 to this session, so we are waiting for the panelists to join us, so we'll start as soon as all the panelists are here. If you just connected, we are just waiting for all the speakers and the panelists to join, and as soon as they are all in the meeting room, we'd be able to start with these second round table. Contacted by Simon is having some technical problem that is going to join us as soon as possible. In the meantime, he asked me to introduce, to welcome everybody and to start the session, so I would like very much to thank all the participants of the round table. I think the result that I don't see since a long time is a long time friend of STP. We had a very fruitful program on ecological economics. And then Andrea, Rinaldo, Alessandro, Pavoloni. Okay, okay, that's fine. Cancun also joining for this. Okay, thanks everybody for joining us. Yes. So, Jakobo, you want to say something? I think we can proceed with the panel and say some general announcements about the school later. Yes, so the idea is to first introduce the panelists, so maybe we can have a round of introduction to my interview. Maybe we can start with Bartha, you want to start. Thank you very much, it's lovely to be here. Look, there is a background noise coming, somebody speaking. Is there a translator at work or what? Maybe it's better, maybe it was me. Yes. Sorry, is it better? Yes, well, yeah, that's fine. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm part of the scope that I've been speaking from Cambridge and as Matteo said, we've worked together many years ago, two decades ago at ICTP. He was hosting a program that Simon and I and Kali Rahn-Mailer ran for four or five years, I think, at the time of early 2000s on ecological economics. I'm delighted to be here. Where is Simon? Simon had some technical problems, but I think he's going to join us very soon. Okay, anyway, thank you. Alessandro, you want to go ahead? Sure, thank you Matteo. My name is Alessandro Tavoni, I'm connecting from Bologna where I'm based in Italy, the University of Bologna. I'm an economist as well, an environmental economist. I've worked with Simon and colleagues, so I have a bit of understanding of complex adaptive systems and ecology as well, but my main area would be environmental economics and behavioral economics. I'm excited to address environmental dilemmas using these tools and we can talk a bit more about it as we go. Okay, in the meantime, Simon joined us. So Simon, we started introducing the panel with Partha and Alessandro, then I'll leave you to go ahead. Good, good. Now maybe we can turn to Karina and Kanchan. You're muted. Okay, can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah, good. I'm Karina Nyburg, I'm speaking from Oslo, Norway. I'm like Alessandro, I'm an environmental economist who also does a lot of behavioral economics. I've been working a bit with Simon and other ecologists in connection with the Bayer Institute in Sweden, and I'm looking forward to this. Very good. Kanchan, I assume you're on somewhere. Don't hear her. Is Kanchan Chopra on? Let's come back to her and go to Andrea Rinaldo. Yes, thank you Simon. Good to see you, Andrea Rinaldo. I'm a professor at the Cold Politecnics Federal in Lausanne, but right now I'm in Italy, my home place. I'm in Padua now and you see a piece of my beloved hometown that is in the background during the lockdown. And my work is on water controls on Bayotta, and I'm delighted to be here. Very good. Mercedes, are you on? I think Mercedes is not joined yet. Okay, Kanchan, I'm glad to see you there. Why don't we're just introducing ourselves. Could you just say a few words about who you are and what you do? I don't know if Kanchan can hear me yet. Kanchan, can you hear me? I'm sure we'll get these problems sorted out. Kanchan, can you hear me now? Hello. Hello, Simon. Yes, can you hear me? Kanchan, can you hear yet? Yes, I can hear you. Good, we're all introducing ourselves. And just, could you just say a few words about where you are and what you do? Although I think most of us know, but go ahead. My name is Kanchan Chopra. I work in Delhi at the Institute of Economic Growth, or I'm associated with that now. I was on the faculty and was director for a long time. My area of work of course, environment and development. And in the course of my work, I have been privileged to look at different aspects of the relationship between environment and development. And I think I see DPS for a number of summer schools and winter schools. And I think that's all that I would like to say at the moment. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks all for joining us. Matteo, I assume you introduced yourself. Well, no, but unfortunately, as I mentioned to you, I have to leave for another meeting. So I'm very sorry about this, and I wish you a very interesting panel discussion. Very good. Thank you all very much. So as most of you know, except for the panelists, in the lecture I gave Monday, I made the argument that stronger interfaces with economics and the other social sciences was one of the great challenges facing theoretical ecology and any ecology that has to do with the environment in in the next century. There are a number of cross cutting issues I'm hoping we will touch on today. How do we value nature? How do we discount the future? How do we deal with equity within populations across populations across time? How do we get cooperation and dealing with problems of the commons and public goods? What's the role of pro-sociology and social norms? I'd like to incorporate the dynamics of human behavior during crises like pandemics, which was the subject really of of yesterday's roundtable. But I'd like to begin by trying to filter all of this through one of the fundamental issues that faces us, namely the decline of biological diversity. The most influential thing that's being done on this topic in a long time is the so-called Das Gupta report that Partha is leading for the British government. I'd like to begin by asking Partha, my longtime friend and colleague, to tell us what that project is and what the issues are in biological diversity that auto-interest theoretical ecologists, applied ecologists, economists, and all those working at the interface. Partha. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Yes, very clear. So the UK Treasury invited me last summer, that is 2019 spring actually, to produce an independent global review of the economics of biodiversity. So there's been one of the nice aspects of this has been that there's been no influence from government circles as to how I conduct the review, what is said. It's entirely a personal view. Of course, I've been helped by a team at the Treasury, goes that saying, who extremely talented group of young people, self-selected because they I think applied to be on the review team. So it's been a great experience. Now, the review is completed now. And it's gone to the senior ministers of the Treasury and DEFRA, the Environment Ministry. They formally launched in February, the second, I think, 2021 in a month and a half time at the Royal Society, which were Venky, Venky, Venky, the president of the Royal Society will be, will be the host, if you like, with members of the cabinet, I guess. What is it about? Well, first of all, although the review is on biodiversity, one should remember biodiversity is a character, a property of ecosystems, or whatever system, natural system you are studying with biological trappings in it. It's a property. It's not an asset. It's a characteristic of an asset. So the intuition that ecologists such as Simon and others have had all these decades that we ought to be looking at the biosphere at the top to the smallest allowable notion of an ecosystem as a component was exactly right. There are many ways of defining biodiversity, but once you start going in that route, we're in trouble because it will become like sociology, define your term kind of thing. So we're looking at ecosystem services. This has been much work done on that. And we take stock from there. The position is to the idea is to regard nature as an asset of using the word nature really as a, as a simple way of conveying the idea that it could be the large macro study, or it could be a small ecosystem, maybe a threshing down a ground or a forest plot, depending on the context. We're looking at assets on a par more fundamental, of course, but in the same vein has produced a human capital, we're looking at natural capital here. And so the, we convert the entire problem as an asset management problem, whether you're a first private investor or whether you're a social reformer or whether you're head of some para para national institution. And so it's built on that the value itself could not necessarily be user value use value. It could be intrinsic value of societies all societies one thing can think of has regard some assets, some natural capital, a sacred even. That shouldn't deter us from thinking of it as an asset once you recognize that the worth has many dimensions to it. Once you recognize that, then you're, you're really talking about the economics of the biosphere. It's as large a subject as that. What we show the theorem that really drives the whole unifies the treatment of the economics of biosphere is the equivalence between what we call inclusive wealth and intergenerational welfare. When two objects have different sources. welfare is in normative notion altogether. And I'm talking about internet generational adding up maybe the generational well being or some nonlinear function doesn't matter. It's that's not the important thing the important thing is that you're including future people in it. And whereas wealth is a value of stocks assets. It seems more like the means to the ends. The connection between the two the equivalence lies in the lies in the prices the values that you attribute to the assets. So Simon is exactly right in thinking that valuation becomes an important part of the problem that ties if you like the wealth which are the assets and the ends, which are, which are, which are reflected in well being human well being, or indeed, the well being of nature. That's not ruled out at all. There's intrinsic value. And there will have a value independent of what it does for us so the approach we take is much broader than is given usually given in environmental and resource economics but that's not a weakness of environmental and resource economics. It's very useful to have use value human use value as a start. And the reason is that one thing we point out over and over again in the review is that using biased estimates can be very informative. If use value alone tells us that we must conserve nature. Then of course if you add non use value intrinsic value, it'll be an additional reason for conserving nature so biased ones are not to be dispensed with. Okay, when I say the equivalence of these two ideas of inclusive wealth, which goes in the direction of national accounting if you like, suggesting that national accounts now to move away from flows to balance sheets if you like affirms. And that the overall thing is an asset management problem tells us that the equivalence result is telling us that the aim of the game is value maximization. That is, whoever it is who's managing an portfolio, whether it's the personal investor or whether it's a social reformer doesn't matter the whole range can be accommodated. They will be using different prices. Obviously, market