 I suppose I will then start with the welcoming remarks. Distinguished delegates, forestry experts and colleagues. On behalf of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, I'm delighted to extend a warm welcome to all of you to this side event on the road maps for primary forest conservation and innovative forest technologies in the Asia-Pacific region. My name is Shaila Wärtskanunikow and I'm the Senior Forestry Officer at the FVO Regional Office in Bangkok, and I'm also the Secretary for the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission. Very unfortunately it was impossible for me to be with you in person today and all the more I appreciate the hybrid modality that allows remote connection to the Congress deliberations and this event. To set the scene, let me recall some facts about the forest in Asia-Pacific. First, despite an overall increase in forested area, there's concerning evidence of declining primary forests in Asia-Pacific. Specifically, primary forests in the region account for less than 20% of the forest area, much lower than the global average. So the conservation of the primary forest in Asia-Pacific is urgently needed to safeguard biodiversity, ecosystem services, and the quality and health of people and the environment. Another point is that the region is experiencing a widening timber supply gap, meaning there's more demand for wood than produced. This emphasizes the importance of upscaling wood production in a sustainable, efficient and inclusive manner. Innovative forest technologies can be key ingredients to this end. Therefore, as one follow up to the third Asia-Pacific forest sector outlook study of 2019, and under the impetus of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission, FAO, and the Center for International Forestry Research, have been working on developing two interrelated roadmaps for the Asia-Pacific region, one on the conservation of primary forests and another on innovative forest technologies. Since the inaugural workshop in July 2020, this involved the organization of two technical workshops, several expert consultations, secondary research and analysis, open online submissions, and an inclusive engagement with youth in the region. By the way, the youth contribution to the roadmaps already resulted in a publication and was the focus of another event on Tuesday. Dear colleagues, today's side event will present the main findings of these roadmaps and initiate a discussion on how these recommendations could be applied and implemented on the ground. I especially look forward to hear from government representatives and practitioners on their views and hope the roadmaps will contribute to further strengthening and upscaling our efforts to advance sustainable forest management in the region. In closing, I wish to appreciate the tremendous effort or tremendous support received during the entire process from governments, intergovernmental organizations, private sector, civil society, academia and research institutions. I also wish to recognize the great collaboration with C4, our partner and co-organizer of today's event, and now wish us very insightful discussion on this last day of the 15th World Forestry Congress. Thank you. Thank you Shayla and thank you everyone. And for the people in the room and also online. In 2019, we ended up the Third Asia Pacific Forestry Sector Outlook Study. And two of the main conclusion of this study was we need really to look very carefully at the left primary forest in Asia and we also have to look at the potential to move into the forestry 4.0 and innovation. And Vincent Leiter will explain you the process, but fundamentally, if you look at the context, I mean, sort of Asia Pacific, it's probably one third to 40% of the world population. So a hive of innovation on things sort of, you just have to go out here in Seoul city and you see a sort of digitalization all over the place. There is a fake cuckoo clock with a burn and a sort of thing is the size of a three-story building. So you have this hive of innovation in one of the most populated area of the world and at the same time you have the lowest percentage of primary forest left. So this is a bit of a, we say a problem, I mean, sort of. So the question is, how can we develop both this, this innovation on forestry to produce and manage more sustainably the forest and wood resources that are in the region. Because also the region is also some of the lowest wood production per capita. So they are importing a lot of wood, a lot of forest product and creating imported deforestation in the process. So how can we develop a more sustainable and more vibrant forest sector and at the same time protect, conserve and valorize the primary forest. And this is, I mean, the main purpose of this to study that that will be presented by my colleagues later. And we're not dwelling to the detail because I will tell you but finally it is clear that it's a problem that is in a sense, regional in this equity, global in nature but that will have to be solved on the very context specific approach. I mean a sort of the situation of Indonesia is different than the situation of Vanuatu that is very different than the situation on another country. So it is going to be context specific based on commonality based on common rule that we discussed in this paper. And really, I will stop here and really thank our extend my thanks to the FAO colleagues that that were the origin of this idea and all the work and and also on my two colleagues who see for aircraft if no money and Jim Oshetko and the FDA team that in fact did the hard work and for us I mean a sort of we get the glory and they get all the hard work so thanks a lot folks and over to you Vincent. Thank you. Thank you, Robert, and and Shayla for your introduction and, and, and yes, indeed, if the money is who led the work stream on primary forest conservation and Jim Oshetko who led the work on innovative technology will present. just let me stay a little bit about the process because we are here today, but it's the culmination of two years of intense collaborative activities since, in fact, that started right away after the launch of the APFOS 3 study to look at these issues that are high up on the agenda in the region and in the different countries. So about the process, Sheila explained it a little bit, but I'll just, it's really important to mention here in this room that we have, the process was, I would say, as important as the product. The product is very important, but the process was quite important because we gathered 425 regional stakeholders, technical experts from government, intergovernmental organizations, from the private sector, civil society as well for, from academia and research institutions from the regions. And that was done through four workshops at critical steps of the process. And in fact, at some time when the World Forest Recongress was supposed to be in 2021, we had the plan even to put the World Forest Recongress at the center of the process. So no, we didn't do that, but we did it remotely. So all these four workshops were done remotely because of the pandemic. We started at the end of July, 2020. So almost two years ago, we threw objectives in mind. First, to agree on the global directions, collect IDs and identify the contributors, the potential contributors and start building a community around the project. I think that's the ownership, FAO and CIFA really wanted to have, you know, a broad ownership around these reports. Then two technical workshops, one on each topic to strengthen the debate, deepen the analysis, get input from case studies in countries. We did one in November, 2020 and one in March, 2021. And then also really enrich the studies because the participants of these workshops were able to, you know, discuss the recommendations and prepare the next steps. We also did two open consultations online and bilateral interviews about 100 with key experts. And at the end of the process, we had a validation workshop, that's quite usual in the FAO process that you want to make sure that the product and in the FAO led process to make sure that the product is then double-check and further polished and fine-tuned with all these experts and stakeholders. And I think the recommendations from this study are a recommendation from CIFA and FAO, but in fact, they're a recommendation from this community as a whole. Importantly, Shayla said it, but I will highlight it again, the use that was instrumental. I think we, on the technology aspect, there was a separate study in fact on that, involving the use and perspective from the use, but on the primary forest, and this is Eve will perhaps explain that Eve constructed