 Good morning everyone and welcome to today's symposia, integrating geoscience into the Green Deal. The European Green Deal is a roadmap for turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities to create a more sustainable European society and economy. It sets ambitious targets, including reaching climate neutrality in Europe by 2050, preserving and protecting biodiversity and adopting zero pollution action plans for air, water and soils. Science is used in the policymaking process for a lot of different reasons. It is used to help identify the issues and put them on the agenda. It is used to help determine the consequences of any policy action or inaction, and it's used to monitor and evaluate the targets as they progress so that we can see where more work is needed. The European Green Deal is no exception to this. My name is Chloe Hill and I am the EGU's policy officer and moderator for this session that is going to be looking into some of the ways in which science and specifically geoscience is able to support the Green Deal's ambitious targets. This session was initially inspired by the EGU's publication How Geoscience Can Support the Green Deal, which provides some very specific examples of areas where geoscience has or could contribute to it. However, while we may be going into some specific examples today, this session is going to take a much broader look into how scientists can engage in the Green Deal where more support is needed and what is coming next. Now, to help us address all of these topics and to answer your questions, we do of course have a fabulous lineup of speakers. So our first speaker today is Yaroslav Maizjak, who is the director of the Research Division Risk Assessment and Adaptation Strategies. He is a member and rapporteur of the European Commission's Mission Board on Climate Adaptation and Societal Transformation and a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Environmental Agency. He's also a member of the European Science Technology Advisory Group on the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and a member of the Expert Group on Slow Onset Events. Yaros' research focuses on risk assessment and governance, including behavioral responses to risks and risk reduction measures, risk perception and trans-emotional societal change, environmental economics and climate adaptation. Our second speaker today is Claire Chenoux, who is a professor of soil science at Agro Paris Tech and primarily undertakes research in the area of organic carbon dynamics. She is involved in the science policy practice interface and in awareness-raising activities on soils. She was a lead author in the iPads Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for the European and Central Asia Division. She has also chaired the Scientific Committee of the GeoSoil Programme. Furthermore, she was nominated Special Ambassador of Soils in 2015 by the FAO, is an EGU metal recipient and she now coordinates the Horizon 2020 European Joint Co-Fund Programme soil. Our third speaker today is Joe Eisen. He is the director of the Rainforest Foundation UK, an NGO that is dedicated to supporting the rights of local communities and indigenous peoples of the world's rainforest. An anthropologist by training, Joe has been with the Rainforest Foundation UK for 12 years after having previously worked for environmental NGOs and indigenous organizations in Gabon, India and Guyana. Now, our fourth and final speaker today is Deidre Samson, the head of cabinet for the first vice president of the European Commission at Franz Thurmans. He has therefore played a key role in the creation and implementation of the European Green Deal, but unfortunately won't be able to join a session today until 10am, so I will give him a proper introduction then. Now, before we do get into this session and before I pass the virtual microphone over to our speakers, I'm going to start with a little bit of an overview of how this session today is going to work. So we are of course going to start with our speakers who will give some presentations and my co-conveners will actually ask some of their questions to our speakers as well after this. And then the second half of the session today will focus on a panel discussion. So this is where we need your input. We will be looking at the questions that you are asking, and I will be asking those questions to our speakers. Okay, so that's basically all from me. I am very much looking forward to this session. And without further ado, I'll pass over to our first speaker, Yaro. Thank you very much, Chloe. It's a pleasure to be with you and thank you for having me. I will share my screen. Hopefully that's work. Good morning again to everybody. I'm working at Euro Mediterranean and Central Climate Change and the University of Venice and my talk will be about the mission, research and innovation mission under the horizon Europe that is dedicated to climate adaptation and societal transformation. Now we all probably agree that the global environmental change requires a bold and transformative action in order to address the root causes that generate and reproduce economic, social, political, environmental problem and inequalities. But how to do that, it's not a simple question. And there are a number of methodological approaches or proposals that are very different in terms of what they cover. They depth, breadth, form, spatial or temporal scale, levels of change, outcomes, evolution and so on. We do agree that we really need a radical change, radical change that is a clear shift from unsustainable practices in the past. So rather than incremental or marginal change, we really need something else but how to design such a transformative change. Now you probably know that the European Council and European Parliament has achieved an agreement on the EU climate law that imposes reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 25% until 2030 and to achieve basically net zero carbon neutrality by 2050. So this is the climate mitigation part. The climate adaptation part has a adaptation strategy which is very ambitious and was released or adopted in February this year, couple of months ago. And closely related to the new adaptation strategy is the mission on climate adaptation and societal transformation. So the mission, this mission is one of five missions that are part of Horizon Europe Research and DALA and Innovation Framework. The conceptual foundation of the mission-oriented research was laid down by Professor Mariana Mazzucato in the seminal work published in 2018. And now each of those five missions is supposed to operate a portfolio of actions like research project, policy measures or legislative initiatives. So it's not only about research innovation, it's basically it has two parts, policy and research innovation that is informing and contributing to the policy change. Now our mission board has released the set of recommendation in September last year, it's called Climate Resilience Europe, preparing Europe for climate disruption and accelerating the transformation to climate resilience in just Europe. The board is chaired by La Coney Hedegard, the former commissioner for climate action and includes 14 outstanding researchers and I had the pleasure to be part of it and act as a reporter. Now what we are doing now is she designed an implementation plan, a blueprint how to translate this set of recommendation into practical operations. The missions have not yet been endorsed and adopted by European Commission that still has to happen and will probably happen in June or July. Now the core of our implementation plan is this what we call transformation ladder and it contains six tabs through which the communities in the region will go and develop a tangible solution. The first and most important part is to improve the access to climate risk information and address identified opportunities arising from better understanding of risk and better coping with risk. This ladder as you see that the upper part is basically more the policy part, what is expected from the communities and regions to be put in place and the lower part is where the research and innovation will contribute to those steps and to those areas. So first step assessing opportunities in the risk, we really expect that basically all communities in the regions by 2030 will have an easy access to climate risk profiles will understand their climate risk and will update emergency management plans so as to be able to answer to climate disruptions. The next part is that's very important it's the DNA of the mission is to mobilize partnership and citizen engagement. And here we imagine citizen alliances, citizen assemblies, action groups that come together and agree on what needs to be done and assign a sort of letter of intent or letter of commitment towards this long term project of reforming the existing systems. The research and innovation so it will contribute to these by emphasis on risk assessment improving digital knowledge services, and in the second step inclusive participative governance and social justice. Now after the after the partnership and engagement has been accomplished. The communities in the region will develop a midterm vision, a vision of the sustainable future vision of the future they want to live in, and the adaptation pathways have to get there. And this will, this will end up in a locally powered climate resilient and sustainable development strategy in the research innovation will contribute with behavioral research on behavioral aspect of social transformation scenario buildings and the robust decision making. The fourth step is invest in innovative solution and testing innovative solution on ground and there we think of portfolio of tested transformative solutions for resilient growth. And there is a huge volume of research innovation that will focus on social economic ecological technological organizational and business model innovation. The last two steps are basically to upscale the innovation to a larger scale to really create impacted scale and deliver cross border value. So in the few next minutes I will talk a little bit through these steps, what they include what we imagine under each of them. So the first one is better understanding of climate risk and opportunities. There's been an enormous progress of climate risk assessment, thanks to high computational facility and power. Thanks to Copernicus program and other observation programs that deliver high resolution information we have now. large scale risk assessment models we have a sort of community epistemological community that is really characteristic and looking at the climate risk. And we have achieved a lot of convergence between disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation in these fields. Here we imagine there will be a European climate risk assessment framework, which is inspired by the UNDRR global risk assessment framework and will be part of it. And it will include the climate adapter led by European environment agency and the risk data hub developed by disaster risk management knowledge center of the GRC and other commission services. So here there is a generation will provide a lot of knowledge brokering services, including facilitating an easy access to the data, but also a broader and better uptake of digital climate and resilient services. Now, of course, there's a clear understanding that the risk needs to be in the strength from the systemic point of view, including the compound and cascading effects. Mobilizing support, we envisage a local governance structure that will steer