prices for the investor, private investor, social prices or accounting prices or values, social values. If you're, if you're a reformer citizen thinking as a citizen, you're interested in maximizing the value of your portfolio. And that's the same thing as saying maximizing wealth. So wealth maximization turns out to be essentially a portfolio management instruction. So that unifies both macroeconomics of growth and development to very, very micro management of assets. So that's, broadly speaking, what we are concerned with. Now I want to end with the just as a primitive remark final observation. What makes this area particularly interesting intellectually and deep conceptually is that nature has three properties which are not usually shared by other forms of capital. Of course the well known property of mobility. Nature is always on the move. And mobility leads to these externalities, which we all understand very well we economists understand very well with the colleges have done a lot of work on it. I want to leave that aside for the moment. There are two other features, which the review emphasizes. One is that nature is often very often silent natural process of silent what's happening under your feet in the soils are not audible. You need extremely precise instruments to go to that on a daily basis you can't. The other is that it's invisible. The ability and silence of nature makes monitoring of human activity extremely hard of what we are doing to nature impact makes it impossible. So the review ends by suggesting we work through I worked through serious issues of institution what should be what can be observed what can be verified. The law can handle matters of our social norms can handle matters. Those are discussed in detail, but invisibility and silence means that there will be a residual aspects of our activities, which will not be monitorable, no matter how good your institutions are. In some sense, the review points to the limits of institutions as a way of bringing our private incentives aligned with our citizens goals or goals as citizens. Which means that there will be a residual amount that will not be observable and the only way we can manage to live at peace with nature, which is another way of saying at peace with ourselves, since we are embedded in nature we're not external to nature is self constraint restraint. In other words, we have to be at the end of the day both judge and jury of our own actions. Never mind other people's actions. So the review ends with a plea for a reform of education. I would suggest we appeal to the idea that nature studies should begin right at the beginning as as as primary school and not to be dropped as we go through our educational process. In effect, it's appealing to all of us to become in part naturalists. Thank you very much, Partha. Before I turn to the other panelists. Could you elaborate a little bit on how this framework deals with the problem of discounting the future subject of debate, even if they even ignoring hyperbolic discounting. How do we decide what's the right discount rate to use. Okay, that's very good. The way we are really looking at intertemporal prices, I suppose, that's what we mean by discounting. It's an asset management, we're still at the level of asset management. The asset management problem portfolio selection is concerned with managing the assets at a moment in time. We've got portfolios to choose between, and we look at today's investment, tomorrow's realization, and then we can reorganize our portfolio. The question that Simon is asking relates to a further problem in portfolio management that is portfolio management over time. Typically, when you think of a portfolio manager, he's got a certain amount of assets wealth to invest, and then that's, and he's choosing between alternative portfolios. But the intertemporal problem lies in asking a prior question, how much should he consume and how much should he actually invest. That too is a portfolio problem. And what we regard as first order conditions in oiler conditions input in optimization exercise is a portfolio is an arbitrage condition. Okay, so that's, that's the background. Let's take the position as we all should that accounting prices or shadow prices or social values are far more subjective and far more amorphous than market prices which are much more real for these accounting prices, especially about the future. The market is based on the decision makers understanding of what is feasible, and what is desirable. These things cannot be aggregated across all people, people will differ and in a democratic society. We will, we can argue about that we can discuss it, but the idea that there's a hard stuff out there which we pluck out of air. That's out. That's not on. So social discount rates which are intertemporal prices, price of future goods compared to today's goods of the same good, let's say consumption or investment doesn't matter what your unit of counties is going to be inherently subject development. And if I say it's 4% and Simon says it's 2% there will be a reason for us to have a discussion as to how we have come to our conclusions or not if our conclusions are tentative suggestions, and the discussion may illuminate remain that converge. That's the stuff of, of debate on matters which are not hard for the private investor. The discount rate may be the market price. Okay, well then, you know, he's, he's small he can't affect the prices. So he takes the prices given, but we're not looking at the problem from the point of your citizen because Simon is asking about social discount rate, private discount rate. And there we have a problem in the sense of problem at one level and another level it's not a problem a good diverse