 warm welcome to everyone's home welcome to the governments of the region i know it's a bit of an unusual time but in a very unusual manner we have our colleagues from Australia already joining us from their friday we're still here on thursday and we promise the governments of the region we promise our australian colleague a nice present of latin american coffee because it's it's seven in the morning for you so thank you so much for joining us australia um and and i will immediately introduce our other exciting panelists joining us today i will i will thanks them as well so yes rosa roban working for cipher in the climate change and low energy development team and today we're having session two of this uh blue carbon webinar um that has a very long title there's a step towards self-understanding blue carbon emissions reporting and mitigation targets under the paris agreement and the voluntary carbon market um we already had session one and uh there you can have a bit more information about the context i just wanted to mention and offer our gratitude to our donor the us8 and this blue carbon webinar is focused so uh as a support to reach regional governments in latin america um and actually it's responding some of the questions that these governments presented as barriers and also as opportunities for developing their self-standing blue carbon programs uh within the uan fgpc but also uh under voluntary carbon market so in the first session we were looking at these differences um between these two options and you can uh look at the audio as you can the recordings and the slides from the first session in the link that i'm sharing here with you um and as isabel mentioned this webinar is also part of the swam program which is a sustainable wetland adaptation and mitigation program and also in the link of swam you can get a lot of information about what sifu does in terms of wetlands not only mangrove but also pitlands um coastal wetlands and other type of tropical wetlands there is a geo information data and there are articles published data and etc um also i'd like to uh introduce our first session by recalling that on the 27th of july this sunday we're going to celebrate the international day of mangroves um we spent some time the other day discussing all these ecosystem services that mangroves provide very important right now in this year 2020 which in the caribbean is going to be a busy hurricane season we have forecasted many more tropical storms and um hurricanes and large category hurricanes than in asmin because we we have a very warm ocean that's been heated for a long time and then we have a noel linear condition so these two things together with more active monsoon in west africa are going to make this hurricane season a hectic one so let's celebrate the role of mangroves in protecting our costs and our um communities from the coast from storm searches from hurricanes from sea level rise besides many other ecosystem services like like fish and food security and biodiversity sustain and water filtering and whatnot mangroves are super trees i am sharing here with you um our latest podcasts that we will be uh c4 will be uh sharing with all of you uh on the mangrove day uh we had two exciting podcasts one in spanish the other in english around the role of mangroves as coastal protection and particularly in the case of the caribbean and their role against a hurricane so if you're interested in too in this topic please take a look at at these two web links that i'm offering you the um the communication link for the lead stock trees which is a a series of discussions with c4 uh researchers and also other researchers discussing about different types of trees and ours will be mangroves and then also please follow the forest news there you will see uh the latest uh development of the podcast and other systems say uh all the topics of podcasts very briefly and we're going to jump immediately into the presentation of the our panelists um but i just wanted to remember those of you who are joining today for the first time a bit of the context of this blue carbon uh session to weamina uh we were discussing the other day that uh blue carbon is starting to be so popular that also is starting to be defined in two very different ways uh for the government in the region and there is not an official definition uh and the u n f to proceed there is some discussion of what blue carbon is on the special report of cryosphere and oceans but other than that there is not uh officially it's not officially defined under u n f triple c so for us for the region blue carbon uh relates to three coastal ecosystems mangroves coastal wetlands and seagrasses for the circumstances in the region mangroves is the only one that we are focusing when talking about blue carbon in most of the countries Mexico also has seagrasses already into their line of action and today we will have an excellent example of how other countries are having their blue carbon emissions in a much more systemic um wider meaning so incorporating not only mangroves but also seagrasses and coastal wetlands Australia will be discussing their blue carbon program but just as context for latin american countries when we talk about blue carbon we're mainly focusing on mangroves okay the other thing that is important these webinars have um a touch of mitigation even though we are very aware that mangroves offer other type of ecosystem services that are not mitigation related um like as we mentioned all the others before adaptation is extremely important sea level rights but because um we were interested in mdc's mitigation as a way to support countries to incorporate that aspect since already countries are including mangroves and blue carbon in the mdc's as adaptation so adaptation is could be improved but it's mitigation that we are trying to support these regional uh governments with um and again you will see that this webinar is rather focused to certain things and not others and this is because this comes from the workshop that we did last year in medida with the regional governments we're trying to answer some of their questions so it's not that there are not many other things that we could be discussing it's just that we're trying to follow up on that workshop so having said that today this session will be shorter than the other one but the structure will be the same we will have our panelists giving their speeches and then we will open the space through the chat for the governments and the participants to have their questions it is rather important you take the opportunity to to um make your questions to this excellent team of experts that we are having today and we have the pleasure to um count today on three panelists we have tertius the cleaver which probably i'm not pronouncing properly but sorry tertius um tertius it's a senior policy analyst at the department of the environment of the government of australia he's a marine biologist and biochemists who has worked a lot in marine science agriculture and environmental management since the 80s he has more than 30 40 years of experience working with private sector with academia with the government uh both in australia and also in the us and he's currently employed by the government of australia the department of industry science energy and resources and he's joining us today um as in the role of expert on wetlands and also um in the role of uh coordinating uh participating to the greenhouse gas inventory of wetlands in australia within the uh branch of the government that is called national inventory systems and international reporting uh tertius you are very welcome when you study your presentation to highlight things that i might have said maybe slightly broad or comment on that so thanks very much tertius i will introduce the other panelists as they speak but let me also welcome kin mostly boston uh representative also here today from the government of uyana we are extremely welcome that uyana will be sharing their experiences with the um mangrove related proposals into the uh global environmental fund and the green climate fund they will share some of their experiences some of the projects that they've um submitted some of the tips that they can give to all the governments and then i have the pleasure to also introduce my friend um next door office uh colleague from f.a.o in the time of dinosaurs so mark dumas johenson who welcome i will also introduce you later on but um he is a representative of the green climate fund so with no further ado i'm going to give the floor to uh tertius after thanking him for being here at seven in the morning and and taking the the time to give our governments in the region your lessons learned for the blue carbon program um monitoring thanks so much for green house gases thanks very much tertius thank you rosa i'll uh just start my presentation there we go thank you rosa um there was a change in the organization of uh departments uh in australia at the end of last year so that i did work for the department of the environment but that whole branch that we talked about uh national ministry systems and it's national reporting um was shifted to another department so you've actually got both departments correct um i've been in both in the last year so i'm going to talk so i'm going to talk a little bit today about what we're doing in australia it was respect to um accounting for carbon in australia's coastal wetlands in our national inventory reports to the urinus triple c and so first thing i would say is one of the reasons why we might look at this is the vastness of this country it's nice to be a small continent we have a significant coastline depending upon how you measure it it's somewhere between 52 and 59 that thousands of kilometers around which we have of course a significant estuarine environment tidal marsh currently sits at around 2.3 million hectares mangrove at about 1.1 million hectares which makes us about third in the world after brazil and the indonesia and seagrass meadows more than 5 million hectares but we're not quite sure because we haven't discovered all of the meadows at this point um the reason for looking at these at these particular ecosystems is that although they are only about one percent of australia's terrestrial um vegetated areas and we do have a vast arid region in australia as well with very low vegetation um those areas contain about five percent of all of australia's carbon stores so um and this this was reduced by lorenz baker and lovelock back in about 2012 those figures uh probably need to be updated a little bit but the areas are fairly consistent so today's talk is really about how we go about accounting for for carbon from those ecosystems and particularly mangroves and so i'm going to talk a little bit about the framework and the scope of the accounts the activities that we currently include in the account that impact those environments that we that we that we monitor how we might estimate carbon stock change in those in those areas how we go about it at this time an example of current modeling and some of the lessons learned in the past five years that i've actually been doing this for a bit of time so let's go into the accounting scope of framework and where does blue carbon actually fit into all of this thank you sorry just to interrupt you um i don't see your slides so oh don't you no please go to the share the screen yep and i'm just gonna end my slideshow again yeah maybe you could