 Hi everyone welcome and thank you for joining us. My name is Erin Beasley I'm the US director for ecosystem restoration camps. We are an organization that supports a network of local restoration initiatives around the world. And I'm thrilled to be moderating today's symposium. To make the connections between ecosystem restoration and climate action. And the potential for all actors from governments to companies communities. And the individuals joining this presentation today to get involved and to take action on some of the most important strategies and activities of our time. We're here today in the context of COP 26 and the UN decade on ecosystem restoration. Because governments and scientists around the world have all come together in recognizing to take that we need to take urgent action on climate change. We need to reduce fossil fuel emissions in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change at the same time. We know that nature and the way we use land has a significant potential to draw down carbon from the air and into living abundant ecosystems. These plants and trees and other vegetation on land and coastal systems are some of our greatest allies to soak up carbon from the air. And we also know that people have a crucial role in this action. So as we invite the speakers for today's presentation, I want to share a quote from author and writer. Robin wall Kimmerer, who talks about the importance of people in this process. She says that restoring land without restoring relationship. Is an empty exercise. It's relationship that will endure. And relationship that will sustain the restored land. Sometimes the scale for action in restoration activities can either be overwhelming or sometimes motivating and inspiring. Today, we'll hear from speakers who have accepted this transformation as part of their own challenge and are taking action with governments and citizens alike. In our first round of speakers will hear from John Lou, founder of ecosystem restoration camps movement, and Renee Zamora restoration expert from the World Resources Institute. After their presentations will take a brief round of questions from the audience. So you can add your questions into the YouTube live chat, and also please feel free there to let us know where you're joining from. So our questions will take a brief break, and we'll come back with three additional speakers who have been leading restoration initiatives on the ground in the United States, Somalia and Egypt. And hear about how they're connecting with their community and how they're building leadership within their organization to achieve restoration on the ground. Let's get started with John Leo. John is the founder of the ecosystem restoration camps movement, as well as the ecosystem ambassador for the common land, common land foundation and advisory council member advisory board member for the UN decade on ecosystem restoration. So we're pleased to have you here and we'll start with a few moments of comments on this video. Hello. I'm so happy to have this opportunity to talk with you remotely today. And I'm very grateful to the Common Land Foundation and the mustard seed trust that have made it possible for me to continue to do this work for so long. And it's my pleasure to talk with you about the ecosystem restoration camps movement. So there's a long backstory to this, but it's too long for this meeting. I would like to show you my academia page and recommend that if you're interested in how I got to this point that you take a look at that and you'll find many films and many papers that have been published. About five years ago in 2016, I started imagining and dreaming about waking up in camp and lots of people were camping and they were getting up and very happily going off to restore ecosystem function. And actually when I had that dream the first time, I sort of said, well, who's going to do that? I felt a little like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh. I'd been making films about ecosystem restoration for a long time and I just thought, well, people don't seem to be listening to this. But a strange thing happened. I kept having these dreams and so I thought I would write about it. And so I wrote an essay that ended up in Permaculture magazine and then it was reprinted in the Cosmos Journal and then it circulated around on social media. And I was surprised to find that first hundreds, then thousands, and then tens of thousands of people were discussing this and that they were saying that they really liked this idea and some were actually saying that they were having this kind of dream themselves. So it was a little bit like close encounters of the third kind or something where people are making mashed potatoes into a landscape where they're trying to figure out where the spaceship is going to land. And but when that was clear then we needed to make a foundation and we thought, well, how would we do that? And I think the traditional way would be to go out and raise lots of money with the traditional capital concentrations, other institutions. But we started talking about having an egalitarian and a participatory way to do this. So we said, well, who would share? Who would share a few euros per month? Ten euros per month, let's say. And when a thousand people pledged that they would share ten euros per month, we made a foundation. And that foundation then we started to think, well, we have to make a camp. So where would we make the first camp? And we decided to do this in Spain where the Common Land Foundation has another large project with about a million hectares in restoration. And so we built this first camp in the first year and then in the second year we had two camps. The second one was in Mexico and the third year there were 21 camps and in the fourth year there were 37 camps. And this year we're going to definitely go, certainly around 50 maybe more. It sort of depends on how many members join the ecosystem restoration camps foundation to support this kind of activity because there are many, many more camps that want to join but we have difficulty being able to help all of these organizations and individuals that are ready to start camps. So as the movement grows then we're going to be able to support many more camps. And these camps are in very, very interesting places in Peru and Guatemala and in Kenya and in Morocco and Somalia and India. There's even one developing in Syria together with the United Nations. And Gaia University. And the fact is if we all work together we're somewhat unlimited in how to do this. And I'm very happy that Zendesk is working with the ecosystem restoration camps to make a knowledge hub. So this concept is that not only can people go camping but in doing this they're working to increase the soil fertility. They're working to increase the hydrological function. They're working to protect and increase biodiversity. And in doing this they can lower the surface temperatures. They can alter reducing evaporation rates, increasing evapotranspiration, and creating microclimates and recharging the lower hydrological cycle, increasing fertility and productivity in regenerative agricultural systems, and restoring natural zones and rewilding. So all of this is very exciting to me because these are the subjects that I've been studying, observing, documenting, and communicating about for decades now. And it's something that changes the dynamics. We have had an expert class and we've had endless conversations in the convening of the parties of the various UN conventions. But in my experience it's difficult to see people who are well dressed wearing Italian suits and cufflinks getting out there and really increasing soil fertility or planting. And a lot of these conversations have been way too simplified. I've been talking about tree planting, for instance. Well, that would be like talking about building a roof on a house before you've built the foundation. So if you're not thinking about the hydrological cycle or the soil fertility or the microbial or fungal communities or the pioneer species that develop these systems, then talking about trees is a bit, well, premature. And if you're expecting that just planting out trillions of trees is somehow going to work, then you have to realize, one, that tree plantations are not forests. And that planting trees are not the same as tending trees and making sure that they survive. So in many of these hasty tree planting projects where the tree value is a few pennies or 20 cents or 40 cents or something, a couple of dollars, this is ridiculous. The value of functional ecosystems is vastly higher than anything that human beings have ever made and everything that human beings will ever make. And so the idea that we want to have some poor unfortunate people somewhere slaving away in the most degraded parts of the world and we're not willing to support them to do this is not very correct. It's not very fair. So we need to understand the value of ecosystem function and we need to see that there are wonderful ways to do this. So I hope you'll all learn as much as you can about the ecosystem restoration camps and about participation because this is a way we can all instantly participate. And when we do this we are creating a method where we can change not only the ecological outcomes but also the social outcomes. We can address many historic mistakes. We can honor and respect and celebrate the accomplishments of indigenous cultures around the world who in fact were more developed than the cultures that came to try to dominate them and to eradicate them. So let's go camping and restore a little bit of paradise every day. Thanks very much. Everybody I guess am I am I live here. So that was a recording that I made. And I'm so glad to have that opportunity and I just wanted to add that while the cop is going on and we're looking at all these theoretical policy decisions and so on. We recognize that climate change is a physical problem. It's not a theoretical problem. So we're going to have to physically change this. And this is what I really love about the ecosystem restoration camps that we can all have a role to play and that we can work together to understand what we need to do instead of be confused about what's going on. We can do a type of collaborative inquiry for collective intelligence. And in this way, we can all know exactly how you lower the surface temperatures of the earth, how you actually sequester carbon, how you ensure food security, how you make sure that there's no toxicity in in the soils and in the environment. And we have to value that we have to realize that that's more valuable than buying and selling things. It's more valuable than anything else that human beings can do. So if we have a existential threat from climate change, then mitigating and adapting to climate change is the most valuable thing you can do. So in these ecosystem restoration camps, it's the lowest cost. And it's the highest impact to engage all of the people in in this effort. And that's what we need to do, we need to make ecosystem restoration the central issue of human civilization. So if that's the central issue or human civilization, then there's nothing that will stop us from doing this. We will continue to suggest that, well, all these things that happened in the past, you know, they're not so bad, we'll just kind of carry on, and forget about that and we'll just keep going with the way it is. I think we're going to have to, we're going to have to do something more, you know, more complete, more holistic, we're going to have to look at the injustice of the past, and say that that's unacceptable. And if we don't want to carry the injustice into the future, we want it to stop now. So we can't go back and and make these things that happened earlier not happen. But what we can do, we can decide what the future is. So I hope you'll all join the ecosystem restoration camps will all work together, and we'll take care of this as quickly as possible. So thank you very much. I'm here to answer questions with everyone else. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, john. I think you really have started begun the conversation on a great foot and I think we'll see in the rest of the presenter, the presentations, the scale, the potential scale of this action, and the possibility of camps as places for action. We'll also hear a bit more about that later from our speakers in the second round. I'd also like to remind folks who are listening through the YouTube channel if you'd like to share in the YouTube chat where you're tuning in from we'd love to hear who is interested in this conversation. And if you have questions based on john's presentation or our next presenter, please add them to the chat as we go along and we'll take a round of questions after the second presenter. So now I'd like to introduce Renee Zamora is Guatemalan and senior forest economist and coordinator of the research and innovation initiative of 20 by 20 and the global restoration initiative at the World Resources Institute. In this role, Renee coordinates the restoration policy acceleration program to encourage innovation in public economic incentives. Renee has a PhD in forest engineering and economics from Oregon State University in the United States. And in 2019 Renee received the recognition of outstanding doctoral research award from the International Union of Forest Research organizations. Renee's work is reflected in more than 30 publications in scientific journals. And among projects developed across the Americas is the creation of a sustainability index for the restoration of landscapes that allows monitoring of restoration of degraded lands. The index has also supported Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, Guatemala and Columbia in the development of their national landscape restoration plans. Welcome Renee and thank you for joining us. Thank you thank you and thanks for the invitation and happy to be here sharing with you some of the experiences we have so far with the consistent restoration and the initiative 20 by 20 in Latin America. And the links with science as John was saying you know this is a real issue we are facing with climate change that people in my country and other countries will be facing is facing every day and we need to find ways to mitigate adapt to to these effects that are coming. I just want to share with you a very short presentation on some of them. Why we're doing this what what is some of the science behind these really simple terms. So you know that this is a very complex issue when we talk about ecosystems is a different different components and it's not a it's not a simple issue but I will share with you right now my screen and then we can start really quick. I'm just checking if you can see my screen or our moderators. You see that. Okay, yeah, just so you have a context here. There are different terms that is being used. You have here of them. Restoration just as a word. Some people use ecological restoration some others are using landscape restoration ecosystem restoration now with the decade. I think the one you know the important thing here, and I think the reason why the UN decade is named the ecosystem restoration is because you know ecosystem is a more global is different we live in different line uses. We, we have cities we have agricultural lands we have forest. We have water, we have mangroves, we have different uses and we are as population is increasing we are intensively using our resources, and that's changing the landscapes, you know. So the ecosystem approach I think is the one that helps a lot to understand all these, since these links between the systems that are that are, you know related. The easiest example to understand is of course you have a watershed and then you have water coming in the upper part of the watershed that has that is going down. You have populations that depends on the water downstream, and you are not making sure that the water is, is being captured in the upper parts by the forest in this case cloud forest. And then you are causing some cause effect situation or you are you're causing scarcity in some areas of the of the watershed, just because you are managing other areas in a bad way. So this is a system a person what you do has an effect, you might not see it, but every day, everything we do has an effect in other parts of the landscape and with other people with other things. So this is this is why we use in many cases landscape and ecosystem as an interesting way to see it but basically the message is that is this is a very complex we are not talking about one unit one project. One nectar of land that we would like to restore we are talking about how that actor can affect other actors and is related to the to the entire system that we are trying to to get better. Actually, you know the many cases we use the word rehabilitation as a way to, to, to explain better you know that we are rehabilitating certain areas we are not coming back to the forest we have before, I think, 1000 years ago, because you know we have people living there we have land that is being used to produce food that we eat every day so we need to manage the balance of all those things without degrading that the land more. So in that sense, you know we have at the political level. Big movement that started in 2011 with the bond challenge, and then from the bond challenge we have two initiatives that were born. There is one more in Asia that is being crafted. We have everyone 120 by 20 Latin America for 100 Africa. These are countries that are committing to restore land, but for a politician, maybe if you ask about the ecosystem approach, they won't understand the world. So that's why you know the way probably these countries started to commit vectors to restore is using the land, the area commitment, you know, we will restore millions of vectors. We are not talking about your restoring a specific systems they are talking about restoring a number, which is meaningful for them but it's more complex than that. If you see all these commitments, you see that there is big challenges here because you know each of these countries have made a lot of commitments, millions of vectors, and you may wonder you know how we are going to achieve that target if we don't work together. And that's one of the challenges we have you know how we bring the science and also the financial resources so we can do this in a way that it can provide us with benefits in the long term but also you know we can achieve our targets. The key here maybe the message is that when we when we see these million hectares probably we are not talking about doing interventions in every single actor. If you see for example my country Guatemala 1.2 million hectares that's a lot of land for a small country. I don't see you know that we will be doing activities in every actor of those 1.2 million actors but what I see and what we are trying to achieve is to develop areas in strategic areas in this 1.2 million actors that will benefit the entire system. So let's say you know there are key strategic areas in this 1.2 million actors that are more valuable than others, for example the areas that are close to national parks, the areas where people are having food security problems and you need to provide them with with with a safe net with trees that provide fruits. Those are areas that are priority for for many objectives and those are the areas we need to influence because if we influence those areas we can have an effect in other areas. So that's that's the I think the key of this component how we intervene certain areas so we can have an effect in the system. Achieving an effect in the entire system is not. It's very difficult and it won't be problem possible, but we and we can reach the skill that we need for climate to face climate change we do that. I just want to mention you know that climate change about carbon of course and greenhouse emissions. And we have developed a mapping in WRI on on carbon. The potential of forest capture carbon and where we are losing for us where we are losing that potential if you remember in the school the question of photosynthesis you know the three captures the co2 uses water and then converts that with energy into biomass could be leaves timber I mean other other biomass. And that that biomass is fixed but if you if you cut that tree then you lose that capacity to capture. And that's what is happening in many places that we are losing that capacity but when when you see that there are areas you know where people is using the trees in a sustainable way like communities in Latin America where they are cutting some trees but they are still you know, maintaining maintaining so they are using the forest, but also they are conserving the forest protecting the forest by sustaining we're using the forest. So what we need to see is not with areas where we are losing that capacity or where we're really cutting to see where we need to see is that where we are changing the land use so you have a forest and then you are cutting all that forest to plan agricultural crops or you have cattle ranching that's that's the that that's a problem because then we lose the capacity but if you are managing