you have to, to make like a completely change in Brazil because right now we have no one with this with this, this certificate, like definite and in order in this in this area so it this is put us in a lot of pressure because you have to in a short period of time to do a lot of changes in this in this part, and that the third lesson that I would point, it's the the need for local production that in Brazil and you are talking about medication and vaccine, you have to think about more than 200 million inhabitants. So it's, it's everything's up. There is a lot of the scale or you have to scale up all of this and local production is very important because we are universal health system, and we, we provide everything free of charge for our population. And it depends if they are Brazilian or not Brazilian. And because migrants is very important in this, in this area to, and it is new for us, we didn't have like a policy and health policy environment policy for migrants because it's, it's not a reality, but it's became a reality, since the Venezuela crisis, and we have our border with like 500 people each day, entering the country. So it, it have a, it's, it's a new challenge for us to build a policy for this migrants that are in our country right now. So I think with these three points. I'm a very optimistic person. So I have to, the idea that we are more prepared, but in, not in the end of the pandemic, but before the end of the pandemic, the world is facing a war. And it, it's for us that wants to work together and make partnership. And for the next pandemic, it's very important to build this relationship and relationship is built by transparency and transparency we need trust each other. And I'm not sure if we are more open that we were before. So I think it's very important to be here. And I'm, I'm very wonder, and I'm, I'm open to, to answer your questions. And thank you very much. Thank you, Ethel. I think it was really interesting. We have a something about 1015 minutes, 15 minutes maximum before the people starts to riot to get their lunch. So I'm going to look, Sophia, to the, to the questions that that I got, but let me make a follow up question to you, Ethel, open to the, to the panel because I think is relevant for all of you. To what extent you think that the window of opportunity in terms of public opinion in terms of policy space that we had during the pandemic and in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic is closing. To what extent, a, this sense of urgency that we had, for instance, saline when it came to early warning system, in terms of a local production, I never thought I would see my life. I'm a US president supporting a waiver for the intellectual property agreement that the WTO things that we thought that were a, to what extent a people simply have moved on. We now are talking about Ukraine, about China, and we are losing that sense of urgency, and they, or you believe that's something structural change, and we still have that opportunity to introduce whoever wants to respond. Ethel, go ahead first. In Brazil, the window of opportunity is very open right now. And we think that we have a very good moment is for the first time we have all the Minister of Health with technical person, the Minister of Health don't have political party, I don't have political party, and this is very unusual in Brazil. So it's, it's open a very good opportunity to us to do what we need to do. Thank you. I think, I think that there is a growing momentum because it's not. Okay, so maybe the, the, the initial backlash from sort of covert the initial push has decreased but I mean look at this year you know the, the number and scale of the different impacts that El Nino's caused. There is something every year that you know you think the Ukraine push up energy crisis you know in the UK if we if we'd invested more in renewables we would have. We would have had significantly you know I think there's an estimate that our, our energy bills would have been on average 150 pounds lower per year if if the UK had invested strategically and more forcefully in renewable energy before Ukraine. So there is something every year now so I think you know what one thing may may dip away but you know that the momentum is building and not you know not in a good way but hopefully that pressure can can keep up and we can keep the momentum moving. Thank you Sarah just please and then Salim we can go to you please. So, I mean I think it's a paradox in that you know we saw with the pandemic that rapid change is possible. That's that civilization that all of our societies can move quickly to address a crisis and and do it in some ways fairly well with all the critique that we might have around the pandemic. And at the same time it certainly feels now like we're kind of back to business as usual. Those two things kind of coexist. And then what Sarah saying is is true as well and that you know in to just put it in the experience that we have and what I was talking about. We've seen nonlinear transformational change in the health sectors approach around climate change. That's certainly true. And at the same time we're seeing nonlinear transformational change that is out stripping that change in terms of the climate crisis. And so, I think the jury's out whether we're going to be able to actually take those positive lessons about how quick change can happen and make it happen in order to address some of the planetary health issues that we're facing today and yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Salim, you want. Just a quick point if I'm just to say that, you know, there's no question