stop it and do it again maybe tell me what's this problem or the panelists do you did you see here's a slide let me have a look now yeah perfect yep okay all right well well that's a bit of a downer okay no it was perfect it was perfect introduction we didn't need the slide so far perfect wonderful okay right well this is the most this is the first important slide then okay so so if we if we look at the framework um we're coastal wetlands actually sits within our reporting so we have our national greenhouse gas accounts and and they are there to do a number of different things and of course we ministry of reporting requirements under both UNFCCC and under KP um this allows us to also track our national emissions from 1990 onwards well actually when it comes to lulu sieve uh land use land use change in forestry um our modelling actually goes back uh to about 1970-1972 uh we track progress against um Australia's emission reduction commitments i'm going to talk a little bit about uh our emission reduction fund towards the end as one of the lessons learned and of course it informs policymakers and the public as to where we are at uh with our management of greenhouse gases in Australia so what underpins national greenhouse gas accounts and how and how we monitor all that and and report it um is through the guidance under uh given by the 2006 IPCC guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventory and of course volume for agriculture forestry and other land use is the importance of volume there now one of the questions that was asked was well how do we account for all mangroves do we count them on the wetlands or do we count them on the forests um i'll talk about that in a second but suffice to say that at this time um we account for them as forests because they meet the criteria as a forest and in fact we've always been reporting on mangroves as as forest we simply haven't uh until recently had the guidance on how best to account for their carbon stock change now the 2013 supplement um came into effect about 2014 that provided further guidance that expanded the uh uh chapter seven wetlands chapter in volume four and as such gave us uh at the very least some basic tier one guidance on how to account for carbon in coastal wetland areas and which included mangroves but as well tidal marsh and seagrass meadows and so we also had an extension of the activities that we might look at on the wetlands that uh which is under the 2006 guidelines basically it's mostly about peat extraction which there is very little of in australia in fact there is none at this time except for a minor cottage industry in Tasmania was related to the production of whiskey activities that promote emissions or removals uh that we looked at including forest management extraction excavation drainage rewetting re vegetation creation every rewetted soils and i'll go through some of that a little bit later so to get an idea as to what that expanded uh activity might look like in our current accounts the things that you see in red on this particular slide are the things that i currently account for in uh uh with the expansion of coastal wetlands into into our u and f triple c accounting now understand that there's there's only a subset of this that actually goes into under kp and that's um because our uh under kp the only things that we are reporting on that is relevant here are the mangroves themselves a tidal marsh and seagrass at this point are not included on the kp accounting let me just jump in for those who don't understand what kp is he is talking about Kyoto Kyoto protocol my apologies yeah no problem most of our countries are non annex one so yeah Kyoto protocol is something that they're not very familiar with yeah thank you church and and it's it's important to also understand that um from the nationally determined contributions this kp account is the Kyoto protocol accounts that are actually the important ones okay unit triple c is uh captures everything as much as we can but for the indices uh it's kp protocol okay so i wanted to answer a particular question that you had Rosa right at the very beginning because there are numerous ways that you can actually um go about this and i share the pain of people trying trying to get an um traction with respect to how do you apply 2006 guidelines and then on top of that you've got the 23rd in supplement and how do they interact well the supplement as i said is an extension a voluntary extension i would add for annex one countries um that's uh we've decided to apply in um progressively over time and so um i'm currently working solely on chapter four coastal wetlands and in that there are only a number of things that i currently uh that i currently account for with respect to to chapter four but perhaps when reading through the guidance in the the supplements you come across the first paragraph in the the overview the very beginning of of the supplement that basically says what's the coverage of the wetland supplements when you pull that apart it effectively says um under uh sentence four land use category under which land is reported depends on national land use category definitions data collection systems and tracking of land transitions effectively you make the decision as to where you want to report um uh your carbon accounts whether it be under a wetlands land category or whether it be on the forest so in our case in australia's case we report on mangrove any land use transitions we report those under forest lands or conversions to forest lands or conversions from forest lands to something else the other issues that i've had long discussions with uh with respect to with uh colleagues in my department is uh where does blue carbon actually fit in with respect to coastal wetlands you have to look at the definitions uh within uh the 2030 supplements to understand that um it is actually quite prescriptive coastal wetlands um are affected by tidal water whether that be fresh water brackish or saline water and they are areas vegetated by vascular plants now that has two important consequences for me as uh the accountants the carbon accountants if you like in that nonvascular plants whether they be algae um macroalgae microalgae um bacteria um the areas that are populated by that for example um tidal flats which aren't vegetated we don't account for those don't account for the carbon in those even though they do actually contain a significant amount of carbon um even though it might be less than you might find in the vegetate the the vegetated parts of the tidal zone the soil still contains a reasonable amount of carbon and so i think that was an opportunity missed but again we have to work within the definitions that are provided it also refers specifically to mangroves tidal marshes and seagrass meadows so that in dealing with blue carbon broadly uh between departments if you like those members those colleagues who are still in part of the environments who are looking after wetlands around Australia or looking after rams are um have also agreed that at this point we can strain ourselves uh to mangroves tidal marshes and seagrasses as being the representative habitats under blue carbon that we can actually do some accounting with so let's look at how we might estimate carbon stock change and remember when doing an account we are looking at um the net impact of um anthropogenic action on a on a habitat and how that the net impact on the on the carbon stock in that habitat so what we report on on a year-to-year basis is how that carbon stock changes because of uh some direct anthropogenic impact on that land now in applying guidance i have to look through both the 2006 guidelines as well as the 2013 wetland supplement because the 2006 guideline provides important information definitional information such as how to define the carbon pools defines your land use and management categories it tells you how to identify your key sources that is those habitats that are potential sources of large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions or remittals that will significantly impact your account from year-to-year precious sorry just to keep on time you have 15 minutes so just to let you know that's all right yeah so it's it's those sorts of issues you need to actually work across both um the 2006 as well as the 2013 wetland supplement i won't even talk about the refinement at this point in time although i am actually applying it in other areas so the current activities accounted for that involve Australian coastal wetlands our forest conversions which in 2006 guidance is forest conversion to grasslands crops and settlements or wetlands and in this particular case the 2013 wetland supplement provides me guidance on how to account for mangroves converted to settlements okay and we look at direct emissions i don't look at lag emissions and i don't particularly look at forest regrowth at this stage land converted to forests includes wetland coastal wetlands converted to mangrove forest which is effectively tidal marsh converted to mangrove forest or tidal flats converted to mangrove forest and then we also have environmental plantings for mangroves and i account for those things in the accounts currently so the use of activity that we that we talk about is effectively the area of change we observe change whether it be a thinning of the canopy or it be a removal of the canopy or it be the introduction of the forest on what was previously tidal flat for example a good example of how we do that is looking at the development of well commercial and residential development on canal estates in an area very close to to my heart cleveland an area where i lived for a time in the 1980s it was a lovely ravey bay was a lovely little bay with mangrove tidal marsh and seagrass by the mid 80s through to currently it's become this big development of canal estates as you can see below the way that we actually determine the areas of change is through the analysis of satellite imagery and so i've included the satellite images of the of the of that area over those two time periods and we at this time we're using a landscape imagery as our major source of information it's not to say that that's the only source because sometimes we cannot determine what is happening in other things such as tidal marsh or seagrass meadows so i use other sources of information to to look for impacts in areas where there is likely development such as around ports and so on the nice thing about satellite imagery is that you can build up a very good picture and this is from some work that was done by the by geoscience australia in conjunction with the australian national university university new south wales on providing a timeline of australia's mangrove extent from about 1985 through to 1916 and this is just an example of some of the work that can be done by analyzing landscape imagery in terms of not only determining what the what the extent is in an area but also have some idea as to the the amount of canopy cover that is available this is very detailed work what we tend to do is to look at for our purposes we look at the extent only this time so estimating carbon stock change applying that guidance once you have an area i use a tier basically a combination of tier one and tier two approaches so that tier three which is the approach currently used in australia for its terrestrial forests is based on a significant computer program called full carbon accounting model or full can