 Hello, welcome everyone to today's event understanding the challenges faced by LDCs in COVID-19 recovery. My name is Georgina and I'm the digital officer at IID and I'll be providing technical support during this session today. I hope you're all feeling great and ready for a really exciting conversation. That's it for me. And we now have a fantastic panel lined up and I think this is going to be a very interesting conversation. So thank you to our audience for joining us today. I am now absolutely delighted to introduce Andrew Norton, director of IID. Thank you and over to you, Andy. Thanks so much, Georgina. Greetings everyone. And thank you all as well for joining us today. Just introduce me. I'm Andrew Norton, director of IID and it's an honor and a great pleasure to be here at this webinar. I would first like to acknowledge that the chair of the LDC group that negotiates at the climate negotiations, the UNFCCC, wanted to take part in the meeting, but unfortunately he couldn't make it. The chair, Mr. Sonan P. Wangdi of Bhutan, has recorded a short video message that we will play after a second. COVID-19 has spread quickly across the globe, shaking the world to its core. The world economy has been severely impacted, forcing governments to reconsider short and long term, and both domestic and international responses to the impacts. The governments are urgently looking into options to kickstart their halted economies. The pandemic has also strikingly driven rising inequality within nations, but also looks likely to force growing disparities between nations between the richer and poorer nations as well. We face the disturbing reality that the rich were ignited at pace, while many poorer countries have been unable to barely start. Less than 1% of vaccines delivered globally have been delivered in sub-Saharan Africa and that is a proportion that I believe is still falling, shockingly. From the awful human effects, this means that rich countries are able to restart their economies much more easily than poorer countries, which may still be stuck in a worse cycle of lockdowns and economic stagnation. Furthermore, rich countries with hard currencies can much more easily borrow to cope with the impacts of the pandemic, but also to fund stimulus and recovery spending. They can borrow at favourable rates, which is a real problem for poorer countries. And within countries, we also know that inequality has grown considerably because of the many disadvantages that poorer populations face. No protection for workers in the informal economy as against the formal economy. Disparities between those who can work from home and those who can't work from home. The unequal burdens of the care economy accentuates it in a pandemic and falling mostly on women and girls. And then disparities in access to health services and different living conditions as well between rich and poorer populations, enabling them to protect themselves. So we know inequality is a huge issue. And we also know that the full extent of the long term impact on the global economy is yet to unfold. But the least developed countries will be the least able to cope with the impacts. They're already having on multiple urgent priorities that require undivided financial and technical resources. This is currently dealing with multiple shocks from climate and COVID-19 related impacts. The impact of COVID has also created much uncertainty on climate action. There are opportunities to build forward with climate friendly policies that could deliver a better result both for economies for the environment and also for social inclusion, designed right. They can deal with those issues of growing inequality that I spoke to earlier. So through a green recovery, governments can innovate, undertake wide ranging and fundamental restructuring of critical sectors, accelerate their existing environmental and climate action plans, and make use of environmentally sustainable project pipelines, while also addressing these issues of inclusion and inequality, so dramatically highlighted by the pandemic. As the Paris agreement moves into post 2020 implementation, harnessing all the levers of both national implementation and global decision making will be vital to build back better from COVID-19 and critically to put the world on track to achieve the more ambitious Paris target of 1.5 degrees Celsius. And we see ever more with the ravages of extreme weather around the world how vital important that is. This work was funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the UK base. IID has been undertaking in depth research to explore policy responses to build forward from the ravages of the pandemic, focusing on the context of the least developed countries. The research focuses on mobilizing resources for equitable green and resilient recovery through debt relief and debt swaps, delivering rapid support for green and resilient COVID-19 recovery, renewable energy access for jobs and local nature based solutions for COVID-19 recovery and resilience. I would like to thank BASE and formally acknowledge them for funding this important work. Today's panel will discuss the range of issues LDCs have to deal with in their efforts to build forward. We hope that this webinar and our forthcoming publications on this important topic will inform policymakers as they consider effective ways of addressing climate impacts during the period of recovery from the pandemic. I'm really looking forward to hearing the panelists and I officially open this webinar. We will now hear from Sunampi Wangdi, the chair of the LDC group in the climate negotiations with a short recorded message, and then we will pass over to our moderator, player Shakir. Thank you very much. Distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen, hello all and greetings from Bhutan. As the chair of the least developed countries group in climate negotiations, it is my pleasure to be welcoming you to this important discussion to better understand the range of issues LDCs have to deal with in recovering from the impacts of COVID-19. Let me begin by thanking IIED for providing this space for this discussion and for its work in researching this important question. It is through broadening our research and deepening our understanding around these issues that the best policy can be developed to make changes for the better for all of us now and in the future. All around the world, people, communities and countries are dealing with multiple shocks from climate and COVID-19 related impacts. No one is immune from these crises, but the 46 least developed countries who are present in climate negotiations are certainly among the worst hit by these shocks. Our populations are particularly vulnerable and disproportionately impacted, so when these crises hit our shores, they hit us hard. Both the climate change and COVID-19 are exacerbating existing challenges, setting back sustainable development efforts. Even though the current focus of the LDC has been towards managing the direct health impact of COVID-19 pandemic, the socio-economic impact has also been extremely hard. Social distancing measures and full economic lockdown is not feasible in LDCs. COVID impact on international trade has created a knock-on effect in the country, resulting in inflationary situations. Most LDCs are unable to provide sufficient budgetary responses due to limited fiscal capacity. This pushes LDCs towards poverty, even further worsening inequalities and limiting progress towards sustainable development. How we and the world recover in this moment will determine our cause for the future. Together, as a global community, we can seize the moment to drive climate action and reset onto more sustainable paths. Or we can slip in the other direction, deepening inequalities and moving further away from achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and sustainable development agenda. I have said before that the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis must be tackled in tandem. We cannot wait for one crisis to pass before we address the other. Recovery plans for COVID-19 that set the world back in realizing goals of the Paris Agreement and the SDGs cannot be considered recovery plans. Addressing one crisis by fueling another is no way to recovery. It is a path to further devastation in the future. We must seize this moment to build back better. I wish you all fruitful discussion today. I thank you. Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us in today's webinar. My name is Claire Sackett and I'm the Climate Change Group Director at IID. I'd like to thank the Chair to the LDC Group, Mr Sonam Wangdi and IID's Director, Andy Norton for their introductory statements. So today we have six excellent panelists speaking to the challenges faced by LDCs in the recovery from COVID-19. So just a reminder on housekeeping before we get started. If you have questions during the presentation, please type them into the question box in the Q&A box down below and our panelists can respond to them. We'll also hold some for questions at the end. So without further ado, I'll introduce our panelists. First we have is Issa Kamara, who's the Deputy Director in the Gambian Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs. Anna Schultz is the Principal Researcher and Head of Global Climate Law Policy and Governance Program in the Climate Change Group at IID. Sergio Patel is the Researcher in the Shaping Sustainable Markets Group. Ritu Barabaj is a Senior Researcher in the Climate Governance and Finance team. Karen Johnson is in the Shaping Sustainable Markets Group and Xiao Ting Hu Jones is a Senior Researcher in the Biodiversity team under the Natural Resources Group. So thank you all again for agreeing to speak at this webinar. My first question is to Ms Issa too. We've heard some of the impacts of COVID from the Chair of the LDC Group. Can you share with us some of the challenges your country is facing at the moment? Good morning everyone. Thank you Claire. It's a pleasure to be here. Like many of these developed countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a wide range of socioeconomic implications in the Gambian. It has affected decent employment, food and nutritional security, access to quality education and healthcare, economic growth, poverty reduction efforts among others. The socioeconomic effects of the pandemic became evident in the Gambian even before the registration of a confirmed case in March 2020. The containment measures, such as travel restrictions, negatively impacted the road driving sectors, especially tourism and trade. The pandemic had led to a drastic reduction in tourist arrivals and trade disruption pushing more than 25,000 people into extreme poverty. Moreover, the pandemic resulted in the loss of economic activities, slowing economic growth to minus 0.2% in 2020 compared to pre-COVID forecasts of 6.3%. So like the Gambia, like many least developed countries, was heavily indebted before the emergence of the coronavirus. And the pandemic has further challenged government's fiscal policy and because the scarce and limited government resources had to be diverted to respond to the immediate needs of the pandemic. As a result, the implementation of our national development plan is undermined. Given our debt situation, coupled with narrow past days and increasing volumes of grants available to the Gambia, our national development plan could not be fully realized as we were constrained with the amount of resources we can borrow for our development agenda. So going forward, the government intends to re-prioritize the national development plan into a COVID-19 recovery plan. Given the clear connection between COVID-19 and the climate change, the government of the Gambia intends to pursue a green recovery in order to create the opportunity for a green and inclusive economic recovery that is people-centered, resilient, and there's no one behind. So as the Gambia kick-start its recovery plan in process, the country is currently being hit by a third wave of COVID-19 infections. The rapid rise in daily infections is really worrying, and most of all, the country has limited access to COVID-19 vaccines. So far, only 1.96% of the Gambian population has taken the first, especially the blues, and while only 0.77% of the population are fully vaccinated. So the Gambia being a least developed country urgently needs support to be covered from the pandemic and also tackle the climate crisis. Thank you, Claire, over to you. Thank you. It's such a gush that's very rich indeed, and very exciting that the Gambia is going to bring these two approaches together. So given that, what would success look like at COP26, and how can it help the other seas build back better? Success at COP26 in Glasgow, for me, would be one, the pronouncement of increased and stronger ambitions from all countries, especially developed countries. And it would be important that the aggregate level of ambitions communicated through the updated NDCs aims at meeting the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming to low 1.5 degrees. Similarly, the long-term climate strategy is communicated to support the transition to let zero come on every sun by mid-century. I believe this is deemed necessary if we are really committed to tackling the climate crisis. In order to build back better, we need to ensure that we significantly reduce any sun across all sectors and build resilience in our communities to avoid COVID-like, COVID-type pandemics, which has a result of increased inter-species contact resulting from deforestation. Secondly, a key success at COP26 would be genuine and committed commitment by developed countries to mobilize and provide the needed climate finance to enable developing countries, especially LDCs, to have the resilience. So given the current debt crisis that most developed countries are faced with, it is crucial that long-term climate finance pledges are mainly on a basis as the OECD climate finance report has revealed. Between 2013 and 2018, the share of loans in public climate finance has increased from 52% to 74% while the share of grants has been decreasing. It is really important that going forward, long-term climate finance pledges to help the CISA mainly on a grand basis, and this will help lessen our debt burden and provide the necessary physical space to support green recovery. So finally, my final point for key success at COP26 would be the conclusion of the Article 6 rulebook. As most of us know, some of us know, or most of us, negotiations on this issue have been dragged for the past two talks, and it would be a breakthrough if an agreement is reached at Glasgow, because this will help promote any sort of reduction, which is essential if we really want to tackle or confront the climate crisis. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ms Izziti. So let me turn now to Anna to respond to the same question. What does success look like at COP26? Thank you, Claire. Glasgow is a really key moment for climate resilient green economic recovery. It's going to be critical to build bridges between nationally determined contributions and long-term strategies in the COP outcomes to send a political signal to parties to align their recoveries with the Paris Agreement. This is the only way to keep 1.5 degrees alive. On a more practical level, parties can extend the invitation on long-term strategies, which currently in the Paris Agreement was for parties to submit these by 2020. Extending this invitation will send a strong signal to parties on the importance of science-driven long-term low emission development planning, which can serve as the basis for aligning the recovery with parties' Paris Agreement commitments. And then finally, reaffirming and delivering on climate finance commitments will also be absolutely critical, particularly for LDCs who often do not have the capacity to deliver large-scale fiscal stimulus. They should also encourage innovative financing mechanisms such as debt for nature or debt for climate swaps in the outcomes, and I'm really looking forward to hearing more about the innovative solutions identified by my colleagues in this research, because this will serve as a really critical input for the work of the LDC group to strengthen the capacity of LDCs to provide urgent support to achieve climate-resilient green economic recoveries that are consistent with their Paris Agreement commitments. Thank you, Anna. So maybe we could just expand a bit further. How does the COVID-19 response planning link with the processes like that long-term strategies, the SDGs, and indeed nature-based solutions? So it's really about alignment of these different processes, and we know from the existing COVID-related economic stimulus that this is not happening. These have been focused on conventional measures or bolstering brown sectors. The OECD estimates that $1,950 billion in economic recovery out of that only $336 billion of that funding has demonstrated, has been demonstrated to have a really positive environmental impact. And this scale of finance, the total scale of finance, has the potential to be transformational for both sustainable development and of course achieving the Paris Agreement commitments. So it's really critical to align this economic recovery with new ambitious nationally determined contributions, long-term strategies and planning processes, and the planning processes around achieving the sustainable development goals. And indeed, these are processes that countries are already undertaking. And in many cases, a lot of these processes have investment-ready solutions that can provide the basis for green economic recovery and a path towards climate resilient, low-carbon sustainable development. So, one, the finance, of course, has to be mobilized for all of this, but there are solutions that are already ready presented in these planning processes that can be used to achieve green economic recovery. Great. Thank you so much, Anna. That's some really reassuring, actually, to know that we've got the solutions there. So, Xiao Ting, what can we learn from existing experiences to inform and support the LDC's green recovery? Great question, Claire. So, I think Anna touched upon a little bit about the nature-based solutions. So, though the terminology of nature-based solutions has only started to be widely used in recent years, LDC have had the vision of tackling those interlinked societal challenges together for much longer. So, as we heard from Gambia and actually Bhutan as well, we got actually seven LDC countries already signed up to the leaders pledge for nature, and there have been a lot of actions implemented in LDCs that we can learn from, including the NDCs of which have already included nature-based