that we are going to see more pandemics and more organisms emerge because climate change is a principal driver of much of that so we are very likely to be in a situation where we're going to see new pandemics coming. And I think that among the lessons we've learned from COVID is the central importance of global equity in access to countermeasures whether they are diagnostic tests or vaccines or treatments. And we understand that in the next global crisis when we face to the same problems, we're going to have to figure away how to get access to critical countermeasures such as vaccines and the WHO has already invested in creating an mRNA hub in South Africa. But the big problem is not the capability. It's not the money. It's not the equipment. The big problem is the intellectual property and the intellectual property remains the biggest obstacle because you can't make an mRNA vaccine without setting on intellectual property already owned by either Moderna or BioNTech. And so we've got to address that problem as part of parcel of the overall problem. I mean, getting somewhat disillusioned with the pandemic treaty negotiations because the draft zero had very good language on this issue of dealing with intellectual property in a pandemic situation and countries have just walked all that back. It's completely out right now. There's not even a single paragraph on it in the current version that's being debated. And I think if we're not serious about addressing that problem, we're not going to fix the problem of global equity to things like vaccines. Thank you very much, Salim. And thank you because your response is very much related to the next question as well because one of the questions from our audience is about the role of different sectors in moving things forward. And the question is, in particular, what sector is the most advanced in implementing this systemic transformations and addressing risks to human and planetary health, whether it is the public sector that is taking the lead. We are all reading Mariana Matsukato's take, for instance, on the role of the public sector as a leading entrepreneur at the public level or the private or even international organizations. Salim was just mentioning the pandemic treaty or what they call it now the pandemic agreement. They are now watering down these two. We are seeing a pandemic fund that is clearly underfunded in terms of the request. Where do you think the passion is coming from and the push is coming from in this regard and whether this has changed or not? In Brazil is the public health sector. Yeah, yeah, it's leading for the minister, Marina Silva, and she is in leader this movement in Brazil and all the development for accelerating infrastructure in Brazil has to be going right now. So there's this commitment with all the parts of the government to be this way. So there's change happening in almost every sector of society and none of it's enough. So what I would say is it's more of a question of where the change needs to come from. And that change needs to come from a much more diverse and vibrant social movement that's advocating for a rapid transition away from our societal dependence on fossil fuels, which are causing huge climate environmental and health problems and toward a rapid adoption of clean renewable healthy energy. And without that social movement, which includes advocacy from health professionals as a key piece of it, the changes that we need to see happen aren't going to happen. So the vice minister and the health ministry in Brazil and the environment ministry in Brazil need those social movements pushing from below in order to make good policy and that that's the case everywhere in the world. Yeah, I think I would echo Josh's point. I think the health community has played a significant role and is really stepping up to become advocates for planetary health and for the phase out of fossil fuels. And I think when doctors start to stand up and talk about these things, people do listen in a way that they may not listen to politicians. And I do agree that change does need to come from the bottom up but I think it also needs to come from the top down we need to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. They could be redirected into other, you know, into healthcare subsidies and why not. And that would promote resilience. I think it's important to start your role as academics because we have these friends in the in the Spanish section of SDSA in in redis called Fernando Ayariz. He's one of the most prestigious scientists in in in Spain, working on climate he's being in the last couple of maybe three years. He has almost, I wouldn't say abandoned, but he has sideline his scientific agenda in the benefit of a much more public role the kind of social movements role in the, and I'm finding finding that more and more I think it is the thing that we need some kind of shake public shake and in that sense the pandemic maybe played that role El Nino and what is happening and what happened this this summer. People are scared but we need, we need that kind of of push know even more emotional know yes. The health sector and health professionals have more than 100 year history of organizing for social transformation and social change. And that history and that experience drawing on that, and applying it to the current crises and the current issues. I think is the key thing here. And as Sarah just said the health voice health professional voice is in poll after poll country after country, the most respected voice nurses first doctors second. And when, when health professionals talk about these issues, they listen to