 Honourable Minister, the Water and Environment of the Republic of Uganda, Senator Torres, Ambassador, Vice Chancellor, distinguished participants at the high table and all the roundtables. Good morning. On behalf of the United Nations Environment Programme, I'd like to sincerely thank first the Government of Uganda for hosting us here this week and for the organisers for all the work that they had done in preparing for this conference. I'm particularly pleased with the theme for this the 11th conference on harnessing natural resources and ecosystems for adaptation. And for the opportunities to be here with you today, to tell you a little bit about what we do at UN Environment and to talk about how we can work together to move forward on the agenda of climate change adaptation. We've been working with a number of stakeholders over many years on what we call ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change. And one of our early projects was on mountain ecosystems and where we worked in Nepal, Peru and here in Uganda and much of that work is still going on. We have still, after that, been demonstrating the value of ecosystem-based adaptation for drylands, for coastal areas, for open areas, for river basins. And I know that most of you have been doing the same thing. And part of that has been under different terminology, different ways of addressing climate change and climate change adaptation needs. So one of the things that we did quite early on was helping to develop some guidelines for ecosystem-based adaptation that the Global Environment Facility then adopted for its projects. I think that helped us all move forward. What we've also tried to do is to raise attention of this at government level, at decision-making level. And in back in 2014, the member states in the United Nations took notice of this, both of the need for adaptation and of all the initiatives that were going around the world. And they adopted a resolution which requested the UN environment in partnership with others to continue to provide and to enhance support to developing countries, to both develop and implement what they call community-based, national and regional ecosystem-based adaptation programs and actions. And that's what this conference is all about. It also encouraged all countries to include and improve ecosystem-based adaptation and community-based adaptation in their national policies and not just in their climate change policies, also in their policies related to food security and sustainable management of forests. And we have seen many countries do just that. And lastly, it recognized that Indigenous, local and traditional knowledge systems and practices are a major resource for adapting to climate change and invited all countries to make the best use of that. That's why we're so pleased to be a co-sponsor of this conference and we look forward to the sharing of experiences from across the world. Just a couple of words of five areas that we're currently working on in UN environment with regard to climate change adaptation. We have quite a large portfolio of projects in countries funded mainly by the Global Environment Facility but also by the Green Climate Fund and by bilateral donors. Currently valued amount over $200 million and working in about 25 different countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, we are hosting the UN Climate Resilience Initiative which is a multi-stakeholder initiative that strengthens three key areas and capacities for climate resilience. The capacity to anticipate climate assets through early warning and early action. The capacity to absorb the shocks through climate risk insurance and social protection. And the capacity to reshape development pathways to foster climate resilience. As part of this work, we've just completed a baseline assessment of country capacity on climate resilience that we hope will be useful to all of you. We have an office in China that spearheading South-South collaboration on climate change adaptation and livelihoods also working in many countries, particularly in Asia and Africa. And we're working with the Dutch government and other partners to set up a global centre of excellence on climate change adaptation that can provide sound advice to those who need it. Lastly, we're currently working on developing common standards for practitioners on ecosystem-based adaptation. All of these efforts would greatly benefit from the expertise and experience in this room. So my colleague Musunda Momba and I look forward to interacting with all of you, look forward to supporting any follow-up actions that you and the environment might be able to assist with after the conference. Thank you very much.