 Hello everyone. Welcome and thank you so much for joining us. We have a wonderful opportunity to gather together to think about some of the most pioneering work going on in the world that we all care deeply about driving the values of nature ever more in a mainstreamed kind of way into our thinking, into our decision making in a lot of different contexts and a lot of different regions. And today we have a really special occasion. We're focused on the value of natural infrastructure in urban planning. And indeed our community has been focused ever more on cities and especially so right in this time it feels so urgent and like such a tremendous challenge to reconnect people with nature in cities and also a tremendous opportunity. There are enormously interesting research frontiers. One of my favorite frontiers is in relating nature experience to health, physical health through physical activity and other aspects of connecting with nature. And also mental health, both cognitive functioning and emotional well-being. And there's so much more to learn. We can tell kind of every week new papers come out relating nature experience to health, especially among urban people who really have a nature deficit in many ways. And so here we are together. We have an amazing week. Parine just led a paper that came out presenting Invest one of the tools available for making this research ever more accessible and actionable and lowering barriers to engaging with others in driving this science forward and driving the action forward. So I'd like to just introduce very briefly the natural capital project. It's a large partnership of about 300 different partners in both research and also in practice worldwide. That's come together. The core partners are listed just below on the screen come together to help drive this innovation in the science very interdisciplinary using the incredible advances in technology and through partnership hand in hand to enable people in nature to thrive. So like I said today will be focusing in this conversation on nature based solutions and natural infrastructure. And I guess with this slide I just want to say that the main objective here is to learn from one another. So we hope to have just a nice relaxed time together and we invite your feedback and conversation here in discussion format and also later in following up with people. And I'll turn over to Parine to help us dive in just focused on nature based solutions in the Asia Pacific region trends in urban planning differences in this region as compared to other places. This is really innovative examples and no one's better than Green Hummel who co led our cities program at the natural capital project for many years and who's now a professor at NTU and Singapore and continuing to drive really pioneering work in this area and to help us connect across the world. So thank you and over to you Parine. I'll stop sharing my slides. Thank you very much for the introduction and for these kind words to introduce the session. I'm going to share my screen. And it's indeed my great pleasure to moderate this session and we have three great panelists today joining us. Rita Padawangi, Prof Rita Padawangi is an associate professor in sociology at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. And she has extensive experience in the sociology of architecture, social movements and poultry urban development and I met Rita through an online conference as it goes these days. And I was really struck by her insightful comments coming from a sociology perspective on urban flooding issues. And I know you'll find her comments and perspectives really interesting for the conversation today. We also joined by Leonard Ong, who is from Ramble Dressitle Studio Dressitle. And Leonard is a landscape architect expert in planning and water sensitive urban design, working at the intersection between man and his environment with the aim of finding a long term sustainable balance between the two of them. And so themes that are really close to my heart and I'm sure really resonating with a lot of the work that you joining in the audience relate to. And finally, Eric Wolf, who is a PhD student soon to graduate at Monash University. Eric Wolf has a background in civil and geotechnical engineering. He also expanded his expertise through his PhD in the field of nature based infrastructure and flood risk management in the context of informal settlements. And so three really diverse experiences and expertise, which will really shed a different light on this conversation of green infrastructure in urban planning. The conversation today will follow this schedule and I'll just give a little bit of background on nature based solutions in Asia Pacific. Just to set the scene for those of you who are less familiar with the Asian environment. And then we'll go through the three presentations, perhaps in a different order. I thought I would start with that since we're in Singapore here. I would start with the Leonard with some highlights of what this conversation means in Singapore and then Rita and Eric. And finally, we'll really use this time as an opportunity to discuss so I'll leave the conversation with a few questions and really encourage you to ask questions and share your own feedback through the Q&A box. I'd like to remind you if you are interested in re-watching the webinar or if you have colleagues interested in the webinar, we'll be making it available on our