and sometimes the politics shifts around and a, you know, it becomes a challenge to be articulate about these issues. And at the same time, if you look at coming out of the pandemic, despite some of the undermining of the health sector's reputation because of that politics. It's still a powerful and respected voice and perhaps even more so in many places, because of the pandemic. And don't forget Salim Salim. Yeah, I don't know if you want to add something on this, on this point. Yes, it's very quickly just to say that we saw during COVID and certainly we saw it during HIV in South Africa, where, you know, the politicians and our president went into denial that HIV was a cause of AIDS and it was the scientists and the clinicians who stood up and said you know we have to follow the science. And that has become much more clear and a stronger voice during COVID. And I think that clinicians play this important role, but I want to warn that we also have clinicians playing the opposite role, where they are, you know, anti vax and they are promoting an anti vax agenda they are promoting unproven treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. So, you know, medical people can be just as destructive as they can be constructive in dealing with the challenges we're facing with information and science. That's certainly a very good point. Let me finish with a quick question, not so quick response, but I do not want to miss it also from the audience. Does any of the panelists have any insights on the gender perspective of health in some of the mitigation and adaptation actions? From a mitigation perspective, I think that there is there are some big opportunities to be to be gained for it to improve gender equity, especially from things like transitions to clean cook stoves that the mitigation benefits are not so significant, but the health and time saving aspects to free up women to be able to undertake further education and take their time away from gathering fuel. It are significant alongside the health impacts which can occur. And we've seen some really nice examples as well in the in the work we've been looking for in in city based actions where they've not only promoted increased use of public transport but making those systems safer to use as well so women feel more empowered to to access them even later at night. And so yeah, I think there are some really good examples. I think when you look more broadly the I know it's always the most boring thing to say but we need more data we need more information to be able to map out those those inequities. But I think yeah there are significant opportunities from well designed actions. Thank you very much Sarah. I'm afraid that we need to leave it there because it's a we are almost on time. Thank you so much for the for it was really interesting to listen to listen to you I hope it was interesting to you and to the people that are online in the and I leave the the floor to the organizers for a final for closing the formal thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all so very much for this wonderful panel and all this great insights that you have all shared with us. Now, let's see if we have online our last speaker for today's event. So Andy Haynes, who is invited here today joining us remotely and who will be providing some closing remarks for for these three panel sessions that we've had. So, Professor Andy Haynes is a professor of environmental change and public health at the London School of hygiene and tropical medicine. He has been recognized for his contributions in understanding the effects of climate change on public health and for his also mentorship for the next generations of scientists and sustainability practitioners in the 21st century. So, he will share with us some of his concluding thoughts. And I take this opportunity also to encourage you to register for the events that will follow this one at 1 30 p.m. New York time on multi stakeholder engagement and collaboration will be dropping the link in in the chat. So without further ado, sir Andy Haynes the floor is yours. Well thanks very much for the introduction. Can I just check you can hear me first of all. Yes, they will. Good. I did have some slides but I think because time is a bit short and I think everyone must be hungry and tired after a long session. I'll just speak without slides. But first of all wanted to thank the organizers for inviting me and secondly to compliment really all the speakers and the panelists today it's really been a remarkably productive session I've been listening to the whole lot it's been really I think very fruitful and shared so much wisdom. So I just wanted to share a few takeaway thoughts myself. And one of the papers that's most impressed me in the last week or so is the recent report on planetary boundaries. And what it shows us published in science advances just last week is really I guess what we all know, but it's nevertheless worrying to be confirmed that you know there are these nine planetary boundaries including climate biodiversity land use change nitrogen phosphorus ocean acidification and six of the nine really are being exceeded right now and of the remaining three, one is about to be exceeded that's the ocean acidification. The other one which is aerosols well it's already killing millions of people from air pollution. So the only partial success we have is stratospheric ozone depletion, all the rest going in very much the wrong direction. And these boundaries of course interact, which brings us back to the whole theme of this talk which is about systems. So single interventions are going to have moderate