 Okay, welcome to the webinar, The Green New Deal, The World Needs Now, Alternative Trade Rules for Climate Action. I'm Karen Hansen-Kuhn with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. As we consider the Green New Deals that are emerging around the world in the US, Europe and elsewhere, as well as extreme inequality and the challenge of COVID, we need to be thinking both about what happens within each of our countries and how we relate to each other. A lot of the solutions that are emerging, of course, involve strengthening local economies, finding ways to make supply chains more resilient, especially for food. But we live in a global economy. The first director of the World Trade Organization said that they were writing the Constitution for a single global economy. The WTO and the web of bilateral and pluralateral trade deals that are popping up like mushrooms around the world constrain governments, constrain public policy and can endanger human rights. And unlike the Paris Accords, these rules have teeth that can result in billions of dollars in fines and enormous pressure on governments to give in to corporate pressure for privatization and deregulation. But we care about trade rules because they affect our lives. They affect things like the food we eat, whether there's pesticides in our foods, how much medicines cost, and of course, the possibility of enacting better climate policies. They also condition how we relate to other economies. Under the current free trade agreements, corporations are empowered to play the rules in one country off those in another. They can flood developing countries, for example, with cheap imports that displace local production. On the other hand, they can be a forum for bringing food in when crops fail. The rules reflect choices. The choices matter and we can make other choices. So today, we'll hear from some really inspiring speakers about what those choices are. We'll have two rounds of comments from each of the speakers, and then we'll open up the webinar to your questions and comments. So throughout the webinar, please type your questions or comments into the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen. And we'll gather those and get through as many as we can as time allows. So before I introduce the speakers, I'd also like to explain that this is both the third webinar in the series on the Green New Deals, The World Needs Now, and the first in a new series on trade rules for climate action. That series will happen at this time on Thursdays. So today, we'll take a broad look at why trade matters. And then we have two more already scheduled that are coming up. The first is extractivism, human rights, and investor-state dispute settlement, hard law versus soft law, which will happen next Thursday on May 28th. And then next, confronting the free trade model, trade treaties, energy, and Green New Deals on June 4th. These will, like this webinar, be bilingual. So presentations will be happening in Spanish and English. And we really hope we will have participants from a number of countries. So to begin with, we've asked each panelist to tell us briefly why should climate activists care about trade rules? And how, as progressive groups, how we can differentiate our proposals from right-wing nationalism on one hand and neoliberal free trade on the other? So our first speaker is Avi Lewis. Avi is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and lecturer in journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. His 25-year journalism career has spanned award-winning, theatrically released documentaries to local news for reporting. He has appeared on TV networks worldwide. In 2017, he co-founded and is now strategic director of the LEAP, an organization launched to upend our collective response to the crisis of climate, inequality, and racism. Avi. Thank you, Karen. Saludos a todos. And so excited to see so many friends and comrades from around the world already in the chat. It's an honor to be here with you all and speaking on this critical subject in a time when the impacts of the last 30 years of neoliberal global trading rules have never been more devastating to our hopes for a safe and healthy future for all of us. And that's equally true in the context of pandemic as it is for climate. For me, my understanding of climate and trade and the intersections and the impact of one on the other, it will surprise no one who knows me to know that they've been deeply imprinted by the analysis of Naomi Klein, who in her masterwork, this changes everything in 2014, laid out this extraordinary historical overview that I want to briefly start with. Let's just go back 30 years to the late 80s and early 90s, which was really the beginning of this phase of neoliberal trade negotiations and global climate negotiations, which both started right at the same historical moment in the late 80s, the formation leading up to the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the formation of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the scientists who advise governments, you had the beginning of the first free trade agreement between Canada and the United States. NAFTA was being negotiated. The World Trade Organization was being formed. So these two global processes started simultaneously. The trade process, as Karen said in the introduction, had teeth, had severe penalties and economic consequences for countries and parties that violated their rules. The climate negotiations were utterly voluntary and, in fact, embedded in all of those initial climate structures and formations, like the UNF CCCC. It was absolutely forbidden in the climate talks to pass any global climate regime that violated international trading rules. While the trading rules never even mentioned climate. And, in fact, as we've seen over the last 30 years, those trading rules have locked in a global economic system of maximum overproduction in a few countries, maximum overconsumption in a few rich countries, the highest emissions, highest consumption global economic model that humanity has ever been capable of. And it has been locked in by global trading rules. And in the same time, the climate crisis has, not surprisingly, exploded. So let's fast forward quickly, because I'm just going to take five minutes as asked in this first salvo, to October of 2018 in the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report, which made it clear for all of us that 1.5 degrees of warming is really the hard limit on a safe future for humanity. And for many of the other crises we face, ecological extinction and other crises. It's absolutely critical that we cut our emissions globally in half in the next decade. And that report, unforgettable, said that keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees centigrade would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. We have to change our food system fundamentally. We have to change our energy system fundamentally. We need more localization, more public ownership and control in every aspect of society. All of those changes come into direct irrevocable conflict with the logic of neoliberal trade. We have to abolish, smash, completely reconfigure not just all of the international trading rules, but all of the pillars of the neoliberal system. And I would say these challenges go right down to classical economic doctrines like competitive advantage, the notion that each country should specialize in a particular set of export goods. This in itself is on a collision course with the localization of economies that we need for a safe and healthy future for us all. The pandemic in the last couple of months has been like a floodlight exposing the fatal implications of this logic, not just in creating the climate crisis, but in this unprecedented public health crisis that we all face as well. So when you see rich countries ignoring dignity, decency and rules, the way they always have in the trading system, in the naked pursuit of their own self-interest in securing personal protective equipment and ventilators and drugs and other things. And then undoubtedly we'll see this with the race for vaccines as well. We see the inequality of what this neoliberal trading system and economic logic has created. And it is literally translating into deaths for countries that cannot secure what they need and lives in countries that have that economic advantage. So that's the opening salvo. But the reason climate activists care about the trading system is because it has been one of the ways that this economic logic has been locked in. And this economic logic is a massive boulder that we have to get off the path on the way to a safe and healthy future for all living things. Thanks, Alvie. I mean, it's certainly true that the trade rules in so many ways just lock in business as usual when what we really need is to be changing course dramatically. So next we have Lucia Barsana, a researcher