the transformation, we will invest into inclusive deliberative processes and foster the engagement of citizens. The citizens are really the core part of the mission, they will actively participate in co designing co implementing and co evaluation of the mission. You might have heard about citizen assemblies. They've been some attempts to some countries have already implemented this rather innovative concept that citizen assemblies a group of people brought together to learn about and discuss issues and reach conclusions that would typically require more time or that are not easy involved quite important trade principles. Citizen assemblies have been implemented in Ireland, France and UK and UK also for the climate actions and as an outcome, the citizen assembly developed a set of recommendation with how to reach the net zero targets. So this is the mobilizing it's incredibly important in the context of. The visioning visioning will include the region will look into smart specialization strategies under the cohesion policy, they will update the smart specialization strategy to the new version, including building upon bottom up place based the strategic use of European structural investment funds next generation EU funding and additional funding. So the mission initial funding is a sort of seed money and these money will be leveraged by by resources from other European and regional and national programs. From the research and innovation side there will be emphasis on modeling and scenario analysis, providing visual imagination of the possible future, but also helping to monitor progress and adjust the transformative pathways. The example of this vision and pathway might be the Dutch nature based future, which is shown on the right side. So you see the map of the Netherlands. Last year, and in 100 year, you can see they are green corridors, there is huge investment into a regeneration of ecosystem and ecosystem services and bio ecological corridors. This type of intervention we envisage in terms of visual representation where we want to go and how to reach that. The full step so that the mission is focusing on so called the key community systems, and we have identified five of them but this is not an exhaustive list that the communities and the regions might include additional key community system they think they are very important. And what they are. So first and foremost the health and well being probably under the ongoing pandemic, it's really extremely important to improve our health services and essential services that the community can fall back. The second is critical community infrastructure that includes the cultural institution, the green places and so on. It includes also the transport local transport and energy supply. The way how we manage water, that means the infrastructure for water supply and sanitation, but it also includes the blue and green infrastructure. It includes the way how we manage water and how we manage water security. The food system is land use and food systems, food system in the whole chain of suppliers envisage the transformation of the food system in order to contribute to climate mitigation goals but also to reinforce the local economies and the cohesion. These is a regeneration of ecosystem investing into nature based solutions and restoration of ecosystem services. So the fourth step will include experimentation, innovation, testing of actionable solutions that might include ecological corridors, incentive schemes for efficient use of water, climate resilient agriculture, and so on. The next step, creating impact that scale is incredibly important. This is where we see the impact on the ground. So it will include large scale deployment of tested solution, transformation of the key community system in our larger scale and enabling condition, condition on governance, on digital infrastructure and so on that help to leverage the transformation to a larger scale. So the demonstrators are examples of breakthrough innovation implemented really on the ground. They might include large scale application of innovation solution, but also something else right it might be soft reform, might be radical reorganization of public health and reconfiguration of social relationships within the communities and the regions and reforms of environmental public policies as among many others. So this is the fifth step and the point of the cross-border value is the step where we generate the EU value, where we generate really the added value to the European policies and reinforcing the cross-border cooperation, the transparent cohesion and so on. So here of course, because the regions will have developed their visions and adaptation pathways independently, so we envisage that it will be first step to reconciliate the visions and the intervention, the adaptation missions, and then focus on certain flagship projects. And those flagship projects might be water abstraction allocation reform in the transboundary river basin, protection and connectivity of transboundary protected areas, or water or air pollution control, or coordination of emergency services or anything else. But this is the place where the regions will really work closely together across the borders. Now this, of course, this transformative vision and transformative mission will require a different type of modeling, you know, let's say the new generation of climate adaptation, modeling skills, tools and models and methods. So to this end, my organization, CMCC has conducted a study for DG Klima for European Commission. Part of this study was a desk review of where we stand in different fields of climate adaptation modeling. We have organized a community workshop last year in September. This is the first, the first banner that you see on the right side and the link under the link you can see the program, the registration, the session, you know, the digital library that was created in order to convey the messages. And earlier this year we organized a large digital event in order to attract attention to the new EU adaptation strategy. And again we have a really rich program of high level policy talks and technical breakout groups where we discuss the development further. And again you can access the whole digital library under the link that you can see below. So out of this comprehensive research, we are making a recommendation of what the next generation of adaptation modeling tools should be or might be. And of course the first and foremost, it's incredibly important not only to know the risk, to understand the full implication of the climate risk, but also make the risk use that knowledge in order to develop a actionable solution. So the new generation of adaptation modeling will of course focus on distributional spillover and cascading effect of climate adaptation and climate risk effect on social economic fabric on planetary health and provision of essential community services as a part of resilience. These new modeling and analytical skills will be closely related to the digital earth and digital twins, which is another initiative of European Commission Digiconnect to develop really cloud services and high resolution digital replica of the earth and important earth processes. So all these computing facility will need to be exploited, right, that include, you know, new generation of large scale hazard and risk models, including high resolution exposure, climate and resilience services that deliver this information to the specific situation of different users really that bring that knowledge and understand how to, how these knowledge changes the on the ground decision and policymaking. And in these, these modeling tools will really need to assimilate the behavioral aspect of human decision making, both in the risk assessment and analysis, and to represent the complex human interaction in various social sphere. So these we envisage a new computational social science methods like agent based model that will enrich the existing climate risk assessment and management tools, in order to take into account the behavioral aspect and human agency and translated into a set of, you know, drivers and lovers that can really make a change in the way how we understand certain processes, how we manage certain processes or how we, how we interact in order to agree or reach an agreement. So this is a short vision of the new generation of adaptation modeling we will come up with a paper. And I'm, I will be very happy to report back next time to this project will will terminate in summer, but already you can find all the resources on under the links that, that I highlighted on the right side of the slide. And with that, I would finish and pass over to Chloe. Thank you so much. I just think it's really interesting to be able to see all the steps that actually lead into creating this impact and create this value that, you know, often goes on thought about. But actually, just to follow up on that and ask a couple of questions, I'm going to pass the virtual microphone over to one of my co conveners, Maria Helena Ramos who's also the division president of the EG is hydrological sciences division. So Helena do you have a question or maybe two questions to ask. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you. Dr my zia for the presentation very interesting overview and a lot of work for scientists and your scientists for the next years and even decades I think without such ideas. We have some questions that I would like to ask you also about that that we're putting the Q&R box in my own questions also of course. First of all I need to declare that asking you about citizens participation the citizen assemblies that you mentioned. We would like to ask you if beyond citizens citizen assemblies with big industries and corporations be included also in the mission plans. Absolutely. I mean, we all agree that the change can only be achieved through a close collaboration between businesses, citizens, civil society organization and public administrations. So I put the emphasis on the citizen engagement in order to make the distinction from the typical stakeholder focus what what we call stakeholder. The change that we are introducing with the mission is the research and the policy action really need to reach the citizens as the individual, you know residents or, or stakeholder in that region, but the business world is absolutely on the board. Thank you very much. I think that the pandemic showed us how citizens unions and the way they behave is important for to go forward. My other question would be linked to your adaptation, the generation of adaptation models as a scientist we like a lot models and doing models and as you very well put it in your presentation we have a next generation of very powerful models nowadays. My question would be, in your opinion, what, what would be the trade offs and synergies that are still missing in this models today and that we need to explore flood further. Thank you for that question. Of course I can offer only my view on that as a scientist as an economist or working for 20 years in climate adaptation modeling. I think we need to get away from the linear model of knowledge deficit. So for a long time we thought I mean all what is needed is to really improve the knowledge and make the knowledge available to the people that may exploit that knowledge and that's it right that was the stop of our job. Now we know that it doesn't work. So the knowledge creation is really a co-production, co-production with the use. I really think you know the next, what would I really believe it's it's not the question