YouTube channel. And we'll send some of the slides presented today in a thank you email. You'll also have an opportunity to reach out directly to the panelists, of course. So just additional housekeeping items. I'm sure you're all very familiar with the Zoom system by now, but please do use the Q&A box for any questions throughout the webinar. And if you have any logistical or technical questions, you can use the chat box or feel free also to use it to say hi maybe say where you're coming from if you'd like to engage. Without further ado, I'll dive in and give a little bit of context on the Singaporean and Asian perspectives on these questions of natural infrastructure in urban planning. So first things first, what do we mean by natural infrastructure? I'm assuming if you've tuned in today, you are already fairly familiar with this topic. But just to make sure we're on the same page, I'm talking about essentially anything green and blue in a city and around the city. So these ranges from urban parks, whether they are small neighborhood parks or larger parks, allotment gardens or community gardens in cities that are gaining a lot of popularity around the world. They can be water bodies or peri urban forests, as well as coastal ecosystems, mangroves for example, but also a range of more engineered systems such as street trees, green roofs, or rain gardens, bio retention systems, a lot of jargon we use in urban water management and that essentially cover the more built infrastructure that still relies and uses the ecosystem services, the natural processes to manage water in that case. And so these, all these types of green infrastructure are really gaining a lot of attention around the world. This is a picture of the Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park in Bangkok. Quite an impressive project that received quite some attention, especially in Asia, these last couple of years. And it really, I think, illustrates well this tendency for incorporating nature-based solutions in the city. So instead of building high-rise buildings and shopping malls, perhaps it was decided to develop this park that acts as a green lung in the city and really promotes infiltration of water, so reducing flood risk in the city, mitigating the urban heat island, which is very relevant in the tropics in particular, but in many places, and really an amazing new public space that people believe there's a lot of urban agriculture also happening. So this type of projects, this is obviously quite a flagship project, large investment, but at much smaller scales, we see this project coming up in Asian cities as in many cities around the world. So this is what we want to focus on today and really trying to understand in what way this trend is expressed in cities and what does it mean in terms of future investments for cities. Just for the Asian background, I wanted to highlight that when we talk about natural infrastructure, we actually talk about a lot of different things, whether it's in the sustainable development goals, the new urban agenda, any resilience strategies, these types of nature-based solutions are gaining attention, but you can't talk about them without talking about climate resilience, without talking about urban planning and governance more generally about informality, which is a very important of the urban conversation, especially in Asia, about financing. So all these themes are of course related and we'll touch on many of these aspects in the conversation. When we talk about Southeast Asia in particular, I wanted to just give you a sense of scale for a couple of these points, informality. We're actually talking about a very large range of informal areas in cities from almost none in some of the wealthiest cities, if we're looking at Singapore or in Malaysia with less data, but up to 50% in some countries. It's really an important part of the conversation and I know the panelists will touch on this today. Another kind of urban water lens to think about is in terms of infrastructure, is to think about the urban sewage coverage. And this is important to realize if we have pipes and sewer network throughout the city, like in Singapore, the type of solutions that are needed and appropriate are different from an area that is still mostly without a pipe network for sanitary systems. So, this is again, really explaining the range of realities that we see in cities in Southeast Asia. And to conclude this brief overview, I just wanted to highlight also another really important theme related to urban planning and governance, which is really the rapid growth of cities in Southeast Asia. And this is a diagram from one of my research fellow team members who looked at the transitions for plausible IPCC scenarios into the future. And we looked at where did the urban land come from. So a lot from farmland in that particular scenarios, but also forest and grassland. And so this is important to remember when we think about this rapid growth in cities and what type of ecosystems it's actually encroaching upon. If we don't look at the numbers but at the pictures, I think this is even more striking. This is another project led by PhD students in my group, looking at Kota Maga in Indonesia. And you can see the really rapid development and what it means on the ground. So when you see these pictures, I think one realizes the urgency of really finding some good design principles to think about the development