solutions. So, in all research over the past few months, we looked at 27 case studies from 17 LDCs and interviewed some practitioners and the local community organizations who have been championing those activities. This study actually covered nature-based solutions implemented across very diverse landscapes ranging from dryland restoration in Mali, sustainable mango management in Bangladesh, to tropical forest restoration management in Central Africa Republic. The common strategy is that they all provide very strong evidence that if done right, nature-based solutions indeed can help LDCs mitigate climate change, adapt to its impact, build long-term resilience while reducing poverty and delivering biodiversity benefits. They really resonate really strongly with what Andy and LDC chair have already eloquently highlighted, showing that the local communities in LDCs are not just suffering from the health economic impacts of COVID, but they're also at the same time continuing to battle other crisis that are impacting their daily lives, including climate change impacts and loss of nature. For example, we're still seeing prolonged drought, degradation of soil and depletion of forest resources, which many of those communities rely on for food, medicine and fuel. So the evidence we have seen from those existing experiences build a very strong case for any green recovery plan to tackle climate change, nature loss, poverty and inequality together. Again, as the LDC chair has highlighted, those crisis really need to be tackled in tandem in any type of green recovery plan. So learning from those existing experiences, we know that the green recovery plan must, if they want to bring transformative change, they must put local community in the driving seat and empower them to work with nature for diversified livelihoods so they can build better and back better and they can weather future crisis like COVID better. They must also support and invest in community-based organizations which can implement nature-based solution at landscape scale, but also mobilize resources and provide much needed healthcare and social safety net to those most in need. But who also often are the people who lack access to those services. Green recovery plans should also stimulate, as Anna mentioned, the right type of finance and more diversified finance that actually can flow to local level and support multi-purpose nature-based solutions, support decentralized natural resource governance that are built on clear rights and responsibilities while enhancing local capacity to uphold those responsibilities. We also learned from those existing experiences that investing in building multi-stakeholder partnerships and innovative new technologies can help communities respond better to crisis and can be really important tools for LDC's green recovery. But unfortunately, as Anna has highlighted just now that a lot of the existing investment are not really flowing to the right places, so learning from those existing experiences and not doing something bad, not taking this good opportunity to think about how to recover back better is really, really important. So due to time limitation, I won't be able to go into details of all the case studies we looked at, not the recommendations that we have learned from them. But it's great timing today because a new report is released today by 15 environment and development organizations highlighting how nature-based solutions went down well can deliver for climate nature and people and it must be part of any green recovery plan. And I'll share the link of the report with all in the chat box. And it's great to see so many participants from very diverse background on the webinar today. So we also welcome you to share experiences and lessons then. So we can all help and support LDCs and indeed actually other countries around the world formulate genuine green recovery strategies that can divert the finance to the right place and help us to truly build back better. Thanks Claire. Thank you so much, Satin. So, so given that experience, how, why do you think nature-based solutions are important for the LDCs to achieve this building back better? Yeah, so just in addition to what I have said, especially reflecting on how the local communities are facing the multiple challenges all at the same time. In the economy, we need to remember very heavily reliant on natural resources. So for example, agriculture accounts for 30 to 60% of the GDP and provides up to 70% of employment in LDC. Sustainable management of those natural resources obviously is very crucial for LDCs economy as well as the ability to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The non-sustainable agricultural practices, deforestation, forced degradation, other land use change accounts for more than two-thirds of many LDCs total emissions. On the other hand, nature is obviously indispensable for any type of long-term resilience in terms of responding to climate change but also other crises like COVID. And then nature is often the most cost-effective measures also for LDCs to adapt to climate change comparing to big-grade infrastructure project. So it's really to reflect on those key elements that we're looking at the whole context of the LDCs economy and their way to recover from COVID but also respond to climate change. But it's no surprise again, as I said before, LDC are actually the leading countries calling for actions that can address nature loss and climate change together. We heard from Gambia, we heard from Bhutan and we know that they all have endorsed the goal to reverse nature loss by 2030 for sustainable development and all of them include nature-based solutions in the LDCs. So we can actually really learn from them and learn how the green recovery plan for COVID can provide another good opportunity to support and raise those ambitions for LDCs and channel much-needed funding as Anna has highlighted to support those integrated solutions in LDC. So, yeah, with that, thanks. Thank you so much, Sati. Really interesting. I hope the noise, I've got a huge downfall happening here, so I hope that background noise isn't too bad. And moving to Ritu, can you shed light on what priority areas of action are emerging for LDCs to move towards equitable green and resilient recovery? Thanks, Claire. And when talking about recovery from pandemic in LDC, one thing is very clear that business as usual cannot work, and that has been highlighted by speakers before me. LDCs need a transformative pathway for an inclusive, equitable and resilient recovery. And the response to this crisis must be undertaken with the eye on future and again being underscored by all my previous speakers. I'm not going to too much of detail there, but while situation is still unfolding, you're still not out of COVID, our research covering about five LDCs point to four priority areas. Firstly, in ensuring that access to basic services and social safety net for all. And experiences emerging from LDCs provide important lessons for the country, especially in terms of scaling up operations during crisis. And it has been shown that social protection program, if they're well designed and delivered effectively, can shape the pathways for improving countries productive capacities, reducing inequalities and building resilience. For example, if I can just highlight a few case studies like Ethiopia's PNSP has demonstrated that benefits of moving away from humanitarian relief towards predictable, sustained and shock responsive programs in chronically food insecure areas. Again in Cambodia, although the National Social Assistance Program was still in the nascent stage when COVID hit social assistance was scaled up by leveraging the existing ID poor database to deliver relief cash which worked quite well. But we still have a lot of learning there to improve that process. And in Bangladesh the micro finance acted as a first line of support during crisis. So that should be our first priority area to look into the social protection programs and building their strength and delivery mechanism. The second priority area for us should be to protect employment and minimize income losses for informal workers, especially because they constitute the bulk of labor force in LDC. In Africa, 86% of the employment is in the informal sector, and similarly, in Asia and Pacific around 68%. But at the same time, much of this informal workers, they are reeling in poverty about 145 million of these informal workers live in poverty. And they are typically characterized by low levels of skills, education, lack of social protection, or right to decent work or living conditions. And again, women labor workforce participation is still an ongoing challenge. So there's an urgent need to tackle this informality and transition into a formal economy and also create resilience recovery pathways that are more inclusive and green. But there's also a strong need to utilize the synergies between labor market reforms and social protection instruments. Third priority area for me that has emerged is protecting livelihoods and preserving the viability of enterprises, especially the micro enterprises along with SMEs. The focus has been too much on injecting stimulus packages into SMEs, but it is important to create a longer term resilience even before pandemic. Even in normal times, they were not able to reach their fullest