democratic society will have disagreements maybe, but we resolved resolve those disagreements through the political process we don't shoot that shoot each other or persuade each other that we are all in agreement. So, what does it really amount to its amounts to the idea that we want to internalize are these externalities over time. And I'll finish here by just reminding us of the short circuit that economists have so far made, which I think has been extremely dangerous damaging because it's faulty science. And I'm not even pretending. Here's the idea. The idea is well look. We, we, we all care about our children. And if we're intelligent we realize our children will care about their children. And therefore by recursion, if we're intelligent will be caring about our own grandchildren great grandchildren and so forth. Okay, so why not leave it to the market. Why not leave it to our own judgment. And that's been used very decisively in American welfare economics, the idea of a representative household as reflecting an entire economy. Now the problem with that argument, and it's really astonishing that it could in fact survive so long, even in the case in a world in which you look studying externalities like global climate change is that I may care about my great grandchildren with great on airing accuracy, and Simon might do the same with his grandchildren. But there is no reason to believe that he will care equally about my grandchildren or me about his grandchildren. That's the whole stuff about externalities. So that's that route is not on. We really cannot use market rates of return for social discounting for this externalities, which brings me back to the point that really the end of the day as citizens. If we say to ourselves, I say to myself, I must care about I must take into account Simon's grandchildren. And Simon as a citizen says, yes, popular also has will have grandchildren, and he should enter my calculation. When I think about social discount rates, but there's no obvious reason how we should necessarily come to the same rate. And that's where I began by saying, they're going to be ultimately somewhat subjected. They won't be arbitrary. They won't be wild. If somebody says it's 100%. Oh boy, we will ask him really pin him down and say, go and explain why you have where you get 100%. And, you know, all the trade offs that are involved. Okay. Thank you very much. Karina, I'd like to turn to you next. Right. Sorry, I lost my headphones. Now I can hear you. Yeah, I'd like to turn to you now. Yeah. For comments on what Partha has been telling us. Right. So, so I think that what Partha said earlier on on on the importance of on non observability is is a very, very important point. And he said he said a lot of what I would have said myself and he said it is a much better way than I could have done. But I think, you know, economists have been working with environmental and ecological economics for many, many years. And for a lot of the problems that we face, economists have good solutions. But one of one of the main problems that we don't really know how to solve and in in a centralized way, at least is the problem that often we cannot see what people are doing. And if we want to limit the depletion of natural resources, then we need, and we want to do it in a centralized way, we need to somehow be able to see what's going on. Because nature doesn't shout out when she's being exploited too much. It's hard to do that. So, I think one of the things that economists don't really have very good centralized policies to solve is a lot of the problems linked to this on non observability. And I think it's, we cannot really get around the idea that Partha is advocating that partly we do, I mean, even if politicians listen to economists and their suggestions of how to solve pollution problems, for example, we, we cannot really solve environmental problems, satisfactory if people don't feel a moral obligation, social obligation, but also a sort of internal moral obligation to take good care of nature. And I agree with Partha that a very important tool to try to make that happen is actually to start education about nature very early on. But also it is possible that policy makers can have can have a role in shaping social and moral norms education is one thing. But I have also been concerned about in my own research that a lot of what we do in society is shaped by at least partly by our need to coordinate our actions. So, so often it is hard to change your own behavior because you need to coordinate with what other people are doing. Policy makers can often help change the ways we coordinate social norms can be one example of such coordination. We often share, share values, share habits. And sometimes you can sometimes there will be multiple equilibria and we are in a bad equilibria when it comes to protection of nature. And sometimes it is possible for policy makers to contribute to flip the economy to a better equilibrium. For example, think of our diets. If you live in a society of meat eaters, then it is very inconvenient to be a vegetarian because every time you visit somebody or you're sharing a meal with somebody, you feel you're making trouble for the others and the others feel you're making trouble for them. But if you live in a society of vegetarians, it is the meat eater who is causing problems and getting problems. And this may not be invited, for example. So, so and to get from one situation to the other, public authorities may have a role in, for example, temporarily subsidized vegetables tax meets things like that and also also promoting a policies that can help change habits. Okay, thank you very much. By the way, I have put a link in the chat to the current UK government