of cities and what a balanced development between people in nature might look like. So this is for the brief overview. I hope this helps, I guess, highlight some some of the key topics of the discussion. I will now pass it over to Leonard, I think to start with, as I will share my screen. And while I do that, I'll just mention that I've asked each speaker to think a little bit about their own work through the lens of urban planning and natural infrastructure and present some of the key ideas. I'll have a few other questions on this. And one first question that I've asked each of them is to share something that is not in the bio as well just as a way to break the ice and kick some of the conversation. So Leonard, again, country director from Ramble Studio Dressitl in Singapore. And just as an additional point I wanted to highlight that he's actually working both in Singapore and Beijing so has a lot of experience here as well. And you'll see that a lot of these projects really take these water sensitive urban design principles at heart. So, Leonard, thank you very much for joining us. And I'll pass it over to you. Thank you for the introduction. Let me share my slides. Sorry, this seat. Not yet. Not yet. No. Let me see it. Try that again. Sorry. No worries. Okay. See now. The presentation. And that's great. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much again and thank you for the very interesting introductory presentation you show. I'm here representing a Danish engineering company called Ramble. We have been based in Copenhagen for 30 years, but the Singapore office is set up, you know, more than 10 years ago, and we are here present in this region, which is one of the fastest growing urban regions in the world. Because we want to present solutions that will address some of the most intractable problems being faced by urban developments. The solutions we present are very much nature based and looking at how to seamlessly integrate nature with our cities. Looking at the traditional solutions, right in this case the canal, how do we use nature based solutions to bring more natural assets into play, right, and enhance the living environment. For example, we use, for example, in this case by engineering, right, looking at how we recreate natural river systems, and then using natural retention to allow climate adaptation to happen. For example, in this case, providing spaces not just for humans, but also for flood adaptation. So this is a picture of a vision park in Singapore. This is taken by newspaper after a storm event. So this was designed for a 1 in 25 year storm event. And during dry season, it is a place for people to play, but during wet season, it is a ability to accommodate storm events. We also designed spaces for nature, right, rendering from a competition we did a few years ago. And this was for a place within a dense, built neighborhood in Singapore. And after implementation. So this is really about understanding that he needs not just for humans, but for nature and animals that is found in nature. And finally, you know, with the limited spaces especially in Singapore, how do we accommodate a highly dense environment but in view nature within this dense environment. So this is a project called Kampong Emerality. And, you know, this is a high intensity integrated living hub for a childcare, medical care, you know, where there's retail and there's a transport hub all layered in. And we wanted a space where we integrate all these different activities and provide a space of community to come together. And that's when we create the elevated landscape on the roof. Right. That is really a showcase where it embeds urban farming playground, right, and a diversity of nature loving planting pilot. And really it's about the integration of architecture and nature that gives it this special quality. With that, I end my quick presentation. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Leonard for this overview of a really interesting projects that have been implemented and that you've led here in Singapore. And perhaps just one thing that is not in your bio that the audience might want to know today. All right. I'm very passionate. I'm not just doing this for a job. This is a passion for me. And I, in doing my free time I collect orchids, especially miniature orchids. Well, maybe we'll get to see a picture on the next slide. Thank you very much. Next, we'll go for also a brief presentation from Prof Rita Padawangi. So Rita feel pretty put up your slides if you'd like. As I mentioned, Rita is a professor in sociology and her research into the sociology of architecture social movements and conservatory urban development. And her work focus specifically on the humanistic aspects of city making, particularly place making in neighborhoods through collaborative approaches in research teaching and community engagement. So same thing Rita, thank you very much for joining us. And if you can share something that is not in your official bio and a little bit about your work. Thank you for that kind introduction. And I hope you all can see my slides and hear my audio clearly. Yes, and thank you so much also to Leonard for starting the session today. I mean, I also am based in Singapore. I was tempted also to bring up the example of the Kalang River Bishan Park because it was one of the most popular projects that is very well known not just in Singapore, but also in the region. But