potential because of a range of issues like lack of relevant skills, access to global supply chains, and I can keep going on. But the issue is to increase and that makes them vulnerable to shocks or even small crisis. So we need stimulus package that has been creating a longer term resilience increases their level of employment improves the working condition and so on. And fourthly, and I'll just move quickly close Claire, and that is it is important to recognize the community hold the key to responding effectively to pandemic and that has been underscore highlighted by my previous speakers. And it's important to consolidate this ongoing process of social dialogue and democratic engagement and underpinning all these four priority area would be and very essential is the access to finance. So I'll just stop there and go back to you in case we need further details on any of that. Thanks, so what kind of delivery mechanisms can be put in place to ensure the COVID recovery responses reach those vulnerable and grassroots communities that are being, you know, often left behind. Thanks Claire see the way I was explaining the priority area in those priority areas definitely social protection become extremely important mechanisms for delivery, especially because we need to leverage on the existing social protection mechanism to help families and businesses restore income and preserve their life. But at the same time country need countries need to prepare for their social protection system to belong to resilience against future crisis as they may unfold because we know none of us are secure. So depending on context because each LDCs have different context, we'll need to look into, for example, I mentioned previously that Cambodia had a very nascent social protection delivery mechanism but they still reached out because of technology because they had a strong So we need to develop nuanced approaches to delivery mechanism to ensure immediate relief within the social protection programs. We need and in depending on context we need to revitalize social protection programs to prevent communities from slipping back into poverty and thirdly redesign the existing social protection programs for their most self responsive, including climate shops. I think such a process must take into contact into consideration the diverse need are different vulnerable groups, because we cannot have the same approach for all the different vulnerable groups. I can because of positive your time I can go on because and you wonder the situation is different that there is more young population moving into the working class and similarly in Cambodia there's more early. So they're different demographic profiles. So, as in the same case, we also need at the same time you also need to understand that they're increasing number of this state, this place and migrant workers, which requires that within our social protection program will build in portability of these benefits. But because as I was mentioning and in the priority areas. Labor market reform is very, very essential and that labor market needs to be done in a way that it is synchronous with the social protection reform, they have to work together. And most of the LDCs have both social protection and labor market programs, but in many cases they are fragmented and unharmonized. What we need to do is to develop an integrated system that caters to both the objective both social protection as labor market reforms, because labor market reform would be deal with informality would deal with small and medium enterprises, and social protection can provide that. So it can provide both the safety net as well as a jumping board to move forward and recover better. So, but we need to develop an integrated system that caters to both these objectives reduces inefficiencies and also ensures more equitable and transparent delivery of benefit. So I, I can still go on, but I'll be happy to answer any further questions that you may have. Thank you so much Ritu. So now let me move to you, Kevin, what tangible opportunities are there to deliver renewable energy services in the short term to support this recovery from COVID-19, which will also help to sustain and build a sector, provide a rapid boost to employment and sustainable and resilient solutions. Thanks very much Claire. I'm going to switch it up and just add some visuals here. Great to be here thanks for having me, we've got limited time so I'm going to jump into some clear for examples from countries that we worked with in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda. So as we've heard already today, agriculture is the backbone of many, especially rural communities in our country examples and across the LDC group. In Ethiopia rural communities capture only a sliver of agricultural value where most of the processing is actually done in urban and peri urban businesses. A 2020 Rocky Mountain Institute assessment found a four billion annual opportunity by 2025 across six value chains, including horticulture, grain milling, injure baking, bread baking, milk cooling and coffee washing. Opportunities for livelihoods includes supporting irrigation which contributes to higher crop yields and greater resilience, replacing expensive fossil fuel generators which shapes money and increasing secondary crop processing into rural areas. The second example is in Uganda. The Uganda off grid energy market accelerator published a report in 2018 the laid out a business case for chilling milk for dairy farmers, thereby reducing spoilage and tapping into increasing demand from the region. There is potential for small and large solar refrigerators alike, but the delivery and financing mechanisms vary greatly in feasibility and depend mostly on assumed income saved from spoilage. The report suggests that public and private actors all have roles to play across different energy delivery models. Moving on into Malawi. There are many existing community businesses that are operating in rural villages that can benefit from electric electrification from renewable energy. Malawi has a handful of mini grids operating at the moment. For example, there's the Melange energy generation agency or mega in Melange Malawi uses a social business model approach with strong partnerships. These mini grids are supporting community businesses such as milling machines, welding and carpentry workshops and bakeries, among many others. And mega continues to experiment with different mini grid delivery models for livelihoods developments. Finally, there's our mini grid operating in Bangladesh as in the energy access sector at large standalone solar irrigation continues to gain traction. There are over 1.2 million fossil fuel powered irrigation pumps currently in operation. So huge potential for replacement with solar powered pumps there. The Asian Development Bank Institute found that solar irrigation in Bangladesh was not only reliable but also more affordable than fossil fuel irrigation solutions and resulted in higher yields during the dry season. However, more business model innovations are needed to scale solar power in Bangladesh. So these are just a few select quick opportunities to deliver renewable energy services in the short term. Back to you Claire. Thanks Karen. So how can suppressed demand for productive uses of energy be identified and capitalized to spur this recovery more quickly and create more resilience and inclusive livelihoods. So there's a lot of barriers that end users in in in rural areas that face that they can leverage energy access when it when it arrives and that's a lot of these barriers are suppressing demand. So there are many ingredients that are needed to be in place. And we've highlighted eight of them here, holding from our literature and experience from our own field experience and with partners, and combining these eight into the mixing bowl of the enabling and regulatory environment, and to logically conclude this cooking metaphor these ingredients can make us a delicious PUE pie, but the problem is, many of these ingredients are not available in rural areas. So what can we do. Well, one of the key issues that everyone is facing I would I would say everyone is bridging the affordability gap and we've already mentioned financing is a huge issue. This comes up across business types and technologies. And we have to continue innovating in technologies but of course in delivery models the socio economic aspects and the financing, but to reach the poorest governments must consider subsidies. So for example Bangladesh and Uganda are subsidizing solar water pumps, they're using slightly different approaches. And as a social enterprise mega and Malawi aims to keep tariffs affordable for communities on their mini grids. And there's also the social protection programs that Richard just mentioned. Next is building awareness confidence and skills. For example just deploying solar water pumps is not always enough to increase farmer yields. In Bangladesh the program it will work with agriculturalists to support farmers to learn and apply good agricultural practices to enable those higher yields. The third is taking a deliberate and integrated approach so for example in Uganda developers within the pro mini grids project must submit a PUE strategy first, integrating PUE directly into the delivery models of the system so taking into account the costs, revenues