 Harjeet Singh from ActionAid, thank you so much for joining us, first off I just wanted to ask about your expectations of this conference. I think the interest has been growing, this is my third CBA conference, last year we focused on scaling up and we see so many people getting excited, the experiments that are going on in the field, they really want to see how those experiments can be scaled up. This time we are talking about communication I think which is to take the adaptation work to the next level and deepen it further. There are good developments happening outside in the external world on the policy part. So this platform has a lot to offer to those international structures and institutions that are coming up to make sure that the whole work is on the right track particularly at the policy level because now the national level policymakers, the international level policymakers are sitting together and trying to understand this adaptation science much more and to see how we are going to deal with the challenges that we are facing due to climate change. And do you think communication between the various stakeholders at the international and local level has been effective so far on this issue? The communication has increased a lot, we see that the negotiations that are happening at the UNFCCC level, you find a lot of local organizations participating and sharing their experiences. Platforms like these, what CBA offers is also a place where you find policymakers coming and multilateral institutions coming and you find NGOs who are working at the national and international level are coming, very, very local grassroots organizations also come and share their experiences. So I think it's very important to create such platforms and the work that's happening at the international level, they are also the policymakers are very receptive, they know that adaptation is a new science and they need to keep hearing about the experiments that are happening, nothing is cast in stone. So you have to be flexible, you have to be receptive and you have to hear more and more about the local challenges and the solutions and alternatives that communities are building. I think that's happening. I think the interaction among different stakeholders is increasing. You said in your talk this morning that sometimes stakeholders or NGOs forget that this is a conversation rather than just a simple communication issue. What did you mean by that? Communication still remains a big problem and climate change with a bit of technical things, it becomes even much more complex. And what we find right now is we are only looking at one way, I won't even call communication. We are either extracting information in terms of what's happening to the communities or we are just going and saying we will build your awareness, we know what you need and we will tell you what to do. I don't think it's going to work like that. In fact, for Action 8, even our normal development program, we don't work like that. We look at a tool which gets into more reflection action mode where communities actually analyze their own vulnerabilities, their own issues. So we only facilitate those processes and for climate it's going to be even more important. We're talking about an unpredictable world, things are going to be much more uncertain unless communities are empowered, unless you have a conversation with them. Yes, they know a lot about impacts than we do because they are facing it every day, they are living that life. But in terms of causes, because the causes go much beyond their geographical boundaries, so there we have to bring in that new information, the science and blend it with their own local and traditional knowledge. And that cannot happen unless you work in a more conversation mode and the dialogue has to happen in two ways and several ways, sideways. So that conversation is very important and that's why the reflection action methodology we think is going to work a lot because eventually communities need to be empowered to deal with those challenges. They can't be prescriptive. There's no one solution that's going to work. If you empower them, if you know how to analyze the problem, how to mobilize resources, how to implement it and then reflect on it and also feedback into the policy process. If that happens, I think our job is quite done. And why isn't this happening enough already? What are the barriers and challenges to doing this effectively? I think it's to do with the attitudes, I would say at all levels, right from policymakers to even community leaders to people like us from civil society organizations. We think that we have the solutions. We think we understand their issues much, much better. That's not the case. Communities are facing it every day. They know what they're going through. And they also have a lot of resources. They're not sitting idle, right? They are working on their own solutions. What they need is a bit more support and the new knowledge that's coming up, the new science, we need to bring that in. So we have to play more of a facilitative role and overcome our own perceptions and ideologies and go to the grassroots, sit with people and particularly women in other vulnerable sections and see what they're facing, what capacities do they already have and what they need from within the communities and from outside so that they are both in terms of program policy and financial resources so that they can develop their own solutions, their own alternatives. Can you just give a couple of examples to illustrate the kinds of solutions that are being come up with by communities? No, we are seeing communities, their livelihoods are getting impacted. You know, a shift from, you would say in Bangladesh, from chicken to ducks because ducks are much more resilient. You would find people who are working in handloom factories, their factories are getting, these are small units, let me not call that factories, small units which are getting impacted by the weather patterns, they are closed for a couple of months. We are working with them to make sure that these small units can run around the year and how it's going to deal with the new climate challenges and we have been able to resolve that and communities have actually come together and these are all vulnerable communities who are now looking at all dimensions, who are looking at business in a very kind of professional manner, you know, how their business is getting interrupted by these extreme weather events, what exactly they can do, how they can prevent flooding to happen, what kind of structural solutions they need to have, what kind of policy interventions are required, how they can sell their stuff, how they can stock it. So there are a number of things that they need to look into. In certain areas, a lot of areas, they have that expertise. In certain cases, you have to bring in new knowledge, so you have to sit together, you have to work hand in hand, you have to work with the community. If you go with the approach of working for the community, it's not going to work and solutions are there. You know, our people have come up with the sanitation solutions where you use very, very less water, we know that water is going to be scarce. So start looking at the challenges which communities are going to face, see what's going to work and then come up with solutions, bring scientific knowledge, build on the traditional knowledge and we can always come up with new solutions. Just finally, you said you've been to a number of these conferences now. In three or four conferences time, what do you expect to see? What's your vision for the future of community-based adaptation? You know, we still, the community-based adaptation debate is very much within civil society. Governments have picked up, but more as a jargon than as a perspective, than as an ideology. You know, when we talk about community-based adaptation or any kind of community-based work, for us it's an ideology, it's a basic principle, it's an approach, you know, how we make sure that whatever we do, and community-based adaptation doesn't mean that it's only working at the community level. It's about any policy intervention at international or national level, you know, how it is going to strengthen the community-based work. That's, because communities are the ones who are at the forefront of these climate impacts. They need to be much more, you know, empowered to deal with that. So when we say community-based, we need to see how much that, those processes are strengthening their institutions, you know, their knowledge systems. That needs to be understood. And governments are still using it as a terminology. Our vision is to see that governments really adopt this approach, make sure that they also change their mentality, their ideology, and then the policy mechanisms support that. Simple things like building capacity, encouraging leadership at the local level, strengthening the existing institutions, making sure that the resource is available much at the local level. Decentralized planning is going to be key. So there are a specific set of solutions if they really adopt. Communities will feel much more empowered to develop their own plans. So instead of making plans in the boardrooms, if plans emerge from the ground, that is going to be a real community-based work and that's what we want to see in the future. Haji, thank you so much for speaking to us. Thank you.