then I saw, you know, I think Leonard will present on this, I will just follow up on that and provide more examples from outside Singapore. And since Parine asked me to choose a project that is my favorite. I was thinking about that for for for for some time. And then I settled for this photo. And this is actually a photo from a compound from a settlement in Jakarta. It is an urban poor settlement. And they and as you can see, there is some greening along the canal so this is actually a river. But it has been in banked and it has been intervened into several canals towards the river mouth in Jakarta Bay. And so the story about this project was that the community is an urban poor community in Jakarta, and they were facing eviction threat. And so what they did was they organized and they mobilized and they wanted to make improvements to their own landscapes. And so they mobilized the resources that they have and they create the space along the canal. So, so unlike the usual images that you see that all the houses are really occupying all the space along the rivers, they actually provided space along the river as a public space, and then have this greeneries along the river. And these plants, some of them are just for landscaping, but some of them are also productive plants you can see some of the fruit trees actually along the along the canal, and, and that they can also harvest to consume. So, why this is my favorite is because this is one of the solutions that is actually possible for our cities of today, and to follow up from parents presentation earlier that many of the cities in Southeast Asia are still dominated by informal settlements, and it's, it's really not possible to imagine cities without the settlements. And so this is one of the solutions to, to actually make greeneries green interventions actually accessible to everyone. And, and the reason why I bring this up is because this is the kind of solution that is often forgotten. When we talk to policymakers today, because these are often seen as something that is too menial and less pretty. And it does require us to work with communities to be able to come up with solutions that they can do in order to make the cities greener. So what is happening in Southeast Asia today is that a lot of interventions when it comes to river banks and open spaces is that there are forced interventions that is from the top. So this is, this is an image from the river, the same river actually a little upstream when it's still one main river across the city, and there has been intervention along the river bank, in which all the settlements were removed. It's not just the settlements that were removed. But as you can see, the greeneries were also removed. And this is still a typical kind of imagine or aspire interventions for rivers in, in some cities in Southeast Asia, especially when they're dealing with rivers that are often flooding. And yes, they have heard about the, the projects in Singapore, like the Kallung River Mission Park, but then they always say that, Oh, this is different. Our rivers are bigger. And so we need a bigger intervention but at the same time, it forgets the green and, and also the participatory kind of approach. And so this is another project that I think, you know, maybe later on, will respond to some of the concerns that we have today. This is another example so while the first project that I show in the first picture was the community themselves mobilized. Here in this photo, this is an example from Surabaya, in which is actually the community, as well as academics, NGOs, and the private sector actually come together to just have this simple intervention along the river, and there's this greening of the riverbank, as well as creating rainwater, a simple rainwater harvesting, like a shallow well, you know, so this is mobilizing the young architects in a firm that they, they, this is part of their thinking actually when they start working in the architecture firm, they were sent to think about what can be a solution that is, that can be applicable for communities along the riverbanks. And, and this is the kind of project, it's a small project. But I think I'm not sure about the sustainability though. But I think, you know, it's, it does create a meaningful experience at least, and plant the idea that, you know, greeneries. Yes, there are interventions that are big interventions, big projects, but we don't always have to think about big projects. The small interventions can also be meaningful and they're important because they are more accessible for communities that everyone can also participate to create these green interventions. And I think taking it into account the context of various cities in Southeast Asia. This is one, one statement that I would like to make that when we talk about nature, the solutions. We need to also think about nature as something that is together with the people and not a nature as just nature, especially when we think about cities, the nature that we see is really something that is in interaction with the society in the cities. All right, so with that, I end my brief presentation and I return the presentation back to Parine. Thank you, Rita. Actually, I'll ask you one last question, something that is not in your bio and, and, and really thank you very much for sharing these insights already I think we'll have some good conversation based on this something that's not in your