 Okay, good morning and afternoon and a warm welcome to this high-level political forum side event, building back better forest pathways for green recovery, advancing the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Today's event is jointly organized by the International Tropical Timber Organization and the Food and the Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO and is presented by the Collaborative Partnership of Forests. My name is Veronica Juch and I'm working on global forest pathways in FAO's forestry division and I'll be moderating today's session. Forest and sustainable forestry can help the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and combat looming environmental crisis such as climate change and biodiversity loss. However, this requires societies to better recognize the considerable value of forests and trees and their crucial roles in building inclusive, resilient and sustainable economies. The State of the World Forest 2022 provides three pathways to implement this new perspective of making development work with the environment, protect measures for hoarding deforestation, restore, making land more productive and use, investing in building economically viable green value chains that provide resilient livelihoods. These forest pathways have the potential to provide decentralized solutions that are highly cost-effective and that can be implemented comparatively rapidly and at scale. Today's event will look into how locally adapted solutions, innovations and investments in young talents and innovative ideas on these forest pathways can be integrated into efforts to build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic and to lead to a whole of society mobilization as envisaged by the agenda for sustainable development. We will be starting the meeting with the opening remarks from the Deputy Director of FAO's Forest Redivision, Everdramatsteiner, who has also led the work on the State of the World Forest 2022 that I've already mentioned. Everd, the floor is yours for some short opening remarks. Thank you very much, Veronica and good morning, good afternoon, good evening, colleagues, everybody. It is my great pleasure to welcome you here today at this occasion of the High-Level Political Forum from New York and I'm stepping in for the lead organizer of this event, the International Tropical Timber Organization. We have had some connection issues, obviously, so you hear me speaking twice today to you as welcoming you here today and the panelists to listen to how we move forward on the SDG-15. The SDG-15 focuses on protection, restoration, and enhancing the sustainable use. The first few routes of the SDG-15 have a lot of potential to not only move us forward on the SDG-15, but on a range of other things and SDGs that we need to get to move forward at the same time, especially in a situation of blooming and increasing crisis as we are still working through the economic fallout of a pandemic and the crisis of additional conflicts that we currently have that also have direct implications of livelihoods and on the environment. So what we are here today is to listen to panelists from different backgrounds, international organizations, governments, the youth and the private sector to look at solutions, to illustrate the potential of trees and forests, to contribute to a green recovery and to building a better future for us all, while at the same time being cognizant of the many issues that we have, including climate change and including biodiversity loss. Finding solutions in this context will need all our energy in terms of finding innovations that work for people on the ground in different contexts and solutions and we need to do it together. So here today we are to learn from examples, learn from experiences from our panelists and then I hope we also will learn from you as people who have valuable experiences to share with us. Maybe ask some questions and then we hope with this side event we contribute to the discussion at the HLPF here in New York. With this, I hope I wish us all a very successful meeting today. Back to you, Mironica. Thank you very much Evert for these welcoming remarks from the side of FAO and I'm very happy because I see that Shamsat Kuo was able to join us now and I would introduce her now without any further delay. Shamsat Kuo, as many from you know, is the Executive Director of the International Tropical Timber Organization. Before taking office in February this year, she served as the ITTO's Director for Operations since 2017 and she brings with her many years of experience in international law, trade negotiations, international collaboration, sustainable development in tropical forestry and with the private sector. It's my pleasure to give her the floor now for the welcoming remarks. Shams, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Mironica and my humblest and sincere apologies to everyone for being slightly late. These technical issues always hit you at the most unexpected times, but thank you also for the privilege of speaking and being with all of you today, focusing on our aim to contribute to the high-level political forum discussion surrounding the key area that controls our lives really for all of us who are in the field here, forestry. In addition to what Mr. Rematsteiner has just mentioned in his welcoming remarks, I will keep mine short. As we all know, forestry, especially tropical forestry that benefits people and nature, are extremely important and critical for the sustainable development that can help the world recover at this point from COVID-19 and also combat the multiple global environmental crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Mr. Rematsteiner also mentioned all the other disruptions that we are currently facing and from our perspective, this will definitely have an impact on communities, the environment and particularly forestry in pretty much the near to mid-term future. When we look at the discussions on policy and technical sessions that we have experienced from the World Forestry Congress and other international fora that are continuing at this point, particularly the conventions on biological diversity and also the upcoming COP 27, it is undeniable that climate change, conflict and food security requires the active presence of forests, particularly sustainably managed forests, which conserve soil and water, filter the air, prevent land degradation and desertification, reducing the risk of floods, landslides, droughts and other disasters and provide forestry stakeholders, including local communities and indigenous communities with much needed income and materials while providing food security. Of course, in doing all this, we must recognize that in forwarding the interests of bioeconomy and nature-based solutions, which is part of the conversation that we are about to hear from the panelists today on green pathways, we need to increase the traction, we need to increase the traction through nature-based solutions and the bioeconomy as a means for building greener, healthier and more resilient societies. And one of the most concrete and living examples from this is the implementation of sustainable forestry. It is the most environmentally friendly producing materials for further construction, which then contribute to the collaborative partnership on forest joint initiatives, which also includes green incentives and green pathways. And let's not forget a sustainable wood for sustainable world joint initiative. We have another joint initiative on restoring forest landscapes. And finally, there is another one on education that most of us are actively involved in. On that note, we need coherent approaches for scaling up and replicating successful projects that all our organizations have conducted. And in this way, we don't reinvent the wheel, but we continue investing in sustainable and successful ways forward in order to achieve our successful green pathways. On that note, I wish all of you a very productive and constructive session today. And we now take you back to the moderator, Veronica, to introduce our panelists. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for setting the scene so eloquently and highlighting again the challenges that we are all facing and how this is going to impact forestry as well. And I think we take particularly note of how you highlighted that we need to increase traction through the solutions we have at hand. And this is now really my pleasure to move to the panel that will look into these locally adapted solutions that we have. And one of the questions will be how indeed we can scale them up and how can we be coherent moving forward with these examples that we already have. Also a note to our audience after the panel. And I will introduce the panelists in a minute. You will have the possibility to ask questions. You can already put them forward now in the dedicated Q&A box. With this, let me move to our first panelists. And then the first question we're going to look into how we can reconcile for food and nutrition security with the protection of forests in a changing climate. Serena Fortuna is the red plus team leader and co-leads the forest and climate work stream in the forestry division of FAO. She brings with her an extensive experience in climate change mitigation and adaptation with using deforestation, forest and forest degradation and disaster risk reduction. There was already mentioned now in the opening remarks. And in her work, she particularly focused on enhancing governance, working on integrated landscape approaches and to explore the synergies with agriculture. And my question actually builds very much in this. Serena, fighting deforestation is potentially one of the most cost-effective actions for mitigating climate change if efforts ramp up. Although the rate of deforestation is declining, still 10 million hectares per year were lost between 2015 and 2020. And recent data highlights the role of agriculture in the loss of forests. Serena, can you share with us some of your thoughts how we can better reconcile achieving food and nutrition security while protecting at the same time our forests and this in a time of a changing climate? Serena, the floor is yours. Thank you very much Veronica and good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all the participants and the distinguished speakers. Did probably to start with it's important to remember a bit as Michelle also indicated that the forest and agriculture really intertwined forest plays very key role and services for agriculture sustainability and production ranging from the habitat for pollinators to the water regulation and climate regulation. Both of them agriculture and forestry play a key role in maintaining rural economy and sustainable livelihoods of indigenous people of local communities. They do face also common challenges indeed despite all the efforts we the world is still facing an enormous issue with hunger and malnutrition. Current dates are giving us the indication that one tenth of the global population 811 million people are still malnourished. Climate change of course exacerbates these impacts and affect our food systems and taking it from the bright inside of the story here forest indeed as also Michelle indicated can play a central role in combating and achieving climate change and achieving the and disease the national determined contributions. So it's important that these two sectors agriculture and forest are seen together as allies and we need to shift that discourse of seeing agriculture versus forestry but seeing them at the same time as collaborators and alliance. Indeed as you mentioned also we do see that agriculture still drives important percentage more than 90 percent of the forestation is driven by agriculture but yet we are a very important junction here. There is an increasingly important call for actions for acceleration of the actions on the ground to really identify the synergies and joint efforts from the turn of the tide of the forestation the food system summit the Glasgow leader declaration and the fact dialogue the forest agriculture and commodity trades I could go on but indeed let's focus more on what is really needed in terms of addressing this such a complex challenge and indeed to address in this a complex challenge solutions are also very cross sectoral multi-stakeholder and concerted actions are needed. We need to have government private sector communities women and regional people playing each of them a specific role in this in these regards. We do need long-term commitments finance technology and scale up innovation through identifying a bit what were the past success stories and what are the current circumstances we identify at least six main action areas that can identified and put in practice of course starting from integrated land use planning and management of forest and agriculture with a fully and a fully recognizing the rights of stakeholders and also including the critical role on restoration of the greater lands for sustainable production of commodities. As a second important point we also identified increased political and financial investments sort of coherence there needs to be an important coherence between the agriculture and forest sector including trying to identify the those investments that move away the incentives the incentives from actions that can be detrimental to forest but on the other side can actually be more kind of a moving into the production of commodities that do not impact forest also promotion of for example report report agricultural subsidies and green impact and then green and green circular economy will be very relevant within this landscape also is very important to scale up finance both from public and private sector from the public point of view for example from national and international and the climate finance the climate finance linked for example to replace results based payments can also play a very important role in this in this regards as a third area technology and innovation needs to be scaled up enhance agriculture production need to be identified for example ranging from conservation agriculture improve livestock management superior and adapted plant and animal and animal genetic resources as a fourth area also the promotion of responsible agriculture