the for like in the Mayan reserve in northern Guatemala, where the communities are cutting some trees, but at the same time are planting and managing the forest, that's a way you know that's a way to protect the forest too. So when we put this together, you can see here where are the areas where the purple areas here where you can see the changes and the big changes in the in the entire where we are losing more than we are gaining so we are basically changing the land use we are cutting the nature to do something else. The problem and that's where the only reason why I put this I don't want to go into the details of carbon or anything it's just that the discussion is about carbon much you see in the newspapers carbon carbon carbon planting trees is probably good some people say planting trees probably bad, but my point here is that when we are restoring ecosystems is not just about carbon is it's about more much more than that it's about the biodiversity is about the water is about the soil. This is this is a simplification of course because carbon is the one that is causing in part in great part of the global warming and trees capture carbon that's important too, but if we are restoring land, we are not doing that just because of the that's the only thing why we're doing that, and I will put this slide here is we're doing this, of course carbon is one part, but we are also doing this because we want to have better jobs, permanent jobs, decent jobs. We have we would like to have clean water we would like to have food security ecotourism, even fuel good, you know, we need we need to produce, we need to cook, and we need to cook in a sustainable way of course you know they are clean energies, but there are some cultures that like fire, because fire is a pretty to purify your spirit and it's connected so you need to cook with fire so that's part of the of the of the vision of some communities. But there is a way that we can do that without harming the environment without harming other people, and that's the balance that we need to find so we are doing restriction carbon is one piece but there are many areas and how we do that. Of course, there are many ways to do that, but one is of course, a protecting the forest when we talk about ecosystem restoration, and you say conservation is not that conservation is not restoration but I will argue that if you don't concern what is in your landscape, you are not really talking about restoration because you need to keep what this protected what you have protected instead of just restoring and then if not it's like cleaning. And then putting trash behind you, you know you're cleaning in front of you but you're leaving trash behind of you so you're not doing basically anything the balance by be zero, but it does not what we are looking into here. And also you know them, we need to look at the agriculture, you know we produce a lot of food, we eat a lot of that same food every day. We need to work with partners you know to see how we can better and that's different ways to restore. One last thing we also need to think about the, the, not everything is about forest we have peatlands you know, we have peatlands where we have, we don't mean we need to restore them and that doesn't mean to plant trees. And we have all their ecosystems like natural grasslands where we don't have to plant trees so ecosystem restoration is also a variety of activities with don't involve only the planting of the trees so that's the other thing that I would like to share. So just to finalize the, the talk is, you know, we have developed and this I want to share this with you, you want to learn more about you know the connection between the science and restoration. We have developed a series of courses online, you can download them and look at it in your computer if you have bad internet for example or you can take it online, those are free. Those were done with FAO in collaboration with FAO. It's the FAO eLearning Academy. There are tons of courses there that you can look into. But there are three that are on last year's situation if you can take a look and I am sure the organizers will share this presentation with you with the link. And yeah, very happy to be here and I hope this has been a good tutorial investment of your time. Thank you very much. Thanks. Great. Thank you so much Renee. If you could. Great. So now I'm going to ask all of the speakers that have spoken so far to join us. So I'm bringing back john as well. And we have a couple of questions from the chat so I wanted to share a couple of those with you. And then I'll start with you. And one of one of the questions that comes up frequently is how to deal, or how to include or prioritize different types of activities in different places. There's a whole range of practices. And within the camps movement, I think we've seen an interesting approach to let the people in the landscape identify what those priorities are. So could you talk a little bit about what that is looking like in some of the places that are part of the network. So, Renee, so you can prepare your answer as well. We have two questions from the group that are a bit more technical in nature. One is about the use of biochar as a potential strategy, as well as agroforestry. And one of the strategies that you mentioned there fit in closely with agroforestry and kind of maybe help the group understand a little bit about what those practices might look like on on productive lands. And you also mentioned the AFR 100 work with restoration in Africa. Could you help us understand what opportunities there are for restoration type activities in North Africa as that's an area or region that sometimes isn't identified as a as the priority region. One of our listeners would like to understand more about what possibilities are available there so first I'll pass it over to john. Okay. Two priorities. I would say that the permaculture principle of observation is a really, really important one, and that the local people are the ones who actually know what's going on when there's subtle changes in temperature, wind direction wind speed, all or available moisture. It's always the local people who know much more than anyone else about this, even if you are studying it from a satellite image perspective you don't really have the same level of sort of density that you do if you if it's raining on you if you know the temperature. So, I think that observation is very important and I think it's really important to understand that some of these concepts. While they are extremely complex. It doesn't mean that they can't be understood. I think what I've noticed in in the last few decades, in terms of what I've observed in degraded landscapes in functional landscapes and in restored or restoring landscapes is that the moisture needs to be held near the surface of the earth. If the if we've altered the surface and we cause thermic drafts that drive the moisture into the upper atmosphere, then this is going to have a much more impactful greenhouse effect than even co2 it's twice as impactful and twice as as as big as co2 as a greenhouse gas So high altitude moisture that is unnecessary and that is being pushed there because of human impacts. Who can change that the people in villages can change this. What is the value of changing this. It's enormous. This is where the support from the United Nations and other other groups should go. It should go directly to the people who have the ability to understand and to do this, and it should not just go into swirling pots of consultants somewhere, it should go to people who whose lives depend on this. Also who have the ability to do this work, and in doing this are not only helping themselves, they're helping themselves their families their communities, their countries, humanity as a whole, and future generations of life of all types. So, the priorities are quite clear to me that we have to observe, and we have to understand that there is really a hierarchy of functionality. One of the aspects is water moisture availability and cycling of this moisture and another another one which I think is critically important is the is the fertility in the soil we used to dance around the fire and you know have fertility dances or something we should do this again, because we need to, we need to realize that this is changing and that evolutionary succession is what I have been studying and what I've noticed is that when the evolutionary succession has principles. So studying those principles and understanding those principles always more biodiversity always more biomass always more accumulated organic matter. These principles are the basis of the systems that we're we're relying on for life support. We all know that and we all work to do this and we, and we value that ourselves and the rest of the society and civilization values that, then we must support the people who do this work, because there's nothing more important than that. So this is I think where we and then and then at the other side of this, we need the lowest cost and the highest effectiveness at at response, and that seems to be engaging as many people as possible in directly restoring ecological function. And when they understand it when they're not asking permission when they're not, they don't need to have somebody tell them what to do because they understand what they're doing. Then they get up in the morning and they do what needs to be done and they, and they, they are affected at it. That's what I think is is the priority for us. Thank you so much john, I think that really resonates with my experience in the in the organization as well. That we've really grown as an organization by recognizing the existing work that's already going on and the individuals and initiatives that have already started this process of restoration activities. And we found that motivation and way of organizing themselves, and for for us to support those activities through our network and community, and through individuals who are able to support those projects as well so thank you for those comments and for thinking about how we can consider some of these priorities at the, at the macro level as well. I would welcome you to respond to any comments that you'd like to make, and specifically the questions that I mentioned before. Thank you, thanks very much. I make a note here and so thanks for the question so they're biochar biochar is one of these products that for those that might not be familiar with you can basically take any biomass and do some analysis effect you know you're born that very high temperatures and then you concentrate the