with the Transnational Institute in its trade and investment team. Her work is focused on investment protection and investor-to-state dispute settlement in EU agreements. Previously, she coordinated the campaign against the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership, or TTIP, for ecologistas en acción in Spain. Lucia? Hello, good afternoon to all of you. I'm going to talk in Spanish. I'll leave a bit of time because they explained that there's a button for interpretations down below, so you can choose the language there. Well, when they invited me to this panel, I saw that the first thing I thought was that it's interesting that we're in a moment where it's easier to connect the discussions about the climate with trade. Something that, although it was obvious, wasn't so easy, especially in some organizations that only worked on climate issues. As Karen mentioned, I started working on ecologistas en acción, which is an organization that is in the middle of the environment in Spain. And then, for me, it was very obvious and logical that I needed to pay attention to the European policies of trade and investment, and especially how these are impacting the countries of the global south through European companies, especially, but also from the United States, Japan or from other countries. But in my case, my focus has always been to look at it from Europe. I went here when I immediately fell on some data that also impacted me a lot on how trade policies are actually affecting, for example, the loss of biodiversity. In fact, there are studies that inform that a third part of the loss of biodiversity is directly related to the production that is aimed at international trade. Or, for example, how it accelerates the climate change. That is to say, if we think about the global structures of trade, it is quite obvious and logical to see that to make this happen, we need... Lucia, please slow down. Sorry. Sorry. To make this happen, we need infrastructures that consume a lot of energy and at the same time will produce CO2 emissions. This is, in some way, applicable to any global trade agreement. But I wanted to take the opportunity to bring an agreement on which we are currently working in Europe, especially because it is an agreement that is impacting climate policies that are currently being debated in some countries. And this is called the Treaty on the Energy Card. This treaty was negotiated in the 90s with the idea of protecting investments and investors in fossil fuels, in conventional fuels. Gas, petrol, oil... And therefore, right now, what we are seeing is what included these agreements, one of the most dangerous parts, so to speak, had to do with the rights and privileges that were granting to national companies, especially those that came from the conventional energy sector, as I am saying. So, what is happening? That this type of protection, what it was allowing, is that if an investor saw that his investment was being perforated by a policy that was being valued in some country, this could be denounced by the country using private arbitrage tribunals, which are exclusively designed to protect private investments, right? So, it was because we started to see some very dangerous examples for countries that were taking serious measures against climate change, that we decided to start a campaign on this, right? So, I wanted to give two examples so that we can understand what we are referring to when I say that this treaty can prevent, for example, some action in relation to the climate, right? There is a Swedish company, and I'm just going to give an example, because there is not much time, a Swedish company called Atenfall, in 2009, demanded Germany 1.5 billion euros because of a crazy community, that is, the city of Hamburg, wanted to approve a legislation that would somehow endure the regulations on the environment of a carbon company that was operating in that city. Because of this, Germany received this demand. What happened was that in 2011, this regulation of the environment was relaxed a lot, the standards went down a lot, and really, I never saw the regulation that the city of Hamburg was waiting for, right? Later on, we heard some declarations from the Hamburg politicians that said that this had happened, this had happened precisely because they did not want to face these millionaires demands, so they preferred, and it was worth it, to sell the sample of the multinational company, in this case, Atenfall, right? This is like some examples so that it is clear how the trade actually accelerates the climate change and it can also prevent any advance towards a fair ecological transition that we are looking for, right? To the question that Karen also asked, about how this is also doing, that different political views arise on how to attack the issue of climate change, it is true that in recent years, the societies have taken a lot of awareness about the dangers of the climate crisis, right? In this, a political negation has emerged that it has organized around the idea, the prologue of the era of fossil fuels, and this is mainly being led by the President of the United States, Trump, but it has also given other views of organizations that are thinking how to fight these climate problems, right? And I find it more interesting to put the debate and focus the debate on these other views, in which we are seeing that there are also divergences of opinions, that is to say, those who believe that ecological transition is compatible with the current socio-economic system and those who believe that we have to change that socio-economic system to precisely combat the root of the problem that has caused climate change, right? So I leave it here with the idea that this debate could be more interesting than the nevationist policies. Good afternoon. Thanks, Dosia. I do think it's really important to think about these complementary agreements. Like the Energy Charter, there's also a lot of bilateral investment treaties that have some of the same restrictions or the same freedoms for corporations. So next, we have Arthur Stimulus. Arthur is Executive Director of Citizens Trade Campaign, a U.S.-based coalition of labor, environmental, family farm, faith, and consumer organizations working together to improve international trade policy. He got involved in trade organizing after participating in the 1999 Battle in Seattle, where he was inspired by the power of cross-sector, cross-border coalition building. Prior to joining Citizens Trade Campaign, he served as Director of Government Affairs for the Clean Air Council. His writing has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. Arthur. Thank you. And thank you, everyone, for the opportunity to speak with you today. So I'm gonna describe how I first got involved in trade work 20 years ago, some of the new obstacles we face recruiting people to this work today and how we might overcome some of those obstacles. So as Karen said, I got involved in trade policy organizing in earnest after participating in the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. And there were a ton of inspiring things that happened during that week of protest, but even before the big demonstrations of November 30th, that physically stopped the opening of the ministerial. There had been days of protests before that, and each of those days had a different theme, labor, agriculture, the environment, and so on. And I was particularly moved and inspired early in the week when steel workers came and marched in the environmental protest. For those who don't know, labor and environmental activists were very actively pitted against one another in the United States those days, particularly in the Pacific Northwest with the timber wars going on over logging. So to see literal tree huggers and workers from SAW and paper mills marching with one another, that was a big deal. And even if you didn't experience that sort of animosity among labor and environs back in the 80s and the 90s, even today, you can probably imagine how if you had industrial unions leading front and center in a climate march, how encouraging that would be. So not only seeing people come together across issue areas, but seeing the power that we had when we came together across issue areas and across borders, that was very pivotal for me and for a lot of other activists at that time. Because of course, the thing about the battle in Seattle was we won, right? Activists and advocates from around the world went up against some of the most powerful economic interests in human history and we kicked their butts, stopping the millennial round of WTO expansion that was something that many had said was inevitable that this was gonna happen. This was back in the time when political pundits were constantly bragging that we'd reached the end of history, that there was no alternative to corporate neoliberalism and all of that. So moving from the 90s into the early 