and led a young team of young, talented postdocs or masters, sorry, students from the University of Yogyakarta, and that was released, so I think four or five, that in fact did the lay work on all the GIS and the mapping and so on. So now the floor to Eve and Jing to present each roadmap in more details, and then we will have a series of Q&A today, so with the audience, and then a panel to discuss the next steps and the implementation of the roadmap, and at the end, Shayla Vertz-Kanunikov, who is also the secretary of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission and the current chair of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission, Dr. Oyunsana Biambasuen from Mongolia will conclude the session, because these roadmaps are only the starting point for the future. So then I think we start with Eve, I think, if I'm correct. Okay, thank you, Vincent. I'm going to share my screen. It's good. We can see it. Okay, thank you. So today, first of all, good morning, good afternoon, and maybe good evening for everyone. I'm going to share with you this roadmap about the primary forest conservation. My name is Yves Le Monnier. I work for CIRAD in France and CIFOR in Indonesia. So this presentation is based on our report, of course, and I am following the same structure as the report. And it's six chapters of the report that correspond to first historical trends and status, diversity of types, also talking about pressure, threats and risk, governance instruments, mechanisms and tools, and some conclusions and recommendations. So first, how do we assess in these studies the primary forest cover? How do we assess primary forest cover from space? So we conducted this historical study. First, we look at the natural forest cover. Why we start with natural forest covers to make sure that we avoid, for instance, misclassification with planted forest. And our result shows that in 2000, the region was covered with 667 million hectares of natural forest that decreased to 643 million hectares in 2010 and 609 million hectares in 2020. At the same time, by doing that, we were identifying also what spot of deforestation in the region to try to look already at what could be the priority region area in this Asia-Pacific. But then from this natural forest, we would like to assess the degradation, the degradation of this natural forest leading to what we call intact forest. So in terms of intact forest, we adopt a methodology from a paper by Wang in 2019 using the Normalized Difference Water Index, which is a combination of the near-infrared and short-wave-infrared spectral bands in the satellite data to detect this degradation of the natural forest over a long period of time. I have no time to explain in detail, but it's important to look at this. It's over a long period of time. And you can see in this slide in 2020, the intact forest of the Asia-Pacific region covers actually 519 million hectares. And you can see these purple dots or area representing the protected areas. So you can see already that there are a lot of forest, intact forest that are outside the protected area. But then the idea was, OK, we have still quite a lot of intact forest. But the fragmentation is habitat loss and fragmentation are something which is really, really important to discuss and to cover in the future, especially. So we try to assess this fragmentation of this intact forest. For this, several size thresholds are suggested in the literature. And we were considering to distinguish Contiguous Forest from Forest Fragment. We use several thresholds, 10,000 hectares, 30,000, 50,000, and 100,000. Why 100,000? For few species such as raptors or big carnivores, elephants, a minimal forest patch size of 50,000 to 100,000 hectares is needed to maintain genetically viable population, for instance, like orangutans in Indonesia. So we choose this 100,000 hectares as our limit to consider, to distinguish, Contiguous Forest from Fragmented Forest. So actually, isolating this large core area, more than 100,000 hectares, excluding also forest edge, we take in this study, we take up to one kilometer inside the forest. We can identify Contiguous Intact Forest cover for the region. So from this 519 million hectares of intact forest in the Asia-Pacific, we identified a remaining 378 million hectares of Contiguous Forest that are more than 100,000 hectares. And actually, representing well, as far as remote sensing is concerned, representing well the primary forest definition as per FAO. Another important point for us was to consider carefully the high diversity of forest types in the region. Maybe it's one of the richest in terms of forest types. So following a very complex, historical, biogeographical setting, changes in geology, bio-climatic condition, attitude in all the nation, and also changes in sea level. Over time, this very high diversity of forest formation and types developed in Asia-Pacific. In Asia and the Pacific, and I think it's really important to consider for conservation. So in line with existing classification, of course, we first identified 30 main formation, also considering the scale we are working with, from tropical mixed-dipterocarp rain forest to tropical and subtropical seasonal forest, of course, but also temperate and boreal forest formation. And consider also their variation along altitude in all gradient, considering also some more specific specialized forest type, like pit swamp, mangrove, limestone forest, and so on. So actually, conservation strategy needs absolutely to integrate this huge diversity, since all these different forest types are actually very important to preserve and to consider. That's why we recommend at the landscape level that vegetation types being the best surrogate to characterize the ecosystem and the ecosystem service. We put a lot more effort on this study in the future, considering the knowledge gap, which still exists regarding ecofluoristic variations observed within each forest types, and about the cause of this variability beyond more or less well-studied elevation, soil, and climate. But we notice and we have evidence on, let's say, on same soil, same climate of different tree species composition over short distance. So it means that if you conserve a bit of forest in the eastern Laolin of Sumatra, you are missing a lot of species, whether you are in the south or in the north of the island, for instance. So large scale ecological vegetation map, like you have an example on the top of the slide, will be very important to consider in the future. Integrating altitude in all the nations, and including absolutely floristic information. So it could be, it is one of our recommendations to try to develop this kind of large scale ecological vegetation map in the region, in the Asia Pacific. Because nobody open access database for satellite become more and more available, and maybe also supplemented by drone survey, we can organize, develop a program of large scale mapping that will be very necessary for future land use planning and management of the landscape where primary forests are still existing. Unfortunately, as it was mentioned already, many threats for this primary forest of Southeast Asia in terms of population growth, migration, conflict, globalization and economic growth, urbanization, infrastructure development, mining, pollution. It's a big issue in the region. Of course, agriculture expansion, but also illegal logging, forest fires, invasive species, disease outbreaks, and of course climate change and sea level rising. Because many of these threats are really increasingly exacerbated by climate change, such as fire and sea level, for instance, accelerating forest degradation, reducing adaptive capacity of forest ecosystem. So as you know, due to global warming, for instance, climatic zone are shifting polewards and upwards in mountainous area. And also invasive species are quite impacting more the region, also exacerbated by climate change. For this study also, we tried to do some modeling, especially for some of the risk that are really impacting the region. So we can try to do risk modeling for, let's say, fire and deforestation. Forest fires are a well-known threat in the region, in Mongolia, Northern China, in the Himalayan hills and mountains, forest fire can be difficult to control due to challenges of access. In Australia, also bush fire are known to be as a natural fire climax, for instance, in the eucalyptus forest. But their intensity and higher frequency under climate change will cause significant challenges. And in Indonesia, of course, in famous speedland fire now occur almost every year with potential catastrophic episodes, as you know, during any new year. So for risk