effect but what we really need of course is systems thinking to address these multiple boundaries at the same time. So for example if we just focus on actions that will say address the freshwater boundary, we won't tackle the burgeoning issue of biodiversity loss or climate change. And there's always a danger of course of having an intervention, which addresses one boundary, but doesn't take into account the others for example if we just dependent on hydropower. And as we've heard precipitation rainfall decreases in some regions, then we may end up without sufficient electricity and sufficient energy. So we're now living of course in new geophysical epoch, the Anthropocene, and the problem we have is that our institutions including our universities, our governments, our political systems, all grow up in the Holocene. The Holocene was of course that long period from which, during which humanity transitioned from being basically migrants and migrant hunters and so on hunter gatherers. Into agriculturalists and then into urban dwellers. And during that 10,000 years or so we saw a dramatic transformation of the landscape of the both the landscape of this planet, the atmosphere, the oceans and so on. And these multiple changes are now threatening to undermine the very real progress that we have seen in recent decades. And as we've heard, these changes threaten health in so many different ways right the way from, from heat, communicable diseases as Slem Karim has very eloquently described the effects of air pollution, the effects of floods and droughts, increasing poverty and so on and so on. And that just emphasizes again the need for systems approaches. Of course we do need specific interventions we need better vaccines we need early warning systems and so on but we also have to think about it holistically. Because as we've heard we have to combine adaptation and mitigation if we're going to be successful. What we do know is that merely telling individuals that everything is bad that there are multiple threats is not necessarily going to precipitate the kind of change that we want. And I'm just giving evidence that having a positive message around health and the environment is much more likely to foster public support, particularly amongst those people who may be doubtful, who may be misinformed about environmental change. And so this I think is important to keep this positivity even in times when we know many negative things are happening. We're committed to hear a lot of endorsement of the idea of integrated action for for health and for the climate and for the planet, because we need to combine mitigation adaptation and for far too long these two communities have worked separately. The adaptation adaptation folks coming from, whether it be disaster management or whatever, whereas the mitigation people coming from food systems, or of course energy as well. We need to combine some of these insights in order to create a much lower environmental impact healthy and sustainable cities. And of course, health care systems as well. And another important point that came out from from Josh and others is the important role of the health care system and that's where adaptation and mitigation can be and should be and must be combined in order to reduce the burden on the health system, but also reduce the burden of the health care system on the environment, because it's just as it remind us it's 5% of emissions, if you include fresh water, air pollution, degradation of terrestrial systems and so on then it's an even greater burden than that so that is the health care system is one place where we can exemplify the need for both bottom up and top down policies to integrate adaptation and mitigation. And don't forget that there are also very big benefits that Sarah has alluded to from decarbonizing the economy as a whole. So if you look at the deaths from fossil fuel related air pollution for example they're over three and a half million a year people dying, probably more than that is probably an underestimate physical inactivity is probably responsible for over 5 million deaths and the best way of getting people active of course is through transport systems. Unfortunately it doesn't really work but transport systems that emphasize public transport walking and cycling are the best way to get people active at scale and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and our diets of course our diets the food systems are dysfunctional. We have under nutrition and obesity and overweight combined in many countries, and we know that the diet dietary risk factors are responsible perhaps 10 or 11 million deaths a year. As the Eat Lancet Commission has informed us, if we changed our diet towards a planetary health diet eating much more fruit and vegetable, less vegetables, less red meat and processed meat, we could probably prevent 10 or 11 million premature deaths by mid century something of that order. So we've heard how cities can be the catalyst for change they can be laboratories for change, and cities I think are inspirational in many cases and the kind of activities that they're taking and they again combine adaptation and mitigation, at least in the best And cities have an advantage because they are closer to the people. They can engage people into in bottom up as well as top down initiative, and they can integrate objectives across a range of different endpoints, both environmental and health. So what needs to change in order to transform the system into an economy which supports human health and equity as slim as as reminded us within planetary boundaries will of course we need better