2000s, trade policy organizing back then was one of the sexiest issues on the left to be working on, right? Not only did the battle in Seattle spotlight a bunch of cool protest tactics and not only were we inspiring people by winning, but at that point, we on the left were the ones who were defining what trading globalization should look like. In other words, as more and more people were recognizing that business as usual in the global economy was messed up, that it was not working for them, that it was not working for their communities, that it was not working for people around the world, they were looking to the left for solutions. Today, that is no longer the case. Voices on the left are no longer the loudest voices attacking corporate globalization and promoting alternatives. Here in the US, Donald Trump and his mega rallies and his Twitter account are much, much louder than we are. And so, for Americans who already have some right-wing inclinations, if you're pissed about trade, Trump is there welcoming you with open arms. And that's extremely dangerous just in and of itself to have right-wing types coalesce around. Trump's demagoguery is very, very bad. Unfortunately, one of the even more troubling trends we're seeing lately is not only the people influenced by America first, gravitating to Trump rather than being awakened or acquitting by the left. Not only that, but the left itself is increasingly seeing the space without much fight. So in recent years, I've repeatedly heard people on the left say they don't want to work on trade because it's quote, unquote, Trump's issue. And there are a lot of reasons for this. We don't have time to go through all of them today. But let me just flag one of the problems that I think we could push back on and make some difference on. One of the things we have to overcome in the US is expanding understanding and representation of who trade policy effects, especially in terms of race and gender analysis and especially in terms of climate analysis. The main depiction in the US of somebody who's affected by bad trade policy in terms of framing by Trump or frankly, the norm even well before Trump, that main depiction of somebody angry about trade is a 55 year old white guy with a hard hat. When you consider who's affected by trade related job loss, you're not usually encouraged to think of, say the water crisis in Flint, Michigan as a trade story or if the disproportionate impact with the global race to the bottom as people of color and women domestically here in the United States and of course globally in Mexico and El Salvador and China and elsewhere. And so in the US, where most trade organizing and most trade thinking is still done through the lens of outsourcing and jobs and wages. If we want to get more people involved in a trade fight, think about who's included and who's excluded when we talk about outsourcing as a serious issue because right now too many people are being excluded in those narratives. And beyond that, of course, we need to do a better job promoting understanding of a myriad of other issues that trade policy affects, particularly climate. So at their heart, trade agreements are about letting corporations invest wherever the hell they want to then ship their products wherever the hell they want free from community imposed laws, regulations, court decisions that might get in these corporations away. So if you want to ban fracking under the St. Lawrence River, that's a trade violation. Do you want to stop a pipeline from moving tar sands from Alberta to refineries and ports down in Texas? That's a trade violation. You can do literally everything right as an environmental campaigner, build public awareness around an issue, organize new constituencies, win elections, get new laws passed. You can do that years and years of organizing and win on all fronts. And corporations can still use these trade deals to swoop and get draconian penalties imposed and thus get the laws that you fought so hard for overturn. And so there are actually already provisions in the U.S. version of the Green New Deal that mentioned trade and mentioned at least some of these problems, but we need to do a lot more to get people to understand them. And I think I'll turn it back over to Karen now. Thank you. Great, I was just gonna remind you. I think that's so important. We have to be working across sectors, finding those commonalities, but also across borders. That is one thing, if you look at these agreements, it is just right there in black and white that these are for the corporations to allow them to go across borders as they'd like. So in so much of our trade activism over the last two decades, it has been this cross-border work, finding commonalities with people in other countries that has made that work. So next, we have a view from Mexico. Alberto Arroyo is a recently retired researcher and professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico. He's been involved in research and action network on trade and investment agreements since 1991 and is currently a member of the Latin American platform Better Without FTAs. In 2013 to 2015, he served on an international commission of experts to hold a hearing on bilateral investment treaties in Ecuador and develop alternative proposals. Alberto? Parametro, bajo otras ideas como la única forma de solucionar las cosas. ¿Por qué? ¿Por qué digo esto? Porque cuando se habla de libre comercio, suena muy bonito porque se incluye la palabra libertad. Entonces, mucha gente cree que hablar de libre comercio es la libertad de que yo pueda vender mis pupuzas del Salvador o tortillas mexicanas en Estados Unidos y ellos puedan vender cosas aquí. Como una libertad para intercambiar. Si fuera solamente eso, bueno, estaríamos hablando de otra cosa y entonces hablaríamos de que hay cosas que no hay que meter a libre comercio, decidir cuáles, cuáles sí, cuáles no, llegar a un acuerdo equilibrado de intercambio de mercancías. Pero no es de eso lo que estamos hablando. Estamos hablando de que absolutamente toda nuestra vida, nuestros valores, nuestros derechos, nuestro consumo, nuestras relaciones tienen que guiarte por una única ley suprema que se llama maximizar la ganancia. Es todo está organizado para intercambiar, maximizando la ganancia. Y esto está por encima de los derechos. Si yo no hago negocio con la vacuna contra el coronavirus, pues no la voy a escar. Así de simple. Los del derecho a la salud no está por encima del derecho comercial. Entonces, cuando criticamos estos tratados de libre comercio, lo que estamos criticando es una orientación general, prácticamente de todas las negociaciones en distintos marcos que se guían por esta idea de hay que garantizar el maximizar la ganancia. Incluso en el clima, a ustedes recuerdan una de las grandes discusiones que ganamos en parte, pero en los fechos hay esta, se decía que no se iba a enfrentar el cambio climático si no era negocio para las empresas enfrentarse. Y si apartimos de ahí, pues ya estamos regados. Si no es negocio para las empresas, enfrentar el cambio climático no lo van a hacer. Entonces, todo está subigitado a que sea negocio. No hay valores por encima de eso. No hay una orientación distinta por arriba de eso. Entonces, más que renegociar, cambiar tal o cual aspecto de los tratados de libre comercio, o de los tratados apienutales, o de los acuerdos de propiedad intelectual o de inversión, lo que tenemos que hacer es pensar un modelo distinto. Lo cual no es fácil. Ni vamos a poder tratarlo aquí en cinco minutos que tenemos, o en tres que me quedan. Pero creo que hay que dejar primero sentado esa idea de que si no pensamos fuera de los programas actuales, no vamos a encontrar solución. Y todo de los que hemos hablado aquí que están en esa orientación, es que me parece que es muy importante resaltar eso. Creo que ya entrando más en concreto de los acuerdos comerciales que están actualmente en curso. Creo que es muy difícil para la gente cuando uno le plantea así el parco completo hay que pensar de si otro parámetro. Vamos a discutir ese parámetro, etc. Tiene que ver cosas concretas. Voy a requerirme algunas de esas cosas concretas. Una primera es que cualquier acuerdo comercial no debe incluir otros temas que no sean estrictamente comerciales. Si podemos enterarnos a platicar, yo tengo excedente en tales productos. Quiero enterarlos a ti. Y a cambio de eso, que te dejo entrar aquí. Y entonces, bueno, negociamos un acuerdo de equilibrio, de complementación entre lo que tú produces y que yo no puedo producir, porque no tengo recursos o porque no tengo la tecnología y lo que yo te puedo vender. Entonces, lleguemos a un acuerdo de que estamos dispuestos a abrir y que no estamos dispuestos a abrir. Esta es una primera idea. Y no meter todos los demás temas. Derechos de los inversionistas, propiedad intelectual, supeditar los derechos laborales y los derechos humanos y los derechos ambientales a la lógica de la