modeling, we use a modest satellite burn area monthly product. Then we can run fire risk probability and prediction model according to several indicators, like proximity to former deforestation or roads or this kind of thing. So you have two examples here for Australia and for Nepal. And in terms of forecasting primary forest cover in 2050, you have an example here for southern Asia. Then what about governance instruments? In our findings, just a selection of our findings here, important one is to understand that international agreements and instruments do not usually focus too much on primary forest. So regional and sub-regional institutions and instruments can provide a bridge between international policies and national action. It's very important then to consider work at the region. So regional cooperation is critical, as many intact forests also are very often transmissory. And we need to build synergies across sectors, including forestry, agriculture, water management, and non-use planning, adopting integrated landscape approaches. What about mechanism and tools? Obviously, protected area cannot be the only mechanism to ensure the protection of primary forest. And we understand also that increasing the extent of protected area seems unrealistic. So we have to find other solutions. And a range of mechanism and tools should be mobilized at different scales, like enhancing ecological connectivities between protected area, enhancing tree cover in the agricultural matrix. Certification and voluntary agreements can help address commercial agriculture expansion, as well as wood overresting. And also connoisseur development, traditional knowledge of indigenous people and local communities should be better integrated with conventional scientific studies. So main conclusion and recommendation, we see that there are still important areas of primary forest in the Asia Pacific, and we remind this high diversity of forest type. But fine-scale variations are insufficiently known. So it means for the operational scale of working, let's say, at the district level, is the data often not sufficient. So that's because there is still an important lack of knowledge on the distribution of species, population dynamics, and forestry variation, especially in the tropical zone. In most countries, we show that forest habitat loss and fragmentation intensified over the past two decades. And a large part of this primary forest is not covered by any protected area network implying other type of landscape management. So there is a need of policy coherence across sector and scales, but also context-specific action plan at fine-scale of management like district or watershed will be necessary to fill test in many areas of the region. And it will be a good idea to start a program on this. We need to use different mechanism and tool, including other area-based conservation measures, integrated landscape approaches, and community-based management. So in term of recommendation, in the report we have six overarching recommendations with 41 actionable options for the implementation of the roadmap. I'm not going to review, of course, in detail here, the 41 options, but I take out some that can be... They are all important, but some that can be also for discussion today. So the first overarching will be to explore innovative ways to improve monitoring and reporting on primary forest. And for this, we will need to support the uptake and upscale of innovative technology, improve information sharing and data analysis. My colleague James will talk about this just after me. We have to support local actors and communities engagement and participation. We have to be careful to link to community arise, community evaluation and incentive, and also maybe again to clarify definition, criteria and indicators for this primary forest. The second big recommendation is to improve the knowledge and understanding of the functioning and dynamics of primary forest ecosystem. So we need to dedicate increased resources in each country of the Asia Pacific. We have to co-produce knowledge with local actors. This is not according to me, that is not enough what we do on this aspect. Advocate the different value of forest ecosystem and ecosystem services, define priorities area and make knowledge available through training, capacity building, also an important point. Initiate region one, large-scale ecological vegetation mapping and fragmentation study. I think that's one program that can be done for the region in the near future. The third one is to build a competitive narrative for primary forest conservation and consolidate new coalition of actors. So articulate this narrative across sectors, actors and skills will be important. Use the knowledge and information developed in the two precedents narrative to raise awareness and build coalitions of actor. Strengthen ownership and encourage participation of less powerful actor, and secure, try to secure the tenure, access and right of indigenous people and local communities dependent on primary forest. The first one is about ensuring policy coherence across sector and skills and to promote integrated landscape approach for primary forest conservation. So announce coherence between land use policies and other sectoral policies that impact forest, engineering role and primary forest, elaborate integrated landscape approaches at local level, scanning up at national level and not the reverse, which is often the case starting from national level and then zooming, zooming in the detail but it's much better to start already with good example and evidence at local level consider not only the forest but the surrounding matrix in the landscape that can completely influence the management of the remaining primary forest, mobilize or design appropriate financial mechanism. The fifth recommendation is about aligning sustainable use climate action and biodiversity objective for the conservation of primary forest. That is so far not enough link maybe between the climate action and the biodiversity objective. So integrate primary forest conservation into policies and mechanisms related to climate, recognize in the NDCs a specific biodiversity and conservation values of primary forest, maximize the synergy between NDCs and NBsaps and consider primary forest conservation objectives in international climate finance mechanism to orient and prioritize funding. Finally, try to strengthen regional and international cooperation for the conservation and management of primary forest, exchange knowledge and lesson learned across countries, transfer technology for mapping and monitoring primary forest, facilitate capacity development through appropriate means at regional level and facilitate transponder cooperation for conservation and management of primary forest. And finally promote international cooperation on deforestation free commodities. So thank you for your attention. As mentioned by Vincent, this work was done with many young colleagues from C4 and from University of Gajemada and I want to send them here. The map that you see on the PowerPoint of course, it's very difficult to show this map in PowerPoint. So in the future we are going to have of course in the report a better quality to represent the map, but also we hope to get a link for people to look at the map at bigger format. So thank you again for your attention. I'm done here. Okay, thank you. Thank you Eve. I think the Q&A will be after the presentation from James Roschettko. So keep your questions and we'll come back to that. So James, I think now it's Flo is yours. Please unmute James. There we go. You can see my screen or not? Yes, yes, perfect. Okay, all right. It's having some messages that are unusual. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Yeah, I want to say good opportunity to present the results of the study and really that it was a great pleasure to be involved with the implementation as a study with colleagues from C4, FTA and FAO and also to work with a very interesting group of 400, 425 professionals in Asia Pacific Forestry sector which of course included youth and students. So let me just jump right into it in these first two slides actually that a lot of the information has been covered by Sheila, by Robert and by Vincent. But the emphasis for this study was really the third Asia Pacific Forest Sector Outlook which identified that there's huge opportunities and challenges for innovative technologies in the forest sector in the Asia Pacific area and also the students that were involved in the Forest Week activity of that year emphasized that and also said there were sort of a slow and uneven adoption of these technologies and they said this should be maybe a focus in the future which everyone pretty much agreed with. And then the process for the actual innovative technology program implemented. Again, Sheila, Vincent and Robert mentioned all of these activities. So we just want to stress that there was multiple avenues that were investigated multiple activities, online workshops, surveys, interviews then the technical online workshop. And so it was reiterative. It was validated through the validation workshop to make sure everyone agreed with the results and then also peer reviewed. So a lot of effort, a lot of different activities and there were again, there were 425 people directly involved with this and other people supporting behind. And this of course included, as was mentioned earlier this included the private sector researchers universities as well as NGOs, people from the communities and the international or multi stakeholder organizations as well. So let me jump right into it. So for the study, four types of categories of innovative technologies were identified. First one being digital technologies, biological technologies, process and product technologies and finance and social innovations. So the, you can see here the list of some of the key this is for digital technologies. Of course, this is the bullet list of some of the key technologies identified. And of course I'm not going to read them to you but we can, we see this as sort of breaking down into three groups. First one being satellite based technologies that improve planning, monitoring and you can hear me reporting. I'll assume you can hear me getting a message. The second one is okay, great. The second one here is with the sensory networks acoustic, optical and camera systems that very much focused on conservation, conservation of force. And then the third category is focused strongly on the information communication technologies which were an avenue for engaging communities, engaging the civil society and individuals to be involved with governance issues. Things have progressed a lot. 30 years ago there was always adversarial rules between government and civil society and communities that's really progressed. And now the things I've seen as partnerships this is one way to help improve that. For the biological technologies, of course a very strong emphasis was there on the genetic resources and the germ plasm. So producing high quality and large quantities of priority species, but moving beyond that is also making sure that these methods and technologies are made available to the informal sector of forestry. So making sure that NGOs, communities, et cetera have access to the technology so that they can start to produce their own high quality material. In the past, high quality materials often in a short supply. And so the local users were the ones who would always come up last. Related to that is that these efforts of producing high quality material should continue with the commercial species but also expand to local priority, local priority species. And by transferring the technology to those local partners that becomes a lot more possible and more available. Sort of a third topic we can think about for the biological technologies was a strong emphasis on DNA identification and tracking which is a technology that's very important in monitoring trade and illegal activities. So for process and product innovations, again, this sort of broke down into three different categories. We could think about the deployment of the digital technologies for improving planning management and harvesting. So that's the sort of the four top bullets there. And then also the improvement of the processing focused largely on wood but to be for other products as well. Our resources actually are the resources from the forest. And a lot of time that processing technology is integrated with the digital technologies as well. So this is very important in improving efficiencies, resource recovery, et cetera. The third area for this process and product innovations was very much focused on the products. So maybe epitomized by engineering wood products, CLTs, math timbers, et cetera but also the use of bamboo and other species to help replace wood products or plastic products, bioplastics, biochemical, pharmaceuticals, bioenergy products. What was really reassuring to me this week is that on Tuesday I attended the innovation session from in the Congress and a lot of these things were actually mentioned and focused on it that time too. So moving on to the fourth category. So innovative finances, innovative finance and social innovations. Not surprisingly, this sort of breaks down into two broader areas. The finance side, so which sort of the blood examples here are in the maroon. We can maybe think about the blended finances being illustrative. So this is the integration of private finance, government finance development and foundation financed so that risk can be shared but also each partner can address their risk appetite for various parts of a project or an investment. It also very much makes it possible to implement or prioritize social and environmental objectives in these activities. Green social and climate bonds of course are very popular for stressing the environment and the social objectives. Crowdfunding is interesting in that maybe 10, 15 years ago this was sort of a boutique type of approach where people would give small amounts of money for little private sort of small projects that were going on. But now with the ICT technologies this has become much larger opportunity. And what's interesting also is that now the use of the funds can be monitored better. Okay, so jumping down to the next category the social innovations. There was very strong emphasis here on community forestry and related topics. Of course, community forestry is not new. It's been around maybe for 50 years or so but what is new is that it's accepted. It's used to lay out a lot more and it's evolved so that the communities can start developing enterprises and integrate into the value chains. And that's facilitated by ICT technologies as well. And it's also given more emphasis to forest and farm producers which is basically acknowledging that small scale farmers and forest managers are very integral to the global value chains. And again, there were several presentations through this week in various sessions inside events that really emphasized how important that is. So recognizing that and again, ICT helps provide that not just recognition but helps support those people as well as maybe the last topic and this was on the list before, but citizen science. So there's a very important role for citizen science for people to, so sourcing information but also people to get involved in natural research as well as in governance a stronger involvement in the governance. So that's the overview of the four topics. Next, what I'd like to do is sort of shift to the opportunities and the challenges and really focus more on the challenges and the barriers. This is not a way of being negative or being a naysayer but help us segue into the recommendations that will come subsequent to this. So with the digital technologies for economic side there's very positive overall views. For the social side, there was concern that about that could lead to the destruction of local jobs especially for the unskilled people or communities. So there's also for environment the worry is that with the digital technology makes much more efficient to harvest, et cetera to identify resources and that this could lead to over exploitation and degradation of the natural environment. For the, for biological technologies there were a lot more concerns expressed than we originally expected. And a lot of this has to do with, for the social side is that the improved material if it's not made available to other groups to vulnerable groups, NGOs, local communities that it could actually, that's great inequalities or keep those inequalities in place. High cost of perceived high cost. As some of our colleagues mentioned during the process limit the ability of small holders to get involved. There's techniques and mechanisms that help make that possible but they're not maybe widely known as like. Again, high cost of some of these methods limits the number of species that can be improved or highly improved genetic material is addressed. In the extreme genetic improvement also can reduce interspecific diversity which is something that's always recognized but continues to be a concern. If the material is privatized then there's concerns about IPR and regulations where we restrict access to other people. Yeah, when we jump down to process and product technologies here, one of the concerns was mentioned