carbon in particles in, let's say the ashes know that that are remaining on that process, and then you can use that to work with soils you know to restore the fertility of soils that have lost that fertility or will compensate some some some variables of acidity another component so that there is a potential there is research ongoing right now. You can see both sides of the questions there are some people that said that this might be an incentive to probably more biomass to produce this product there are some other groups that are saying that this is a good way to to really take all the biomass that you cannot convert into products let's say timber and others. And then you can process that and then use that for soil amendments. So there are two areas in the spectrum, I think that I saw ongoing research right now. There are some experiences where this product has been applied and so have been restored some fertility. There are some areas where there is no effect. So I think I think there is an ongoing discussion and I will recommend you know just to be to assess you know the different options because there is not a right answer for that product but it's something that there in terms of Agroforestry Agroforestry of course you know that's promising and also there are research in different areas there are research that when you have trees with with cows for example. You can improve the production of milk and beef for those cows by having more trees in your property. But of course you know you know there are also crops with with trees like coffee with trees that is very a very good example in letting America and this you know we actually in Salvador the forest cover they have in great parties because they have this coffee tree plant tree shaped coffee plantations. So this is very promising but again you know the problem is that we cannot apply them in every situation that are conditions you know we need as John was saying we need to restore some conditions before we do any practice. And if you have limitations of soil, if the soil is very degraded or if the water is not there then any of these options might not work. In terms of the last question on FR 100, of course you know that when this movement started with the one challenge it was called forest landscape restoration. So it has it had the forest as a last name or as a first name. Right now it has evolved more ecosystem restoration, which doesn't mean only tree base restoration. So there are some opportunities for countries that are perhaps, you know less less forest area because of the conditions the ecosystems that are there but they have ecosystems that are important to be restored. And the importance of FR 100 is that it's a country led initiative so if a country decides you know this is what we would like to restore with our people. I think there are diverse way of ecosystems that doesn't necessarily have trees in there, but they are very important for people and I think that they could be considered just an example from from my initiative that I support which is 20 by 20 we have the case of Uruguay, where they have this natural grasslands and they are not looking into into trees they are looking into how we restore these grasslands that are there, but no planting trees but all and their commitment is restoring that type of ecosystem. In case of Peru and Chile they are looking into the wetlands, especially the wetlands in highlands how we can restore them because they were trained you know the wetlands they were trained for agriculture. But now they are looking into you know how we can restore that and doesn't that doesn't mean planting trees is a different approach so I think every, every country and every area has their own objectives that can be applied for ecosystem as a whole. I will say that things back to you. Thank you so much Renee. It's really inspiring to see the communities and of practice and leadership that the 20 by 20 initiative has developed across Latin America to really pull together leaders in restoration practice and science, and to make sure that those communities have national policies, and also achieving work on the ground so we're really excited to see what will continue to come out of the 20 by 20 initiative initiative 20 by 20 as well as we're really thankful to have your background and experience and to inform this conversation as well Thank you for taking the time to join us and john thank you for your inspiration and observations about where we can go with this restoration work. We had one additional comment in the question in the chat from plant for the planet related to ecosystem restoration camps, and how we monitor. Our impact as an organization we've been developing a prototype and a repetitive process of learning in a framework that we call our souls, soil, souls and society framework where we look at three major areas of impact for our site, and you can find more about that on our website at ecosystem restoration camps.org. So I think with that we will conclude the question and answer section. And we'll go to a brief break before introducing our future speakers. If you want, if you have other questions. If the conversation develops, please feel free to stick around. We'll have an open discussion at the end as well. So if additional conversations or comments come up, they'll be welcome. So thank you so much Renee and john. Thank you, thank you. So now we'll go to a brief break for five minutes and we will resume shortly. And this is a verbal reminder that will be back in one minute for the second part of our presentation. Hi everyone, we're coming back for the second part of our presentation. And I'm pleased to introduce our next guest speaker in the second round will have three speakers who are each leading restoration activities at different sites around the world. And we will also open space for questions at the end of the three presentations. So, up first we have Geneva sorenson Geneva is the camp paradise and campfire restoration project director in the United States in California. Welcome Geneva. Please make sure you are unmuted and feel free to share your screen as well. Okay, then. Let's see. Yes. Okay, good morning. Maybe afternoon or evening everyone. My name is Geneva sorenson and I'm the director of the campfire restoration project. And I'm calling in from Machuptah my do territory which is known as paradise California in the United States. And I just want to acknowledge the original tenders and stewards of this land, the my new people that were the original or stewards and restoration leaders and so grateful for all of their thousands of years of work and knowledge that brought us to the landscape that we have today. As Aaron said I'm with the campfire restoration project. Our vision is to joyfully cultivate harmony with humanity through nature. And our mission is to demonstrate regenerative community and inspire our new human story. And campfire restoration project in ecosystem restoration camps is known as camp paradise so you can find us as camp paradise on the website there. And our organization was started shortly after the 2018 campfire which is the deadliest and the most destructive wildfire in California history and this talk is sort of appropriately timed in terms of just yesterday was the three year anniversary of the fire and the impact of that mega fire is still very present in our community and it's still being felt. And so I just want to just give a quick nod and acknowledgement to all of those fire survivors and the new and continued fire survivors that we have here in California. And our project was I mean here in butte county we've been impacted by the campfire but then since then and you know last year we had the bear fire and this current fire season we've had the Dixie fire and so mega fires are a constant in our community. Also I'm in a year with rain so hopefully it's not too distracting. And, you know we see the direct impacts I mean I am not an expert I am not a trained restoration expert. I just want to qualify that in the beginning I consider myself a normal human being. But having grown up in this area and noticing the changes in the in the rain we are getting great rain now. But historically for the last 10 years we've been in a pretty extreme drought, you know we've seen friends and families wells go dry that have not been dry. And we have these mega fires which of course are not just climate change as Renee mentioned, many of these things are very layered. But certainly, when you have a forest that hasn't been able to receive water or hard pack unhealthy soil that's not able to soak in water. And that increases the flammability of that right, and then since having fire, all of those roots that hold our soil together we have increased erosion we have a massive landslide on one of our main highways just after this recent rainstorm and that was an area impacted by the Dixie fire so it's very easy to see the effects of climate change in our just our small community here. And, and being able to tend this land after the fire is really what inspired the start of this project. And over the last several years of organization we've kind of developed an approach, and that is to one focus on relationships. And being a community that's been impacted by so many great challenges, in addition to loss of loss from from wildfires but also as many of you all know from COVID and it's kind of been a stacked issue and so we don't really have the capacity to do things alone, but we have a requirement for us to collaborate with each other for us to have the capacity and the resources to do the work that we need to do and so it's sort of been a silver lining of going through a traumatic event. But building our relationships having a collaborative approach, both with local community members and from the top, you know, and larger government organizations. And that also is about healing our relationships, just to jump back with the land and we truly believe that the more that you have a relationship with something the more likely you're going to protect it. And so as we rebuild our relationship with this land, we learn from the indigenous practitioners here about how to be in better relationship with our plant relatives and our animal relatives and our land. Then that can help us be better stewards and have a deeper relationship to know how to protect and steward this land. So then that leads us to education and that's historically we did camps big camps like john was talking about where we can invite lots of people to come and take action and restoring the burn scar. COVID allowed us to like many of us revamp and