whether we have, you know, larger model ensembles whether we have a higher resolution of climate modeling whether we come to a resolution of one kilometer. It will not matter if the knowledge doesn't fit, you know, really the, the opportunities that specifically a person or a farmer or a business entrepreneur can do in order to exploit that knowledge. So I do really believe that what we really need to move forward is to understand the value of the knowledge for specific operation and then feedback to the modeling and understand how the modeling can can really produce what is really needed in order to foster changes of practices or specific choices, specific business innovation ideas and so on. So this would be probably for me more important than investing into higher resolution of climate simulations or something really first stop and talk to the users and explore together how have the knowledge that that is really quite underground could be co-designed and co-implemented. I hope to answer your question. Yes, very well. Thank you very much. I think we have to move on. We have plenty of questions to you yet, but I think we can pick them up in the panel. So are you handle the clothes. Glory. Thank you. Great. Thanks so much Helena. So on to our next speaker, which is Claire Shanu, who will be focusing on soils in the European Green Deal. So, Claire. Good morning. Good morning. So it's really a pleasure to be here in this next section between policy and science. And so regarding the integration of geo sciences in the European Green Deal, I'm going to talk about soils and about soils in the European Green Deal. So the first question is, where are soils in the European Green Deal? Well, I would like to answer that they are nearly everywhere. So here you have the graph, one of the schematic synthesizing graphs presented by the commission to present the European Green Deal. And let me show you where are soils. So you can see that soils are in different places. They are, of course, like in the, in alignment with the previous talk in achieving climate neutrality with the climate law, preserving Europe's natural capital in the biodiversity strategy, transition to a circular economy, a zero pollution Europe with a clean air and water action plans in the farm to fork strategy in and towards an instrument of the farm to fork, which will be a modernized and simplified cap. So soils are really spread all over the European Green Deal and it makes sense because soils provide many ecosystem services are and are interacting with many challenges. So one of the specificity of the Green Deal. And this is again a document that I extracted from the commission documents is that it provides quantitative targets. This is from the farm to fork what you can see, just note, in 2013 so the target, the deadline is extremely close and very ambitious targets reduce pesticides by 50% for example, reduce by 50% the use of antimicrobials so very ambitious quantitative targets, I will come back to that. And before I proceed, I think I should be tell you that there has been a paper already on by Luca Montanarella and panel spanagos from the GRC on the relevance of sustainable soil management within the European Green Deal. And indeed, the main topic is not only the how our soils in the Green Deal but how is sustainable soil management accounted for and used in the Green Deal. Let me first explain to you what is sustainable soil management. Sustainable soil management has been defined by the FAO. And so management is sustainable if the supporting provisioning regulating and cultural services provided by soils are maintained or enhanced without significantly impairing either the soil functions that enable those services or biodiversity. Management is sustainable if soils can remain multifunctional. This is extremely important, even for agricultural soils I'm working, and I will present your program and working on agricultural soils. Now, there's, we are using the soil science community with the concept of soil quality, the capacity of soils to perform their functions. Now there is a concept that is developing a lot in the European Commission documents, it's the one of soil health. So health is defined as the continued capacity of soils to provide ecosystem services. So you see well there's a lot of discussion of course on these concepts quality health, but you see that if solely sustainably managed, it should become healthy. While the present situation is more than is that more recent assessment is that more than 60% of European soils are not healthy. Now, the European Green Deal is not the only policy, not the only initiative dealing with soils actually there's a whole. The landscape is fairly rich, while the European Commission has launched a consultation for the new EU soil strategy so you can answer you have until Tuesday, you can answer as citizens you can answer as scientists as groups. So the mission concerning soils and the mission initial title was to healthy soils and food, and it has been renamed caring for soil is caring for life. So these are close, strongly related to the Green Deal, but there's also in the landscape the four per meal, the international four per meal initiative, so also food security and climate, promoting the preservation of the increase of soil organic carbon stocks and so organic matter, and there is also the global soil partnership, which was at the origin of this definition of sustainable soil management. So there's a series of initiatives, and luckily, they are very consistent. Do not have many may maybe the same targets quantitatively, but it all goes on the same way so. So in my second part, let me know I would like to take your three examples, and I will only take three examples on how our soils present in the Green Deal. And actually with two questions, what is, what can we say about the effect the Green Deal will have on soils, if it's realized if it's implemented. And what is the contribution of soils to the Green Deal, and does some management contribute to achievement of the Green Deal. And so I will take three examples in three different strategies. The first example is the biodiversity strategy by diversity strategy quantitative target is. Well, they have several, but one of them is let's increase by 10% landscape features by 2030 again ambitious. So what is behind landscape features, buffer strips, hedges, fellow land, non productive trees left in the middle of crops, terrors falls, ponds. So you see. Yes, it has consequences on soil of course it doesn't need soil to be implemented. It does have consequences on soils and actually does have really benefits on soils. And this is widely documented that these landscape features tend to reduce soil erosion to increase water infiltration to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus losses to increase so organic carbon stocks to increase biodiversity. So here, so it's clearly benefit from the Green Deal, if the Green Deal is, if this is implemented, if this target is reached. Now, are there still related knowledge needs. Yes, of course, two examples, connectivity at the landscape scale and erosion. So not working only at the plot scale but working at the landscape scale. And what is the actual effect on soils by diversity of these different landscape features. So here we have one arrow from the Green Deal to soils. Let's take another example. The fund to fork strategy, what is planned, what is targeted is to reduce the use of fertilizers by 2030 by 20% and to reduce nutrient excess. Well, you know that we have a awful one natural and phosphorus excesses by 50% by the same time. The benefits to soil, the direct benefits to soil for example for reducing nitrogen mineral nitrogen fertilizers application is well known again, it is to reduce soil acidification. But I would say but besides there's no. Yes, there's a effects are mainly indirect because if you want to reach those targets, you must use soul management, you must try to avoid nutrient losses integrated nutrient management rotations cover crops in forestry precision agriculture, try to improve the provision of nutrients by soil, if you reduce the external application by increasing soil organic matter content by using micro riser legumes and try also to substitute mineral with organic fertilizers. Management options so this is soul management, indeed, and this has consequences on soil, these management options tend to increase organic matter by diversity, improve soul structure. So again, here you see that soul management and sustainable this is sustainable soul management is needed for the achievement of these European Green Deal targets and it will benefit to soils. Again, new research knowledge needs of course there's knowledge needs in terms of knowledge development about a new trend that for example, nutrient dynamics and cycles in agroforestry about soul stoichiometry and the consequences on so organic carbon sequestration on soil by diversity. So there's still a research, yes, knowledge needs to be able to really assess how to implement those management options and what are the consequences. Let's go now to my third example so the climate law Europe becomes climate neutral in 2015 has just been presented extremely ambitious. Indeed, and it is known that this will require negative emission technologies storage of carbon in soils but more widely, this has to go for the part of soils through protecting existing so organic carbon stocks in forest in permanent grassland and particularly in Pitland to increasing so organic carbon stocks and here what is targeted is essentially degraded soils and agricultural soils and reducing into emissions and here the main actors unfortunately are agricultural soils. That's the general target and actually there are other targets out there. The mission board on soils caring for souls is caring for life has proposed a target that the current carbon concentration losses on cultivated land, which is 0.5% per year in average in Europe should be reversed and be increased up to 0.1 to 0.4%. And this is actually the same target that is in the four per meal initiative. Well, which is an aspirational target but it's the same order of magnitude. And also the second target in the mission board is to reduce that the area of managed Pitland losing carbon is reduced by 30 to 50% very ambitious again. So, yes, we have targets of the Green Deal but we have additional ones in other initiatives. Now, let me go to the same kind of presentation so how here soils are involved in that soul management is needed if we want to achieve the subjective of So it's contributing to negative emission technologies contributing to increasing so organic carbon stocks. There's a wide range of soul management options that exist for that and I should have added land users of course for a station for example. These are known there's a lot of quantitative estimates. What is known also is that it benefits to soil. So, these management options that are needed for the Green Deal are sustainable management options that will benefit so so will be an actor and soil will benefit from. And knowledge needs, for example, the drivers of so organic carbon persistence, the effects of not only manner, forestry or agricultural practices but also agricultural systems forestry systems urban systems food systems have a more integrated you this is really needed, and also very important question the trade offs between so organic carbon storage and two emissions and more generally nitrogen and phosphorus losses. So there's, we have a lot of knowledge out there, we still need, and