that the direct and indirect cost of adopting technologies even in the private sector might make companies or specific firms unwilling to adopt the technologies. This course might be an area where some type of innovative finance would be useful. In the social level, again there's concerns about loss of jobs and then maintaining inequality not so much with communities but between larger corporations and SMEs or community groups and then a big concern once again about over exploitation. So the process and product technologies improve efficiencies improve returns so that might cause the degradation of the system and then natural resources. With finance and social innovations interesting enough that the main concern was that as improved financial opportunities would come to communities that there's always a concern about elite capture and this is elite capture by both internal and external players. Last point before we get to the next point is looking at what are the key barriers to the adoption and scaling of the technologies. So we have appropriate innovative technologies. How do we make sure that they can be adopted? These are some constraints that hold that back. So with human capital, there's a lack of skills and knowledge experience. So training would be appropriate. The natural environment, there's a limited access to forest and land and natural resources as well as their assets and products for the physical capital infrastructure and that includes internet, right? So access to internet, simple equipment as well. So some type of investment for financial, of course the point is that there's limited access to capital credit and value change for a lot of players need to make sure that that's broadened out social capital restrictions on governance and tenure rights for forest land and natural resources. And a big issue that came up repeatedly was policies. So a lot of times the policy conditions are seen to be absent week or restricted in the relation to the innovative technologies, right? This is not a surprise in that the innovative technology sort of jumped forward and developing policies and regulations takes a lot more time. So the existing policies and regulations seen as not inappropriate or not being able to address the issues. Okay, so next point, recommendations. And here we had 10 overarching recommendations for our study. So we can say IT wins because we have 10 in the primary forest only at six. And again, the key point here is the, we have the 10 overarching recommendations and we need to make sure that they address various conditions areas, countries and situations within the forest sector, right? So my notes. Yeah, that was a key point. So within the recommendations, the 10 recommendations they sort of fall into two categories. One is, why are we harnessing the innovative technology? So why do we need them? Why do we have them? And there's four main points there. So the key point is the improved monitoring of the forest resources to track, and to track illegal activities in the trade. So again, the digital technologies really have vastly improved that ability. Also to raise awareness and enhancing citizen participation in forest monitoring and sustainable forest management. Again, this has really made possible because over the last few decades, governments, communities, NGOs have all started working together towards these goals. Number three is improving the productivity and resource use efficiency. Very important, of course. And then also to generate new jobs including replacing jobs that might be lost before the innovative technologies are used. And also supporting livelihoods, supporting livelihoods of mainly the communities that are living in those forest areas. The next group or the next category of recommendations are more focused on how to support the uptake and scaling of the innovative technology. So again, we have the technologies. How are we gonna facilitate adoption? The first one is ensuring the coordination across sectors, active scales and creating innovative guidance mechanisms, right? So this is very much focused at the national level to make sure that the national partners and even like within the government various agencies are working together towards similar goals. Make sure that there's efficient use of resources. The second one or number six here is investing into innovative research, extension and capacity building. Obviously related to number five, but focusing on those three very, very important topics, research, extension and capacity building. Next one is to elaborate conducive policies and regulations as mentioned before to make sure that the policies and regulations address the new environment, the new conditions of the innovative technologies. Okay, number eight, again under this way of how to facilitate adoption, considering the economics innovations to facilitate adoption of the innovative technology across context and scales. This can be thought of or is this often summarized as scaling down the technology to make sure that SMEs, community groups and civil society can adopt these technologies. Well, a lot of technologies may be being developed more for larger scale or macro level firms. Number nine, assessing the negative impacts of possible negative impacts of innovative technologies and establishing appropriate social and environmental safeguards. The last overall recommendation is strengthening regional cooperation. So this is very much like on the previous slide number seven. So, technologies are expensive. We wanna make sure that there's collaboration coordination between neighboring governments that they have similar strategies. They have similar programs so that the adoption and implementation of the innovative technologies are easier and synergistic. Basically talking about that sort of trans border issues that you've mentioned at the end there. Okay, maybe a few real quick conclusions from the study, kind of limited to one page that four or three is often considered a conservative sector, but the study very much strongly shows that in fact, it's innovative, it generates new technologies, it's adopted some new technologies and anti-fans technologies. Sort of the three key benefits we can think of from the innovative technologies are that it's revolution forestry, allowing real-time monitoring and precision management. So that's again, through a lot through the digital technologies making that possible, reducing operational costs, increasing productivity, developing new products and evenly increased use and recycling, reducing negative or adverse environmental impacts, all very positive. The last one for the benefits is attracting young people into forestry, forest management and conservation. And definitely reassured on Tuesday when we had the youth session that this is something that was repeatedly mentioned by the youth participants in the session, the site event rather. So yeah, it's that people are attracted to natural resource management, forest management, but using innovative technologies makes that process so much more productive. And so there's also dangers and these two were mentioned already, but they really, really deserve emphasis that improper use, improper utilization and the incentives that are provided by innovative technologies could accelerate unsustainable exploitation deforestation and forest deterioration. So that's something that needs to be always in the front of our mind and a major concern. And the last point is that the use of the technologies can cause job loss, which is specifically, or not specifically, but a big concern for unskilled labor, you know, rural based people who may not have other alternatives. So we need to consider that and as we develop opportunities with innovative technologies, make sure that those opportunities are shared by everyone. Products already mentioned a couple of times. So we had the youth volume, which is 13 papers about the development and application of innovative technologies by students and young professionals across the region that was published in November of 2021. And then we have the policy brief, which is about 20 pages, focusing on the highlights of the study and then the full working paper, which is over 200 pages. The policy brief and the working paper are in final review right now. Last but not least, thank you for your attention. It's been a pleasure to give the presentation and work on this study. And if you guys come to my house, you can have some durian. So thank you very much. I'll stop sharing. Okay, thank you, James and Eve. So now we have a short Q&A session before we come to the panel. Are there any questions from the either the chat or in the room? I see Andrew, Andrew Wardell. Yes. And