for short that through combination of empirical and numerical modelling can grow forests or can decay matter that has from the forest that's been cleared over time and so you you can work out the emissions or the removals of carbon in an area based on changes that you see over time but i use a somewhat similar simpler approach mostly tier two through developing a series of parameter values for simpler models that are based on the based on the models or the guidance given through both the 2006 and the 2030 guideline so to estimate carbon stock changes look at living biomass above and below ground dead organic matter which is which includes non woody litter as well as deadwood and soil organic carbon so the basic equation for any one of those is the change in carbon is an emission factor by the area of that change you determine that for each of the pools you aggregate those pools and you get the the change from year to year based on that simple equation it's also worthwhile looking um because one of the questions is well what is it that we should be modelling directly it's worthwhile looking at the common report common format reporting tables of common sorry reporting format tables that um are used to pardon me are used for um inputting your data uh in through at UNFCCC these tables give you an idea as to what your outputs should be that you should be reporting so that under UNFCCC you're looking at gains and losses in terms of your biomass in terms of your soil and in terms of your dead organic matter if you look at under a Kyoto protocol they like to have a little bit more disaggregation so that you're looking at above and below ground biomass at your deadwood and your non woody litter as well as your soil so that from a modelling point of view you're really as a minimum from Australia as an annex one country we need to develop models that provide us with changes in in stock or above and below ground biomass as well as the litter deadwood and soil so that we determine our areas of change for example somebody's gone and removed a mangrove because of putting in a port we see that change through the analysis satellite imagery that analysis is based on the coastal tiles each of those each of the tiles that you see here is effectively a an area an image of a landsat image well actually a composite image and that we analyse on a year-to-year basis and note any changes that we see in forest cover we use a tier two approach my models are spreadsheet based i'll use microsoft excel but any spreadsheet complex spreadsheet will be fine and effectively i apply the equation the change in carbon is the emission factor by area the observed area is is from the satellite imagery and the emission factor is from basic good science reported in the literature that i've uncovered over a period of time so now i've provided rosa with the actual spreadsheet for this slide or anybody who wishes it but this basically is a run-through of what a model might look like at the very top row the sd-54 refers to the tile that you saw in the previous slide which is where if you like the pixel location of the change in pixels it is observed and then we look through different the different habitats that we might observe there and some of the conditions that you would require to answer questions as to how the model would go progress forward and this particular sheet is if you like once you work your way through it provides the logic under which the model works and i can certainly help people with that if they wish to contact me for the growth model i chose an equation for that simulated if you like growth of the forest rather than growth of an individual tree so the weights that you see are the weights of a particular species per hectare over time it's all explained here as to what that is the mass the weight is based on dry weight and that provides you with a sigmoidal growth curve for which you have a minimum maximum extent or weight as well as the point in time when you have maximum age where the maximum mass is reached and the and the age at which the forest is growing fastest now that requires a significant amount of work to and there's only a couple of examples of that work here in Australia so my model is based on some work that was done in western Australia and but unfortunately because of lack of other data i applied that across Australia at this time i'm hoping that with time i'll be able to modify this to be more regionally based yep sorry okay you'll have five more minutes and we'll open questions thanks yep thanks fine good all right quick a flash of the what the model looks like in in the spreadsheet again if people are interested i can certainly talk about it unfortunately i can't give away a copy of the model itself at this time i need permission from my department to do that acquiring data for models ways to do that is to look through the scientific literature to work with i've worked with Australia's wetland scientists ran a couple workshops and acquired a lot of data over time we're also very fortunate that at the time when i first started was the end of a research project um by the CSIRO in Australia they performed the marine and coastal carbon biogeochemistry cluster who they in conjunction with a number of universities went around Australia and effectively examined how carbon varied between habitats and climate zones around the Australian coastline and a recent summary of that work was published as the reference is below as well as number of publications have come out of that recently so very quickly if you wish to go through with this i found the best way to do is to establish a framework to guide further work establish the activities you want to report on what activity data is available pouches to be collected and establish where you want to actually report it in which lands use category review your own in-country data to establish where possible your your own ef and parameter values for your modeling and look for additional data sources to fill gaps and that means working with other countries i've used information from New Zealand because their work on temperate mangroves is actually first class and exceeds what we've done here in Australia um from that you can develop where you think your your tier level model is possible and what is required because if you if you find that you're looking at a key category from an annex one country point of view um we need to use a higher tier model we can't just use a tier one model and then to develop your model the major learning from this in spreadsheet models is that it's difficult to maintain a consistent representation of lands using approaches two or three now what that effectively means is i have two models one's for mangrove growth one is for mangrove excavation they are blind to one another they can't you might have an area where you have growth over one decade but in the next decade you might have had a removal i'd be recording the growth in one model and continuing on that growth through the following decade because growth occurs over three decades for a forest but not knowing that um the half of that forest was removed 10 years down the track so using a spreadsheet model it's difficult i'm currently working to move the models into the tier three a full cam model here in Australia and that will overcome that particular problem because that particular model does account for changes over time government buying is absolutely important um from Australia's point of view we've accepted voluntary inclusion of of at least some of the uh 2013's wetland supplement as i said i'm currently working on chapter four i'll be working on other chapters as i go forward um uh because they'll be required uh particularly under the uh 2019 um revision and the other thing is that if there is something another part of the department which is our emissions reductions fund are very interested in blue carbon because blue carbons represent uh very good sinks and if you can continue to develop well for one thing you want to avoid destroying your your blue carbon sinks because they'll become great emitters but the other thing is the blue the environmental emissions reduction fund is there to provide funds to industry to undertake projects to reduce their emissions or to mitigate their emissions through establishing things like uh new mangroves um reducing uh one of the things we're looking at is to reduce coastal bums uh which keep tidal water out of um uh coastal wetland areas and convert and has in the past converted those to wetland pasture fresh water wetland pasture which are great methane emitters to remove those bums to real to allow the uh reintroduction tidal flow and convert those back into uh uh saline wetlands to reduce methane those sorts of things have spurred uh the government to have a positive approach with respect to blue carbon and one of the best things that you can do is to undertake UNFCCC training programs my my understanding of the accounts and how to how to manage modeling under the accounts was greatly aided by some of the training programs that I've undertaken and some of the third party training courses that are currently available through the greenhouse gas management institute are also excellent places to uh to undertake training so if you have if there's confusion about how it all fits together um training these training programs will help significantly when I was in America um that's what I saw a lot of where I currently live it's as cold but we just don't have that snow very happy thanks very much thank you for this I thought that could not be Australia even though you said that this morning you were two degrees Celsius so I think Australia definitely can be very cold thank you so much for this extremely interesting um chat there is a lot of information to digest so we are so grateful yeah absolutely there is uh we will be sharing this a slide so people and the audience of the governments can take a look more quietly to that and we're going to open the uh panels for everyone to ask you questions but uh while there is writing their questions in their chat so I'm calling the audience to include their questions especially for the governments let me ask you two questions um you were mentioning you have this slide that you were showing the one the um activities that you were accounting in terms that you were not so maybe that's something you could explain why do you use some activities and not the others and particularly you are accounting uh mangrove growth but you are not accounting forest regrowth so the expansion of new areas of mangrove doesn't seem to be accounting so why would you do that and also before that before you answer the second questions would be about soils I think countries in the region more or less can figure out with tier one how to do the above round but their problems are soils soils um co2 but also methane so maybe these two questions on my side thank you yeah no sure so um the activities are based on what we see most of um first of all because we're looking at uh changes due to direct anthropogenic impacts so the two anthropogenic impacts are either we remove a mangrove uh because we're because of some development or we grow a mangrove because we have an environmental offset somewhere um where we remove mangrove here but you know what will we've established and a new intertidal area over there so we'll plant some mangroves over in that area to compensate and so those are two um two activities that