site for the Das Gupta review with that part of it is public. Partha, it's not yet complete. Is that right? Oh, yes, it's complete. It's been sent the as I was saying the. Okay, our obligation was first to send it to the senior ministers and copies have been sent also to the advisory panel that the the treasury had created for us for my review. It will not be made public until it's been handed over officially some protocol with the finance minister, and that'll be on second of February. The moment it's done, it'll be on the website. All three, I should say there'll be three documents. One is the review itself, which is a technical piece of work. It's about 500 or 600 pages long now, because as I say, it's the economics of biosphere and a good deal of economics had actually to be redone to make it in line with what I was sketching for you, including the points that current made the points I was making are somewhat different from currents, because even those, they're observable, I can eat what the person eating meat, or the meat eaters, I wasn't thinking of that kind of coordination problem I was thinking about things which literally cannot be monitored by anybody. What I do is entirely private. That's the bit which I don't think will ever be resolved, except through self restraint. So that's that's the first and it has that I've tried to keep the text in English, even in the big the or text if you like, but it has lots of boxes, lots and lots of boxes and access start chapters for the mathematical parts of it because everything is as far as possible proven as in general form. But on the other hand, I want to reach the general public, the citizen concern citizen, my ideal reader. And so I prepared 100 page a bridge version of it. And that will also be on the website and it will be published alongside with the main text. And then there is a very short four or five page, if you like, headline messages that my team produced because that's necessary for the decision makers in government. Since the report is ultimately for the UK Treasury and the government in general and of course will be used by the Treasury and the government for the COP 15, which will be held next year in China. And that's the UN biodiversity of the committee involved with biodiversity in parallel with climate change 26 which will be held in in the UK. Next year again. So we're making some progress in this area but this is the foundations for the biodiversity one so it'll be February the second I think it'll be on on the on the website all three documents. Simon, can I chime in a bit on that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so I perfectly agree with part of that he he was speaking about something else than the coordination problems that I spoke about so that's that's actually why I I spoke about moral norms and social norms as different because what I think of a social norms is is requires some kind of observability by your peers. It's not something what you do is not necessarily observable by the central authorities but it might be observable by your peers. And in that case you can have social coordination or social norms. And this helps solve part of the problem, but I perfectly agree that a lot of these problems cannot be solved that way, simply because even your peers will not see what you're doing, and then we need internalized moral norms. Very good. I should say that the, I mentioned at the beginning the social norms issue is a huge one Korean and I were part of a paper, a few years back I'll send you I can't remember if you were part of that or not. But we talked about it yesterday and in terms of mask wearing and and it's going to come up again in terms of vaccine hesitancy. It's a cross cutting issue. Conchon I'd like to turn to you. Next, for you to give us thoughts on any aspects of this or other issues that you'd like. Thank you. I'll do that. I'm fine with that. Well, there are several challenges at the interface of ecology and the social sciences in particular economics you wanted me to talk a little about natural capital accounting I'll come to that. In the space of the last two decades, we've had a whole lot of general frameworks coming up general frameworks or grand designs that provide space for linking the social sciences in particular economics with the ecology. And of course in the beginning we thought that ecology and economics should be most easily thought of as having a common mathematical language and easy to easy to connect to each other through that language, but they have to come out of their comfort zones and context dependence makes it difficult. Oops. I think we'll have to come back to conchon she seems to have frozen. Now, conchon. Some of these. I'll come back to now. Yes, we can hear you now. But you keep freezing maybe, maybe closing your video and just coming in our with just by sound would work. We've. Now you're muted. We have your video but. I'm sorry for that I don't know what happened. And actually, some developments including attempts to capture climate tipping points in damage functions and econometrics and so on. And we have other movements like the planet three boundaries approach, but more than that, when it comes to inclusive wealth and systems of natural income. We want to link the systems of national income to what is we call natural natural capital accounting. Now, how do we do that, that is the context dependence, which I'd like to talk about a little, which is really in the sense of suppose I want to find out the part of the different kinds of capital is working to say seven years ago, which was basically chaired by, which was chaired by a part of the script. And there we had referred to the aspects there, but you have to get an estimate of the