another steel on this on the climate law. I would like to show you two results. We're originating this European joint program soil, and we ask a door what we decided is to survey to do a stock take off, which countries had already made an estimate of their technical potential of carbon storage in agricultural soil, how much my country can store additional carbon in agricultural soils. So this is the graph showing the results. And what came out is that only 13 countries had done it, you have the initials of the country there. And some of them had done it with only one practice, for example, Italy with only compost pain with only no tillage, while Sweden, for example, or France had implemented well conceptually model the effect of different management options. And you can see from the numbers that potentially can amount to quite an important contribution to reduce reducing the emissions from the agricultural sector. So what we're doing now in the HP is that 23 countries have agreed to do an estimate of the carbon storing potential in agricultural soils using a harmonized methodology. So this is different 23 countries collaborating to towards this. So, this is the technical potential, but if you consider the price of this additional historic carbon, you can see that the technique, the economical potential is less than the technical potential and the only one of these 13 studies had has an economical study and it's the study by Pelerin, and what about what is socially acceptable, what is practically implemented because the knowledge is there. The enabling conditions are there. Well, I have no example to give you. We really lack estimates on the economy and on the social legal etc. Okay, so I'm going to the answer what I, there, you see their souls are really present in the Green Deal, both as actors of the Green Deal, but also as beneficiaries of the Green Deal. Now, regarding knowledge needs, I have presented you knowledge needs that are in the category of knowledge development. As was previously said, what's actually is also needed and actually to implement really a better management of souls in Europe is we need what is needed is to monitor solve functions and their contribution to ecosystem services then to have indicators, that absolutely must absolutely be context dependent. So this is a very active area of knowledge development but also not only development also assemblage, putting together integrating the knowledge, intercom pairing. And one thing that is absolutely important that is really crucial is to harmonize the soul information we have different methods across Europe in the different countries for measuring even so organic carbon contents. There's a need for harmonization and there's a need of harmonization so that the way also the information is stored so that it can be shared in research program it can be extended and can be shared and used for policy because it's enough harmonized. And for measuring reporting and verifying on souls, not only on soul carbon, but also know the soul characteristics, and there's a crucial need for fair and functional incentives to help the, the stakeholders to implement the management options. The examples I took so far are essentially knowledge development needs and I agree knowledge has to be as much as possible co construction between stakeholders and scientists, but we do not only need knowledge development we also need knowledge sharing and transfer with stakeholders with citizens, making the information available usable by policymakers for example. And this is an engaging, engaging with the society and scientists are needed there. There's a need as I just said on knowledge harmonization organization and storage databases monitoring monitoring monitoring soils, having sharing observatories national observatories European observatories, and there's a need for knowledge application You can think of course of living labs or flight houses farm as proposed in the mission, but also policy support for policy, knowledge driven policy, and I think that now about geosciences and scientists The engagement of scientists can be in these different sections of the knowledge framework so this is the knowledge framework we're using in our European program that is named toward soil towards climate smart and sustainable management of soils. And from that I would like to conclude that solves plays central role in the European Green Deal that, and that's a fantastic opportunity for geosciences there's a lot to do in terms of knowledge development sharing transfer harmonization organization and application and thank you for your attention. Thanks so much Claire. You've actually answered in that presentation we answered a lot of the questions that I had. No, no, no, it's great. It's great. And you actually already preemptively answered one of the questions in the q amp a as well so bonus points there. I'm going to pass over to my co convenia co convener Claudio as a corner, who is also the edu's division president on the soil system sciences division to ask one of his questions. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks Claire. I mean, I have to say that I always enjoy to attend your presentation. They are always extremely interesting clear and so on. Two very simple questions so what are the issues or the limitations that we as geoscientists or scientists face when communicating so related issues and potential solution. I would say on soils. One of the issues is that soils are collective unknown. No one knows about soul and it's perceived by being not very attractive. So I think that there's work needed on making on raising awareness on making soils more likeable more known. So that's on the, the one hand, and on the other hand, what I feel is that we still are so much in the top down scheme. We still are so much as scientists because we have made our studies we have to begin to work like that that science and my predecessor say the same science finds solutions and then hence the solutions to the stakeholders, which is completely it doesn't work. It doesn't work and so we need to learn how to how to work in co construction this very nice word very sexy but okay what is co construction where where do you co construct is it co constructing the ideas the priorities of research. I think it is. I think it is also at this very early stage, and not only the implementation in the ground. So yes I would say awareness and learn to go to another scheme that is co construction. I think the last one I mean we, you, I mean you told several times that so play a central role in the European Green Deal. So, my question is, is there some soul related field that is still missing in the European Green Deal. Well, I don't know. I don't know because to be honest, I have not read all the communications of the Green Deal. I have read the biodiversity and the farm to fork one, but I have not read all. Well, I wonder whether Europe and soils are present enough. I wonder, there's a lot of focus put on agriculture, and this is meaningful because we have many environmental environmental problems where agriculture is both the origin of the problem but also a solution. But I wonder whether there's enough focus on urban territories and Perry urban zones. Well, and yes I wonder and I don't. Yes about land take land take is a huge problem ceiling, so ceiling and land take. I don't know. And thank you for the question because I'll have a look. I don't know whether it's taken up. And to you know to deal with land take to deal with behind line take is how do we is the whole issue of land planning and urbanization, and these requires interdisciplinary work and work with stakeholders. And also, yes, one measured I wanted to conclude on souls must solve scientists must interact with other scientists and other disciplines but okay, I think the opportunity of the question. Thanks. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for my side so now I'm going to pass directly over to our third speaker Joe Eisen to give us a very different perspective on some of the lessons from previous EU biodiversity and forest interventions in Africa. And the conditions for an equitable and sustainable natural Africa, which is one of the initiatives. So Joe. Thanks very much Chloe and good morning everybody and thanks thanks for inviting me along. It's very nice to to hop in with scientists. It's a very, very different webinar that I normally attend so thanks thanks very much for that. Yeah, so I, I'm just going to give quite a short presentation, looking at how the EU Green Deal intersects with with the European Union's international interventions, particularly one that's being touted and currently being being developed called natural Africa. So I've entitled it, keeping full solutions out of natural Africa because there's, there's a very long line of of difficult projects at the EU supported in Africa that I think we'll do very well to, to avoid moving forward. So, a bit about me, I'm, I'm the executive director of the rainforest Foundation UK. So who are we what do we do very quickly. We support indigenous peoples and local communities of the world rainforests in their efforts to protect their environment and to fill their, their rights to land life and livelihood. The core, a core belief as an organization is that you can only achieve environmental protection if human rights and land rights are recognized. We've been around for 30 years. We're actually established by by the singer Sting in 1989. We're mainly active in in the Congo recent Congo Basin region of of Africa. We also work in West Africa and Peru. And, and how we work we work through very long term partnerships with with civil society groups, indigenous peoples in the country to ensure that capacity is staying sustained where it's needed. We have a view of some of the EU programs in in Central Africa, just to lay a bit of the foundation for the presentation. So, there's lots, of course, Africa is an extremely important continent, the most important continent in many ways for for Europe. There's various different initiatives in in enhancing natural resource governance and forest governance, but one of them is called the fleck TVPA agreements so flecks flecks. If you don't know this already is an acronym for forest law enforcement governance and trade. It's essentially an initiative which seeks to develop bilateral agreements between timber producing countries in Africa and across the world with with the EC to to have to create timber licenses, great timber licenses to export, to make the world manage timber into the European markets. That's that that's been around for around 12 years and it's something that's been about a billion euros spent on it worldwide. Recently there's been a very welcome development at the European policy level to develop a law on imported deforestation to make sure that timber that enters European markets is is sound. There's this law on imported deforestation that that's being developed and that's that that's a very welcome initiative. Finally, one of the biggest EU programs in Africa has been to develop, expand and manage a system of strictly protected areas, particularly for the effect program. It's, it's, it's a program that the EC has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in and it's about creating strictly protected, protected areas that are often treated as as wildernesses that you know should be protected. And that's been funded by the effect program. So that's just a very quick overview of some of the main EU interventions in Africa. So now, now moving forward, the EU Green Deal, proposes