I can account for um in terms of regrowth this comes back down to my being a little bit blind as to what happens um uh to an area regrowth effectively means an area that was previously cleared of mangrove has naturally naturally or otherwise got new mangrove on it so I don't see that specific activity yet when I move into full cam that will become an activity that will actually be um be accounted for it's it's simply a restriction of the type of modelling that you do tier one and tier two models um and and trouble is you know Australia being so large we have we just simply don't um have the capacity to uh do the field surveys that would be required to to effectively monitor that so we do it through satellite imagery and and that that is great but um and we spend a lot of dollars to to do that because it requires a whole team of people to uh effectively analyse differences usually differences and see that a change pixel that is where you and change is observed in the in the canopy forest canopy whether a it is real and not an artifact but real and b to then um ascribe it to either a natural event where and that the 7 000 hectares lost in the Gulf Carpeteria is a natural event um well not ascribed to to direct human interference in those in those mangroves as against an anthropogenic event where somebody's come in and um either grow in a mangrove or or remove the mangrove so um perfect yep and soil sorry um basically the way that I work the models is that um it relies on data uh from scientific studies on the soil content on the carbon content in the top meter of soil in sediments around Australia um that carbon cluster that I spoke about did a lot of that work okay and um I am the beneficiary of that where um a party can't actually or hasn't got that data they may have to rely on data from areas that are similar in in habitat where the work has been done in a path from another party or you have to rely on the default values that are provided in the guidance but you will have some starting points and the whole the whole purpose of um the whole direction of the accounts is one of continuous improvement going forward you may not start with an account that is entirely accurate but accuracy will improve over time and that's what you aim for yeah thank you you don't need to actually put it all together in one go absolutely this progressive approach is extremely important I will come back to the topic of soil but let me first ask you something from a government they um uh one of the government in the region is asking um in one of your slide you mentioned that mangrove forest um is what you are focusing on and the question is what do you consider mangrove forests when estimating biomass only mangroves or forests predominantly with mangroves and the person is asking this because they have this discussion of whether to operate other uh like participating species or not yeah yeah so um effectively use the um uh the definition of forest that is in the 2006 guidance and it's a it's a fairly broad definition um so um in the sense that from Australia's point of view we look at um a canopy cover of uh of about 20 percent or more with a height of about two meters plus okay that that could be considered if you like forest under the definition so any mangrove that is out there that looks that matches that particular definition will be considered forest we have we we extended a little bit in the sense that um you know for plantations when you first plant your plantation your forest plantation um obviously your saplings aren't too meters high and and you're not going to see uh your canopy cover at that particular point in time if we know that something's being planted and it's forest um then that becomes a forest because it's potentially will be a forest within the next five years tertiary sorry to interrupt but the question goes to species so I think species yeah no it's species species uh if it's a tree if it's a tree in that that comprises the the forest then it's the habitat rather than just the species okay it's so it will we go in yeah it will go in okay it will go in yeah yeah yeah so so government of guliana I think this question is guliana uh yes you incorporate there uh the forest as as tertias was saying so you'll find that the carbon content in soils is different between mangroves tidal marsh and and un-vegetated areas anyway um and so when you when you're reporting uh or doing your modeling you will have different values for your soil carbon for those for those habitats and whether it be seagrass or tidal marsh or mangrove which just reflects the conditions for those habitats um so when in a reporting sense mangroves can be reported it depends totally up to the country as I said before can be reported on the wetlands if you wish to uh on the coastal wetlands or can be reported under on the forests because mangrove forests do meet the definition of forest in the 2006 guideline guidelines so I guess answering the government sorry sorry to interrupt but I think answering the government of Mexico then yes you can use a wetland supplement but then put those data under the forest exactly that's exactly what I've done I've I've used a wetland supplement to better characterize um mangrove forest and as distinct from terrestrial forests because effectively mangrove forests um sequester much more carbon than Australia's terrestrial forest exactly on a per hectare basis yeah exactly um we're going to give um now the floor to kin but before from the government of Guayana but before we do that um churches one of the issues that we saw in our first session is that incorporating a blue carbon as part of the NDCs in non annex one countries requires so half mangroves within red plants so the mitigation targets that have been there is not a blue carbon barso framework for for for the mangroves and it has to then be connected to the frails and the frails that countries have so and that added a lot of complications like having just one line of reporting for mangroves when they are already accounted within red or even if they are not accounted but they occupy an area yes that have been reported within the frails are very it's very complicated so the option two is that for NDCs countries in the region could use their greenhouse gas national inventories and then create these reporting uh categories for mangroves so having exactly what the government of Australia is doing so you have your blue carbon within the national greenhouse gas communication um but the tricky part here and the question for you is because you you basically probably also have mangroves under Kyoto and then you use the Kyoto commitments for the NDCs so basically that in the if we translate that to the non annex one that is like saying you have already your commitments on the red and then you put the reds into the NDCs so it is a bit tricky for countries that wanted to have their NDCs with blue carbon as a as a self-standing line of reporting out of the red class I would say the only or the easiest way right now would be to have them reporting that under their greenhouse gas inventory so create this line of reporting that is specifically for blue carbon any tip you can then give on on these how could they use their greenhouse gas inventories uh and and their subcategories of mangroves as a way to then create mitigation targets under NDCs it's a question yeah it's a very tricky question not not one that I'm actually very familiar with um in terms of you know because the only thing I work with um is basically uh preparing the reports for unifficulty and and the Kyoto protocol um let me ask you that an easier question and we'll move to the YANA what difference is the reporting that you have in Kyoto for blue carbon and then the the commitment for for mangrove that you have under Kyoto and then the accounting that you also included in the greenhouse gas communication does that match exactly no so for for mangroves it does um but of course under unifficulty also then report changes to seagrass and tidal marsh habitats which I don't report to which I don't report under Kyoto so um yeah it's mangroves as I said has always been reported uh simply because there were forests captured in satellite imagery and we've simply resolved a better carbon accounting for for that type of forest and so and so it goes forward from there um how we go forward under Paris I'm not sure at this point okay that's that's fair enough that's fair enough it's not an easy question no um there was some discussion on the on the chart about the definition of forest answering a bit Guiana um but we're gonna move ahead um to the Guiana government sure thank you so much Tertius thank you very very much this is extremely useful um Australia is very advanced they have tier three modeling as you could see so most of our regional governments are working on tier one and using the full values but Australia already goes into the entire modeling approach tier three both for growth and for soil so so it is um it is top level but I think with your slides are going to be extremely important for those of the countries to see which type of soil emissions Australia is uh accounting into their system which you highlighted in red color so thank you so much also for sharing these slides and my pleasure thank you for offering thank you also Stersha for offering some support if some countries might want to ask you further questions yes um very pleasure uh I'm more than happy to uh to respond thank you very much thank you very much okay perfect let me show that screen and I'm going to give floor then to kin uh mostly Boston uh we have the we are very grateful that we have here today with us um sorry Kim is the coordinator of the mangrove restoration and management department at Guyana's national agricultural research extension institute the NRA and the overall objective of this institution institute the NRA is to respond to climate change and mitigate its effect through the protection restoration conservation and management of Guyana's coastal mangrove ecosystem and today kin will be talking about lessons learned and experiences that Guyana has on submitting uh mangrove and coastal ecosystems related projects to the global environmental fan and the uh green climate fan so kin very warm welcome and the floor is yours thank you good evening everyone so my presentation um is going to focus um more in general and how we have been able to mobilize finance and mangrove restoration and management in um Guyana so briefly I'm going to give uh overview of the country profile how we the mangrove restoration um program has evolved in Guyana over the years areas that have been implemented and what has been some of our experiences and then go through how we have financed restoration and protection initiative sources of financing and what are some of the funding opportunities and the challenges that we've had again as us is in South America we have a very small population and 90 percent of that population is concentrated along the coast so it's a very coastal population and we have no natural disasters but we are vulnerable because we have a low lying close line about 1.8 meters below sea level so we have a need for uh coastal protection most of that coastal protection is through uh mangrove ecosystems and high structures such as seawalls the mangrove ecosystem is um low the current coverage is just about 33 000 hectares it's french mangroves but they have been seen bordering the coastline