value of ecosystem services. In order to value these ecosystem services, we need to know basics like, for instance, production functions of life supporting systems. Now, for economists, production functions are important, but when it comes to life supporting systems, it's very difficult because spatial and temporal boundaries of specific ecosystems need to be identified. In order to integrate them in order to get the value of that ecosystem service as a grand design is fine, we will say we value the ecosystem services, but in order to do that, and to integrate with systems of national income accounting. You need to know the boundaries of that ecosystem. And that is where it is a tough job and that's one of. I think we're frozen again. We'll come back to concha. To integrate side looking at short term impacts of developing. Concha, can you hear me. I think we, we're going to need to move on out Alessandro. I'd like you to take over now and give us your views and I'll see what we can do about concha. Let me jump in, although it's going to be a tough role to follow such eloquent speakers, but I'd like to touch on some of the topics that emerged with part as a discussion and Karen's points about social norms. I'm interested also in the behavioral aspects behind cooperation and as we discussed before, oftentimes we simply do not observe, either because nature does not scream and call our attention, or simply because our own actions are not observable themselves. And in the situation when the social norm is low, meaning that that behavior is is a niche, the pro social behavior, the environmentally friendly behavior is still so small in the population that we're talking about the niche behavior. How do we scale it up? How do we ramp it up? I think essentially what what we saw before is that there is a role for government to intervene and one channel could be, and I agree with what has been said by my father and Karen that education is dealing such inclination, proclivity to cooperate and to appreciate the environment is key. I think in some of these situations we can also have help from interventions that may not necessarily come from a government. And if you think of the economics profession, a lot of the interest as traditionally been on self interested motives, we discussed briefly before about wealth maximization and these sort of drivers. However, there are other motives we know that from from ample evidence from social psychology psychology, also behavioral economics, and some of these artistic motives can be leveraged also when it comes to cooperation in climate change dilemmas or global public goods. So, to be concrete, we were discussing the situation when when when a behavior is not observable that is the most problematic right, if I switch off my lights at home, or if I have a renewable energy contract that arguably is a little bit more costly. No one knows about it, unless I go about and talk to my peers and friends and family and try to convince them. The economic interpretation of pro social behaviors tend to focus on what is known as image concerns or social signaling that again is not an altruistic motive but it is a self interested one. I do something pro social, because I hope that by doing by taking that action. Third party observers my peers, those that can actually see this behavior will will have a higher esteem or will return my behavior with with some kind of reciprocity. Now what if the behavior is intrinsically hard to observe. Again, there's a role for for government or firms, businesses to try and modify this situation so again we're in a in a coordination in a bad equilibrium because people struggle to to witness to observe potentially inspiring pro social behaviors by others and simple nudges and interventions again at the firm level, or mandated by the government can reduce the cost of me individually going around shouting that I'm great because I have a renewable energy contract which also can be seen as as sort of socially costly right, it could be perceived as bragging. So an intervention may aim to make it public to make the decision public to others so that imitation can can kick in. And again, I have to to flag that in this domain and here we go full circle and go back to to education. I think that the economics profession can do more in terms of of training future policymakers future academics. I see it in my own university economics department and the students tend to not be introduced into disciplinary concepts or even just the basic knowledge about climate change or even environmental economics until later in their curriculum and and again the focus of the standard curriculum if you if you take sort of basic economic courses tend to be on these self interested rational but psychological evidence suggests that it is otherwise and we we have an innate proclivity for for cooperation and so I think also by teaching that there may be more and and stressing these sort of leadership and altruistic motives also in the standard curriculum could could help out in in bridging the gap that the part that so eloquently described in the introductory talk. Thank you very much. Andrea I'm glad that we can turn to get a perspective from outside economics but from someone who recognizes how important these issues are so be interested in your thoughts on what we've heard so far this morning. Thank you so much. Samo yes indeed I'm very impressed and very passionate about those subjects as a you hinted I see things are a narrow perspective that of the perspective of water control so leaving communities. And of course not all ecosystems are water controlled many are like they are limited. They are limited. But yet the the but many are and in fact they are advocating