revise and adapt. And so we did more local focused educational workshops. And, you know, the goal is really to try to support local community members that are not experts necessarily to learn practical skills on how to be in better relationship with their land how to capture and slow down water how to build soil, giving them resources to plant. So that goes down to resources we have given away trees we have given away soil and different restoration related materials and wood chips. We also have created video content, and we'll show some pictures of that but being able to provide resources for the community, and then sharing models, you know, sharing the model of collaboration, sharing the model of permaculture sharing of traditional ecological knowledge or TK, and being able to demonstrate how those can be put into place and demonstrating a different way to be in relationship with this land. And so some of the ways that we have done this. And I also just want to name that I have an incredible team of folks that support me all the time on this so even though it's my face you're seeing none of this could be done without a group of very dedicated passionate individuals. And so I just want to name, name them. But in the last year, we were able to plant or give away almost 4000 trees in the burn scar covering over 550 properties. Those properties are not only private properties but in some of these pictures for planting fruit trees at a school where they had a fruit tree orchard that got burned in the fire. Those students get to learn about and tend those trees. And then on the bottom picture is at a community church which was a memorial grove planting fruit trees there where there's still fire survivors camped there in RVs living and being able to provide access to food. And then also we gave away hardwood trees which are fit for this landscape that are fire resilient and fire adapted. Because this is a fire ecology that we live in and so trying to educate and learn how to be in relationship with that, as opposed to fight it, you know, it's working with our existing landscape and supporting it so that it continues to support us. After the campfire one of our first responses was distributing waddles or compost socks which are these long snake to be things. One of the responses is that they stop sediment they help prevent erosion but also when you, they prevent toxic runoff from burn buildings or workshops from leaching and running into waterways and so we were able to distribute those after the campfire. So with our work with different government and local organizations, we were able to do that again for bear fire survivors, and actually the California Office of Emergency Services learned from the campfire and from some of our responses with other environmental groups to do this for the bear fire so they actually provided some of these, in addition to these ones that we were able to provide so it's sort of encouraging to see the actions that we're taking be carried on for future learning. Because none of us have been here before and none of us have dealt with this before so it really takes tracking and learning and trying and working together to try to do the best we can as things continue to be unprecedented. So some of the other workshops that we've put on as we've done educational videos online we have a YouTube channel we have a website, we installed the first permitted gray water system and paradise again teaching, you know, individuals how that they can do climate action on their property and preserving the water, you know, keeping the water on their property. We've also been holding traditional ecological plant walks with a traditional traditional ecological master practitioner alley matters night. Again, we're learning about the keystone species we're building our relationship with our other than human world, and then again holding restoration camps in this fall and spring of 2019. We're continuing to hope to open that back up. But really it's just inspiring the the everyday person on how to how to be a better or steward, and that doesn't have to necessarily be getting your hands in the dirt. It's a lot of these businesses or corporations that are causing a lot of destruction in our ecosystem are being fueled by the consumer that drives them and so as the individual there's so many actions we can take, and how we buy and how we shop or how we save our water or how we use our resources or how we share with our neighbors or how we collaborate with other people in our in our community. And I feel like all of that actually is related to ecosystem restoration. And so it's been an inspiring journey and a humbling journey. And I'm so grateful to be representing us and thank you so much. Thank you. It sounds like we'll have a little bit of background noise. So I'll go directly to the next speaker. Maximilian Abulaysh Bose he is the Chief Sustainable Development Officer at Camp Seca in Egypt. Thank you for joining us, Max. Thank you very much for the introduction. I'm very very happy to be part of this movement and I'm very happy that I can share some of our experiences. I'm from Egypt. I 12 years ago from Germany, but I have become an Egyptian so far. I will share the screen. So Egypt is maybe not the first country that comes into your mind for ecosystem restoration. It's not a vast desert areas, but landing to a story from John also this maybe it wasn't all the time the case. So we are believing that even in the most harsh conditions, we have to start acting and the main reason to develop ecosystems and restore desert land is also to drive a transformation and build communities and have the agriculture ecological side as a basis. This initiative was founded 43 years ago by Ibrahim Abulaysh and the vision was to build or to force a sustainable development where human beings can unfold their potential where mankind is living in social forms that reflect human dignity and where economic activities are woven in according to economic ecological and ethical principles. So we see here a very holistic vision that that was formulated and seeded in the ground and it was definitely a mission impossible when Ibrahim started to dig the first well in the desert. But it is this kind of momentum that should inspire other people to to engage also in mission impossible. When Ibrahim left us in 2017 as a community, we kind of reconnected back to our vision and to the fourfoldness and formulated vision goals for the next 40 years that also spring out the four dimensions of life. And I will not go into all of them, but it shows how much related every sphere of life is to community building and ecosystem restoration. There isn't not only an ecological functions but also an institutional ecosystem that grew organically over the last 43 years. And I want to highlight the slide to show you where the Camp Sikkim is embedded in. It's an institutional ecosystem made by human, in the social sphere, let's say, combining elements and institutions that serve all spheres of life. We have a Sikkim holding company that encompasses different companies that are engaged in ecosystem or land reclamation, engaged in processing of herbs and spices, engaged in food production, textile production, food pharmaceutical production. And this value creation is also mainly used in educational and human development activities. For that reason, there are several NGOs that have been founded, an NGO that is taking care of a school, a kindergarten, a nursery and a medical center, and is building spring-offs in all over Egypt and also just yesterday a new kindergarten has been opened up in our Camp Sikkim that is located in the western desert following the model of the original farm. So we are really in the process of replicating our model and trying to understand better the mechanics of it. To help to do this, a lot of research is needed and a lot of education is needed and thereby 2012 Heliopolis University for Sustainable Development was founded. And this was a key piece to the puzzle of this vision to be able to weave in research and education and to serve community development. And this year, there are also certain societal functions, legal entities that have been created that ensure the institutional sustainability of Sikkim, which essentially owns itself in the form of a trust and where a kind of statutes permit the using of excessive funds into community building and into ecosystem restoration and with the help of a lot of Sikkim friends all over the world, this could have been made possible. These are just some key numbers to show you where we are and it might seem overwhelming, especially maybe for camps who started in recently, but it shows also the beauty of the diversity of the different camps and that there's a lot that we can learn from each other. I will start with the green cells, which show that we have at the moment, almost 300 hectares that we are operating ourselves, but the majority of raw materials for the value equation come from the hectares, 1,355 hectares from our farmers that are all over Egypt, small scale farmers that have a long standing relationship with us and to all apply biodynamic agricultural principles and deliver to us raw materials. On our own farms, we're using a lot of water, as you can see, 4 million cubic meters of water per year, and this is a slide on 2020 and we managed to grow different crops and also plant a lot of trees. Our aim is to plant 1 million trees by 2027 and I have John's words in my ears saying it's not all about tree planting and that's correct. We know that it is a kind of integrated part of restoring soil fertility and inviting other species to live and provide services to the agricultural picture to the farm and they are a great source for carbon sequestration, which essentially is providing additional financial means that can support farmers in this important transition. We see that farmers are getting more and more competitive in applying biodynamic principles, given the rising energy cost in the world, and given additional funds such as carbon credits that we can generate, not only from trees, but also from soil where a lot of carbon can be stored and from compost making where a lot of emissions and methane and gas can be avoided, and also from applying photovoltaic energy instead of grid diesel generators and it's all part of a story where we can say in the end our initiative is carbon positive. We sequestered around 6000 tons of CO2 in 2020 and we emitted with all our activities and economic life 4000 tons roughly so there's a net benefit and I know that carbon is not the whole story, and it's a very intellectual