to, to start this new program, Natural Africa. And again, the aim is to expand and consolidate a network of protected areas and, and offer opportunities to support green development for local communities. This is mean in practice. So, so I, I guess you're aware of the post 2020 biodiversity framework that's currently being negotiated and is due to be finalized at the COP 15 in coming in this, this October. And the EU has some very clearly stated goals in relation to this, including that it, it hopes that the overarching global goals for biodiversity are established by, by 2050 and very ambitious global 30 30 targets in line with the EU strategy, by the best strategy. Essentially, what that means is that the, at the EC level, there is a goal to declare 30% of Europe as protected areas. And there is efforts at the global level to make the 30% target a reality across the world. And so this, this, this, this came from an initial concept note that the, that the EC developed for natural Africa and, and again it very clearly describes that, that a protected area model is, is, is, is the way to achieve biodiversity goals through through natural Africa. I just want to take a second to, to see, I mean, I think, as an organization that works very closely with local and indigenous communities in Africa. There, there is a risk that, that this program could entrench past past failures. So as an organization, we, we, we do lots of field work with indigenous communities. And around, we've, we've noticed many social problems linked to these protected areas. And a couple of years ago we got funding at last to, to, to look at this issue more, more, more systematically look at what the social impacts and actually what the biodiversity impacts of these protected areas are across the Congo basin. So we, we studied a group of 35 protected areas, there's about 200 in the, in the Central African region. To, to look at this, and what we found was, there was very scant evidence that these, these kinds of protected areas ever consulted, you know, forest dependent people that live and depend on this resource. And we found that I think in 26 of the 35 protected areas. There were reports of physical or economic basement of local and indigenous communities. There were numerous reports of conflicts by, by eco guards armed park rangers that are charged with, with managing the areas of protecting these areas. So there were 21 conflicts. And there were six, six cases where there was no reports that no data reported. So, as you can see, the protected areas across the region having very severe impacts on on local and an indigenous communities. One of the things that came out of the research that we weren't particularly expecting was, was they, they were a questionable biodiversity effectiveness as well. There was very little empirical evidence that the keystone species were, were better protected in these areas. So diversity and mega mega fornite is in, is in steep decline in many parts of Central Africa. There's a lack of community driven projects, which have proven effective elsewhere. And of course, these kinds of protected areas are under threat from, from extractive industries. So this, this is a model of protected areas that has been supported by the EC, not just the EC but also, you know, the US government and, and the US government in particular, for a long time and it's, it's based on this kind of notion that the tropical forests wildernesses that through our work in supporting indigenous communities to map these areas, what we actually are actually very much human landscapes and, and by separating nature and, and humans. You, you leave, you know, you lead to very perverse outcomes socially, economically and in biodiversity at terms as well. So just to give a couple of examples and one or two of these are have been funded by the EC ECA back program so this is, this is a strictly protected area. There was a land in Dima that was created in 2006 in Western DR Congo. The, it was created again without any consultation of the local and indigenous communities that live and depend on this resource. And what you can see here these, these white polygons. These are customary tenure systems. So these are planned parcels is these are these are how the map, the land is customarily owned and managed by by by local people. There's, there's 120,000 people that live in this area and overnight a protected area was created. So all sorts of land conflicts, human rights abuses conflict between the local communities and the park managers. Another case from the DR Congo this the Selonga National Park, which is a World Heritage Site. We have supported local communities and local civil society organizations there to to support human rights monitoring of the relationship between the armed eco guards and local communities. We, we only studied 12 out of 600 communities that are impacted by the park. And we found mass reports of very, very serious human rights violations. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a pervasive problem. And it's, it, it very much needs to change. And I think, I think the international community now, starting to come to terms that treating rainforest as wilderness is is is detrimental. There's been various legal reforms at the US government as a result of this campaign to to design conservation programs that are more propo, more positive, more positive Patreon inclusive. There's, there's, there's been questions certainly asked at European Parliament level but that really hasn't cascaded down to to the kind of policymaking level. And as we saw from, from, from the document I showed earlier in the presentation about natural Africa, the mode, you know, the, the, the go to model is still strictly protected areas and I think that needs to change. Another thing just to just, just a flag about EU policy and what global policy in relation to, to rainforest conservation, moving forward. So, I think, I think that Jaroslav had talked about nature based solutions in, in, in Europe. But I think, particularly in places like Africa and other tropical forest regions, I think we need to throw a word of caution about the climate mitigation potential of, of nature based solutions. A lot of the policy development at the moment is based on one single paper by, by Grisken, which, which estimated that 35 that that nature based solutions represents 35% of climate mitigation potential within the next 10 years. Now, that's, that's quite a claim, I think, in order to, in order to do that you would need an area the size of Australia. You would need to map it, you would need to, you know, you need to consult all the local communities who may claim this land. It may be done through potentially environmentally destructive plantations, which have their own ecological impacts. I think we need to be careful about, about inflating the potential of nature based solutions to, as a climate mitigation tool, particularly adaptation and more so. And it's interesting that a lot of, you know, the oil companies are very much behind this come a very much behind this concept. You know, the hotel shell any and, and the like that are very much behind this, this movement and of course that you know that already starts the alarm bells ringing so I think it's just important that the EU Green Deal abroad doesn't place too much emphasis on on unproven things that delay climate action in in in Europe in the global north. So just to finish off. So what the conditions to to the real to avoid and trenching past failures in Africa. But as I said, I think, you know, the recognition of indigenous peoples and community land tenure is an absolute prerequisite. It's not just about social justice it's also about, it's also about environmental effectiveness as well. And, you know, there's a lot of scientific research which shows the areas under the control of such groups are better managed, better social and economic outcomes and I think that needs to be supported in policy terms. All future projects really needs uphold the principle of the free part of obtaining the free and informed consent of, of local communities that are impacted by, by these interventions. You too often international funding has has gone from, you know, the big international governments to the big international NGOs bypassing African civil society and you're not going to change anything unless you really work with and empower African civil society to play as role. Again, going back to the being wary about nature based solutions and other offset schemes that that that delay climate action in Europe net zero is not zero. And we need to be really conscious around that narrative because we know we don't have much of a carbon budget left, and we can't allow the system to be gained gained. Yeah, in the spirit of the other presentations, you know how can we embed geo science in rights based approaches. One of the things we do as an organization we campaign for, you know, African civil society organizations to campaign for laws which, which, which give communities rights to their lands and resources. We do work with such groups to, to, to ensure that, you know, having land tenure can deliver benefits to local communities as, as, as well as environmental benefits. So yeah, just as a last slide, giving control to local indigenous communities, secures and securing land rights and building local capacity, reduces le, less deforestation. More carbon stored human rights upheld and improve livelihoods and I think, I think that natural Africa really needs to sort of take a long hard look at the theory of change about how we're going to create positive change in Africa. So yeah, thanks. Thanks very much for taking the time to listen to me and I look forward to any questions you may have. Great. Thank you so much Joe for giving us the scientists the perspective that we often don't hear or think about. Thank you so much for the opportunity that our fourth and final speaker has joined us. Welcome to eat your Samson, but we, before we do get to our final speaker, I'm just going to pass quickly over to my co convener Ned, study land who was also one of the authors of the edu's publication on how geo science can support the green, the green deal. So Ned, do you have a question or two questions for Joe. Of course, and thanks Joe. That was a really interesting talk. I just really had to have two questions. So the first one was in line with what you're talking about and the response of nature Africa and some of the issues that you brought up I understand that you alongside some other NGOs have written to the EU do you feel like you're having a positive back and forth with them. And I guess I can probably combine that into my second question which was going to be, do you feel the viewpoint of NGOs are being brought in as much as they can into the EU Green Deal and the decisions that they're making currently I know there's the life 2020 initiative to try and bring in proposals from NGOs to be involved but do you do you feel like that back and forth is going the direction you would want and if not what do you think is the best way to achieve that. Thanks Ned. Yes, a really good question. I mean, I would say, you know, the, the concept around natural Africa was, was developed without any consultation of, of international NGOs working in human rights and conservation and certainly not without any consultation of, of African civil society organizations. So, you know, I think, I think, you know, us, us and other NGOs kicked up a bit of the stink about the program and and we're hopeful they are, they are reconsidering it. So, that, that very much, you know, remains remains to be seen. You know, human rights is is not always properly embedded in their programs. So I would say to that question is very much a work in progress Ned. So, I guess that brings us on to our fourth speaker who is Diedrich Samson. Now Diedrich is a Dutch environmentalist who led the Labour Party from 2012 until 2016. Before his election to Parliament he was CEO of a green energy company and campaigner for green, green peace in the Netherlands. In November 2019 he has worked as the head of cabinet for first vice president of the European Commission at France, Timmins, and subsequently he has played a very important role in the creation and implementation of the Green Deal. So, welcome, Diedrich. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, can you hear me. Yes. It took me a while to get into this Zoom meeting after one year of this you should know you should think you get better at it, but the usual trouble. So I joined late and I will be brief so that we have all the time for questions and answers and whatever. And first of all, I wanted to congratulate all of you with your marvellous work. That's more than just courtesy. I do that because I need you a lot in what we are doing with the Green Deal. Because to step back a bit from daily business, let's look at that Green Deal. What is it actually? It is not a normal environmental plan like you've seen dozens of coming from Brussels in the last decade. It's much more than that. The Green Deal stands out from let's say normal environmental plans in at least three ways. One of them is obviously its ambition for once politicians didn't go for the lowest common denominator for the feasible for the practical. No, for once politicians settled for that what was necessary, getting ourselves to a fully sustainable society before half of the century. Hence the climate neutrality goal and the minus 50-50 in 2030 that we just agreed the climate law on to enshrine that into legislation to show actually ourselves, but also the rest of the world that we are damn serious about it. Real ambition needed because obviously the urgency at hand is clear and that's what you scientists tell us every day. The second thing is the second difference with normal environmental ideas and plans is that for once we didn't make a plan on climate and then another one on energy and then another one on nature and then something on transport and then something on water. Discovering halfway that some of those plans work against each other. No, we made a comprehensive coherent idea vision to save our ecosystem and basically come to think of it. That's pretty logical to make one idea about our ecosystem because there is only one ecosystem and within that ecosystem, everything is connected with everything else too. So our plans, our strategies should be connected with each other too. So we didn't go only for that climate neutrality goal but also for the goal to stop the loss of biodiversity completely and also the ambition to stop further pollution of water, soil and air. We have polluted enough in the last two centuries or actually longer than that. So a coherent idea in order to get ourselves to this ultimate ambition, a fully sustainable society, including also the ideas to become fully circular because you cannot become fully sustainable if your economy is still a linear one, throwing away all the stuff that you used at the end of the game. And the third way that our Green Deal stands out from normal environmental plans is that it is actually not an environmental plan. It is a growth strategy. And coming from the environmental movement myself, I vividly remember that when we presented it almost one and a half years ago now in December 2019, that idea of an environmental strategy being a growth plan raised some eyebrows, especially within the environmental community, because how on earth can you combine those huge environmental objectives with the idea of a further growing economy. I do think that is possible. I also think it's needed to combine the two. And I'm now more than ever happy that we did because this was all happened in the pre-corona era. So three months into the plan, March 2020, we were hit by something that turned our world upside down and that's the reason why we speak to each other on these stupid screens all the time. But much more than that, it also deflected a lot of the political attention and maybe also the financial capital. And that happens before in history, when politicians finally must have the courage to put a long-term vision on paper, to put a dot on the horizon and tell the public that we were going in that direction. Once that happens, sometimes, or actually most of the time, something urgently comes by, wipes away the long-term vision and takes all the attention to the urgency at hand. I remember vividly that we had that in 2009 when politicians in Europe had embarked on a climate ambition after Al Gore mesmerized us all with his movie An Inconvenient Truth. And just as that has happened, Lehman brought us fell and we dove into the financial crisis and we haven't heard about an inconvenient truth ever since. This time was different, luckily. This time was different because we realized pretty soon into the COVID pandemic that we needed a gross strategy to get ourselves out of this mess, out of this economic crash that the corona crisis brought us upon. And here we were looking for a gross strategy while the European Commission had just produced one. It was called the Green Deal. So instead of what I feared would happen, and many of us feared what would happen, that the Green Deal would be put in the lowest drawer that you could find, the deepest drawer that you could find never to come back again, we put the Green Deal on steroids in order to fight back economically from this pandemic. We said, well, if we have to build back, we better build back green because it makes no sense to restore your economy and then again transition it to a sustainable green economy, do it right in the first instance. So here we are with the Green Deal on steroids. The plans being put on the table, some of them in also a more detailed form. We plan to come halfway of the year somewhere the beginning of July, maybe with our so-called Fit for 55 package, which is the whole legislation to get ourselves first of all to minus 55 CO2 emissions and then to climate neutrality in 2050. But we need you, we need science for that because, well, it was already alluded to. I just followed the last part of the preceding presentation. Part of the ambition is reducing the emissions. Part of the ambition is also increasing the removals, increasing the way we sequester carbon in our soil, in our trees, in everything we do. And we need a lot of science to make that happen. We also need a lot of science to make the emissions reduce, etc. We need the businesses and Elon Musk type of entrepreneurs to get us into new technology, etc. But we also need and more than we actually thought and more than we paid attention to so far, those nature-based solutions that can stabilize our ecosystem, not only in climate terms, because the good part of nature-based solutions is that it also helps the other aims that we were striving for, saving biodiversity or stopping the loss of biodiversity, stopping our pollution, cleaning our air, cleaning our soil, cleaning our water. We need those nature-based solutions and that's why we need your knowledge and we need to know what we're actually doing. And that's also why we need your knowledge. I know I'm pretty new to the European Commission, but I'm amazed by the amount of data that is flowing around and that we're actually arguing about. We arguing with the member states on how much forest they actually put there or how much forest they took away for several reasons sometimes. How much land they have actually in use for farming or for other non-agricultural practices. And we arguing with them on those data, while at the same time we're looking from space down on Earth with breast-taking precision and we actually could know what they're doing without asking them directly, without exchanging all kinds of papers and protocols and frameworks and data, we just take a picture and well, you know better than I do that just taking a picture is not that easy. You need to know a truckload of things about what you're looking at actually and that's why we need you too. So we need science, we need geoscientists for bringing us closer to the best nature-based solutions because you can screw up quite a lot if you don't know what you're doing. And we need you in order to help us see what we are actually achieving in order to learn those lessons, in order to bring us step by step towards minus 55 and then to climate neutrality, the end goal that we're all striving for. Not because it's a number on paper but because we want to look our kids right into the eye somewhere in the next two decades. That we are actually not screwing up their future but we're helping them. So all in all, I think there's a union to make between the politicians and the other people working on the Green Deal from a technical, political, financial part and the scientist community that can tell us what we're doing and how we should do it. With that, I hand over to you. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Deidre. It was really great for our scientists to hear something along those lines as well. I'm sure knowing that they can get engaged if they want to. I do have a follow-up question before we do get into the broader panel discussion and that is that the Green Deal is obviously going to have a lot of large societal positive impacts that will subsequently also benefit scientists. But are there some specific activities that are supported by the Green Deal that are also likely to benefit those scientists or benefit research in general? Yes, it does. And actually, before the Green Deal was put on paper formally, you could already see that momentum changing and I'm referring to the so-called horizon missions. We have that huge research program which we call Horizon Appropriate Name and we've been struggling with how to frame and organize that for the last decades and the latest development is those missions that we think bring science closer to people or the other way around to societal challenges. And four of those missions are actually directly related to climate science. It's about soils, it's about oceans, it's about adaptation, it's about clean cities and there's one about cancer which is equally important by the way but not related to climate change. So I think we aligned the Horizon program more towards the Green Deal objectives even before the Green Deal was there so that's nice coincidence. Obviously what we should do next is also strengthen those missions not only aligning it but increasing them also in terms of finances and that's where we always hit a snack because the commission proposes quite a lot of investments into research and then the European Council 27 members, prime ministers in all their wisdom decide to back on that a little more because they don't want to spend that much money. This is something that happens every seven years and it happened again. Nevertheless, quite a lot of money left, 100 billion, I don't have it in my pocket every day. But the most important part, so the alignment, the strengthening of finance but as I said what we now need more is the alliance. The alliance between the people working from one side which is the Bellamon building and an incredible machinery the European