we have three species have been seen rise for a mangle and the lagoon polaris and those our ecosystem because of the fact that we are on the norbizil shelf last minute system it's subject to natural coastal erosion and efficient cycles with you guys so resources uh we are agriculture country we have forest resources and a very recent we are currently um investing in our recent oil finds and we also have mineral resources available so how the mangrove restoration program evolved in geana it started in 2010 with the geana mangrove restoration project and at the same time uh mangroves were declared a protected species in geana or under the forest act during the implementation of the project we established a national mangrove management action plan that moved from 2000 was implemented during 2010 to 2012 and we were also able to get technical assistance through the european union funded project that saw landmills providing technical assistance with feeling of mangrove experts as well as engineers to provide support as we had not undertaken a restoration initiative of this scale before in the country at the end of the restoration project itself in 2013 the mangrove restoration and management department was established within the national agricultural research and extension institute and that is where we are presently implementing the activities and lessons learned um during the project so under the project which is founded by the government of geana and european union um we looked at a number of areas not just the restoration of degraded areas but we also collaborated with the university of geana to conduct research on um on geana's mangroves we also looked at increases public awareness and education about the importance of mangroves so that we can get community buy-in and we look at small livelihood projects that can be tied to the mangroves that will allow communities to earn an income by protecting and restoring their mangrove ecosystem so just to give a brief on what we have been some of the projects that we've implemented with gas restoration all of which was based on the public awareness and education as a background and ongoing research we have done significant work with regards to establishing engineering structures sediment traps geotextile tubes in areas where the shoreline did not meet sufficient criteria for mangroves to be established and where we would have done that we'll supplement that supplemented that work with planting spartan grasses at those locations and areas where we our assessment indicated that the conditions were suitable we did mangrove seedling plantations with community support so all of our seedling plantations and nurseries for those plantations were community nurseries were trained and paid persons in the community to establish nurseries and then you paid them to plant the seedlings when they reach appropriate stage we had one project at hydrological restoration and the reason we had these several different types of interventions is that during our technical assistance support that we received we adopted the program of assessing what is happening at the site first and then going through the various interventions to see why mangroves are not there and what is the most appropriate intervention that needs to be established to reestablish the mangrove system so we've had a number of successes with regards to our seedling plantations we've established over restored over 300 hectares of mangrove along the coast we have natural colonization of the mangrove seedlings in areas where we would have implemented the geotextile tube grinds as the appropriate intervention or the sediment traps and we also have rapid colonization of the spartino that was planted from one region to the other so how did we finance these restoration initiatives a significant portion uh about 80 of the finance for some public funds from the government of liana as they would have committed to mangrove restoration um activities and then we also had a significant portion of that from international donors primarily the european union small projects funded by multilaterals and i'm going to go into what some of those projects were and then we had funding as well from conservation organizations the government of liana funding was primarily for capital projects as i indicated the mangrove restoration department is now department of nari so we have annual budgeting as part of nari's annual preparation of annual budget so we also have a capital budget and those projects fund the capital projects restoration activities it also funds research monitoring and our public raising education program the international donor fund you receive us through the european union gcca budget budget support and the 11th edf which the gcca program funded initial mangrove restoration project as well as technical assistance we're currently um receiving funding for technical assistance under the 11th edf to establish some of those capital projects as well as looking to establish mangrove reserves as part of the performance criteria on the agreement for the 11th edf there's the kind of fund for local initiatives that would have provided funding for um livelihood a livelihood initiative for persons who were involved in agriculture in mangroves and that provide that fund provided for um PPEs as well as training for persons within the communities to establish apris within mangrove areas which that's the multilaterals um the gf through its um international waters last year funded the nord brazil shelf mangrove project which was implemented by conservation international and that project was a one-year project that provided critical research information as well as updating of the ganna mangrove forest cover the jeff small grants program um in ganna funded one restoration project through a local NGO with nary's participation and technical input and that also allowed for the restoration of um one site as well as um training of persons and public education conservation organization we would have successfully prepared proposals and received funding from wwf education from nature the restoration grant where we provide technical assistance for a local NGO to create a proposal and receive funding for the restoration of the site as well as we receive funding from the workshop grant to provide education and awareness and train persons with regards to mangrove restoration and management at the moment um we're receiving technical assistance through severe amazonia and nasa for a capacity building workshop that is looked into establishing mangrove monitoring system utilizing remote sensing and satellite imagery and then as well on the um this area we the livelihood program had received um funding from cats that program provided um funding for training in tourism we have a pilot project that looked at conservation tours with thin a mangrove aerial training um educating persons about the importance of mangroves while at the same time um it's tied to the history of one of the first villages bought by freed slaves in them so as part of the livelihood program it's not just um the agriculture that we looked at what we also looked at a tourism livelihood project there are a number of funding opportunities that are currently in the pipeline and there are a number of future opportunities that we're looking at for the second phase of the nbs mangrove project that was funded by jeff and conservation international is currently looking at what that project would fund coming out of the first phase and the recommendations that were made the european union um on the 11th edf has already prepared an action that is looking to sports title this to sport again as nature-based responses to global climate change and that is expected to um commence in 2021 we the conservation international giana has an agreement with exxon for the exxon gana resilience and one project and that project is a five-year project that is especially contribute to a green economy and enhance gana's natural and cultural heritage and as part of our project um the post of the mangrove ecosystem is expected to receive funding for green-gray infrastructure projects as well as updating our national mangrove management action plan with regards to future opportunities we have had some initial discussions with some of the oil and gas support companies that are currently in gana that are looking to invest in mangrove restoration and protection initiatives primarily they have expressed an interest that in investing in these initiatives they would like to be able to claim the carbon credits although at the moment we have not done significant work with regards to um registering our mangrove restoration activities for carbon credits so that's a multi-lateral as Rosemarie indicated we have submitted two project proposals to the gcf for funding um these have not been approved so one has been submitted through five c's that is looking to enhance sorry course enhancing coastal protection for climate change resilience and one submitted through conservation international that's looking at the potential of gana's inland mangrove forest before the reducing emissions and then resistance climate change while these project proposals have been prepared and submitted to the gcf um they have not been approved yes i are currently going through the process let me jump in because there are a lot of acronyms here for those of you in the region the triple five c sorry the the five c's is this gary b and climate change community yeah sorry yeah and also for those of you who are not um a very uh used to it mbs is nature-based solutions which is the use of mangroves as green infrastructure the use of mangroves in general as as ecosystem services just just to clarify and then the edf is the european um development fund yeah exactly perfect thank you these are these are amazing slides thank you uh kin go ahead yes um the mbs we're referring to is in north brazil's self-liased marine ecosystem because the projects um that project looked at not gana alone but um gana and serena oh sorry perfect so mbs here the second phase mbs it's the the north a basin north of the ocean last oh sorry perfect thanks for clarifying that thank you so as we are on um the mbs mangrove project the official name for the project um it's quite long so we usually use that um there that project did a number of studies and one of those studies conducted by silvestron climate associates and i noticed uh c brooks is part of this webinar so his team at silvestron climate so we conducted the blue carbon feasibility assessment as part of that project in 2019 and why they did not use in country data they value the carbon storage for gana at 700 million and um the value based on coastal resilient benefits because as i mentioned the project was gana and serena was 1100 million in serena and the value based on the potential cost savings um by replacing mangrove structures while this is not possible to replace the mangrove mangrove structures in gana was estimated at 1.5 to 3.6 billion dollars so as i indicated while this assessment um was not done using in country data one of the recommendations coming out of it is to be able to do that um data collection and assessment to get in country values in addition to that um the project also had a consultant who's done that um looked at financing um conducted strategic assessment of financing potential mechanism available um to ci and they recommended a hybrid approach that looked at diversifying