bio. Well, something that you haven't read in my bio. Well, like Leonard, I'm also very, I'm not just doing this for work. I'm very passionate in this and I think I am of the view that academia needs to work collaboratively with various stakeholders. And so we don't, we shouldn't actually stay in ivory tower of academia. So that's why setting all these connections with communities are very important. And that's actually one of the things in the Southeast Asia neighborhoods network that I'm coordinating in which we are promoting this kind of approach in which we bring research and integrate research with our pedagogy and to use our research also as our teaching tools to bring students to learn from real life experiences and bring them as close as possible to grounded realities. Thank you very much. And this is a conversation also very close to my heart. So I'm so come back to that a bit later. Eric, you are next if you'd like to share your screen. And thank you also for joining us for this conversation and bringing your extensive experience in implementing nature based solutions in informal settlements. And we met through a joint connections, I think through the race program. I'm sure you'll say a little bit more about this and thank you for sharing this and also something that is not in your bio. The floor is yours. Thank you, Parine. Thank you, Rita and Leonard would just like to acknowledge as a starting point that I'm very happy to be here. I admire both of your works. And I would like also to thank Parine and the natural capital project for the invitation. I'm going to share my screen. So actually, I'm going to start with the, what is not in my bio. I think that is a good icebreaker. I think the first thing I would consider really important to say is that probably five years ago would never imagine that I would be talking about Asia. I've been in such an important conversation. I have background in the global south experiences as well but I'm originally from Brazil. I have been over the last four years working in my doctoral studies in Australia, working directly with communities in Indonesia and Fiji. And I think that's an important point to make that my experiences are grounded in close contact with the communities. That's how I've learned about Asia and that's how I've experienced my research. Yes, so I think that that is a good segue into the project I'm going to talk about. I'm also going to talk about rise rise is the revitalizing informal settlements in the environments. It is a project led by Monash University. And I am rises consists of more than 150 people across different disciplines. So I would like to say that I'm also not speaking on behalf of rise I think I'm talking about my experiences inside rise and my experiences working with communities in the Asia Pacific region. So this first image here I've selected it because I think it is very representative of what I want to talk about. This is an informal settlement or in Indonesia. It's a fisherman village. And I think it exemplifies some of the challenges we've been having which is the community tends naturally to encroach over natural assets or the ecosystem around them. And this brings a lot of challenges in the provision of infrastructure in the working with environmental hazards, floods, tsunamis, cyclones, all of those. And of course there are challenges in terms of health as well which links to what Gretchen was saying. So what I wanted to talk today is about. I would start by saying very similar to what Rita said, usually the approaches that we've been seeing are very centered in external stakeholders, and very often the community is not that involved, and the solutions to flooding in informal areas have been mostly centered around building walls. And these very often in many countries in Asia we've been seeing this trend of the big climate proofing projects, and they very often include plans of evictions relocating communities. So I think that is a point I wanted to talk to about how we are testing other ways that not necessarily need to move people away, but instead to work with them to improve their conditions on site. So this is an image from one of the settlements I've worked in in Indonesia. This is a photo while rise infrastructure was already under construction but can have an idea of how the houses are elevated so there's a very important part that is local knowledge of avoiding the flood, and the sites are very waterlogged as well it's very flood prone. Next door there's a rice plantation which is the biggest indication of a flood prone site in Asia. So I think the challenges here. This is what rise has been proposing. So rise is using nature based infrastructures in the context of informal settlements. And I would say that they are three main components and rise infrastructure one of them is what they call these bio filters. So these are the blue barrels on the left and they are basically used to treat sink and shower water, great water. And for sewage, it's treated through a system of communal septic tanks that then the water is directed into constructed wetlands, which look more like plants, like plant tanks, like they look like flower pots, honestly so it's, and they use to treat water. So I think this is the example of how rise is testing nature based solutions in the context of informal settlement and looking at the health benefits of it. What I wanted to talk about is my research in particular inside