approach, but it is also talking the language of the policymakers and of businesses that allow us to maneuver in this kind of still very strong capitalistic oriented society and to provide a model that can bridge the two worlds. With this raw materials, we are creating a lot of sales which are used for educational activities and a good share of it also goes to the export, but very luckily we developed also a local market that is emphasizing on organic and regenerative agricultural practices. So, in the end we are very proud to say that secret holding in its core is an initiative for human development. So that means we are proud to say that more than 100 small children get educated in our nursery and our kindergarten and for special needs we have a place to educate them. And we have around 500 pupils that are visiting our schools and our vocational training center and it is those vocational training centers that are building up our photovoltaic assets in the farms. Together with the students and after only four years we could almost engage 3000 students in five faculties. So there are a lot of mechanisms where we are able to provide a pilot and trying to find models to scale them up and spread them in Egypt and into the world. These are some pictures of ecosystem restoration in the middle of our camp Sikkim in Rohat desert in the western Egyptian desert where we experiment with different types of irrigation. And yes, we are taking in that case also, excuse me, and yes we are taking in that case also water from the ground, which has fossil origin. But we are aware of this challenge, and we have roughly 100 years to find out mechanisms to scale greening the desert efforts in such a way so we can restore ecological cycles. So sustainable development for us means really to manage and cope with trade offs, because in reality you always have to balance out different different impacts. And for us building a model where community building and sustainable development and ecosystem restoration is done is very important. Economic activities are an integrated part of our value creation and it's super important to create a healthy economic life that creates value locally where funds can be generated to stay economically our target and to have the funds to develop and serve community needs. Educational efforts are, as I said, at the core of our model, and there is such a high need for transforming the educational sector I cannot even emphasize strongly enough. And we just opened up a community school next to the kindergarten on our new farm in the desert. And it's amazing what kind of what can be created out of nothing just by starting it and then improving it with the help of people. And together we are dependent on more than 100 people from our communities that come from the surrounding villages to seek a network together and it combines farmers, professors, managers, workers from all over Egypt and around the world to achieve this. And I also want to say thank you for listening and thank you also to giving me the opportunity to share this. Thank you so much Max. So we just heard from Max, who's working with second, and I think he really importantly touched on the institutionality, the structures and ways that we organize our work to be successful over time and we're so pleased to have to count second as a partner in this network. They've been a leader in the region and globally on dry land restoration for over four decades, and seeing that work evolve and succeed is something that can be really helpful to other members in the in our community as well so thank you so much for your for your comments and I also wanted to come back as well to our present presentation from Geneva and just mentioned how important the community building and outreach, and the looking for opportunities to build those relationships with the landscape is for the success of her work in a fire affected landscape. Before we move on to Yasmin. I want to remind folks who are listening to us. We'll do a round of question and answer. So if you have questions for Geneva Max or Yasmin please add them in the YouTube chat we see some coming through and we'll bring that into our conversation. So next I'd like to introduce Yasmin Mahamut. She is the managing director at dry land solutions in Somalia. And we're very pleased to have you here. Yasmin. Thank you so much and it's humbling to be here. So thank you for allowing me to participate in this program. Share my screen with you just to give me a second. I think I need help with the presentation. Great. I think we can share our screen. Yasmin and and you'll be able to continue your presentation so just give us one moment while we pull that up. Here we go. Yep. Okay, can you make it full screen. Awesome. Go ahead. Again, thank you so much for allowing me to be here and it's great. It's really great to be a part of the ERC movement. And without it, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing right now. So thank you. So my name again is Yasmin, managing director of dry land solutions. And I would like to introduce you to the work that we're doing in Somalia right now to establish our first camp, which will form the nexus of ecosystem restoration work in the new region of Somalia. I established dry land solutions in 2019. Because when I first traveled back to Somalia, one thing that became very clear immediately was the connection between damaged environment and human poverty. I felt that I needed to do something and I established so I established a community led organization in order to support the work of ecosystem restoration in Somalia, and to be a part of the work of the international movement to change the climate and to change the story that we are in from a disaster and catastrophe to one of transformation dry land solutions strives to improve the lives of rural communities, including the internally displaced personnel, women, youth in addressing poverty and environmental concerns. We're working with the ecosystem restoration camps and other partners to empower the community through education, examples, and a lot of inspirations. We have a community and knowledge hub where knowledge can be shared and demonstrated and a place where people can come together and communities are strengthened and built. This will show what is possible in the local and global context and help Somalia tackle current crisis in range of fronts, but especially in food and water security. Slide two, please. Slide two. Perfect, yes. So we understand that to grow, we understand that to grow and strive Somalia must first look to heal and repair and restore within. We are working to reverse ecological damage and create resilient environment and social systems for a better future. Dry land solutions embraces the core permaculture ethics of planet care, people care and fair share, but we like to kind of twist that ethics and start with people care, because without if we get the people part right. So we will work itself out restoring the ecosystems of the region will form a foundation for a strong resilient growth. Next slide please slide three. Okay, thank you. We are upgrading our base in Garo, which is northeastern part of Somalia. We are in the process of establishing ecosystem restoration camp that can be a beacon of hope for resilience in this in this region. We're working closely with the locals and our partners to develop holistic plans for land and people. We will serve as an example of the ways in which the greater landscapes of the region can be restored. This also brings many benefits in terms of climate change, mitigation and adaptation, halting and reversal of biodiversity losses addressing food and water security, social cohesion conflict resolution in equality, community building and economic prosperity. By bringing nature and and society together and thinking holistically, we can dramatically increase resilience and forge a better and more sustainable future in the region. Next slide for challenges. The urgent need for ecosystem restoration is clear. People here live on the very front line of climate change, and it's not some abstract reality. In their day to day lives, they feel the effect of climate change and the certification in a very real, immediate and tangible ways. People are living at the age of life and death. Drought is the defining feature of Somalia. Its impact can be distressing and affecting the whole community. This is the only place in the world, maybe one of the places in the world where drought causes famine and despair very often. Nomads are recognizing rainfall regimes has changed drastically and know that their climate has become unpredictable, but they remain at the mercy of nature. And these people have done nothing to contribute to climate change crisis. Communities used to depend on their animals for milk, ghee and meat can no longer get those essentials because the livestock needs to go farther and farther away to find grassland and water. The local medicinal plants and wild fruits from native forests are harder to find, and some areas disappearing entirely to do climate change again. So as a community, we have, as a human, I guess, we have to explore other avenues of livelihood security beyond handouts. So human activities is a part of it as well. Overgracing has damaged and degraded natural ecosystems of the region, which led to widespread differentiation and devastation. So the political turmoil since Somalia's central government collapsed in 1991, meaning that a vacuum of power and people reverted to traditional and religious law to govern the and resolve climate conflicts. These things have made it challenging to form a cohesive response to the environmental problem. Ecosystem restoration is key in tackling all these challenges. We have slide five. We know now that establishing ecosystem restoration camp in Somalia will be the first key landmark. Step in forging a better future. The road has been challenging, and we are making great progress toward this primary goal. We signed a memorandum of understanding with the Buddha Land government, which is the local government in which they agreed to sign a land into the care of dry land solutions for next 30 years. We have also taken the steps to actually force progress on this by hoping to sign another memorandum of understanding with our partners who are providing support in getting the government to sign over the land previously discussed. We're confident that we can soon finalize the land allotment and establish the camp. With the presence on the ground, it will be easy to engage local communities, village elders, the young people, the women in the ecosystem restoration. This camp once it shows results can be easily replicated in more communities engaging more and more people reaching larger scale. Directly engaging the people with education and practical experience allows for a self-directed self-replicating restoration activities. Most exciting piece of progress is that we have just concluded our first permaculture course. Slide six, please. Awesome. Yes, to train the trainers who will go on to teach the local and international volunteers at ecosystem restoration. We are excited to establish and run the first to run Somali's first ever permaculture course. The instructor, Anton Bernadu, co-founder of Enaya Permaculture, instructed students in training of trainers program in permaculture design during a two week intensive course. 