the the financial uh portfolio not looking at carbon offsets um oil funds um in gana and serena corporate partnerships uh green bonds and community engagements so what are some of the challenges that uh we have with regards to mobilizing finance well one thing that we start is that at the moment in gana there's um no policy on ice integrated coastal zone management and mangrove conservation i was happy to learn at the meeting um this morning that the officer climate change in gana will be looking at a establishing a policy with regards to our coastal zone so this particular challenge um hopefully will be shortly overcome there's a lack of coordination across um coastal regulatory bodies the organization that are responsible for mangrove management and conservation in gana is spread across a number of different agencies while um the national agriculture research and extension institutes at the moment is the agency that is leading the restoration activities with regards to mangroves the agency does not have a legislative mandate with regards to mangroves the legislative mandate comes on the gana forestry commission um part of it is under the sea and river defense division the environmental protection agency and a number of other agencies um so that there is no need to be able to coordinate um the activities of these agencies and um our data and human capacity as i indicated the work that was done under the mbs project with regards so um the carbon assessment was not done using um our in-country data so there's need for a carbon assessment using in-country data um gathering data on species and stuff monitoring um through that severe amazonian nasa project we're hoping to make head the way which we got so our monitoring program our monitoring right now is primarily focused on our restoration initiatives and that is field monitoring um to do an assessment of the success of our restoration activities so the monitoring that we need to move um to is doing an annual assessment of our mangrove of our changes and so forth and implementing adaptive management so that's briefly my presentation um i trust that i was able to provide an overview of what we've been doing gana how we've been able to finance those restoration activities and uh what some of the challenges that we are we would have experienced and how we plan to move forward um happy to take any questions thank you kin i i truly enjoyed uh your presentation all these different type of sources of funding and and the type of activities that you're also promoting um as coastal protection and thank you i think that was really really enlightening let me open the floor now for governments in the region to ask you questions and some of them will probably overlap with the presentation by mark from the green climate fund on what are the type of lessons learned of how to uh improve the competitiveness so that projects finally get funded i guess so um maybe that would be my question to you while we open the chart and and the audience can ask questions about uh what would be your suggestions from your experiences giana in terms of both for the gef and green environmental fund and the um and the gcf what are in your opinion some of the tips that you could give these governments to have successful programs it's co funding it is having already existing policies it's having a clear vision it's having clear targets what do you think would be some of these requirements um we're definitely having a clear vision of um what is it you want to have funded um for us i think one of the challenges as well was with regards to data and having the available data that is required so um required of these project proposals and at the moment we are working to overcome the challenge with regards to in country capacity to prepare these project proposals um so i know a number of agencies within the miniature of agriculture um nary included are participating in a capacity building project to prepare concept notes for green climate fund navigation for other countries in the region thank you so much for for sharing these lessons and i think this is extremely useful um let me give two more minutes for someone other countries to ask something in the meantime otherwise mark is going to start to get ready also um while mark starts getting ready um Guiana let me ask you also something um in terms of this international as we saw there are different types of finance like from private sector to interactions uh with aid agencies and bilateral but from this big um funding body is geff and green climate fund your experience has been more successful uh with geff than with the gcf or or the timing has been different so is there any suggestion between these two that you might want to make in terms of how to be more competitive and then we'll give the the uh the stick to uh to mark he is the one who will also let us know what would be the good tips to have more competitive proposals thank you i'm sorry rosemary you're addressing i'm yeah the question is between the gaff in your experience between the global environmental fund and the green climate fund um how which one has been more successful for you in terms of funding and and what do you think would be the reason well the gf would have been more successful because we actually got the funding and the projects implemented um a application for those projects um so for instance the the gf international waters um finally i received the application went through conservation international and i think the approach that they use with regards to the preparation of the project proposal and including our stakeholders and getting an idea from the country's guidance sorry now what were our objectives and what we would like to get out of the um projects was key um with regards to the gcf projects um what happened been actively involved with regards to the feedback from gcf on what has been the issue with those projects i know that um the data availability um has been one of the areas where we've been challenging great great this is extremely um useful we are going to open the chat right now so that whomever has questions uh both for keen or for mark and start writing them in the chat so that we will speed up a bit the process uh so keen thank you so much i am very impressed with the um with the activities the sources the uh the type of vision that giana has on coastal protection and role of mangroves and other coastal ecosystems thank you so much for sharing this the slides will also thank you thank you very much the slides will be shared with the other with the audience of also people can digest a lot a bit more quietly this great information um and now i'd like to give the floor to uh mark dumas johansen um because it's been an old friend from fio time um mark is forest and land use especially is in the division of mitigation and adaptation at the green climate fund so some of the questions that we were right now opening he would be um able perhaps to give us some tips on how countries can try to unlock a bit of finance for for green uh for blue carbon action uh mark leads and coordinates the review forest and land use related projects uh from project idea to full funding proposals presenting the green climate fund for approval so he is our man and uh for giving us some some tips on how to have um more competitive uh proposals he's currently coordinating the development of guidelines for the green climate fund forest and land use sector and also for a large scale umbrella program on the great green wall uh he's a danish and french citizen with vietnamese roots so he's rather international and decided he's covering Cambodia and vietnam working on agriculture development uh mark welcome thank you for being here the floor is yours thank you very much rosa and thank you very much colleagues for this opportunity to be here with you today um to have this great opportunity to discuss and to hopefully try to answer some of your questions i may not be able to answer all of them but but but but very happy to engage with you and of course continue our discussion after this webinar as well and please feel free to reach out to me anytime afterwards so so we can continue these discussions um i'll quickly upload my my slides right here yeah perfect thank you mark um i hope you're all able to to see this yes all right great so um the slides are prepared today are just a quick overview of of the green climate fund you may all all be very familiar with that so it's just a quick summary then a brief introduction to some of the um projects that we have that touch on blue carbon we don't have uh many uh we you know would like to have many more of course and so so looking very much forward to also hear your ideas um on how we could have more of that and then finally a bit of tips uh for my side uh what what could be good to include in the uh the all concept notes that that you will be submitting to us and also um touching briefly on the uh current work we have on the sector guidance uh which i will explain a bit further in the presentation very briefly um the green climate fund is a fairly new fairly new donor or and we were established uh back in 2010 um at the 16th conference of the part of this we are part of the key uh finance mechanism of the UNFCCC and we have since 2013 and been located and headquartered in south korea the overall objective we have is to promote a paradigm shift towards low emission and climate resilient development pathways um the way we operate is we work through partnerships at the country level with our national and national economic authorities our focal points and then through a wide range of accredited entities that can be both national direct entities in the countries they can be private sector and they can also be international entities such as uh UN entities uh currently we are around 90 i think 90 accredited entities and it keeps growing as as more and more have an interest in in working with us we offer also quite a wide variety of financial instruments from grants loans guarantees and equity and as i mentioned it's very country-driven so we are also working with countries and the NDAs to develop country programs that align the priorities of the countries of of the type of projects and ambition that the countries would like to see where after the accredited entities then work together with the countries to finalize those ideas and and turning them into a concert note and what is it that we look for in projects and i'll come come back to some of these key things on this slide um we're basically starting with the eight result areas you have here we have four on the mitigation side you will see them in the top here and then four on the adaptation of course many of them are cross cutting you know for example in the result area that i work in in forest and land use many of our projects are not only mitigation but but also have some some adaptation aspects of course in particular i work a lot with projects that that combine the ecosystem she will see down in there in the bottom left corner which is on the adaptation site where we currently have most of our mangrove focus for example and and potentially in the future would have more on blue carbon combining the forest and land use and the ecosystem result areas um but the reason i'm mentioning this is that get based on the result area that you would focus on that would determine the the paradigm shift that that you would like to to achieve and also it will