ganancia, etc., etc., etc. Entonces, no somos, porque para ahí nos han atacado, de que estamos pensando en un mundo que ya no existe, un mundo cerrado, aislado, un país de otro. No estamos pensando en eso. Estamos pensando en integrarnos en el mundo de una manera distinta, bajo valores distintos, bajo parámetros distintos. Estamos buscando integrarnos complementando y no compitiendo y suponiendo todo a la ganancia. Esto implica que hay cosas que, ciertamente, no hay que meter en sus pases. Servicios públicos, por ejemplo. Los servicios públicos en los primeros tratados de libre comercio ya van muy, muy de pasadita, muy poco. Cada vez más los tratados nuevos incluyen servicios e incluyen servicios sociales, servicios básicos. Si metemos los servicios que son un derecho humano, como el derecho a la salud, el derecho a la educación, los metemos en la lógica de comercio, deja de ser derecho. Si yo para acceder a la salud, necesito pagar, pues ya no es derecho. Ya es una mercancía. Tenemos que sacar los servicios públicos de esta lógica comercial. Los servicios públicos tienen que ser un asunto de derechos humanos, no de negociaciones comerciales de intercambio. Que si yo eso más suficiente, lo voy a ofrecer este servicio financiero, o servicio de agua, o servicio de electricidad en tu país con el único fin de sacar ganancia. Entonces, el que no tiene dinero para pagarla, pues se queda sin luz, sin agua, o sin acceso al banco. Un tercer elemento es que hay otras cosas que no hay que meter en los tratados. Los derechos propiedad intelectuales. Y esos son, estoy plodiendo solo algunos ejemplos, no, no quiero ser exaltivo. La propiedad intelectual se justifica diciendo que nadie va a invertir en investigación, en innovar, en sacar un producto nuevo si otro cualquiera va a hacer negocio con él. Entonces yo tengo que garantizar que si yo lo invité, pues nadie lo puede usar para hacer dinero. Insisto en esto, para hacer dinero. Pero antiguamente, en nuestro país, por lo menos cerca de México, existía una cosa que se llamaba licencia obligator. Cuando, por ejemplo, en la salud, el Estado decidía que algo era de necesidad pública por la pandemia, por ejemplo, ahorita, o el SIDA, o tantas calamidades de salud se ha habido en salud pública, y por tanto, me da licencia de producirlo yo a fuerza. No es si quieres, no quieres. Alberto, tenemos que pasar a la segunda ronda. Sí, termino con esto. Digamos, la propiedad intelectual no puede estar por derecha, por encima de lo derecho, y en ese sentido, si yo voy a producir una medicina, no para alucar, sino para repartirla gratuitamente en un sistema público de salud, yo puedo producirla y no tengo que pagar te legalidad. Si metemos la propiedad en esta lógica de comer en la propiedad intelectual, entonces yo no puedo producir la medicina porque tú tienes la exclusividad, que llamamos una pública. Entonces, resumo, hay que pensar en un marco distinto de valores distintos, de orientación distintas, y un último punto es si nadie va a venir a invertir en nuestro país y no hay garantía de seguridad jurídica, pero igual a jurídica, no es lo mismo que súper derechos. Hay que garantizar derechos elementales, pero en tribunales nacionales y según nuestra ley nacionales. Thank you, Alberto. And in fact, he starts to go into some of the issues we'll be talking about in the second round. We want to talk about, in the second round, get a little more specific. So we asked each speaker to tell us one or two ideas of trade policies that could support climate action or one that gets in the way. And we'll be going in the same order and help each about five minutes. So, Avi, can we hear from you? Sure. Oops. I'm unmuting myself and I'm starting a timer. This is a fascinating discussion and I'm delighted to hear the European voice, a voice from Mexico and I'm also feeling what a number of speakers have hinted that this needs to be an even more global conversation. At the LEAP, the organization that I work for, we have just launched a project with a magnificent partner organization based in the UK called War on Want, calling for a global Green New Deal. There was a webinar with Assad Rehman, the ED of War on Want, as well as my partner, Naomi Klein, friend and thinker Aaron Dottiroy earlier this week, starting to sketch the outlines for a global Green New Deal. And too many of the Green New Deal proposals, as they've emerged in North America and in Europe, have proposed and Karen, I will answer the call to be specific, although we're talking about massive change. The proposals of the Green New Deal in Europe and North America have been very focused on the nation state, on the changes necessary. For instance, the Green New Deal for housing, the first specific legislative proposal in the US Congress for 12 million new units of non-market public housing, taking housing out of the market and really providing housing for all. These are important policies. They're specific policies. They work at the nexus of economic justice and climate justice, environmental justice. They're very focused on how to address inequality and white supremacy and racism with these big public run programs that we must have to secure a safe future. But they're very focused on nation states and they're very focused on what we need to build in the new infrastructure and there is massive new building that must take place. But we also have to factor in the implications for where those resources come from especially over its carrying capacity seven or eight times. And can we have a Green New Deal with new transit systems, new energy systems housing for all and other universal public services that don't spark extraction explosions, particularly in countries of the global south and deprive those countries of environmental, social and economic rights as we seek them in countries of the global north. And so one appeal not specifically on the trade side but on the Green New Deal side is for us to continue to push ourselves to involve voices and priorities from social movements and civil society organizations in the global south in this conversation. If we had that really in focus it would help us on the trade side to start advocating for mechanisms in the global trading architecture where we could have alliances like we used to have like we were just starting to form in the globalization debates of the late 90's where countries and movements in the global south were coming together with social movement actors in the global north to fight together for a global trading system that would prioritize basic rights to basic services and to prioritize now fighting the climate crisis on a global level. So something like I'm not a trade expert, I'm like some others on this panel but if we had a climate clause in every trade agreement if we had campaigns and pressure from both countries and movements within countries to put a climate clause in every significant existing and future negotiated trade agreement that said exactly the reverse of what the trading system did to the climate negotiations in the early 90's that said any provision of any global trading agreement violates the fundamental right to the priority of public health in other words both the pandemic and the climate crisis fall in this lens of survival for life on earth and what better meaning could there be for the notion of public health. If any provision of a trading agreement violates every country and people's right to measures that secure public health whether that is vaccines and drugs and personal protective equipment and ventilators for a pandemic or whether that is rapidly shifting energy, transportation food and other systems to reduce emissions massively and rapidly then those provisions are not in effect if they have a negative impact on the future of life on earth. We need a climate clause like they inserted investor state dispute mechanisms and others that are kind of like a dead man switch and something threatens the life of the conductor of the train moving forward for planetary health then a switch has to automatically intervene in any trading system that prioritizes profit over what is necessary for living. So that's a big one that is also specific that I think some of our comrades who understand trade law better could fashion into an actual instrument and maybe even better for me than as Alberto put it so perfectly better than the specific mechanisms the global movement connections that we need to start fighting back as connected movements across international borders we need to rally around something really clear and really specific that can help us campaign on all of each other's behalf particularly as Arthur said because the right wing authoritarian populists not just Trump but others have managed to leverage the extraordinary failures of the international neoliberal project to bring more people to their side that has no intention of dismantling those structures that has no intention of bringing back