so I don't have my glasses. Bressel, yeah, Bressel. Andrew, please. I think you need to come to the mic or even here one. Okay. Hi. Thanks very much, Jim and Eve for your presentations. Good to see you again, Jim. It's been a long time. Yeah, thank you. Nice to hear your voice. Jim, my question relates to the two dangers you flagged in your, I think last or penultimate slide. And an observation in terms of your presentation that you didn't actually refer explicitly, if I'm not mistaken, to the role in terms of changes in the extent to which internet based sales of non-timber forest products are starting to fundamentally influence some non-timber forest products. And I want to cite the case of Boswellia. Some of you may know, frankincense, some regarded it as the oldest supply chain of all involved in mummification processes in ancient Egypt and which in the last decade has seen a massive transformation with double digit growth annually in the trade based on internet based sales. And this is having a profound influence. It's also tied to the fact that you have a very large Somali diaspora without a state who are very much involved in that process as well as two dominant companies in the US, both based out of Salt Lake City. So I wondered if you wanted to comment because I don't think it is just the case of frankincense. I've seen internet based sales with regard to sandalwood and other species. So, sorry. Yeah, right. So that was my question, Jim. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, of course, the study didn't get into too many a reason. I mean, what we've found is that a lot of times what it actually was beneficial. I'm not sure if you're saying it was negative or over exploiting the resource or not, but with the small scale local production of non-timber forest products that being able to use these online, online identifying middlemen as well as end users that it was really very helpful in most cases. There is of course a concern that if the natural populations of a specific species or a specific product are small and that it's open, there's no local process for who can harvest from different areas, that that's when it becomes more dangerous as well as the case where it's open to the point where outsiders can come in and harvest. So I think it's to make some general comments that it can be either, it can be positive or negative. It's certainly positive for the communities and for the farmer groups that they have, they've developed this access outside, but for specific products and species, there's a concern that it could be over harvested, which of course opens opportunity for on-farm or in community forest production. That's a whole nother issue. So hopefully I answered your main concern. Russell Warman, University of Tasmania. I was curious as to whether there'd been any formal or informal discussion or thinking about the synergies between the two different roadmaps. And if that's been touched, I apologize, but I am curious as to what might have occurred in that space and what might have emerged from that. Perhaps it's a question to both James and you. Sorry? It's perhaps a question to both of them. Yeah, that could be a question for James, Oaves. And for the panel. So to me. Okay, certainly there was some use for the primary forest study in our study. In our study, it's been cited in the working paper. Of course, the concern is primarily more for the digital technologies and the process and product technologies. I won't say that we, I won't say that we didn't see it as an opportunity to integrate it too much, but we did use the technology. And maybe that's a next step is to see how these two can support each other. Thomas, yes, please. My name is Thomas Hofer. I'm the senior forestry officer in Rome and former senior forestry officer in Asia. So nice to see all of you again and happy to see how this study evolves. A question we already discussed at the beginning, I think when we started with this work was always this regional differentiation across the region. I mean, how James, how do you deal now with it in the study? Especially when you talk about access to technology, which obviously is hugely different if we look across the region in terms of resources, in terms of possibilities. And that has also to do with obviously the impact or the value of exchange of experiences and of support across the region. How do you deal with this in the study now? Thank you. Okay, yeah, Thomas, nice to see you again. Yeah, I mean, with this, I think you were in the virtual room when we discussed this way back last year sometime. So it's very true. I mean, obviously Asia is a huge place. There's big differences between the countries or big differences within the country, between private sector, between the industrial sector, et cetera. So what we did do is we, the way that we structured the recommendations with, so we have the 10 topics and then we have the specific options within there. And so we developed those options in a way that the priorities of a government or the priorities of a firm, they could look at those recommendations and then pick out those that are most appropriate to them. And you can see that in sort of some of the topics where the question about scale, the idea of scaling down the technology so that it's available to everyone as one case. Also the emphasis on modern technology so that that can be used by all players across the sector. So companies can use it, but also a civil society, NGOs, conservation organizations. Yeah, I think I'll leave it there. Thank you very much. My name is Bruno, come out. Sheila wanted to, she wanted to answer or I'm not sure, I've not read the, yes. Yeah, apologies. We have to get used to the hybrid modality. No, I wanted to support to the previous question, not the Thomas one, but also to compliment what James had responded as regards what I found a very good question about the interlinkage of the two roadmaps. And in my understanding as we, as you, you heard the work was started under Thomas's leadership here in the region and I joined. So I haven't followed from the very beginning, but to me having followed the content and towards the finalization, I do see a lot of complementarity. I mean, a lot of the kind of my understanding it does make sense to separate intellectually the discussions initially just to organize thoughts and to have a good understanding of the different issues and priorities at stake. However, now as we need to talk, and I hope we have the time now to talk also about the application implementation on the ground. It is in my view, evident that a lot of the innovative technologies presented here do matter also for primary forest conservation, whether it's the digital ones for the monitoring, it was mentioned by before that we need more large scale mapping, et cetera, or the innovative finance and social innovations because we want to go beyond protected areas in order to have effective primary forest conservations. So there are all these tools to have community involvement and et cetera. So it may have not yet being explicitly articulated how the two relate, but for obvious reason, there's a lot of complementarity and in the application, I hope it will be applied in a complimentary way together. Over, thank you. Okay, we're running a bit late, but maybe we can take one more question before we go to the panel, sure. Okay, just a quick question. If you could choose one or two new technologies that FEO maybe without, with partners could work on in terms of normative work that could benefit the wider community, what would you select in terms of the work we could follow up on? Yeah, okay, unmuted. Yeah, good question. And it's always a challenge to look at that considering that there's such a vast number of innovative technologies that are available. I think would go against the most of the work that I've done, but I would say that the digital technologies are very important. So of the four categories, digital technologies, they're all equal, but the four categories, maybe digital technologies is a little bit more equal because they actually influence a lot of the other ones. So by being able to deploy, you know, the satellite technology really helps in the other areas. So, you know, deploying those technologies where that they can be used by a broader range of people, very important. The other one, and this is really, you know, part of the heart and soul of my career is the genetic resources in germplasm, right? So getting high quality material to people who need it. And, you know, in the study, we talk about some work that's done by Tony Page in Papua New Guinea, and what they're doing is very much sort of what I summarized before, taking, giving the ability to produce high quality material to communities and plant it on their own land. And then some of my colleagues in Nairobi are also working on this, you know, developing multiple species, improved approaches so that, you know, you're not making the best possible germplasm and genetic material, but you're making stuff that is much better than what is generally available. So giving that, you know, giving the power to local communities to join in on landscape rehabilitation, reforestation, improvement of the forest and tree value chains. So, hopefully that's good. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Jim, and also Eve, for your presentations and answers. So I think now we can move to the short part. We have 15 minutes left before the closure, but perhaps the best way to do it in a bit more interactively if the three panelists could go to the, because of the mics. I think the three microphones, they work. So we can save a little bit of time if both Robert, Nazy, Luke, Bulkley, and Dr. Uyunsana Bien-Bazuren. Yes, please take the, to kick off, to kick off this discussion just to introduce Luke Bulkley, he's the Director of Plantation and Innovation in the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment of the Government of Australia. And I think the two other speakers who have previously introduced, and Eve and Jim and Shayla are also a virtual panelist member. So just to kick off this discussion, what's one question perhaps to, we've seen these two very comprehensive roadmaps and menu of options. And we see, for instance, when we look at a primary forest, as Eve has said in his first slide, almost 10% loss over 20 years. I mean, accelerating somehow. The menu option is comprehensive. I think that the toolbox is there from actions in landscape, and especially around primary forest, that's value chain, trade, production and consumption, governance, some critical gaps that may have been forgotten, like the maps. So what's the problem, in fact? What's missing? Where should we start from for this agenda? Any views or perspectives? Thank you very much. And those who are online and also on site participating in this event. And the first I want to commend FAU and C4 for their hard work for these last two years to follow up the recommendations of our third Asia Pacific forest. So the outlook study, which is released in 2019. Let me also share with some of personal thoughts the building upon what we have heard today as highlighted in the studies presented today. Our large Asia Pacific region is very diverse as many of our colleagues who are also indicated. Diversity of natural ecosystems and forest formations, diversity of edific and climate conditions, diversity of threats and pressures on natural ecosystems, and also diversity of social and economic contexts, the diversity of education level and innovative capacities and diversity of political and institutional environments. And there are wide range of innovations that can be mobilized and combined to foster sustainable forest management. There can be no silver-ballet bullet solution applicable across all this region but a portfolio of options for each context. Building upon the overarching recommendations and for the forest road map implementation process presented today, each country will have to develop its own road maps adapted to its specific circumstances at national and local levels. There is however range of activities that can be developed at the original level to support countries. First offering a space of dialogue between member countries involving as appropriate non-state actors to exchange on the road map and refine it progressively based on lessons learned. And then next one is supporting member countries in policy design and strategy development. Strengthening regional cooperation as many issues are transpondering nature. Encouraging research, development and capacity building. The facilitating technology transfer between innovative countries and countries more in need. Enhancing resource mobilization of course the important one as highlighted in two studies presented today, time is running, which all are agree. The coordinated action at all levels is urgently needed to effectively protect primary force and advanced sustainable forest management in the Asia and the Pacific before it is too late. And the student colleagues and friends let's continue to work together and make sensible progress in these issues. Let us stay in front of my point of view. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Biambasue and perhaps that invites a question or also to, I don't know who that could take the floor, Robert, but also to look on how you can. To try to answer your question. We have a very nice menu of recommendation and option, I mean, sort of. And then you're a bit like when you are in the Chinese restaurant with sort of your 35 page menu and they say, what am I going to choose to eat? And what is missing in this menu is how much you have to pay on the right side in terms of using the recommendation and the action. So that's the problem we are facing, I mean, sort of. How we move, that's true for everything that we have said or heard for during this week. How we move from the thing that we should do that to just do it. And that's where we are still facing a problem and it's not simply a problem of lack of finance. I mean, there is money. It's also a story of matchmaker. I mean, how can we convince a very innovative startup in Singapore to work with a pretty but headed logging company in the middle of Borneo in terms of showing the logging company that using innovative technology first could help them in terms of being better, efficient, wasting less resources, ultimately making more money and sometimes being more sustainable and having a good PR relation. And that's something that is missing and that's something that you don't really see. I was in a seminar organized by the Indonesian Forestry Association in terms of can you present us the result of the innovative technology and then you see that there is no link, no traction on that sort of. And except in some sector, the pulp and paper sector, for example, is a very, very big adopter of new technology, the traditional logging sector. And the illegal sector, as Andrew said, is a very, very adept in new technology or you can avoid being prosecuted or you can manage to sell illegal birds online. They are master of it. So I think we need to, for me, the next step is really thinking also, how can we implement one part of the action and which we're putting some money on the table to pay for the dish that you have on the menu, putting two chefs together to develop a new dish for the menu or simply say that this is something different and has to be decided by Asian country and the political power to put in place something that is a constraining legal framework. Thank you, Robert. And perhaps I guess that Luke Berkley, as you're the director of innovation and plantation, maybe you have views on how we could bring the left and the right that Robert just mentioned. Yes, thank you, Vincent. And thank you for the opportunity to speak here at your panel today. And I would also like to applaud the efforts of the students and the young professionals that contributed to the making of the road map, the innovation road map, their energy, you could see on Tuesday's side event, it was clear to see. So in 2008 in Australia, the Prime Minister launched the National Forest Industries Plan and the plan supports Australian forest industries to meet challenges of the future, underpin growth in renewable timber and wood fibre industries and innovate for forest resources to use them smarter and also to expand our plantation estate. And I want to give one example of the measures being implemented through that plan and that is what we call the NIFPs. And it's quite relevant to recommendation six that James presented. A NIFP is a National Institute of Forest Product Innovation Centre and there are three of them across the country and there are three points I'd like to point out for you about the NIFPs. Firstly, their purpose is quite clear, focus on research which supports innovation in sustainable forest management, also timber processing and we have wood fibre recovery, recovery advanced manufacturing and the bio economy. Secondly, the NIFPs are joint funded by the Australian government and the state governments and also industry. And thirdly, each NIFP is led by a local, regional advisory committee that is industry led and that helps it determine the research priorities for that area and the projects that are relevant. And to date, there are over 40 projects have been undertaken or ongoing