impact the type of the activities of course and the overall nature of the project that that that would be submitting um but but in general for all projects is the additionality of the gcf funding so first of all why why the gcf um what is already happening on the ground is is the gcf project able to scale that up um to to to to the entire country or to parts of the country or to other countries and also the opportunity to crowd in additional finance so basically co-finance we don't have a strict number on on co-finance what it has to be but it's always good to to indicate the potential for co-finance and also what can be leveraged by the project in terms of for example private sector finance um we have also um of course being a climate fund it has to be a climate project uh so to have a very strong climate rationale is is is very very key we see that for uh projects that are being assessed by our independent technical advisory panel and by the board that for the adaptation projects alone and this sometimes is is quite challenging but for cross-coding projects where we where we have forest and land use for example and ecosystems it's it's more let's say easier to justify the climate rationale but for for adaptation alone it requires quite a lot of data and and quite a lot of information um we we have um also of course uh you will see down here on these uh our investment criteria um really the important thing here is to to highlight how the project is is aligned to those six investment criteria in particular three of them are of importance is the impact potential so uh how many tons of emission reductions uh will we be able to achieve how many um direct beneficiaries can we can we change the livelihood of and make it more sustainable than the paradigm shift what is it really that the project can help transform and what is the long term aspect of that transformation and and how is that sustainable also linking that to the exit strategy what will happen after our funding stops how can the project continue to develop and to be scaled up over time and finally on efficiency and effectiveness looking at the um potential to leverage additional finance for example and to keep that as an effective part of the project um so basically as I mentioned we we we have um very limited projects at the moment worldwide on blue carbon um it's not not something we we have with of course we would like to have more projects and and I'll come back to one active thing we are doing now to increase this um but this list is another one an exclusive list it's just a brief overview of some of the pipeline and portfolio we have at the moment that looks at blue carbon not not directly perhaps more indirectly some more than others um I think Kenne mentioned earlier from from her presentation the um the concept notes um on on mango forest that one is is one good example and it's currently being being further reworked by the by the accredited entity and and the government I believe I'm not involved in myself in that one at the moment but then we have also another one um looking at several countries in the in the Caribbean region uh looking more at the coral reef resilience um so here you have two examples um of projects we you know that that could you know eventually could be replicated in other countries or or inspire other future projects in particular it's very interesting to see multi-country projects I believe and this is something we are going further towards in our new cycle now we would like to to stimulate more um let's say ecosystem-wide projects that share an ecosystem perhaps or that target the same challenges in the different different countries we have outside the large region some projects that may be of inspiration to you and there are not many but I listed two here one in Vietnam one in India that is looking at rebuilding the resilience of coastal communities and restoring mangroves um we don't have many unfortunately but of course I mentioned we would like to see many more coming coming forward um as this is a key area for us um and one thing we're doing to actively promote this is actually currently on our sector guidance you may have heard about this before but the GCS secretariat is currently developing sector guidance for all the result areas so I'm involved in the sector guidance for the forest and land use but also on the ecosystems which directly influence or have have a focus on blue carbon in particular the ecosystem one here you see a slide on on on the just a quick quick update on the forest and landscape forest and land use sector guidance where basically the sector guidance aims to identify the paradigm shift in each result area and and is to become a guide book or tool for countries and accredited entities to support them in developing future projects to to help them be as innovative as possible it's not a list that that provides all the solutions but it's more as an inspiration for countries and accredited entities and for example here um one one issue here in the forest and land use is that a mangrove restoration for example could could very well feature in on the forest restoration and reforestation and and also sustainable management um it's not explicitly uh mentioned you know mentioned throughout the document and unfortunately I'm not able to share these documents with you yet they're currently being finalized in-house and we aim to have across the secretariat uh finalized guide guidance documents by the end of the year hopefully where after they will be able to be shared with with the wider public looking more at the ecosystem services and ecosystem services guide guidance document here more specifically we are we're trying to see how blue carbon can can be further promoted by first of all looking at how can we recognize it in the in the international framework and in the alignment with the indices what what common of investment can be mobilized at scale here that can really promote the blue carbon and can really come up with a very innovative um use um looking here at at blended finance and and the mixing also our our different financial instruments that we provide and finally also looking at how how can we further promote the the science and the quantification of of the potential object there's already a lot of data and and science already but how can we also um it for the future projects um one one other um very interesting thing here that that will really also help i think in in developing future projects is this very new manual we have produced the DCF programming manual it's it's a living document that will be updated as we as we go forward and it provides a very good overview of of of guidance and and good suggestions on how to develop proposals for us how to align them with our investment criteria and what are the key steps at the early early stage in terms you know in terms of project idea development the concept of stage the funding proposal stage so all the stages going through what are the key aspects and key tools to to keep in mind so it's a very good very good start uh to to start developing ideas i would say and can provide you with a very good very good process as well before i end my presentation just to highlight um that's as i mentioned um part of this sector guidance um and part of the overall ambition we have is to see um more focus as well on on multi-country projects um is to really see how through using the sector guidance that will be available later this year how how we can stimulate uh projects that that really are very as ambitious as and inactive as possible and and and have a paradigm shift that is um as as transformative as as needed be um that really have that long-term effect that i think it's important to to note here that uh projects that are able to show uh first of all why why the gcf uh funds are needed and how they will be used in a way to uh scale up something already on the ground or pilot something and how that will have a long-term sustainability i think those are key aspects in in in having very good concept notes later approved um we have a new process uh in house where basically concept notes uh would need to be cleared by our climate investment committee and then they will be giving the green light uh by senior management to proceed um to funding proposals so it's a very good opportunity to at a very early stage involve our senior management and have that uh buy-in from the secretariat for our future funding proposal um so whereas we in the past did not present concept notes to senior management only front proposals um so this is a good opportunity to very early in the in the process have that discussion on making the concept notes as as aligned to to our criteria and policies as possible um before before ending my presentation here just just to highlight as i mentioned earlier i'll be very happy to um to discuss further with you please feel free to contact me anytime and if i'm not able to answer your questions i'll be happy to put you in touch with all of my colleagues that may be more familiar with that particular project you you have in mind or if you have any other questions i can also that became two other parts of the secretariat so thank you very much for your for your attention and and looking forward to to our discussion thank you oh thank you mark this was extremely clear very targeted um i truly enjoyed your presentation i think you gave us a lot of good tips and also on what has been the trend but what will be also a future trend uh for for successful funding um okay in this chat we've learned two things nbs is not only nature-based solutions it's also the north basing field program from um giana and serena but also that you cannot have the chat open at the same time that the speaker is talking because it's disturbing him so now we are opening the chat for questions please so basically those of you have questions for mark about the green climate fund please use the the written chat there is one question sorry um uh serena i'm actually was asking um let me let me read the question in this year so they believe that one thing that will be a challenge is how to promote allocating funds to research to include in project proposals to the green climate fund often we see that these funds um don't go exactly where the government wanted them to go so what is your experience with that and i think this also relates maybe to the the lack of data so sometimes they could also like to get funded to get data so let me quickly mark repeat the question one thing that the serena eclipse would think is a challenge is how to promote allocating funds to research to include in project proposals to the green climate fund thank you thank you rosa and also thank you to serena for this very good question um indeed it's it's um it's it's um it's a very good discussion that you know of course needs to happen i think very early in the process between the country uh and between the choice and equity density um basically looking at first of all what is the ambition of the project uh where would you like to go with the project and how how can that best be uh let's say facilitated by the choice of the accredited entity that that the government and the country would uh has has chosen you know different different accredited entities um have you know different strengths um and and different expertise and also um have a different accreditation some are able to access grants only some are able to also access loans and so forth so