and so forth of productive uses. Ethiopia's national electrification program any P is integrating grid and off grid energy solutions with efforts to support PUE such as electrifying geographic clusters with the highest potential for the production of commodities for which Ethiopia has a comparative advantage. The fourth is incentivizing public and private cooperation so for example in Bangladesh it called the program set a target of 10,000 solar water pumps by 2027. And this target setting is signaling to private companies setting market expectations encouraging investment and demonstrating long term government supports. The fifth is specifically about COVID-19 recovery funds. So our four governments and multilateral banks are establishing COVID-19 recovery programs at the moment. And many of these are targeting micro small and medium enterprises and farmers all key productive use and users. So this kind of support is crucial it could look like guarantees it could be asset financing for productive use equipment among many, many other strategies, and we hope to dive deeper into more detail in the next phase of our work. And finally, building on community needs and monitoring impacts, continued innovations in financing and delivery models are crucial to reaching more people productive use must be built on the needs and desires of communities themselves. So projects and governments must design and monitor for who is benefiting and who is not for example ensuring that the additional barriers that many women face are dismantled. And finally, they must try to anticipate potential unintended negative impacts for example on ecosystems as a result of excess water pumping. Thanks very much back to you Claire. Thanks so much Kevin fascinating. Okay, so Sergio, we heard earlier from this issue about the challenges the gambler facing and debt not be able to get access more financed in the recovery. Anna mentioned debt swaps, could you tell us a bit about what these mean and how the LDCs could benefit from these policy shifts to go back. Thanks Claire. And hi everyone, really great to be here. Yeah, so as you're saying that is to do and animals highlighting and as other parents have been highlighting also the LDCs have been particularly hard by the pandemic, owing to multi dimensional vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities have already been undermining the broader progress on SDGs in the countries. And this figures are now showing a reversal in trends of producing absolute poverty. The climate and nature crises are part of the causes that are undermining development efforts and LDCs have been facing growing debt burdens, but this has been hugely worse than by the pandemic. So the World Bank and the IMF have assessed that 16 LDCs are at high risk of debt distress and around for our in debt distress. For example, I became the first LDC since the start of the pandemic to default on on its debt. So there's an urgent need to provide significant support to LDCs to prevent further deterioration of the debt situation across the group. And this kind of approach would then support a preventative approach. So that would contribute to letting that distress and that default issues. And that's where this kind of that's what mechanism to come in. And that that would support this kind of debt relief that relief is useful for shedding and mutual burdens, and it will be required to some extent, but to support building back better. This debt that relief needs to be coupled with an approach to tackling the causes as well as the impacts. So that debt management and in particular debt management that's linked to climate in nature and support this kind of broader approach. That's because the climate in nature crisis destabilizes that as many LDCs are seeing is undermining economies and it's usually worsening the debt burdens. So taking an approach that seeks to coherently address all three crises can help support resilient recovery. So that management linked to climate in nature is where a country's existing debt is restructured in some way, whether that's a change in terms whether that's buying back debt at a cheaper rate on the secondary market, or in supporting conversion to a different financial vehicle, and with some proportion written off as debt forgiveness. And then the freed up fiscal space and budget issues to support growth enhancing and poverty reducing climate in nature investments. There could be investments in climate smart agriculture renewable energy, sustainable fishery management, labor intensive soil and water conservation, or a range of other idea activities, and specific activities would be chosen by the country, based on their plans and policies that already exist. So this type of approach would help to bring in financing behind the LDCs though carbon climate resilient development agendas. Thank you so much Sergio before I ask you the next question, just to all of those with us in this webinar. If you have questions please do put them in the Q&A box down below. We are collecting them from the chat but if you put them in the Q&A box then the panellists can also respond as we're going through. So the second question said, Sergio, what is the state of debt support across the LDCs and what's the opportunities for this debt management approach. How can the LDCs approach this? So currently there is the G20s debt service suspension initiative for the SSI and that's offering 73 countries, 43 of which are LDCs, a temporary suspension of debt service payments owed to the official bilateral beneficiaries, and the objective is to free up funds to spend on the COVID response until the end of the year. The G20 are also building on that initiative with the common framework for debt treatments beyond the DSSI. But the implementation and support under the common framework has been slow and very limited so far. And given the situation support needs to urgently go way beyond just a suspension of the debt service payments. So an example of debt management linked to climate and nature were previously being used was in this relatively small scale debt for climate and nature swaps in the 1990s and 2000s. Since then, given the experiences of climate and nature programming and the lessons from the lateral initiatives like KIPIC, the heavily indebted poor countries initiative. These kind of initiatives are showing that a much larger and a programmatic approach can be taken for that will require the support coming from national and international levels. At the national level, LDC governments can scope out the potential for climate and nature linked debt management by assessing what instrument and what structure would be most relevant for their debt situation. And which climate and nature objectives are priority to link this funding to. So that means involving the ministries of finance and those ministries to be actively engaging with the ministries of environment and ministries related natural resources. And then it also means the government needing to actively engage with non-governmental actors across the society. In terms of the structure of the instrument, the financing could use an approach where funds are channeled through government budgets in the same way that, for example, a World Bank Development Policy based loan or an IMF background program would be. And that would help enable larger financial transactions. A lot of channels could help build national financial capabilities, whilst also helping to ensure that finance is going behind the national climate and nature priorities. So it's owned nationally and determined nationally. Scaling up this kind of debt management approach also requires then coordination and support at the international level. So developed country parties should be supporting this kind of approach as part of the climate and nature commitments and advocating for credit to countries to engage with this debt agenda. Institutions like the IMF and the World Bank could also provide technical support for this kind of approach. And LDCs can push these agendas forwards in the G20 or in other international spaces to ensure that the international actors are speaking to and responding to debt climate and nature crises coherently. That thanks back to you. Thanks so much Sergio. Great. Well that's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you to all the wonderful panelists that we have today. We've got time for questions now so if you do put questions into the into the question box then we can I'll ask them but also we can have some written responses if you have more questions that we can handle. And I'd just like to start by asking Miss Isatou. Please give us an example of how the government of Gambia is building back better the question is around what activities are doing what you what you're actually doing currently. Hi Isatou are you there. Thank you Claire. Basically the government of Gambia like I said my when responding to the course works on highlighted that the Gambia we have already started the process of having a recovery plan. So we intend to prioritize national development plan to a recovery plan to what the process is yet to start. However, since recovery would be something that would be short term would be long term as well. We intend to have a policy dialogue around what the government thinks about recovery and what policymakers thinks about recovery as well for us to a city and how long do we want our recovery. Our recovery timeline to be because the current personal development plan we're trying to prioritize ends this year but we intend to extend it to 2022 because we will have an election this year so we want to have the current development plan extend to 2022. So, so given the approach to recovery being long long term and not short term, we can just have a recovery plan that that would be for a period of one year. So we want to intend to intend to have a policy dialogue with policy makers and policy for the development partners as well to have a dialogue on how long we intend our recovery plan to be. So, hopefully, we might have a recovery plan be extended to the next development cycle and it would also help and help or inform our development of a long term plan because currently a long term plan or perspective plan has just ended. We intend to have a long term plan. We intend to align with our 2050 climate strategy. So this is the process we have been doing so far. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, so I've got a couple of questions also for shouting and shouting what approaches exist in the LDC leadership pledge for nature. How can this be engaged in engagement building up on bottom up of genders into global policy. How can this be engaged and supported. Yeah, it seems like a two layered question in the specifically in the leaders pledges self it all the countries who sign up for the pledge does say that they must recognize the people and the local communities knowledge and use that to inform their plan they also recognize that their rights to manage their natural resources and the manager must be respected and those are the two key components obviously the country's already committed to we think the leaders pledge to ensure that the whole society approach to actually work with nature to build back better. And at the same time, there's also, from the cases we've seen an existing experiences we've seen. There's also existing mechanisms that we can use to help ensure that vision, and that's pledged in the leaders pledge can be realized so that's probably the second layer of that question if I understand that. Specifically, as many have already illustrated already. In LDC, they still also need a lot of support to realize some of the ambition they already pledged for both nature and the climate. And for example, we've seen that there's some estimate out there that the world itself needs to invest between 589 to 800 billion US dollar more per year in nature. And with the debt crisis in LDC they even need more additional support from our initial analysis to implement some of the solutions. So the first to probably answer to the mechanism is that to get more money to LDC more financial support to support LDCs and debt for nature swap as my colleague have highlighted is one of them. But then the second part of it when there's a bigger pile of support or finances also how to make the finances flow to where it matters and that ties into the IEDs whole Institute money where it matters work. And especially in the cases we've seen for this piece of research, we've seen that the local the rural communities in LDCs often have very limited access to public health care, social safety nets, but community based and local organizations like producer groups, cooperatives, community conservation teams that was formed to sustainably use and protect nature and address the multiple crisis those groups face on daily basis are not only helping to manage nature work with nature better but can also help empower community to provide services with their members in times of crisis. For example we've seen some of the user group saving groups loan scheme set up to help people manage natural resources better is also helping members in difficulties when they don't have remittance from the urban area when COVID hit. And we also think that those groups and local structures help provide members with continued support and secure access to market in terms of crisis. And they also strengthen members voices to inform the government policies including the green recovery policy. So I think that's really important when we think about the green recovery plan. The funding need to be there but then you also need to be policy and the support for those locally based the community based organizations to strengthen them to be able to translate some of the visions of engagement with indigenous people and the local communities. Sorry, a little bit long hope but hopefully answer the question. Thank you starting now that was really useful. Okay, so I'm one for Kevin. And the question around how do we bolster the expansion of renewable energy and productive uses. So we're moving away from fuel with it's a question for my Uganda. Yes, a big question that deserves a big answer but I'll do my best. Just to highlight a few points that pop out to me. So as I mentioned financing is really key in getting these systems into especially rural communities. There are many many options for financing so there's blended financing using public money to leverage greater amounts of private money which is also quite controversial and there are questions around that, whether that's kind of just a safety net for investors which I think we need to think about. There's subsidies away from fossil fuels so there's there's still a ton of subsidies on fossil fuels. So how do we move that away into renewable energy into rural electrification. And I think a lot of that has has to deal around political will and you know the political economy and implications of that. So ideas around cross subsidizing so high energy users in urban areas who tend to be tend to have more wealth and resources using them to cross subsidize rural electrification in rural communities. So just to emphasize that we don't see energy as an end goal itself energy is really an enabler so it enables all the other SDGs to achieve those. So it's enabling healthcare it's enabling education and so on. So we want we want donors to prioritize their programs into leveraging energy as an enabler into their specific programs so whether it's small businesses or SM a small medium enterprises and so forth. These are great opportunities to build in energy into money that either exists in programs or is in the pipeline. One last point expanding on existing structures is really important to in order to achieve scale that's really what we have to aim for. So something I didn't have time to mention but would like to now is we've we've mentioned So we looked at the government of Malawi's social cash transfer program, which gave stoves and Pico lights to some of the poorest families in Malawi and it was it was quite successful. So leveraging those existing structures trying to find additional ways to reach more people and so forth. I hope that at least answered a bit of that. No, that's great. I think that was really, really interesting Karen really helpful. Okay, so there's a lot of these questions around finance and said, what are the political solutions to this heavy burden of debt is one of our questions. Yeah, so I guess maybe that's around, you know, how can the cup 26 process perhaps be used to to begin to push for these debt swaps to happen. Thanks. Yeah, there's a huge sort of political kind of back and forth here about how support can be provided and I think that the biggest point is that a lot of these countries have made the developing countries and developed countries on these climate commitments. And a lot of this approach that I was talking about linking climate and nature to debt management is to support that agenda. So there is a lot of sort of a kind of traction there so commitment already there to support these kind of approaches. The, the kind of actors on the stage are quite worried so you'll have developed countries who are not necessarily creditors but they can help move the agenda along. And then you have creditor countries who are bilaterals, you can also help move this agenda along by actually engaging and supporting LDCs with restructuring their debt. What we've seen is that the composition of creditors in LDC countries has become a lot more complex than it was 10, 20 years ago. And now, as well as bilateral and multilateral institutions also private creditors as key actors, there is a lot of sort of coordination required to help align those incentives between bringing in private creditors, actors and bilateral creditors and multilaterals. The World Bank and IMF are trying to respond to this and developing a platform that will help provide some technical assistance and link these kind of agendas together. And I think the one of the key movement points is, and drawing from some of the work that we're doing with, we're currently working with these four countries in coastal West Africa, who are who began the process of scoping what a debt management link to climate and nature approach could look like in their countries. And what that's helping to do is pull out insights that can help shape what these multilateral institutions are understanding as useful in supporting these countries. So there is sort of a need to develop thinking on both sides. And that comes from also scoping and understanding how best these approaches can be implemented, learning from the past initiatives like HIPAAC and will be kind of programming experience of climate