for the social and economic importance of many of those ecosystems and for two different reasons which I'll be discussing in a second. I am obsessed in fact and and even from our early work together Simon and with NASA or the agency to be in fact from the they it's inherent weakness of many of our ecological predictions and that's in fact it's a permanent liability on our capability to put a price tag in fact on the system services and and and so when I'm very touched when you say that about those characters the path I was eloquently pointing out that these these the silent invisible characters that you may have beneath our feet and something that cannot be monitored can be profitable to be guessed. And here I'm not quoting a scientist but I'm quoting a poet Odin if I'm quoting by heart I think I'm correct when he said that knowledge may have its purposes but guessing is always more fun than knowing and and why am I pitching for the water control ecosystem because there's something about the the the the subject for ecological interactions is something about what we know about what the economies called externalities that can be useful that to predict shifting patterns of rainfall mean a hell of a lot for rain fed agriculture which is a major a major driver of social well-being on a global scale in fact and we know a lot about patterns of rainfall and how they affect the ecosystems and ecosystem services and and in the accounting for the depreciation of natural capital effect has some sort of inherent robustness when you're talking about more controls and on those living communities. So my my typical questions that we'd like to point together it is for instance what the management schemes a large scale water management schemes mean a hell of a lot will future large scale water resources management plant include biodiversity protections worldwide. Of course, to do that, we need to be sure that our guessing is complementing knowing in a good and meaningful sense. I could, for instance, the structure something that we have studied together some of our long time and we asked you to like the structure of the river network be a template on how deadly water bond disease can spread and and something which is also important. Can we judge whether we can sort out having packed of improved agriculture, for instance, with its well documented in roads into the spreading of incidents of debilitating disease, for instance, be accounted equally can we and that's central in the reflection that it's a quantitative example of what Patha was saying when when accounts that like gross domestic products of ad hoc indicators of economic well being do not represent the depreciation for natural capital so the GDP of Burkina Faso where we did a lot of a fieldwork for instance 15,000 small dams have been built and irrigation structures have made a visible impact on the GDP of these peculiar sub Saharan country, and yet they dramatically increase the incidence of debilitating disease is not accounted for any of those indicators. In fact, biological invasions is another example. There is an inherent predictability about the biological innovation of any species and whose economics can be done based on the fact that we can actually a guess relatively well the possible scenarios in terms of what happens if and what happens and that happens to disease spread actually. We, what I'm saying is that see from outside is from an error perspective the one I can't comment but I see that those issue would be central respect to what we call eco hydrological research that is a research of the living communities controlled by water, not again, once probably has to be clear, an entire view to the ecosystem perspective but certainly an error but significant one from a social economic viewpoint. Thank you very much. Andrea. So I, we're just about out of time. I want to thank all the, the panelists. I we've touched just touched on on a lot of the great challenges that I think face us. We've talked about a biodiversity the issue of discounting, which we just barely scratched the surface on. We didn't talk much about equity, especially in tra generation equity, which is a crucial problem. This is a natural capital accounting from conch on, and about issues of cooperation and social norms both from Karina and from Alessandro. A rich interface in which not only are there a range of problems that are at the boundary between ecology and economics, but a recognition that that's as Kenneth arrow pointed out it's not an accident that economics and ecology both start with eco which means household. In the case of economics household management. The problems that we face are similar public goods problems are prevalent throughout the natural world and things as simple as the extracellular polymers that biofilms produce the public goods problems that tumors undercut and the bacterial biofilms that that form all the way up to cooperation and bird flocks fish schools and up to humans. So they're not only interfaces but great parallels, which is why not surprisingly, many of the similar techniques, especially game theory, have permeated both both disciplines. So, take our word for it this is an exciting area there's much to be done, both at the interface and by drawing parallels. I won't go on for three hours easily on this, but I want to thank again the panelists very much. And, and now close the session. Thank you. Hello, Simon. Thank you very much is a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry for the technique. Not sure. But, but that's fine. I'm sorry for the introduction. Anyway, thank you. Thank you. Great. So thank you very much, Simon and to all the panelists for this very interesting session. So we are now taking 15 minutes.