those jobs they have no intention of writing inequalities in fact they're shoveling money in this bailout program by the truck full to their rich friends but they have been able to point out these very obvious things about how the promises of free trade have failed and the left needs to speak just as loudly just as clearly and just as simply about those failures which we all know and which the climate crisis and the pandemic show us are truly costing lives in the hundreds of thousands right now and I don't see any argument more powerful than that. Thanks that's great I mean I completely agree we need to be scaling back what's in these agreements and doing but doing so not just from each country but through global movements. So next we have Lucia what would you think would be something bad that gets in the way or something that could be done differently? That could also be different in terms of ways and methods I mean if we understand or if we get to the point of view that we have to decelerate the climate change and that happens if or if by investing in fossil energies that's going to take us to a social and political economic change as we know it and from my point of view it would be enough to talk about adding safeguards even though they were linked to free trade but what we would have to do is limit quite strongly what global trade is today and invest in other types of economies local economies, in regions etc. However and I go back to the European Union it is true that the path that the European Union is taking is to push more and more negotiations of free trade agreements and to boost the protection system of investments. A few days ago the European Commission Phil Hogan recognized that his strategy or one of the ways he saw to get out of this current crisis is to increase free trade and to sign new free trade agreements so in some way when we see these movements this really dislegitizes any climatic policy that the European Union or any country is taking because on the one hand we have the agreements in Paris the climate agreements but on the other hand we have the commercial policy that sometimes seems to go in two opposite ways sometimes it seems in the global trade knowing today what we know about the impacts on the climate it seems that it is closer to a negativist view of what climate change is and although it is true that we can talk about alternatives and some are very valid like the one I was talking about right now we can also talk about how to include impacts of risk before or during the implementation of the agreements with a clause that obliges that this agreement is cancelled at the moment in which it is violating one of these principles could be interesting alternatives to explore but without forgetting that if we do not limit this global trade we will not be able to achieve it on the other hand I think that right now it is an interesting moment to talk about global trade that is being a critical object in the academic field in the social field even in some international institutions and some countries are wanting to lead these debates we have on the one hand what the European Union already commented with the United States or Japan pulling towards the business as usual following the same strategy as always with some mental changes but that are not really substantial and some countries like India Indonesia that are facing the problem even deciding to leave some trade agreements even interesting the example of Brazil and with this term Brazil does not have signed investment agreements and yet it is one of the countries that has the most foreign investment in the region so I think that the debate unfortunately is not being discussed on the reform of the system is to put in the center of the debate what we need these free trade agreements and especially the protection of investments I think it would be much more interesting to debate from the root of the problem before we get into talking about how we can improve a system that we are seeing that intrinsically is insustainable and nothing the word thank you thanks Lucia those are important important points I think we are certainly at a moment especially with the COVID emergency and this has come up in some of the other webinars that there is no reason for us to accept that the agreements we have now are the way it has to be I work on agriculture issues and a lot of ideas in agriculture that were considered outlandish a couple of years ago are now on the table and so I think it is time to think boldly about how this could be different both structure of the agreements and their content so next I have Arthur yeah thank you I'll start by saying I think there has been a lot of good thinking by green groups on this question of how trade policy could be used to support climate solutions and if you want to dig into what U.S. groups have been working on I encourage you to start with the Sierra Club's discussion paper a new climate friendly approach to trade there is a good deal of detail on that and I will provide the link in the chat after I have spoken but that paper aside let me just highlight a few core thoughts that have pretty broad support among progressive groups in the U.S. working on trade first of all there is broad agreement that there needs to be a broad carve out in all trade agreements that recognizes the primacy of climate solutions over commercial interests a number of people have spoken about this it needs to be an explicit exemption for domestic and international climate policies to be completely exempt from any sort of deal of challenge whether that be state-to-state challenges or challenges brought by corporations under investors state dispute settlement which is going to be opposed overall anyhow so number one very broad agreement climate policies need to be untouchable from harm by trade paths going beyond that the U.S. view which I think we have already heard may not be shared internationally is that the enforcement teeth in trade agreements the enforcement teeth that we've heard so many people talk about already is something that we should actually consider using to enforce internationally agreed upon climate paths be that the Paris Accords or some future climate agreement you know as others have said one of the novel things about trade agreements that isn't necessarily found in other types of international agreements is that they do have these enforcement mechanisms built right into them such that if you violate the terms there can be millions if not billions of dollars of penalty imposed upon your country to try to force you to get back with the program and thus far these enforcement mechanisms have always been used to enforce things like intellectual property rights or so-called investor rights things we don't agree with but in the U.S. the view tends to be among progressives that these enforcement mechanisms should be used to enforce labor rights and environmental rights and human rights and things of that nature so that's my second point and number three is related to that and it's something that maybe there isn't broad agreement among U.S. groups but there's at least been some thinking about and I just wanted to raise it and that's the idea of carbon border adjustments carbon border adjustments are something that I first heard about almost 15 years ago in the presentation of the CTC conference by representatives of Friends of the Earth U.S. and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers so again one of these unusual alliances and the idea behind the carbon border adjustment is if a country is importing goods from a product whose climate policies haven't reached a level that people agree they should be at on that import and maybe you don't call it a tax the warriors in the policy wants to be used for why you might not call it a tax but the thought here is these taxes for lack of a better term are going to help dissuade rich countries from just dumping their carbon pollution onto poorer countries via outsourcing manufacturing and simultaneously from groups that care about the outsourcing of jobs in a race to the bottom one of those draws for outsourcing is eliminated and back 15 years ago carbon border adjustments were largely viewed and largely discussed as a way to restrict carbon intensive manufactured goods from entering the U.S. from China today I tend to hear about the more in terms of preventing carbon intensive U.S. goods from entering Europe but in any event these are mechanisms that could be used to pressure other nations like the U.S. at this point to get with the program adopt better policies and thought can also be given to where the funds that are raised from these border adjustments get devoted so in the perfect world this could be for things like just transition domestically but also potentially for richer nations to begin to repaying some of the carbon debts internationally but also the technology transfer and direct payments