that I think it is very important to acknowledge the local knowledge and the power that the community has so inside the big rise project, my research specifically has been to work directly with us on monitoring the floods. So we set up this citizen science project, and we had people from seven settlements in Suva and settled six settlements in Makasa in Indonesia, and we asked them to monitor floods send us photos frequently. So over the last two years we started at the end of 2018, we received more than 5000 photos documenting this water level so this was really important for engineers to be able to model floods understand the sites a little bit better and work with the community so I think there is a value here and there's not only about assessing the flood but in involving people in the process of understanding the site in the process of discussing the project and the, the situation. So I think there is something in that direction. To conclude, I wanted to share the link here for the rise program and my context, if anyone would be interested in hearing more about, I would highly encourage you to look at rise website and I would like to acknowledge all the rise funders. Not only at the University but also their partners, Stanford, Emory, and the partners universities in the country's University of South Pacific, Fiji National University, Hassanidine University in Indonesia. And yet this slide I think it's just an image of how we've been understanding the floods and retranslating that knowledge from the gauges in a way that can be discussed if broader audiences that can influence in the production of natural infrastructure and that can be useful for the community again. So we need to keep this exchange going. That was all I had to share for this brief presentation. Looking forward to the discussions. Thank you very much indeed Eric for presenting this overview of the rise project really important work I encourage the audience to also check a lot of the new resources that have been added on the project website which we'll share the link to this video later during the webinar. So, thank you for really giving a nice overview of the different types of issues and it's not surprising that urban issues are so complex and interrelated person I'll kick off the conversation with one question and then encourage the audience also to ask questions in the Q&A box to get us started. So, to have you in the audience a part of academia and I know that this is also a part of the audience. I want to ask you what do you think are the best ways for academia and the private sector to collaborate on nature based solution projects and maybe sharing some specific examples in your work. Let's start with Leonard again. Sure, Baron. I think the dialogue between the academia and the business sector is really, really important. In our business, we are looking for realized solutions that can be implemented. But in order, when you're working in the city you have the freedom to explore and push the boundaries. And as we, I'm constantly seeking ideas, you know, participating in dialogues with researchers, right, in a new city to gain new insights, you know, as to what is current. And so this is the big advantage for this interaction, you know, we are grounded and they can look to the sky. That's a very nice way to put it. And thanks Leonard indeed coming from a very large engineering and landscape architecture company. It's interesting to see that you see value in generating ideas, looking to the sky, and really the time that academics may have more than the private sector in terms of the timeline. Thanks for sharing this Rita. I think, you know, as Leonard was speaking, I remember actually a few years ago I had a student from Denmark, who came to Singapore for a summer course, and eventually she came back to Singapore because she was interested to study more about the Kalang River Bishan Park. And so I think she said that she did get connected to the designers. And yes, I just want to point that out that, you know, it's good that your company actually do welcome students who want to know more about what you're doing and how you do it. And for me myself, I'm also, I look at the Q&A box, there was a question about, you know, how to avoid, you know, parachuting science into the community, right. Now, my approach actually in, I don't get into studying green interventions or, you know, community based flood solutions. I don't get into it just in my, from my own head. So what I did was actually, I started with going into the community and then look at like what are their current concerns. And then try to understand a bit more about why they are concerned about those things and what are the points of contentions, what are the problems. So we often, you know, when we are doing research, we have to identify what is our research question and what is the problem that we want to investigate. To me, it's really about going back to the ground and say that the problem actually identified from the ground and not just from us, just by, you know, yes, reading is important, our libraries are important. But when we are actually doing research on the ground, those knowledge has to be grounded. And we do need to realize that different kind of communities have their own contexts. And, well, while in Singapore, the solutions like Calang River Bishan Park or Kampung Admiralty are actually very, it's very good and very, it's something that