and nature activities and programming over the last decades. It's a complex sort of field, but it is. Yeah, there is movement there and momentum building. Thank you so much. And, well, before I go to the next question Kevin MJ is asking how to access your report so if you have a link in or yeah, great. Another question, I think I'm going to go to Anna with this one, a question around the digital divide in the LDCs that's been a huge challenge for inclusive recovery, especially for children and being able to continue to be educated. All the back to jabs being made available through apps so is there any ways that these types of issues are being picked up around the cup. And does COP26 have any leads on the issues of digital inclusion. Of course, COP26 and certainly the process moving towards it has been facing a switch to an entirely virtual environment. So, I do think negotiators and certainly LDC negotiators have faced challenges. And engaging in in those environments. The technology is, is, is much more difficult for, for them to access the internet technology is, is simply not there in in many cases. So, in terms of inclusion in the international negotiations. I think that it's important to be very careful around how virtual environments in the negotiations are structured. I don't think that the COP is is is really addressing these issues systemically though, obviously within the context of the negotiations solutions are trying to be found. I think that there needs to be a lot of additional work and attention paid to bridging the digital divide between LDCs and and the rest of the world in order to make digital spaces fair, fair and inclusive for for for all. And so, yeah, I do think that that needs to be addressed outside of the climate process very, very urgently. Thank you Anna. And a question for Ritu social protection. You were talking about how important it is as a delivery mechanism for supporting the very poorest. But how can we finance it so that we can get real access across the numbers of people that need it. Yeah, that's very important question, especially in context of LDCs because you've seen, even though we understand the value of social protection, some of these instruments, but still even countries like Uganda, Ethiopia they're struggling to achieve that universalization because there is no budget allocation, the coverage is poor, and more than that, the countries are constrained because of poor domestic resource mobilization, even in Ethiopia even though we know that the NSP have been successful. They have high dependence on donor finance. So what do we do so what are the solutions for this. Obviously, we also know that while these issues challenges are there we also have some opportunities, especially because social protection programs have been implemented in a very fragmented way, there are a lot of duplication so the first starting point for LDCs could be that we remove some of these fragmentation and try to optimize some of these resources. Secondly, you know, there is, I would not say I'm not against cash transfer, but you know we had our own research where we try to figure out that many countries are just going behind universal cash transfer, because they feel that they're most more beneficial, but we do need to understand that they are different social protection delivery mechanisms, their cash transfers their conditional cash transfer food aid, and they work differently in different country contexts we cannot have one size fits all approach. And our own research shows that there's different benefit cost ratio, and in many cases, the public works program sometimes to be more cost effective compared to others. So therefore the country then they're trying to look at universal social protection access, they need to put the resources behind the ones that is most suited to their country condition and probably have a mix of these social protection instruments. And also say that we, you know, there is, we saw that in Ethiopia, there's a huge prevalence of informal social protection mechanism. And even in Bangladesh we have this micro finance mechanism. And these are typically outside the limit of typical formal government social protection system. What we need to do is probably and they have a much wider coverage, they deal with immediate community needs. So whether we can bring them within the pool and bring in some some element of efficiency. And finally, I would say that we keep talking about local supply chains, and there are many companies like they put the resources behind or the only source products from supply chains that are that are compliant with all the sustainability norms. But there are many, for example, I have a typical example of the store need Chocolonies, which has almost their, their, the market share is increased by 20 times without one advertisement. And the only reason that they have flourished in the market is because the youngsters that way they're buying chocolates, which they feel is more compliant with the labor norms. But are these global, these big companies just investing back their profits into creating or sharing the burden of social protection with the LDC. So probably we need to push the big companies to that are relying on sustainable supply chains to invest and partner with the government in bringing about universal social protection. So I'll stop there because this issue is very challenging countries are struggling with access to finance, but first we need to consolidate the domestic finance and then for those gas which remain then we may look for international and donor support but on in a way that we can reduce the dependency in the global. Thank you to fabulous. So we have, we have a question from James, and I'm going to start with you is a two. The question is, shouting emphasize the critical role of innovation and capacity of local organizations. Kevin was also giving examples of the vital existing local structures. I think it's a tonalist think local organizations are the key to covert recovery resilience. But do we need to organize communities. Is it to do you want to have first go from the Gambian experience. Hi, it's a to can you hear me. Yes, I missed the quick sun sorry. That's okay. So, in the in your experience in the Gambia. Organizations critical to covert recovery and resilience we heard shouting and Kevin talking about the need for organized communities or the organized the community structures to to support the response. Is that something that sounds resonates for the Gambia. Sure. Because, like I already said, and we are working on having a recovery plan. So far, the government of the Gambia have already have this a COVID so say COVID-19 the public secretariat has been supported by UNDP. So this secretariat is tasked with develop coming up with a recovery plan. So, in doing that, the secretariat intends to involve the local communities experience especially local authorities in this because we believe in tackling climate change, we really need to have these issues resolved at the local level. For example, the Gambia climate change policy has knowledge you need for having climate finance reach at the local level. So in that policy we have identified we have emphasized that 50% of climate finance resources that we will be having. And then we have established our climate in front would go to the local and people because I'm beside statistics have shown that most of the climate finance, which is countries and only limited amounts goes to the local level. So it is important that local people are empowered to enable us to recover back better. Thank you. Thank you so much. Does anyone else want to respond to that question. I'm happy to respond. Certainly, if if we do succeed in in increasing the number of resources at the international level. If we succeed in really embedding and integrating nature based solutions and green economic recovery into these important outcomes from from COP 26. It really will have no impact unless it reaches the, the, the local level. So, it's incredibly important to build linkages between the international level and emphasize the importance of having systems like the Gambia is currently putting in place to ensure that those resources can really do reach local local communities to have impact. Thank you. Yes, you know, one thing which has strongly come out from our analysis is, there's a very strong need for improving targeting and advocacy at the local level. The way of achieving that targeting is by involving community because that's the, that's the level at which it can be achieved in the most effective and in the most cost effective and efficient manner. And we've also seen that if you give the decision making and flexibility at the community level. And the efficiency in the program delivery can be achieved at a much faster phase compared to other so it is, it makes sense for us to, to involve community more include them in the decision making power in the decision making process so that they can identify and target and prioritize those who are most vulnerable, those who need immediate support and to build that resilience for long term as well. So, yes, we do need to go behind and strengthen those communities. Thank you. Okay, so broad support then for getting, you know, engaging local communities in the processes for resilience and a lot that's come out around the challenges of accessing