and what have you so I think I went up a little over my time last time I'll pause here and I will provide the link to that paper thanks Arthur Alberto and then after this round we'll be looking at some of the questions and answers it is easiest for us to find them if you put your questions and answers in that section Alberto five minutes left it is difficult to enrich what you already said I think there is a very big consensus in what is being proposed maybe I think we should start thinking beyond what I had said in this part I would like to focus on the organizational challenge in the unity challenge we are not going to be able to advance if each sector or each country fights for the same objectives it is not possible to fight for sector or for country in these issues or we give it globally or we are not going to win and also it has been the proven experience if you have managed to stagnate the OBC since then to stop the agreements and the negotiations that could not advance in some way it was because there was a global organization if we could stop the ALCA in the case of America it was because there was a global organization and not only global forums maybe you know more about the economic forum the world social forum but it was a forum the social forum with the effects it had and the limitations it had which is not the time to talk about it but you have to recognize that it had them it was an organization with action plans we are discussing so I think we have not repeatable the experience we had in the 90s in which we could freeze the OBC or stop the ALCA or stop some bilateral agreements of investment and free trade we have to evaluate the experience but we cannot repeat them I think the situation has changed it is not feasible to organize ourselves in the same way but I think the big challenge is not to have alternatives if I don't listen to you because I see one in the written amount there are alternatives they are clear they are elaborated we can professionalize them we can enrich them there is a huge amount of proposals that are part of this we have to think outside of the framework we have to think of a different system and that they are viable for something to be viable it needs the strength to be viable and then I think that at that time we have to think again internationally to make these proposals really viable or the best of the proposals of the world is a beautiful book if they don't have a subject capable of carrying out the practice then I just wanted to introduce the topic for other meetings for other moments so as not to repeat what many of you have said we have to think about this global movement integral in which we cross the speciality that is here but at the same time it will be a common struggle thanks thanks Alberto we are going into the question and answer part now and I think I would like to start with one that follows on this point Alberto just made about organizing internationally because it's certainly true there are proposals in fact some of us on this call were involved in with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in developing alternative proposals to NAFTA a year or two ago there's a lot out there different ideas about how this could be approached but we need to be thinking both about the what and the how so we have a question from Huey Union she or she I don't know Arthur mentioned that we won on trade issues at the turn of the century he mentioned the creative use of actions around the WTO meeting to drive home these ideas in general the panelists are talking about negotiations over these trade deals themselves but left leaders are not at the table during these negotiations how can we move more people into action to get what we need the youth climate movement is inspiring that has been halted by COVID-19 we're hindered by the fact that corporations are happy to keep negotiating behind closed doors how can we exercise power while sheltering at home and before I open that up to answers I would mention that specifically the US is negotiating with Kenya will be soon and is already negotiating with the UK so they are definitely moving forward do I have a volunteer among the panelists someone who would like to take on take up this subject maybe Arthur to start yeah I'll start I'm not going to be able to address all those themes raised in there but I will say I think one of the things that we need to do to try to wrestle back some of the space that the right has claimed on trade policy is start not just critiquing trade agreements but promoting our vision for alternatives. This is something that you know was done quite a bit at the turn of the century and that we've gotten away from in certain respects at least on a broad scale and so I would like to see a lot more forward thinking proposals from a unified left across sectors and across borders that attempts to capture people's imaginations in the US context the Green New Deal Medicare for all similar ideas have started to capture people's imaginations and give us a vision for what we're fighting for I think that would be really critical to again fighting back for some of the space that Trump and Trump types have captured recently and I think a couple of the ways to do that as I said in my earlier comments is to expand representations of who trade policy is hurting in the US so that it's not just white guys my age and older but it's actually people of color and young people and women and not just people in the US but people around the world who are hurt by these trade deals that in the US are primarily viewed as just outsourcing jobs and also the other sister from UWE mentioned getting youth climate activists and others to broaden their analysis of what trade policy means in terms of the harm it causes to the climate justice movement but also the potential of what we could be fighting for other people can answer how we organize power during COVID I'm happy to jump in with a quick reflection Karen first of all I just have to say as a human on this call this is my first Zoom call with translation and wow it is amazing so a huge thank you and kudos to the superb language justice translating collective that is I would love them to get a proper plug at the end of this webinar because it's really a pleasure to be able to speak across languages with such great professionals and experts so I think one thing that's a little bit missing for me in this conversation but I expect everyone will agree is that we need to speak to the unprecedented political moment that we are in we are not in obviously we're not in the late 90s nor are we in the Green New Deal moment of 2018-2019 as it was playing out in the United States and to some degree in Europe and the UK we are in an unprecedented global moment of crisis in which the rules that have been brutally imposed over the last half century of the neoliberal triumph have been temporarily suspended I think we're that's not like a blanket true statement but like everything is happening at once right now hundreds of billions of public dollars are being shoveled to the richest 1.1% of population and to the biggest multinational corporations at the same time rich countries are wantonly violating all of the trade principles that they have been locking in for the rest of the world over the last decades companies are being nationalized whole industries are being nationalized in some rich companies factories are being expropriated taken into public ownership in order to manufacture life saving equipment we have governments that are paying the salaries of employees in local and international companies we are in a moment where the rules have been suspended as the global economy has been suspended and we on the left need to speak clearly and powerfully to this moment when we see so many of the myths of the neoliberal period laid bare it turns out that austerity was always a cruel and punitive choice by governments used to attack the poor and the marginalized communities in every country and globally there are trillions and trillions of dollars available in public money that can be spent on health education the welfare of people income supports and an inclusive economy that genuinely provides basic public services for all we know that now and nobody can deny it and so we have to step into this political moment with real courage and clarity to claim this ideological terrain that has suddenly opened up before us and there is so much forward momentum we can make and at the same time in this unprecedented moment the towering forces of the global economy are also moving quickly to swallow up this new terrain that has opened I'm in New Jersey a Canadian living in New Jersey next door in New York State just a week and a half ago the governor of New York State invited the former CEO of Google invited Bill Gates invited Michael Bloomberg to radically reshape the economic future of New York State in the name of high tech solutions to