70% of the participants training of the trainers of BTC course came from local universities and had degrees and experience in the climate change and agriculture. We aimed 50% of the students to be women. However, some females have dropped out of class last minute, just because I think women do and girls do bear more responsibilities in helping their families. Slide seven, please. Yeah, seven. We have been extremely encouraged by the feedback students have provided us on this course. Permaculture training was very successful. All the students said that the training that they got from the BTC course is better than the four years university program at the local universities. The students were very happy to learn and cover the principles and ethics of permaculture and be able to read landscapes, learn how to heal soil, how to design integrated systems, how to best harvest rainwater, how to build drought-proof land, and build and create healthy soil, sequestered carbon, and learn many ways to make compost. Slide eight, we're very excited to have our participants go on and spread what they have learned and put into practice for a better future for themselves and their community. Thank you. I'm so grateful for all of you. I'm so grateful for all the people who made this possible. I couldn't have done it by myself without the ERC team, without the many people who really supported and made it possible. And even our funders that allowed us to make our first BTC course in Somalia. Thank you. Thank you so much, Yasmin. I'm going to ask you to stay on the screen for a moment as well. It's really been inspiring to see the work you've been doing in your community and for also sharing with this group, a bit more about how climate impacts are affecting the landscape and what that means for people in communities. I'm going to also now add in our other speakers and we'll move into our question and answer section of our event. I know that we were originally scheduled to end our presentation now, but since we have such interesting questions coming in, we'll go ahead and extend our event for another 10 to 15 minutes. And as long as the speakers are able to join us, we'll keep addressing questions as they come in through the YouTube chat. I'm adding in Max as well as Geneva. Great. Thank you all. It's always such a joy for me to hear what's going on at different camps around the world and to see the leadership and commitment that you each have to your place at your landscape. I'll go through all of the challenges and the successes that come in committing to this type of work and then seeing it through to success. So it's always a privilege for me to hear from each of you on that work. And I'll open the conversation with one question that came in for Geneva but I want to pose it to all of our speakers and then I'll go into some additional questions. The question that they have that was posed and I'll pose it to the group is what else do you need to be successful in the work that you're doing. You've already set forward in this path in each of your environments and each of your challenging contexts, and you've seen ways to be successful in doing that. And certainly through ecosystem restoration camps, there are opportunities to be connected to other projects and to build that community of practice. But I'd like to open the question to each of the camp leads here about what they see specifically for their project to be to continue that success and to grow. And Geneva will go ahead and start with you. I have a co presenting cat here. That's very interested in helping talk about this. I think, you know, there is, there's always need I think money is typically a limiting factor. And then I think we are, it's interesting, it's enjoyable to listen to Max talk because I feel like our projects, you know was sort of started out of this immediate disaster response. And like many people in our community. We've run on adrenaline almost in terms of like what what you need to have done, and we are in the process as an organization to figure out how we can institutionalize these things to make it sustainable so that we can continue doing this and so there is the the joy of getting for me it's getting dirty and getting you know outside that's what, you know, lights me up but there's also sort of that back end administration stuff which can get laborious and of course you don't want it to bureaucratic but but also there's some necessary requirements for your project to maintain success and sustainability and so we're sort of in that transition phase in terms of organizational planning and institutionalizing and creating a sustainability plan so I mean it's could be administrative support. We've been limiting kind of volunteers from out to come into the community just for safety reasons or health precautions but yeah fundraising, a dedicated group of team members or people that we can pay to kind of keep us, you know going on instead of running, you know, sort of in response mode, but maybe more in a planned mode. And so, yeah I think those are kind of the main things and then, you know certainly reach out and let us know what you got to offer. But yeah, I'll leave it with that so others can answer. I want to hear from you about where what second needs after so many decades of learning where where do you want to go next. So I would say the key for further development and also where things are always challenging is that you get the right people on board. You, you always have to get in people who are able to engage in a role that requires always a transformative mission of taking responsibility for something that is not there. So it's it's really radical responsibility. It's an openness to a different culture where you have to maneuver without probably language advantage Arabic is of course very helpful. And I would say you need what what I would precisely ask for is also people who come in with a specific expertise in the field of organic and biodynamic agriculture. And who can really go into the field and take responsibility for operational stuff and are able to stay a year or longer, because you can do something below that and and and we need we need also to be open to say yeah we would appreciate if it's on a needs based compensation. You know, making a lot of sales doesn't mean that there's a lot of cash in the contrary. We have seen that, you know, taking private depth is not the best idea to to to green the desert. So, there's always a shortage of cash so you will not enter a kind of initiative with the aim of making money but with the aim of sharing experience learning being open, just giving it all and take initiative so these kind of people, I think the most valuable thing that can happen to an initiative. Thank you max I think that phrase that you used about radical responsibility is something that we can all integrate into the work that we're doing, whether we have a land based project or we want to get involved in one. Thank you. Yes mean. Oh my goodness. Okay, I'll try to answer this question I think, you know, obviously I'm in a different place in both of you. But with regards to I'm in a place where we're coming out and recovering from almost 30 years of, you know, type of civil war. So in some, there's a lot of challenge. Yeah. And so I think what we need a support I feel like sometimes it's like when you first finished university and you need that first company to give you a chance to actually see what you're able to do. So yeah, you know one is, you know, creating that network and and getting the funding and how do you get the funding you really need people to believe in your costs and be able to see yes, you know I trust there and she's able to do that work and and to carry on. And also I think I'm in the place I'm in capacity building human capacity is so important. So and that's why I think, you know, one of the things that I really realized with the permaculture training that we have done is that we need to do more and you know find one of those key, you know students that we can actually adopt and carry that with us. So we need people with expertise, you know, even though I'm like here as you know, you're leading this, this kind of this project, I still need people to support me and sometimes might be difficult for people, you know, to come to Somalia. But yeah, so any types of help, but I think one of the things John always says funding comes, you know, but he's doing the other works, you know, building the foundations and things like that, and I believe him. So yeah, it's all about, you know, the support like even if we can get an online help, you know, people that can help us with their expertise, they're welcome. Thanks. And yes, we also had some other questions for you from the group. So we, the, the folks online want to know how the community is feeling about the work that you're doing. Are they excited about this project. And, and also that they noticed that their youth and children in the pictures that you shared in your presentation. And could you talk a little bit more about how you see youth being included in this work that you're doing. So the first question, you know, talking about the community, you know, I talked about how the, you know, people that we're trying to help, which is the nomads, which is people who are in the ID camps, you know, youth, you know, so those people really feel the effect of climate change. They're the most who are suffering, you know, with what is going on globally. So with that regards when you go deeper in, you know, like the community level, people are excited and they know we need to do something about it, and they need help. But with the government and trying to convince them that this is important work is another level. So I, and I think one of the things is, you know, here it's a more like we're used to handouts and you know it's an NGO world. So and this is, you know, a 15 years project. So there's no timeline so it's not so easy for, you know, for big organizations to really support, but other the community itself, they know they need this and they're ready for it. And that is the question with regards to the youth. There is so many percent of the community are youth, the young people, they're eager to learn. They may not have the capacity and they, you know, may not be able to, you know, but they're eager to learn. And, and, and, and, you know, with this, you know, creating ecotourism and creating jobs for them. This is the whole purpose of doing this. It's not just a restoring a land for creating jobs for the youth. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, making sure that we're working in community and and thinking about all of the stakeholders are intergenerational relationships and communities that may have been historically excluded from those processes. So thank you so much for for bringing that into into your work. Max, we also have a question for you on the from the audience. And they would like to know a little bit more about how second includes and integrates gender considerations into the work that it does as an organization. Yeah, we, we have to specify first the context in what kind of organization am I talking right now we have the farm level. And that that is not easy to to engage with women. Because it is somewhere work in the field and it can be seen in the context of families and farm farming families, but the the agricultural work is mainly done also by by male people and it is our challenge to bring out also female engineers to live on the farm and drive in the organic agriculture. Whereas when it comes to the educational sphere, this is much easier. And we have a higher ratio with engaging with women, probably around 40 to 50%. And the companies, it's difficult. All over Egypt, the role model of women follow traditional patriarchal models where often women are working in the house when they get pregnant after marriage and stay at home. So our aim is to to to increase the the general share of 20% women in Egypt to 50% and we are on a long journey we have 25% women and we're trying to help as much as we can with the nursery and the school and and so on to offer women to bring their kids to our places. And that's that's promising. And and otherwise we really have to work on the cultural side, which which takes longer, which which takes longer time and we have to invent also part-time work models that are usually not easy in the industry. For example, in the economic side, night shifts are not possible for women. So we need to find out other ways to to deal with that but we are in the middle of the process. And one of our goals is to to empower women and celebrate diversity more and to proactively engage with that. But it's a challenge here in this country. Thank you, Max. I think we've gotten to most of the questions. So one question from the audience that's related to what type of types of support that ERC provides to new camps or folks who are trying to get a project started. In our organization, our strategy has been to look for groups who have already built some of their momentum on their own, like the presenters we've seen here today, and to accompany and make sure that those initiatives have already gotten started, get the support and and and connections that they need and global storytelling to help regular people as well as donors understand what the opportunities are for restoration projects around the world. In addition, we're also developing a free online course that we're expecting for next year that would help people get started in some of these activities and publish guides and best practices for some of that work. And also, as a way of supporting some of the folks in our network we're also developing a knowledge exchange platform that will also create spaces for the broader community to be involved. So we definitely want to continue to motivate and inspire people to get involved in this work and I'll talk a little bit about that when we close. I want to open the conversation as well to all of our speakers I know we have John Lou still here with us. And I want to see if anyone has any final comments that they'd like to make or reflections that they've had in hearing the presentations. And then I want to ask you a question about the current context of where we are in the climate negotiations and what you guys would like to see happen there so I'm going to open the floor to anyone who wants to make some some comments, some final closing comments. Silence. Sorry. Gosh. Thank you everybody it's wonderful to hear the stories. And thank you Aaron for leading in the United States and to Peter and young Hein for the leadership in Europe. And we really need to get into a conversation about value, because a lot of the discussion is about price of goods and services and trying to deliver products and and this assumes that the products are more valuable than the ecological function. This is fundamentally untrue. And so we have this mistake that's historical and that causes people to basically be almost enslaved in into into producing things which are not needed. There's, I don't know if you've seen in California but there's, there's like ship loads of containers of stuff sitting there and it can't, they can't unload it fast enough. And the whole idea is that the economy only works if this stuff is bought and sold. Well, most of that stuff is going to end up in the junk heap. And is is really not very useful. And what is the value of ecological function when we're facing human induced climate changes, it's ridiculous. So if we if we could figure out what the true value is, and value the people who do the work to restore the earth, then we don't have this problem anymore. And that's that's kind of where what I see is the next level of conversation to stop talking about carbon trading because I mean that's just really just people who want to control flows of money. Let's talk about how you get that, how you get functional ecosystems how you maintain moisture in circulation in the lower atmosphere how you stop having enormous greenhouse gas emissions and what people can do that is immediately useful to protect and restore equilibrium in and stop having human impact on on the climate and to do that is more valuable than just buy and sell things. I just, I just want to echo that john because I feel like there is a role. I mean certainly there's the global leaders that are in conversation right now that have a lot of power to decide things. But they are not the only players and ecosystem restoration which is what I think ERC does so well is that it creates a platform for anybody to get involved and as in America we are entering our most consumer time of year with Black Friday camping so that you can get a deal on the cheap TV microwave stereo system then followed by Christmas which is, you know, the trash cans after Christmas are just overflowing and then, you know how many things by that June are in the trash can or broken from what that purchase so I mean it's just these little small behaviors and so maybe even a challenge for those that participate in those things in these next coming months to maybe reconsider the ways in which you're voting with your dollar. You know, and if ecosystem restoration feels important or protecting our planet feels important. So what are the ways that we can do that in our own lives with the day to day choices that we're making. Maybe you don't need that thing maybe you can borrow it from a neighbor and make a new relationship or, you know, perhaps it's a gift of like, I'm going to learn a native plant and mind my local ecosystem right or I'm going to research what's going on in my local community of what's happening and and get involved that way or understand your local politics of what's happening with your water resources or your crops. And so I think, you know, it can feel very overwhelming. It can feel very disheartening and hopeless. Finding small little actions that you can take. Even if it's walking somewhere right like that makes a difference and that is the one step the first step that then can open your path to many other opportunities and I think as the individual consumer. We have so much power, right. We have so much power to make a difference on this planet and so that is just an offering a hopeful message challenge as we move move forward in these coming days weeks months. Thank you so much. I know. Really, we are focused around those pathways for action, so that you can get involved at an ecosystem restoration camp that's in your landscape that's in your community, or you can connect with a site that might be halfway around the world from you and other relationships, either through distance or in some cases being able to actually go and build exchange in those places. We have extended our time here and I really appreciate the presence of of all the speakers and this great conversation that we've heard from all of your experience. So, I think we'll wrap up our conversation for today, and we'll continue these events. It's one of the great offerings that I think we have as a as a group to hear directly from leaders such as yourselves who are doing this work on the ground. We'll let the audience know some other opportunities to get involved. We'd love for you to join us at a camp. All of the events that happen at our almost 50 camp partners around the world right now are available on our website at ecosystem restoration camps. There's a section of the website that talks about events that are available there. You can take a course on ecosystem restoration. We have several offerings that we developed. And you can also sign up for our newsletter, which tells you specifics information about which camps are news from from camps. That is an email newsletter but we also share information on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram so you're not following us on one of those platforms or more. Look us up and make a connection with us there, and certainly also support for this work is really important so you're able to become a supporter. And as Geneva mentioned, transform that gift into something that has real impact on the ground. We encourage you to do so whether that's making a small monthly donation, or building a larger supporter relationship with our with our group. So thank you everyone so much for joining us and please feel free to reach out and we'd be happy to put you in touch with any of the speakers, and we'll see you again soon.