is, that is, you know, groundbreaking and very much popular these days. When we go to communities in Jakarta, in Surabaya, in Manila, in Bangkok, these kinds of solutions need to be contextualized. And so, to me, avoiding parachuting ourselves into these communities is that we try to work, we have to work collaboratively with them, even in defining our research questions. And so, oftentimes, and I think this is a problem with academics and academia right now, is that we are so pressured with, you know, all these publications or you have to publish like two articles per year or even more you have to publish books and all those things. And oftentimes, you can actually achieve them without collaborating with communities. And that's, that's one of the problems academia right now. You can actually progress in your career without even engaging with communities. And this, this actually is, is a challenge for us when we think about these, when we think about the relationship between nature based solutions and our, our urban context in Southeast Asia, because engagements with communities and collaboration with communities is essential in trying in really identifying the best or most, most contextual solutions for each locality. And so I guess it is also important for academia to make this effort to not parachute ourselves. Right. And changing the incentives in academia. Right. Thank you very much Rita. Eric, would you like to add on the academia and private sector or local government partnerships and maybe parachute science if you have thoughts on this. Yes, definitely. I think we'll be hard to make a contribution after the fantastic contribution by Rita, but I think I think yes we're very aligned there, Rita, many of the things you're saying. I think my experiences and rise is that if you're talking about these collaborations between industry and academia needs should be a true way discussion, of course, and then we need change in two ways. I think academia should be interested in grounded projects that are real practical and that that are about engaging with communities. I think that is the first step and engaging with real life and real necessities. And I think on the other side, I think it also very important that industry in the case of rise there is a lot of funding, the support for rise, mostly came from Asia Development Bank, and from the Welcome Trust, but also their support from Australia's government, now New Zealand's government, Fiji and Indonesia's government. So, I think the government should also be a part of this discussion and we need these big banks and we need these big companies to acknowledge that we cannot continue doing things the way we do. I think academia is a fertile end for developing ideas, but it needs to be grounded in reality so I think that it also brings the community in. So, in the parachuting front, I think the, that is a very important point, and I think the, it's probably interesting to highlight here that rise is not initially a flood project rises as operating in a framework of global and planetary health. But we being there you understand that the first concern that people have a flood. So I think that was a component of the people being part of understanding the problem and understanding being part of the decision of what needed to be worked. Yes, I think the citizen science was, I think there are ways of improving it further, but I think collaborating with a community, particularly in Indonesia where they love these messaging apps. When you have a messaging app and you understand that people like it and they are familiar with it. That's a way of communicating. We just decided to use that as a platform for sharing flood knowledge sharing and creating a community to discuss floods. So I think this kind of nuance and care in how you proceed and how you do your research is really important as well. I think from both your answers here also the, I think the intention of the researchers is that it really matters the city of care and re-cairing the communities and the impact of the work and not the academic impact necessarily seems to be quite important. I'm going to take a few questions from the audience in the interest of time. Perhaps I'll direct this first one to Leonard, who I think in some of your design you may have thought about this. Forests are the only land use that can achieve significant carbon drawdown, even with zero carbon buildings and transports here to increase and warming continues. How can we couple forests into architecture and urban planning to achieve drawdown? Leonard, is that something that Rambel and Tricidal Studios thinks about? Yeah, so working within cities, you know, and the fact that cities are identifying quite quickly, you know, you need to find spaces for nature. And as we use up the ground level, right, we have to find spaces for them at the elevated spaces. So in my previous projects in Kampong and Malty, where we actually create a new ground plan, an elevated ground plan, there are many projects in Asia demonstrating this new approach. And not just in Asia, increasingly, in most cities, they're providing spaces for nature and community on buildings itself. So the many examples worldwide, obviously, there's a lot more to do. We are at the very spot of this trend towards greening, including nature on inbuilt environments, and there are many ways to do it, whether it's on the roof or at mid level or in interior spaces. It's