education the provision of healthcare and others so we have big tech the Amazons and Googles and other high tech companies of the world who are now the richest and most powerful companies in the 21st century moving in quickly to make an offer that preys on our terror in this time of pandemic that they are going to take over a touchless human free no contact economy that makes people feel safe it is truly terrifying the way they are presenting a dehumanized future to us to prey on our fears in this moment but they recognize that everything as the name of this whole series recognizes that everything is in play in this moment so I just want to have a really clear call for truly radical and game changing demands because the floor is open and if we don't take it we know who will Thanks Avi, did anyone else want to weigh in on this particular issue or should we move on? Lucia? Sorry, in Spanish I just wanted to make the point that if it is true that I agree that this is a historical moment that we have to pay a lot of attention to it is also true that we have to take into account or pay attention that although the states can come out strengthened from this seeing the measures that they are taking we also have to take into account that many measures are also being criminalized and militarized much more in societies and this is also the responsibility of the states so the exit has to be equally strong also with the strengthening of the community, of the society and that there is much more implication of these aspects and it is true that if we are proposing alternatives on how we can not only are we always reacting towards free trade agreements but I think there will be two battles that we will have to fight because on the one hand moving and there will still be negotiations and we have to parallelize them, the European Union is negotiating right now with Mercosur, with Mexico and it has restarted the conversations with the United States so we have to pay attention to that in a more reactionary way but at the same time to start talking about other types of measures that the most interesting alternatives are usually out of the framework of what we have tried of trade, but they have to do more with the macroeconomic systems or local policies that many times they have to deal with precisely with these agreements even better and with this term sometimes the trade agreements can be presented as obstacles to carry out this other type of alternative proposals of local economies, for example and with this term, thank you Thank you I do think I want to call out the translation and the fact that we have people from other countries on this call I've been conscious that during this moment of the COVID emergency we have been focusing on things like the safety of the meat workers which has become so apparent in this process things that are happening within our own country but I think we're not hearing enough about how this is playing out internationally and how these new proposals, the political space that might exist looks elsewhere Alberto, I don't know if you want to add anything right now about that issue or perhaps we can move on to another question I can't hear you Is it done or not? Yes Now yes We have to create a space to discuss organizational forms or interconnections I don't think I can advance more I would like to add that this issue but perhaps others that our partners are participating are going to take it out is how to deal with economic recovery after the pandemic crisis the positions of the states and companies is more than the same to look again for the states to make millions of savings and the people are leaving to know what they're doing in Mexico with all the limits we have we're going to do a pandemic but you're trying to face it in another way if we save the people we save the companies if the people have to live they're going to pull the economy so all the social politics are going to try to save the small, medium and people and not the companies but that's why I'm talking about your neighborhood how to knock down the president who has had more votes in the history of the country so I think we're going to face a very difficult period in which some states maybe they haven't been in Canada but if Ecuador if Chile they're learning the pandemic of how to control the people that is, they managed to have our house 24 hours a day and that's for them the fear achieved what they had never achieved in their lives so how to leave again without taking care of our health and reorganize so I think there are two challenges how do we organize but also how do we intervene in the exit with popular objectives of the crisis that is coming after the pandemic is over I'm going to go on to have time for a few more questions we will be going until 12 more minutes 12.30 in my time so here's one from London GND I assume Green New Deal and it's pushing back a little bit on one of the comments Avan Arthur mentioned a climate clause and trade agreements are they not concerned that this would give trade agreements even more power than they already have trade agreements have been attracting other areas of public policy because they have teeth there's another argument that says issues like climate, intellectual property digital rights from trade agreements and trade agreements should be made subservient to climate goals and human rights commitments I guess we'd start with Arthur or Avi if you have any response to that yeah I mean I can start and I'll say absolutely we agree that trade agreements should be subservient to climate goals and climate agreements and climate policies both at the international level also at the domestic and local level I think that there's broad agreement among that in the US I think there is some disagreement around this idea of whether trade agreements themselves can be good for anything other than tariffs and quotas on goods and services moving across borders and again our view is that let's create the trade agreements that we want and that we think are beneficial and for us having seen for 25 years these trade agreements used to promote things that really have nothing to do with trade like copyrights and patents and other so-called investor rights why can't we use those to promote worker rights and climate rights and other environmental rights and human rights there isn't broad agreement around that internationally but that's sort of the hope that a lot of US NGOs and labor organizations and others that have been working on trade bring to the table right now and I will say I don't think we've gotten there or that we're anywhere near getting there yet but I don't think we've got a vision that we have been pushing Second the agreement that the spirit of that question is one I hope we all really agree with it is absolutely I don't propose something like a climate clause in the spirit of a technocratic fix to an architecture which is otherwise serving the cause of life and justice the entire system is corrupt and is replicating on every level a murderous logic revealing lives in real time in this pandemic as it has always particularly in countries of the global south that still subsidize the economies of the global north through trade agreements but other international financial mechanisms to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars every year in the international financial flows the rich world is rich because the global south continues to keep paying it year after year after year and so we can't be talking about quick or incremental fixes to one piece of the system like trade agreements we need debt jubilees and cancellation we need wholesale change to the values and the logic of the system itself I just want to return to the pandemic for a moment because I think we have to keep remembering the context that we're in and Alberto started to touch on this in this moment of pause people are recognizing what is essential is first of all the workers who are the most marginalized and precarious in all of our economies who are providing, who are seeding and picking and packing the food, who are distributing it workers who are keeping systems running I think we've recognized globally that the internet is the very definition of a necessary public service and should be provided as a free universal utility in all of the places in the world and to all people in the event that it is needed in moments like this by so many and it's just becoming clear to so many people what we really value what we miss the most is not shopping but hugging our friends and our family and the centering that is happening, the spiritual clarity of this moment of what we really need and what we really want to improve is I think a really strong place for left movements to build from. I think this pandemic has been an incredible teacher as much as it has been a terrorizing force and I just want to echo all calls to build from where we are because the possibilities seem