technologies but technologies by themselves won't solve the problems. We need better knowledge structures. We're not very good at integrating knowledge as we've heard from John Thwaites our universities are often siloed and obsolete in the way that they generate a knowledge and evaluate change. We also need to address power relationships because one of the reasons we're not advancing now is because very powerful interests of course are opposing change. And they benefit from many of the perverse incentives are in the system at the moment, fossil fuel subsidies being one of them. And if you take the IMF approach and include implicit subsidies, the cost of air pollution climate change and so on, then that's some over 6% of global GDP. So, making sure that we phase out those subsidies redirect them to things that are socially useful environmentally beneficial, as well as having realistic carbon pricing will be a very important part of any solution. And these changes that we need these transformational changes of course must result in the end. We need new behaviors, new lifestyles, but it's important of course not to blame individuals, nor should we put much of the costs onto poor populations and that's been one of the problems with some of the initiatives that we've seen up to now the gilet jaune problem for example in France. We have to be very careful in implementing and designing these interventions to make sure that they don't push poor people further into poverty or don't increase inequalities. What we need to do is to identify the key tipping points for rapid social change. And we believe that health co benefits the realization that there are many near term benefits from these policies can act as potential tipping points can reinforce them. But we need also and some people think of evaluation research as a luxury, and I would dispute that. I think the danger is that if we just say that we're going to act, but there's no evaluation, then what we will have is large amounts of greenwash and probably health wash as well. So it's really important to embed evaluation in actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sustain planetary health to ensure that we learn the lessons, not just the successes but the failures as well because there will be tradeoffs that we minimize tradeoffs because there will be tradeoffs, as well as benefits. And we have to make sure that we minimize those in order to garner and sustain a public support. So there are many barriers I think that prevent implementation of the insights that we already have the knowledge that we already have. And John mentioned John face mentioned some of those but I would say vested interest very important organized denialism, particularly using social media, political short termism we have this fundamental conflict between a political system, which depends on getting reelected every three to five years, and a planet, which needs long term policies, and therefore we need to get public support on our side, and to actually counteract that perception that change is expensive and too difficult. What is too expensive and too difficult of course is continue with business as usual, that is what will divide us drive us into disaster, and will cause a great deal of added expense in the medium to long term. So we need to integrate top down thinking with bottom up and context specific actions and interventions, bringing along communities, including of course indigenous peoples in co designing and co implementing solutions, and addressing some of the governance failures that are currently preventing us from moving forward. So it's important to have an overarching framework for change, and there isn't a single framework which I'm suggesting we endorse but a framework should include the need to capitalize on potential for social contagion, not just for negative things but for positive ideas and positive changes as well, sharing lessons from implemented actions, capitalizing on the co benefits including to health of course, but also if I get it right, they can also be benefits to employment through healthy productive livelihoods. We need to make sure that policymakers and the public understand the potential near term co benefits, and taking into account the economic value of those co benefits which will greatly offset many of the costs of the kind of changes that we need to make. So in systems approaches of course feedback loops can retard progress but they can also enhance progress. And so we need to ensure that we capitalize on the positive feedback loops that will take us more rapidly to the sustainable future that we all want to see. And in concluding let remind you that we really have very short time to do this we really have a decade or two maximum. So quickly, we don't have the luxury of waiting for the best available evidence before we before we move on. We have to implement the best available evidence we have now, but evaluate, evaluate, learn the lessons and and spread the news spread the knowledge, work together, capitalize on intersectoral action and collaboration across multiple disciplines. I'll stop there. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Professor Heinz for this inspiring thoughts. And hopefully we'll leave the event with more knowledge and motivation to work on systemic solutions. And thank you so much again for our senior and important projects for making this event possible. Now we invite everyone in the room to to join the network and see you hopefully at 1.30 New York time for another event on math I say holder approaches and people online you can still register using the chat. Thank you very much.