all happening. We just need to keep selling this, right, so that more and more people adopt this approach. Yes, and from various from thank you for answering this and perhaps I can encourage you, Rita and Eric, if you want to type some compliments to these answers as well feel free to do so on the Q&A box. I just see a related question from Sean Kuhn. A huge part of concerns with current climate change is the proportion of carbon emissions would like to get any insight if they need on whether natural infrastructure can help cut such carbon. So perhaps I can give a first answer to this in the form of a paper that the Center for Nature based climate solutions at NUS in Singapore has just published where they actually analyze the carbon reduction potential of reforestation in cities throughout the world. And they found that there was actually 25%, oh, there were a large number of cities that could cut more than 25% of their emissions, which is actually quite high and higher than I would have thought because it was often assumed that reforestation, especially in the form of tree planting is quite limited in terms of carbon sequestration in cities. So this is quite a significant finding I'm happy to provide that reference if anyone is interested. Any additional input from the speakers on this carbon question. All right, well, let's go in the interest of time. One last question maybe. There's one question on starting what could be a viable natural infrastructure solution to river runoff which is playing an active part in the accumulation of suspended matter in water as well as coastal flooding. Rita or Eric, would you want to take this water focus question actually any of you. Yeah, I'll go first. I think the solution, I guess, you know, we need to move away from just a single top down and big infrastructure solutions, because actually climate change and flooding affects everyone, right. So here, we need to look at, again, I would say look at the context, the governance system, what is actually suitable for a particular governance system in Singapore the solutions are like this. We're not in the Philippines how what in Indonesia we need to take, take into account how governments are how capable the governments are, and, and how capable the communities are how capable the, the other stakeholders are the businesses and all that. And so one of the, one of the problems that in my experience in the Chilliwong River in Indonesia is that the flooding is not primarily because of climate change but it's because of the over development of the river along the river. And so the disappearance of the spaces for water runoff during heavy rainfall days. So like Leonard mentioned, actually water needs space. And if you reduce the space for the water and build houses there build other things that then definitely it will flood elsewhere the water will go elsewhere and it will flood the city. And so the solution is actually to give, you know, to, to again share the spaces water. And when we talk about nature based solutions, we are not just talking about greeneries and planting trees, you know, the blue, the water is also very important. And so having having these spaces for water in the river system itself. There are, there have been decreasing numbers of natural retention lakes actually in the river system from over 100 to just you know, maybe about 50 of them. And so that's why there is always this big problem with flooding in Jakarta from the rivers. And so the solution will be to give back the space or to share the space with water. It's not by, you know, pouring concrete and and banking all the rivers and try to control the river and and build all those levies right, but actually there are smaller scale solutions that everybody can can do you know built the wells for water to actually go into the ground, slow down the river, the river water, and also there has been you know, speaking of architecture, there has been model houses actually that provides, you know, spaces for water. And it's not just in informal settlements like Eric has described in his presentation, but there, there has been house house designs that actually provides space for water, when the runoff actually increases. And so, yeah, by decentralizing this solution for flooding. I think we can get somewhere because it's not just about the big top down solution, but actually to have solutions that are accessible to everyone. And, and that's this one context appropriate. Thank you very much Rita. And fortunately we had time and I see some really interesting questions again in the chat box. So, perhaps we can also continue this conversation on the YouTube channel and I don't know if that's possible, probably. So, I'll just wrap up by thinking again, thinking again everyone in the panel for sharing these insights, one hour is definitely too short but I think we, we got a really good insight into your work and I encourage the audience to reach out to you directly. I just wanted to mention the next two natural capital conversations in September and October. Glassnet networks I must say I don't know what this is, but I'm sure you'll find more information on the natural capital project website, and then another one from the urban team at the natural capital project. So, do you tune in for these next conversations. Thank you very much to the audience for connecting today, and we'll be with you soon again on the YouTube channel. Thank you again.