the climate finance but also some ideas about how that can be pulled from it to, for example, that much more of that finance needs to be grants, particularly for the LDCs said I was talking about the Ministry of Finance needs to work much more closely with those in the climate plans to set up these steps. And we've had a lot about solutions Kevin and Ritu talking a lot about, you know, the types of solutions that can really begin to bridge that affordability gap, for example, bring together labor market reform and social protection to get more coherent approaches. Are there any final words that anyone wants to make a top advice to governments of an LDC. What would what would your sort of, you know, elevator pitch be anyone got any final things to add to that list. Yeah, Kevin. My advice is based on what many countries already doing already which is integrating their energy plans so the classic approach from the 20th century is grid expansion. It's worked. It's very costly. We have new technologies and if we can integrate this this grid expansion it makes sense financially with newer technologies so that we can enable more livelihoods in rural areas I think that's that's really great and we've seen it across the four country examples that we looked at they're already doing it so keep it up and and let's let's learn from them. The others come behind Kevin there and you know, beyond what I've already mentioned, I would second Kevin that in terms of social protection and labor market reform, and especially because we're talking, targeting of better efficiency and streamlining program it is important that we take advantage of and probably because we've seen in Cambodia, because they had an ID poor database, they were able to quickly roll out, even though the social protection mechanism was not strengthened, they were able to quickly roll out cash immediate cash relief, although that's not an ideal solution, but it does bring about efficiency. So make use of technology make use of existing tools and methodologies available to improve the efficiency of labor market or social protection. It's a check ahead. Yeah. First, I want to acknowledge the, to acknowledge the momentum that state called us. That is countries, we don't group civil society private sector has shown towards pursuing climate reasoning and green recovery so far it has been great. And just yesterday, the climate funds has jointly confirmed support for this level. So for me as stakeholders and as actors in this process. Really, I would want to address all of us to walk it up in order to save our planet for the future generation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, maybe we'll leave it there. I was sorry, do you want to come in. It's probably really quickly to add a public another call for really looking at the local structures that can make finance with flows but at the same time one additional point is that it will encouraging thing when we were talking to some of the local practitioners is some of those activities that addressing those multiple crisis for local communities still ongoing despite COVID. And the reason that they've been able to do that is because that look really strong local organization structure. Also that those local organizational structure like produce organizations, they actually can help you secure finances through a combination of mechanisms so it's not just donor money. It's not just waiting for the government to give funds but actually accessing sustainable supply chains looking at the local market rather than just international market and being able to support the communities with social protection schemes that the local organization actually put together. So they all have this diversity of basket that they tapped into, even though somewhere some money drained due to COVID they have other things that they can use. So the financing when we're talking about financing and the financing this type of different approach and a great recovery. It's not just about kind of the donor and the LDC relationship but it's also about within LDC itself if there's that strong local organizations and local structures they can mobilize finances and find the innovation themselves. So I think that's really important to highlight as well. That's brilliant. Thank you very much. Now it's a really good place to finish. So I think we're going to, I'm not going to hand over the floor. Thank all my panelists again for absolute brilliant interventions really really enjoyed that myself and hand over to Andy to give closing remarks. Huge thanks Claire and huge thanks to the panel that was such a rich discussion and there was so much there. All I'm going to try and do is pick out a few crude top lines I couldn't capture all of that but just great to have that. So just going through the speakers from Issa to this issue about the that we are seeing growing debt burdens in the poorest countries, and that it's really urgent to ensure that all countries and particularly LDCs have the resources they will need to implement a green and inclusive recovery and there's a real need for action here to match rhetoric. We know that the hundred billion the target from 2009 was not met in 2020 on climate finance, and we know there are many other areas as well where global solidarity is falling short which is vaccination rates that Issa mentioned, and it's just so important that this is fixed in vulnerable countries, particularly in Africa as a key priority to build resilience and that's an element of global solidarity that is just so vital. From Anna this point about aligning recovery and stimulus spending with climate action we know that is something also that isn't happening yet where the global community is really falling short. So another critical area for to focus on really at every level. I'm shouting really eloquent description of the ways in which action can address climate change, nature loss, inequality and also promoting recovery together but the vital importance in doing that of supporting community and indigenous peoples land rights, supporting their own cultures and their own ways of dealing with those issues which have been proven over long periods to be highly effective. So again that focus on working at the community level but also empowerment and rights is key dimensions of that. Fantastic kind of tour from Rita of all the hugely important issues around social protection. Well designed social protection can build climate resilience can address inequality and can also help countries to build back livelihoods that have been decimated during the pandemic. Community action is key to that finances key to that and that's a huge issue. But another really important point there is that we can learn for the long term from what we've seen over the last year there will be it's going to be a more unstable world there will be, you know, shocks upon shocks to come so it's vital that we learn the lessons that we've been able to build through the year of working on the pandemic and other other kind of forms of fragility that have hit over the last year. A great kind of illustration from Kevin I mean just to pick out one really key point there that distributed renewable energy systems aren't only good for the climate they're not just about mitigation. They also build resilience they also build livelihoods, and they also help build the strength of communities for the recovery from the pandemic so there are multiple areas there and they're a big part of an inclusive and green recovery that we all want to see. And finally from Sejal how you know debt management can be used to support a green recovery with both climate and nature elements and how you know that can be used to leverage resources and also direct investments towards a coherent response at the level of the LDCs. But also there's a real challenge there, because the creditors now in terms of the debt situation, which is acute for many countries are much more diverse and they were in 2008 and much more diverse they were when the hippie debt relief initiative was put together. At the turn of the millennium so there's a lot to be learned there about how to draw in private sector creditors and new national actors such as China. And just a final word on this, I think just that all the contributors really emphasize that business as usual won't be enough that there's a need for way more volumes of finance and support to reach the LDCs, but also institutions at all kinds of international international global need to rethink their practice, so that those resources reach the grassroots and reach communities that are impacted, most severely both by the pandemic, and by climate change and nature loss. So let me just finish up by thanking everyone that was a brilliant session many thanks to Claire for being such a great moderator. Many thanks to the back room team to Elaine and Georgina for doing such a fantastic job preparing actually and also Benjamin, who couldn't join us today, but did a wonderful job in preparing the materials and huge thanks to all the panelists. And also many thanks to the participants we had some brilliant questions coming in, which really enriched the discussion. So yeah, many thanks to everyone and please keep an eye out for we'll be publishing findings from this work over the coming months so please keep an eye out for that. And huge thanks to everyone. Thank you.