it depends also on the on the type of project that you would like to um to work with um on the on the point here of research it is a little bit tricky perhaps to have um most of the funds going into that but one one way to do it would be on the knowledge management sort of output or components where um you know key part that that we would like to see in projects is is how all that data generated information generated by a project can can be used by a wider audience and and can be hosted by the government in in different databases or systems and can be further uh used by by others in including research of course so one way I could see what what is could fit in would be to integrate it in um in a dedicated knowledge management um output where for example um one good example we have seen many times is for example when uh projects similar promote land use planning then all that data generated from that plan process can then further be used to also help the communities and and the partners for example to develop investment plans based on what are the best investments tied to to the those different land uses across that that you know a particular landscape um and there there's a lot of data that then would be shared with with different sectors private sector or investors but also here you can very well you know integrate research as well so I think there's a lot of room for for uh flexibility there and if you have a specific project in mind I'll be happy to or a specific idea in mind I'll be happy to to come back to that later on or we could follow up on that offline thank you thanks Mark um there are a couple of questions one from Colombia following in on this latest comment that you've made about the regional projects and they want to ask uh so how how would that work considering that countries priorities arise so much how these multi-country projects related to blue carbon in terms of research policy implementation mitigation adaptation would work do you do you first see some so maybe guidance already at this stage of how to align the interests of different countries no thank you thank you Rosa and also thank you uh to Colombia for this um indeed a very good question and and I don't have a straight answer uh to be honest with you it it's really context specific and um and giving that we are just starting on on blue carbon let's say uh it's it's quite new to us so so we are very open of course two ideas here from your side colleagues um basically I think when doing multi-country projects or programs um um there are different ways to do it um one could be to have let's say one regional components uh or one component that links all the countries and then other components are very country specific for example um within the same ecosystem but but specific to that particular country and thereby sharing that those lessons and and best practices across the countries could be one way to do it and stimulating different types of investments or prime sector buying for example um this would also go in directly with research I guess let's say you would scale up certain research experiences or results from one area of how to promote a certain solution that may work in other areas for example that could be one way to do it to stimulate that kind of access and discussion across countries but but there's no probably good answer to this but it's very specific so um again happy to to follow up with you after the call if you have you know have the need to do you know happy to do so thank you but I have a question for you and then we'll jump into a couple last questions um we were looking in the first session about the overlapping of projects that can merge uh areas that are included for the red plus it for voluntary carbon market and I know this is a very tricky question because as as the as because of your connection with UNFCCC and all the connection with the payment for ecosystem services sorry payment for performance based results within UNFCCC you have this double version right so in one hand you have this funding for projects that are independent of UNFCCC uh or somehow independent in the terms that we're not talking about payment for for performance based and then uh you do have the other funding that is more for performance based action right so maybe you could clarify this a bit these two line of actions that differ and then in the case of of this payment for performance based or support for mdc's or um how do you think there will be more clear guidance because we're still are waiting for article seeks of the Paris agreement to understand a bit how the the carbon market is going to work yeah I hope I made my the question clear if not let me know and I'll ask it again yep no thank you Rosa that's that's a very good question and um I'll try to uh to to give a good answer um indeed it it's um a key part of our past few years of support has been to the red plus results based payments we have a pilot program that was launched in in 2017 and is running until 2022 where we basically pay for past results that that countries have achieved and that have been reported to the UNFCCC so regarding the voluntary market we currently cannot directly support payments in that regard because what under the pilot program and we pay directly for results that have been verified by the UNFCCC through the reporting of the technical annexes to the biennial update reports and that is what we base our payments on which is then later going to a scorecard where we identify a certain score for those reported results and then pay against that then those payments or proceeds will have to be reinvested then in the country in alignment with the NDC as part of red red plus strategy and and so forth and of course not be reinvested into activities that may cause deforestation or or forest liquidation when it comes to the article six of course there are a lot of very good opportunities and we have a lot of have had a lot of good discussion on how we can move forward in particular now no as I mentioned on the sector guidance here we have many ideas future carbon markets but but it's still very very early to to say anything like you say Rosa I mean we have to wait until there's more clarity on article six on that regards maybe maybe I'll stop here and I can happy to to elaborate I hope I answered your question okay yes yes yes you did and actually this is I think thank you so much Mark um I think the topic also that confuses a bit all of us is if if the countries are already having the red plus reasons for mangroves and blue carbon as part of their national mitigation targets and and and they could maybe access finance through that but at the same time they're putting other projects that also incorporate the mitigation growth mangroves is this over is this requesting two times the same thing sorry maybe you answered this and maybe you could answer slightly again yeah so let's say I mean in the in the case of a country having uh results reported to to UNFCCC that that would include coastal forests or mangrove forests then in principle those results reported to UNFCCC and then later reported or submitted to us or you know with a certain volume offered to us uh of course could could could very well be be the case so far we haven't had any cases like that but but for sure in the future it could happen then the opportunity for that particular country to then reinvest the let's say the use of proceeds could very it's very very flexible so basically our terms of reference for for for this pilot program are very very flexible on the use of proceeds that the country wishes to do and we had from the past projects approved by the board very different the use of proceeds one was to establish a national climate change fund one was to uh one is now to look at at expanding a pest program so that there's a lot of flexibility and of course one could one could design the use of proceeds here to to actually restore mangroves if one wanted to do so that there's nothing that that will stop a country from doing that so so that is one opportunity I have to say that the pilot program is currently um we are currently exhausting the funds but we're already working on an on an extension um whether it will be a new pilot program or simply a second phase or or dedicated window is still unsure um we're working with a company to to help us develop and shape these ideas and hope to have something ready to share with the public fairly soon um where where of course there will be much more opportunity to to discuss these things and also um we hope to have more private sector buying but it's still too early to say at this point what what exactly would look like thank you yeah thank you thank you margie a lot of interesting also connections with private sector as bilateral funding countries and governments that maybe could could be coordinated through the green climate fund what what you said is rather interesting I thought through the green climate fund countries could access the funding directly but what I'm hearing from you is that whatever comes from performance based or from mitigation achievements would be reinvested in different options that countries can choose whatever fits them best right but not necessarily accessing accessing the funds directly is that what you're saying when you're talking about reinvesting funds yes so so this only this only goes for this this but these particular projects the resource space this payment projects um this is only part of the the pilot program for other non non resource-based payment projects um basically this this pilot program is only to support the the last phase of red plus where phase one and phase two can be targeted under our order and funding modalities such as the regular funding proposal or a simplified approval process and we actually have a new a new modality on our simplified approval process it's projects up to 10 million and there's one particular such project or project type modality that focuses on on red plus to basically support countries to meet the the wash of framework requirements to be able to and and eligible to receive payments in the future so that is a new new modality we we created last year um but there's a lot of flexibility to target phase one and phase two um there and so for regarding resource-based payments it's only to that pilot program so far and that that's the only option we have at the moment oh great i understood thank you so much there is so much to learn on these topics thank you so much mark you were extremely clear from very targeted and very much for for for being here um thank you everyone to the governments in the region for joining us in this second session of this blue carbon i think we've learned a lot thanks to the experiences of the government of australia that had to get up rather early to be with us today so thanks so much uh tertius for joining us and and also for all these insights into your tier 3 modeling for the growth and all the data that you're incorporating uh for sorts and so on thank you also to kin and to mark and uh i hope we will be sharing these slides on the recording of this session uh and send the an email to all of you who have registered so that you can more quietly read this information and contact the panelists uh for further information so thanks a lot and happy mangrove days this 26 sunday enjoy our blue carbon let's enjoy our blue carbon uh ecosystems thanks very much have a good evening all the rest of the day thank you