Commission and also in member states, politicians, civil servants, together with the scientists. I do think that we entering a new era in which that connection which is not self-evident at all is made better every day and it's my commitment to increase that over the years towards a full alliance between science and politics. Well, I hope so too. Everyone here knows I'm a little bit biased towards that because I'm the EU's policy officer but I do have one more question to you but actually I think it's one that the whole panel want to address as well. So I think I'm actually going to open this up to the panel discussion starting from now but I'm actually going to be a little bit greedy and kick off this panel discussion with my own question which is, okay, we've talked a little bit already about what scientists can do in terms of supporting the Green Deal throughout the last hour but specifically now, what can scientific unions such as the EU do to support these scientists or more generally support the connection between scientists and policy makers and therefore support the Green Deal and the ambitious targets that it has. And Deidre, I'm going to start with you because you're on my screen right now but I'm then going to pass it off to the other panelists as well. But I'm going to quickly pass it on because this is a question for yourself therefore how you organize yourself as a scientific community towards us so I have something to say about it but I'm going to say as little as possible as I said, we are receptive at least it's my commitment to become more receptive but how your union can help the individual scientists or the individual scientific groups that's something for you to answer and I hope you will be successful in that so I pass on this question to the other panelists. Okay, great. So other panelists, I say Claire puts her hand up there I'll allow you to jump in here. To unmute myself, hello. Yeah, thank you for giving the opportunity. Well, I think unions can do a lot scientific unions can do a lot well first by organizing sessions at conferences like that and I think many quite often scientists would like to know about policy but it's much better. Yes, so conferences are a good I think way to well to make these exchanges and to well to learn to learn about policies and also I think that the scientific community and unions can represent a task force what I see in the European program I am coordinating is that we are able to answer to or in the full initiative we're able for example to answer to questioners from the commission on the mission on the social strategy in a coordinated way because we can assemble the answers well stimulate their answers and have group group work so having elaborated answers when when the commission or other bodies IPCC or other ask for so promote and organize the task force of scientists contributing to global efforts Great, thank you Claire. I can say Yaro also has his hand up Thank you very much you know looking at the EGU directly you have a number of very interesting divisions but they are somehow disciplinary oriented let's say would it make sense for EGU to create a division that is cross-disciplinary and addressing climate resilience across the different scientific disciplines and I give you a little bit background of that yesterday I participated in an event about with the teacher of the K-12 educational system in Italy and we discussed how to teach how to educate on climate change and the feedback that we got after intervention was it is not my subject I am in favour of teaching climate change but it doesn't fall into my subject and then I said climate change is not a discipline climate change is a bill that we are paying for for our unsustainable past so it really needs to be brought to any subject that you are teaching whether this is a civic education whether this is science or history or something else so all decided and used the opportunity to the same probably applies to the scientific institution we really need to go beyond the silos the traditional disciplinary division I am not to discuss that but but we need to create structure that happens Yara you are breaking up a little bit there but I think you just finished your point you are breaking up right towards the end so we got into the disciplinarity I think leads really well into what Jo might be saying so Jo I can see you also have your hands up there Thanks Chloe I think in terms of the evidence I think the evidence for recognising the rights of local and indigenous communities and the climate benefits that has is pretty clear it is more a question of political will I think in practical terms there is definitely a body of work there to look at the look more deeply into the climate mitigation potential of nature based solutions as I said it has been touted as being 100% within 10 years I think it is more in the lower percentage point so looking more into that looking at the moment nature based solutions is a loosely defined concept it can incorporate protected areas it can incorporate plantations it can also incorporate monoculture plantations which previously are quite environmentally destructive so what do ecological sound nature based solutions and how can they be implemented in Europe and elsewhere other things I would say that it is important to establish stronger relationships with African scientists and civil society groups because that is where the rubber hits the road stop talking in our silos and finally across multidisciplinary approaches to these kinds of questions working with social scientists working with anthropologists to put these kinds of concepts into action great thanks so much for that Joe good I am not muted double check so the next question is what do you think this is also maybe a little bit hypothetical but what do you think the impact of the Green Deal is or potentially could be on a global scale and on the flip side of this will the Green Deal targets and things like that be impacted by other countries so for example I think Joe Biden has recently made renewed the commitment from the US perspective is this likely to do you think impact the Green Deal I don't know who wants to jump in on this first I saw a digic raises you might need to unmute yourself though yeah well it was the aim I didn't elaborate on every aspect of the Green Deal but it also had a geopolitical context obviously and our aim is as Europe to take the world along on this incredible journey and only one and a half a year ago the picture of that was pretty gloomy we were still stuck with President Trump in the White House and we hadn't heard from the Chinese for a while to mention a few important players on the world stage but now look at the situation one and a half years later sometimes you need to be lucky there's a different administration over there at the other side of the Atlantic but part of it is also because the Green Deal inspired others to step up their game we've seen that from the Chinese they have different reasons for it but one of them is also to be a world player and they see that the world stage is about climate change at the moment the G20, the G7 all those big gatherings they are about climate change and partly because Europe stepped forward and said we are not going to wait here we are with our ambition climate neutrality in 2050 the US is now the same ambition for 250 we're still hackling a little on there but to be fair it's way better it's a difference between night and day compared to what they had even if you look at the Obama era by the way so they really stepped up their game and from the Chinese we now hear their climate ambition climate neutrality in 260 well obviously a lot to talk about for instance in COP26 in Glasgow at the end of the year but we are now in a worldwide endeavor which is completely different from a year ago and I must say also very needed because Europe is 10% of the world's emissions we have a bigger impact because of our markets and our imports etc but we cannot save the planet on our own this has to be a worldwide project and it starts becoming one thanks is it do any of the other speakers want to jump in for free to switch your microphones off and nope maybe next question then the next question I'm going to ask is actually a question from the audience and it might be more actually directed to the scientists on the panel here so it's from David Cockrell and he says he's very happy about the Green Deal taking place but he is a little bit what was the wording here he's wondering if it's happening too slow so he's wondering whether the Green Deal will work fast enough to slow down things like climate change or whether even more action is needed now I know the Green Deals Claire actually mentioned this in a presentation as well some of the Green Deals targets are very ambitious so I guess it's sort of trying to see whether the question is whether the Green Deals targets are too ambitious are they achievable or do we even need to push further and do things faster any thoughts on that maybe I'll jump to Claire so I think that the objectives and the targets of the Green Deal are quite ambitious as I showed you those of the sole mission on the mission on the healthy soils and food are even more ambitious but they are taken up by the commission well I think the question behind is what will be the enabling conditions for stakeholders to implement the practices that will allow to reach the targets so we really need fair and efficient incentive systems for promoting the achievement of delivery of ecosystem services in different ecosystems and from different natural resources such as soil, water biodiversity so for me the Green Deal does not completely give the tools part of them can be the cap well there's a lot of discussion out there yes and maybe I do not know enough what is in the Green Deal but yes it will depend on incentives on creating the enabling conditions for stakeholders thanks very much Jo any thoughts on this particular issue yeah I mean I just being I guess it's a standard argument isn't it just being ambitious in terms of decarbonizing our economy and not conflating that kind of imperative to decarbonize with offsetting and commit to real emissions reductions yeah so I can say Yara with his hand up and I know the EU mission board on climate adaptation is also quite ambitious so Yara what do you have to say thank you the connection is better now you can hear me I think Green Deal encompasses many commitments and many objectives and tangible targets by 2030 by 2050 if I understand the question right is it more about is Green Deal ambitious enough in order to stop climate change in time if this is the question I think personally I would believe the Green Deal is really ambitious and it pushed forward the frontier of ambition really to the point where doing more would probably not be politically feasible so we have the intermediate target of 55% reduction of greenhouse gas emission by 2030 which is in nine years right it's huge and carbon neutrality by 2050 it's really ambitious we still need to develop the pathways, the trajectories how to reach that goal but if the question is whether the science is fast enough in order to inform already ambitious Green Deal then I would perhaps answer of course what we are planning for especially in the mission on climate adaptation in the horizon Europe and beyond is of course a research innovation that will take some time in order to be materialized and inform the transition processes what we really need to do is to harness also the research that was completed under horizon 2020 so