by the NIFPs and they're supporting fostering collaboration, boosting innovation, increasing profitability, all the things that you would expect from innovation also growing the market, maintaining jobs. So many of the digital technologies mentioned during James's presentation are actually some of the focuses of those projects. So a few of the audience would like to explore those projects I urge you to look up the NIFP website, nifpi.org.au and you can see plenty of extra information there. Thank you. Thank you, Luke, for pointing to a nice example that in fact could be one of the models of the elements of the roadmap when we look at capacity building and doing things on demands of local communities and also linkages with the private sector as well. I think that could be one good way to study. I think some of the actors involved in the roadmap including the Asia Pacific Forestry Corporation organization could also play a role into that, perhaps Afoko. I don't know how are we doing with time? I think we have three minutes left before the end of the panel. So perhaps is there any other perspective or question or even from the audience or from the virtual panelist, Shayla, Eve and Jim? Someone wants to bring an additional perspective. Oh, yes? Hi, good afternoon. I am Clarence from the Philippines and I'm one of the co-authors of the Asia Pacific Youth Roadmap. This is a good roadmap since we have been engaged for at least a year that we've been doing consultations workshops for virtually. And just to wonder, just wondering that moving forward or after publishing the roadmap, is there like a specific thing for these youth authors, youth researchers who are involved in developing the roadmap after they develop this roadmap? Like is there an opportunity or some activities or initiatives that will be like the follow-up activities like after we publish the roadmap, like what's the plan moving forward or basically what's next? Thank you. Well, in fact, that is an excellent question because it was something that the two next concluding speakers will in fact be talking about, I guess. But either if there are any other, if there are perspective from the other panelists, then Dr. Oriane Zanabian-Bazoul and Shayla on that, we can take that and then I'm sure that in their speaking points, they will address the answer. Yeah, I think it's a really relevant point. I mean, I said we have these very good reports, policy brief and so what? They're going to stand on the shelf to be eaten by the termite or are we going to do something about it? And I think that, yes, we should do something about it. What I also believe is that we will not be able to do something about everything. So that we need now at this stage, we have this list of recommendations. We need to have a sort of triage exercise. It's OK, what is it that is the longing for that we can start? What is it that is more longer term that we should for the time being put on the shelf? I mean, it's sort of because if it works with a snowball effect that you start something and you show the people that it is working, then they will adopt something else. But it will require some motivation, some dedication, some finance, and so forth. I think it's the only way, otherwise, we will have yet another good study that tells us what we should do. Yes. Thank you, Ohobe. And any other point of view from the other panelists on that? Otherwise, we pass to the final speakers. OK, so I think we can, I think, still give a hand of applause to the panelists and the presenters. And over to maybe, yes, Dr. Biambasou, and you can maybe stay on the podium. And the floor is yours. Again, thank you very much, especially the team members already here and raising what is the next step, which is very important question. And dear colleagues, let me make closing remarks in this session. I would like to highlight two points in conclusion of our meeting today. First, beyond the high scientific and technical quality of two studies presented today, I would like to commend the collective and participatory process which involved more than 400 regional stakeholders, youth, and experts, state and non-state actors. That led to the overarching recommendations presented today by FAO and CIFOR. Let's build on this collective momentum for our future work. Let's see how we can better involve non-state actors in our discussions and give more voice to the youth, who are the forest managers of tomorrow. The second, the public today of the two technical studies and publication, I'm sorry, and studies and the corresponding policy briefs as a milestone achievement, but certainly not the end of the process. Building upon the four-step roadmap implementation process suggested today by FAO and CIFOR, it is our role now to follow up and develop context-specific roadmaps and the strategies at regional, national, and local levels. I'm ready to work with you all to enhance primary forest protection and sustainable forest management in our region. Over to Sheila now to conclude our event today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Yun Sena. Thank you. Colleagues, I have less scripted closing remarks, but maybe just a few takeaways. One is that first, really to say that those two roadmaps prepared for the Asia-Pacific context really are pertinent. This was also recognized today. So a big thank you to all the collaborators involved and again to CIFOR, our partner in this. So I think they will be published soon. That is the intention. You'll see this in the chat as well, the information. So this is really fantastic. And now we have no time to go into the details. Second, as Robert also said, and I'm really behind that message as well, we need implementation. We need application on the ground. And this requires, I mean, it's good to have this information now that we have on the roadmaps. But in order to apply and implement, we need commitment. We need political commitment and national local level in addition to finance. But luckily on the finance, but also on the commitment side, at least globally, we do have a positive science. I mean, just as an example, the COP26 Glasgow COP26 declaration, what was it? The Leaders Declaration of Forest and Land Use is very much in favor of, again, holding deforestation and advancing restoration, but recognizing the role of sustainable forest management. So this is a wonderful entry point also to see some momentum there. And then secondly, on the primary forest, I mean, this matters very much for biodiversity conservation. And therefore, the political momentum is coming also with the POS2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which is expected to be adopted later this year. And then finally, the question was raised about the next steps specifically and concretely. And these are just some thoughts I would share from my side. I mean, obviously now that with the finalization of these publications, it is first of all a matter of outreach and dissemination. We started it here at the World Forestry Congress, but continuing the outreach and dissemination to relevant stakeholders and processes. Also the regional level, we heard the importance of regional processes. I'd like to also explore how we can bring this back also to the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission meeting, which we'll have next year. That's next session. Actually, Australia will be hosting. So I'm glad to see that we have our colleague from Australia in the panel. Second next step, we did hear about knowledge gaps that still persist, especially in regards to the primary forest. I think maybe this is something also for the scientific community to take up, like organizations like C4 and others potentially. And then thirdly on the terms of next steps, in terms of implementation, technical agencies like FAO, they can support member countries interested in applying the information, the knowledge that we have in these roadmaps on practical action on the ground, for example, through actions from the Jeff 8 pipeline. And I wanted to highlight there, as part of the Jeff 8 portfolio, there is a focus on critical forest biomes, which to me sounds like a fantastic entry point to pursue work on primary forests and then combining them with the innovative forest technologies, should they be interest by countries and we very much hope that they will be and we stand ready to support and work closer together with countries in this regard. So please, if you hear interest, let's continue the discussion and move forward together. Thank you very much again to all who are here today and again to all the collaborators to do this work. And let's not have it ended here, but let's continue working together. Thank you.