 All right, so we've got our last speaker coming up. And this is really a treat. So this is about the feet on the ground. This is about the people who are actually doing work and having tremendous impact. We're about to welcome Prince Emmanuel de Maraud from Varunga National Park. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about Prince Emmanuel. After training as an anthropologist, Dr. Emmanuel de Maraud worked for 20 years in support of Congo's national parks. He spent most of those years in the field supporting Congolese park rangers through the 12-year civil war that claimed the lives of over five million civilians and 140 of the rangers with whom he worked. In 2007, after witnessing the slaughter of nine mountain gorillas by armed militias and investigating the root causes of environmental destruction in eastern Congo, he decided to focus his efforts on overcoming the illegal trafficking of natural resources in Varunga National Park. As a result of these efforts, he was appointed as chief warden of Varunga National Park by the Congolese government in 2008. To overcome the various challenges in the post-conflict region, he helped to develop the Varunga Alliance, a Congolese initiative to create an alternative clean development strategy capable of eradicating poverty and bringing stability and peace to eastern Congo based on the sustainable use of water resources for energy and fisheries together with agriculture and tourism. It's a real treat. Please welcome Prince Emmanuel de Merode. Thank you. Yeah, okay, thanks. Good morning. It's an incredible privilege and I'm extremely grateful to be here. I think I, perhaps more than most, need to explain who I am. I'm a bit of an outlier with respect to a lot of the discussions that are going on today, but actually I'd like over the next few minutes to just explain how important the work that people like yourselves are doing to the future of a region that desperately needs change. And really the way I would like to do that is through the extraordinary team that I work with. And in that, to explain who I am, essentially what you would define as a middle-ranking civil servant in the Congolese public service. I work for the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo as a national park warden as the director of a national park that's called Varunga National Park. It's located in the east of the country in a region that has been affected by what is now recognized as the most tragic episode in human history in terms of human suffering since the Second World War, a war that's claimed the lives of over six million Congolese people, six million people who should not have died in that way. And every single one of those wars has started either in or immediately around this national park that we've been trying to manage now for over 20 years. And it's this extraordinary team that I work with whose story it is, I tell. But for me, at the beginning, growing up in East Africa, growing up in Kenya, I had this very different image. I had this image of this landscape in the center of Africa with these incredible mountains, some of the highest mountains on the African continent with glaciers on top, and that stretch down through tropical rainforests across these amazing savannas with some of the greatest abundance of large mammals of elephants, hippos, and buffalos, and then through to these extraordinary volcanoes, these permanently erupting volcanoes that give you a glimpse of the very center of the Earth. And between these extremes, some of the greatest diversity of wildlife on Earth, what essentially made it, what essentially makes it probably the greatest national park on Earth. And of course, that one species that drew me to Varunga 23 years ago, which is the mountain gorilla, this incredibly vulnerable species that's right on the edge of extinction. But when I arrived, I bought a motorbike in Kampala and drove across East Africa, and then across the border, across the great East African Rift Valley, and then down into this amazing landscape. What brought me there were the mountain gorillas and this amazing national park. But what really kept me there was this team of Congolese rangers. And very quickly what I realized is I became, over the years, a part of that team, was just the incredible sacrifice that they had gone through. Over 140 of them had died protecting this park, and yet for months and sometimes years on end, they hadn't received their salaries, they hadn't received any support from the outside world, and yet they were continuing this struggle because it was the work that they had always done that their parents had done and that grandparents had done. This is the oldest national park in Africa. It's the first to where conservation was born in Africa, and this tradition was continuing in spite of the incredible difficulties. And it was met with incredible success. The mountain gorillas were increasing. They doubled over the last 20 years until this terrible day in 2007 when we heard gunshots up in the forest and came across the beginning of what was, seemingly, the end of this species, the mountain gorillas. They were being exterminated by militias that were moving into the forest and killing the gorillas. And that really was the event that precipitated a series of decisions that ended up with a situation when I was asked by the government to take on this incredible privilege, which was to lead Varunga's rangers as their director. And so we continued from there. But what I didn't realize was that my work was not going to be about protecting mountain gorillas or wildlife or managing a national park. It was about managing a deeply, deeply troubled political situation. And within weeks of when I was appointed, we discovered that an army was being created, a rebel army. And very soon that erupted into the third of the great wars of Eastern Congo. These wars that killed literally millions of people. And of course, this was the view just outside my tent when I woke up in the morning. It was a war that came right up to the park headquarters. And within days, our staff were forced out on this terrible march towards the city of Goma and into these internally displaced camps. Suddenly I found myself from being a park director to being somebody who had to manage a refugee camp for the rangers and their families. And suddenly we had to re-adapt ourselves to a situation of crisis. And this continued, but I was surrounded by these very extraordinary people. And it's them really who led me forward, helped me with these ideas. And the first was the decision never to leave the park. And so we spoke to people. We spoke to the rebel leaders. We spoke to the government. And out of that came this agreement that the park would continue its work whatever the political situation. And we were able to continue the work. But what really struck us, what was a real problem was this struggle with respect to this national park. And there was this one photo, this terrible photo that was taken by a good friend of mine of this woman at the feet of one of our rangers. And it really captured for me the struggle that we were up against. So