we really need to work on deploying the innovation that we developed in the past and see it working in the practice so there was not always horizon Europe will definitely deliver new innovative solution and actionable knowledge but we still have a task to exploit what we have developed for thank you so just to finally come in on this question if you would like to, didrik do you have anything to add or respond to again sorry you have to unmute yourself no problem obviously my answer to the question is the Green Deal far ambitious enough it's formally yes I can't say anything else but I am also convinced of it as a person the problem obviously is that we anticipate that the rest of the world has to go through a similar effort and then it will be enough or at least well with all the uncertainty that you know more about in terms of bandwidth of climate change effects and climate change models but it could be it's sort of in the midst of the bandwidth of where we need to go but this is all provided that the rest of the world is coming along and it's very interesting to see that for instance I think this morning the New York Times published on the basis of what was announced yesterday in the Biden summit by the US and adding that to Europe and adding that to China and they sort of start to show that if that continues the world might be on a pathway to avoiding devastating climate change which is pretty good news but it's a bit running in ahead of itself in terms of for instance we don't know what in the eyes actually up to Brazil there's quite a few big emitters that are still in the dark and this is very important that we need to take them along in that journey towards climate neutrality great thanks so I have I'm just a question in the chat that I really do like and this is from Borek and she says my question stems from my lack of knowledge on economics as a geoscientist I have a broad idea on what we can do to fix climate change but I have no idea how feasible it is on an economic from an economic point of view the European Green Deal is a growth plan incorporating environmental and economic aspects as well as many others and I'm wondering on what level aspects are combined to make a general action plan is this only at a policy making level do you think we need to have courses in universities where we combine client mitigation techniques with economics or something else so quite a lot of aspects to this question does anyone feel like jumping into address it or maybe comment on it more generally did you already I'm muted if you want to jump in no I didn't want to be the first but this is obviously you could call it the one million dollar question how to combine those two as I said in my introduction it raised quite some eyebrows if you say that you want to combine economic growth with those environmental objectives there's a lot of people out there and I was one of them once that argued that you cannot combine the economic growth with those sustainable objectives and it is also not self-evident growth has not only a speed but also has a direction and I think we are focusing too much on that speed which is the 2.1% growth of the GDP each year all those figures that you see in the paper the direction is actually much more important and that requires much more knowledge and insights on how you steer the direction of economic growth I mean and we have been fighting or we or the environmental movement or people that question economic growth are always questioning that figure the 2.1 or the 3 it should be lower in order to meet the sustainability objectives they argue and I argue that that figure isn't relevant the direction is much more relevant but it's much more difficult to show it, to steer it I mean every one of us is getting up every morning with the ambition to do a little bit better we want to be a little bit better in our work we want to teach our kids a little more we want to read an extra book that's our ambition as a person well 7 billion persons do not every morning and that's called economic growth because every morning we do every day we want to do a little better and the challenge is when all that grows into the right direction into a sustainable direction and that is possible but it requires more knowledge so my answer would be a full hearted yes to that question that you as a scientific community could lead the way in trying to combine those 2 things because as I said that's pretty difficult okay I can also say Joe with his hand up virtually just on the on the financing side of things Mark Carney the UN Special Envoy on Finance and Climate Change recently said that net zero and nature is the greatest commercial opportunity of our age so yeah I mean that could be a good thing or it could be a very bad thing and it kind of underlines the need for the enabling conditions to happen you know I said securing the rights of local indigenous communities the governance the science that all needs to be in place otherwise we risk seeing land grabs pretty unsound project so yeah it's an opportunity but we need to make sure the other pieces of the jigsaw are in place as well absolutely now I would like to move on to one more question from the Q&A box because I do also really like this one it's from Martin and I think I'm going to address it to Yaro first because I think it links up quite well with his citizen assemblies so firstly Yaro and if any other panellists want to jump in on this afterwards feel free can we say that the Green Deal is a lot about changing human behaviour how can we tackle that so to get the societal features changing in that sort of thing thank you there is really a good question I would almost say personally I would say the Green Deal is a very ambitious target and very ambitious policy objectives and those can only be reached if you change the behaviour so in principle you can say the core of the research and innovation behind is really how we motivate how we incentivise the behavioural change that might be consumer choices that might be the way how we socialise in our communities that might be a number of things but how we address risk how we cope with risk and so on so the behavioural change is absolutely at the critical cornerstone on the pathway to meet the Green Deal's objectives and targets I would definitely agree with that and that reconnects also with my last slide from my introductory talk where as scientists we really need to think hard about how to incorporate assimilate the incentives and strategies the behavioural research into methods across the different disciplines and across the different policy advising policy support tools so yes, I would give full endorsement for societal transformation behavioural research as a core of the Green Deal thank you great answer, thank you Yari does anyone else want to jump into this before our final question because we are fast running out of time the two hours are just flown by so I'm going to ask my final question now and this is a bit of a fun one I'm quite interested to see how the speakers answer this so the question is the Green Deal's long-term targets reach up until 2050 now I want you to imagine that we are in 2051 what does the world look like and what are our next steps so I go first because I have to run off after that question sounds good well we actually thought about more than 250 we concluded as I said in the introduction to climate law on Tuesday night actually at five o'clock in the morning negotiations ended because one question was still out there on the table what do we do next and in terms of climate change we have already agreed that we would go negative positive because we would go into removals being bigger than emissions as of 2050 but that was not a real question the real question is what does the world look like by then and I hand over to you for that because I have a lot of imagination and I can sketch all kinds of pictures but I would like science to be in the lead in leading the way towards that well must be beautiful future I'm not sure what and how it looks like and so I leave that up to the scientist to as I said, guide us into that future because that's your job with that I say congratulations to you for all your work and I hope to see you sometimes in real life great thanks for that inspiring answer thanks so much for joining us I'm going to pass straight on over to Claire who I can see has her hands up yes, so maybe I'll start well it would be great to be in 2021 with the Green Deal targets reached because I think we would be in a much greener world yes, literally much greener and more sustainable still I think so yes, nearly difficult to imagine what it would be still I think that there will be issues because the population is going to continue to grow and hence there will be still discussions not only in Europe but in the whole world about how to share how to distribute the land and the resources and yes, access to land access to food and how to build how to devise sustainable cities because many the proportion of a urban population is planned to continue to grow so I guess there will be challenge there but well it would be great to be there in 2050 with targets achieved so yeah, that's it fingers crossed I can see Jaro was unmuted but he's muted again you wanted to jump in I can be the last because I okay, in that case Joe Joe also has his hand up so great okay so yeah, 2050 I mean it's estimated local and indigenous communities number around 2.5 billion people around the world and customarily manage around 50% including some of the world's most rich ecosystems but they legally own just 10% so I would like to think and this goes somewhat beyond the e-green I would like to think that we start to that 10% figure comes to near 50% figure as a free condition for a healthier, more equitable planet something to aim towards thanks Joe so Jaro last but not least thank you of course we are more concerned about what might get wrong and prevent us from being there where we intended to be in 2050 but I like that question if you are in 2050 I will not speak about mitigation but in terms of adaptation when you look at this we are requiring color ambition of EU adaptation strategy to be climate resilient climate resilient by 2050 and we have we are using a similar target in the mission at least part of Europe should be climate resilient by 2030 but what does it mean climate resilient it doesn't mean that the extreme climate event will not occur again so the resilience is a sort of moving target so in 2050 we will still face a word with inequalities economic and social and we will still face some environmental degradation to tackle so for us probably the work will continue beyond 2050 and still finding new ways had to become more resilient against climate variability and hopefully not against climate change at the time OK I think that's actually a really great place to end the session today which is great because we are just one minute over time I would like to firstly say a huge huge thank you to all of our speakers for joining us here today and also to my fellow co-conveners who this session would have happened without them so thank you so much to everyone who helped with the session and finally thank you to all of the participants who asked questions in the chat box, in the Q&A box and sorry we couldn't get to all of the questions today but I will be doing a follow up blog post on this so you can look out for that otherwise I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the day today I hope you enjoy the rest of EGU online next week and we hope to see you in Vienna next year