limitless now. Did anyone else want to touch on this one? I have maybe one question and then I think we'll go to final comments. So here's one that might be addressed to Alberto to start with. It's on sort of the institutional issues. The WTO has lost legitimacy for global South countries and also for the free trade enthusiast global North countries like the U.S. who seek to advance ultra neoliberal deals outside of the WTO. In the vision of trade in a global green new deal, is there a role for a multilateral institution at the global or regional levels? Do we reform or abolish it? And if needed, how can we prevent more powerful and wealthier countries from exploiting their power to reproduce the unequal relationships we see in FTAs and in the WTO? It's a big question but on this issue of governance. This is a fairly broad question and it has been discussed in the movement. We simply need to abolish these multilateral institutions of global governance of the economy. This is a tactical issue and I think the world is interconnected whether we like it or not. We have to put the accent especially on food and a series of things in local economies. Yes, I agree. The world is interconnected and it will continue to be interconnected in reality. And in that sense, it needs minimum rules of governance in these international relations. All of the discussions if we can transform these institutions or we have to create others. But what I think is that I don't see it like that that we can prevent some kind of space where we can regulate the international economy. That's what we need. The question is if it's viable to transform the OMC in something radically different or to be able to create something radically different we have to end with the OMC. It's a tactical political question that I think. But what I think it hurts is that we think we have to end with the OMC. We have to end with the OMC with the free trade deal. But how are we going to regulate connections of asymmetrical power between countries? Because it's a reality of the symmetry of power between the different countries that formed this great international relations. We need some kind of agreement that is linked. So it's a matter of discussing how we do it. I don't know if I answered your question. It is a hard question. I think those are important observations as we move forward. I think we need to move into a final round of responses from the panelists. We have so many good questions here. I will encourage people to attend the following sessions and we may decide to add more questions. I don't know if you have any questions or comments. I would ask first from Lucia if you can start any final comments. I'm going to speak in English now for some reason. Thanks for the translators. I agree with Avi. It's an extremely hard work. I think we have a lot of questions on that. I just shared a link to a research that we just did. I will finalize with this because I know that the next webinar is going to be specific on investment dispute settlements and investment protection. I think it's a good way to introduce into the subject. So we did some research on how investors can use their clients which are investors or multinational companies on how they can start preparing to sue states over COVID-19 response measures. So I think this is quite a scandal but it does not really come as a surprise since actually some of the investment lawyers come from the crisis. Using this investment protection systems which are part of the investment agreement and some trade agreements that have investment protection clauses. So I just wanted to finalize also sharing something that is very current right now. It's something that might or might not happen but it still raises the question of why do these investment systems have to exist in the first place and why as Alberto was already saying we do have to give some kind of juridical security to investors but not necessarily through this special treatment and giving them the special privileges. So thanks for inviting me and I'm looking forward for the next conversation to talk more in depth about these investment protection systems. Thank you. So I realize we are out of time so I'm going to urge the panelists who are left to tell us what you see as a most crucial issue or a crucial issue to move forward on soon. Maybe it's process, maybe it's a theme. Anyway something we should be thinking about as we move forward or tell us about a publication we should see and then we want to mention something I think Aaron can tell us perhaps about some other webinars that are coming up. So Arthur. Yeah, thank you and let me echo my thanks to the organizers and the interpreters it's been fantastic. You know I think just the closing thing I'll say is I agree with Avi and everyone else that the COVID pandemic is an opportunity for us and I'll say in the United States context anyways it's just an opportunity that is not being grabbed with both hands yet so the more that we can do to to increase analysis and promote forward thinking policies right now we should be doing and I think in the US we need to learn a lot more from what people are having success with in other countries because there's a lack of leadership right now on these issues here. Thank you everybody. Thanks Alberto, any brief words? Very, very brief. I think the pandemic is an opportunity to change but they are also trying to use it as an opportunity to consolidate and deepen even more in the same model. I think there's a new awareness in a broad part of society not too broad but broad in which we can't continue to talk about not returning to normality but a new normality that is not possible that after the massive infection we return to the same lifestyle I think we have a great challenge and it's a huge challenge how to take advantage of this moment so that people can take a leap in consciousness to realize that the planet is going to take us. It's going to end. Thanks Alberto. Avi, any final words? Sure, we're in overtime here so I will actually be brief. In terms of things to check out this seems like an opportune moment to plug the project that I was talking about earlier that the leap is doing with war on want that we've just launched. You can learn more and sign up at globalgnd.org I do think it's time for a renewed internationalism people are communicating or exchanging more in this moment across the internet and all borders which are colonial constructs anyway so I think this is a moment when we need to get ready we know what happens next we're not moving from this pandemic into a socialist paradise we're moving into a long process perhaps worse than any we've seen in modern times and the hammer is going to come down and it's going to come down hardest on the people who are already suffering the most so we need to move fast because the opportunities are not going to be hanging there forever so I think conversations like this one are really urgent as we connect and try to form international connections I'm really grateful to be in this conversation with the great Alberto and Lucia and Arthur and Karen thank you for your excellent moderating and one more muchisimas gracias to the translators I agree the translation has been a huge help I think Aaron was going to tell us remind us of some of the other webinars that are coming up first we are passing it to Pau who will give overview of the interpretation and translators great hi everyone this is Pau my name is Pau Lebron I am one of the language justice workers with as I mentioned Babilla Collective or Colectivo Babilla just wanted to give you all more information thank you for the recognition for the hard work interpretation entails we were established in 2019 but we are three person group of language workers who have been interpreting for over five years we are collective of trans feminist anti-racist language workers we come from experiences of migration and diaspora and we focus on supporting cultural community organizing political spaces to prioritize and practice language justice through a lens of gender inclusivity, decolonization and language determination just a few things but we are very happy to be here thank you if you want to know anything else about us you can reach out to Erin for more information again we are Babilla Collective or Colectivo Babilla thank you again and then the last thing to plug will be our next webinars which will be on Tuesday at 11am which will be continuing the Brussels series which will be about energy and then on Thursday as has been mentioned before will be at the same time on hard law and soft law our continuation of our trade series all under the banner with everything up for grabs so thank you all so much for coming and I will pass it back to Karen for just a close up if necessary I think we are good this has been a fantastic discussion I hope we can continue these kinds of conversations and see how we move forward thanks everyone