it's not a simple matter. This woman was trying to get into the park to obtain charcoal. And of course, the victim here is the woman. But it's not that simple. The woman is a victim of the armed militias who are trying to extract the resources. It's like a protection racket. And you've got this economic situation around the park where you have what is essentially what was once a colonial economy based entirely on the extractive industries that's gradually evolved into a conflict economy. And it's based around the extraction of charcoal in the forest, the destruction of the forest for charcoal, the destruction of the water resources for illegal fishing. And then more recently, this international corporation that came into the park for illegal oil. And this economy was essentially based on coercion and patronage and was breeding these armed groups. And what we found was this situation where we had 12 armed militias that were drawn to the park around these resources, fish on the lake, illegal fishing on the lake, charcoal in the forests, and then this illegal oil. And the three together were generating about $100 million a year for the armed groups. And we were completely disempowered in our ability to confront this. And, you know, one way of explaining this is through my colleagues, Innocent and Bronomoy, my deputy, whose brother was killed protecting the mountain gorillas, Rodrigue, who spearheaded the investigation into the illegal oil. For his efforts, he was illegally detained for 17 days and very, very badly tortured to the extent that we had to get him out of the country. And then Atama, this dear man who I worked with right from the beginning, 23 years ago, who moved up through the ranks and became a warden. One day when he was coming back to the park, he was shot in the back by militias and died of his injuries. And so we were losing all these amazing people who were helping us to protect the park. My day came on a warm day in April when I submitted the report on the investigation into the illegal oil to the state prosecutor, this investigation that we've been carrying out for four years into the illegal exploration for oil. I believed, as I still do now in my naivety, that there is something about the sanctity of the rule of law, what holds society together. And I submitted this report. As I was coming back, five men were waiting for me in the forest and they shot me in the chest and in the stomach and left me in the forest. It was two young Congolese farmers who saw this happen. And as I was alone in the forest, they came and picked me up and put me on a motorbike. And for two hours managed to get me to this local hospital who performed a miracle that enabled me to go back to my work and to really rethink what we were doing. And really what that came to was this idea that we were just too small, too vulnerable, too weak to really confront these big problems that we were facing. And this idea of the Varunga Alliance, of drawing in other players based on certain values, values to do with upholding the needs and the rights of the most vulnerable in the poorest in society, of upholding the needs and the rights of future generations, the whole concept of sustainability. And of course of upholding the rule of law, the rules that hold our societies together. But we needed the resources. And those resources really focused around three key things, four if you include fishing. But the first is energy, this idea that you need to recreate a whole new industry, a whole new economy that is based around diversification of the economy and that's based around this idea that you've got to break the conflict economy that has been there for so long. And really that is, you know, one of the very great challenges. And it's not that it hasn't been tried. You know, the international community, the world has invested $90 billion in Eastern Congo since 2000 in trying to put an end to the war. It's the biggest UN mission in the world and it's failed. And the reason it's failed is because of the whole demobilization of the armed militias where we are, there are between 5,000 and 8,000 of them. It's not that much. It shouldn't be insurmountable. But the demobilization disarmament and reintegration process has failed because of the R in the acronym, the reintegration. And that has failed because there are no jobs in Eastern Congo. There's 70, 80% unemployment. And really the answer lies in the kinds of work that people like yourselves are doing of creating successful enterprise that can create sustainable livelihoods for those people. And so we looked at those resources that can provide that and there's the two untapped resources of Congo, water and the human resources. And what can we do with that to turn this economy around? The others, of course, are agribusiness and tourism, the traditional industry for a national park. And we invested massively in that. It's perhaps not massively by your standards, but for us it was a lot. We've now reached an investment, committed funds of about $92 million to try and get sustainable energy to these communities. And what we discovered is that in doing that, for every megawatt of electricity that you provide to conflict affected communities, you can create between 800 and 1,000 jobs. And the research that we did in the early days demonstrated that we could create between 100 and 120 megawatts. That's 80 to 100,000 jobs in the community around the park. And we're well on our way now. We've now got the committed funds for 50 megawatts, we're halfway there. But if you remember the figure, 5 to 8,000 militias, that's 5 to 8% of those jobs that we're in the process of creating. And so really that's the answer. And it lies right at the heart of the kinds of work that you are doing. One example is the soap factory that has invested in Eastern Congo because of the fact that there's electricity and because of the fact that the park is bringing a degree of stability to that region. The soap factory has created 400 jobs. It's a $5 million investment, 400 jobs in a conflict affected community, but it's also increased the revenue for 10,000 farmers and it's decreased the price of soap for 5 million Congolese consumers. And so really that's the answer to conflict. It's a much smaller investment than the $90 billion from the public sector and it really comes from the kinds of ideas that people like yourself are developing today. So really that's why I came, was just to thank you for these amazing ideas and for this amazing work that you're doing. Thank you very much. That's so kind. Thank you. Sorry, I used that more than I share of time. I'm glad you used it for time. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. I knew you'd be glad you stayed, but we're gonna let you go now. So the next session started at 11. I wanna let you know there is another plenary this evening from 5.30 to 6.30, so please join us back here for that. And next up we have a session that sort of continues the theme from the morning that'll start at 11 around impact investing sort of at this tipping point hitting the mainstream if you'd like to stick around. Thank you so much.