supply chains increasingly more number of countries are calling for removals of the forestation from agriculture commodities especially beef soil and soil palm oil cocoa coffee rubber and timber and there are emerging markets that are really moving into that direction I'll take just one more minutes we're only got to indicate two more areas and a couple of example the ensuring of the enabling environment is critical from the government's perspective but also from an engagement of local communities and also creating that enable environment boost the private sector engagement and lastly the as a sixth area of intervention the rethinking of food systems at the food system summit last September seven coalitions out of the 30 were moving into the direction of removing conversion from food systems 27 out of the 116 national pathways are also identifying some actions related either to replace restoration and sustainable forest management one one or two examples on integrated landscape approach in the from from from Brazil we had a very important example from the para state and the paragon minas and municipality that are that managed to shift the needle from the forestation to sustainable production by implementing a macro zoning law that legalize legalize the use of agricultural land and forest for conservation restoration or intensification according to the sustainability of the land from Argentina very important examples of forest management with integrated livestock linked to the results by its payments over a plus and announce a silver pastoral systems and lastly a very good example also coming from the modulating of tariffs according to sustainability criteria where for example in porters providing information to ensure that the production that they put on the market then do not embed the forestation in Switzerland Indonesia have a very important very important connection on this closing here the shifting of the discourse away from agriculture versus forestry towards more balanced and synergetic approach is possible we have examples and the calls and commitments are there now in this era post pandemic we need to turn really the commitments into actions and with this I led to the other colleagues and speakers to also put their important contribution thanks very much Veronica thank you very much Serena for the for all these points and how we can shift the narrative and the discourse to move to a more food systems approach and what I also found very interesting one of the action areas you highlighted were integrated landscape approaches and among them the restoration of land and I think that's a nice bridge to our next speaker which miss Valerie who is the director for environment natural resources and blue economy in the world bank and she previously worked as a manager for advisory and operations in the climate change group where she oversaw the implementation of the bank's commitments on climate change climate mainstreaming and climate finance and throughout her career she has worked in many countries and supported the variety of operations including in fragile states and she also led the banks environment portfolio in Haiti following the earthquake in 2010 and this is probably an interesting example but more generally I'm asking my question you've looked into how investing in forests and natural resources can bring back communities and landscape how it can bring them back to life or in other words how to restore them and what would be interesting to see from your experience how when investing in restoration efforts what needs to be taken into account so they can support broader development objectives we see here the floor is yours thank you so much Veronica and good morning good afternoon good evening everybody and I have to say we're meeting this morning at a time when the brazilian space agency just came out with numbers that show that the brazilian amazon has hit the highest level of deforestation since at least 2016 there's been more than five times the size of new york city close to 4 000 square kilometers lost just in this first six months and I think this highlights the challenge that we all face but of course we're also meeting in an event that's talking about building back better but for most of the world nobody wants to go back because the past hasn't been particularly friendly not to forests and not to the people who depend on them and who steward them you know we all know when we talk about the fact that we're in the middle of a triple environmental crisis climate change the loss of biodiversity and enormous deadly pollution everywhere just on climate change alone our numbers suggest that by 2030 which isn't that far away and it coincides with our that when we're supposed to achieve the SDGs if we don't tackle climate change an additional 130 million people are going to fall into poverty that's not to mention the 200 million people who are on the move internally because climate change and the impacts it's having including on forests and smallholder farmers as serena talked about means they can't make a living anymore in the landscapes where they did and this is all happening at a time when covid continues to wreak havoc with public health and public finances just since 2020 covid has pushed 100 million people back into poverty it just speaks to the fact that everything we've done as we prepared this 2030 agenda didn't set the standards strong enough that once people got out of poverty they could stay out of poverty with the war in Ukraine with war and conflict everywhere else we're seeing debt distress increasing countries we're seeing inflation up which is adding to poverty and we're seeing hunger go up the FAO report as serena just mentioned talks about 828 million people living without food food insecure not sure where they're going to put food on the table tonight that's 50 million more people than last year that's 10 million mothers 10 million fathers who don't know how to feed their kids tonight that's not good enough and that's why working on forest is more important than ever because as she was saying forests are where we integrate development climate and nature this is where we can deliver on all of the stg agendas all of the agenda 2030 not just stg 15 and that's so important and as eval said it's also never been more important to do this together in partnership and that's why it's so important Veronica that you've brought together all of these different institutions and partners in the public and private sector today because as we all know forest being cut anywhere is leading to sea level rise everywhere this is a global problem we can't do it alone and that's why at the world bank as we're really thinking about what a 2030 agenda looks like we're thinking about how do we ensure we can ferment green resilient and inclusive development and put forests at the heart of that and that's because we want a development that sticks that creates permanent pathways out of poverty for people and a development that restores momentum on the stg agenda because we've lost too much momentum these past two years on agenda 2030 and for us there's four pillars on which we put on which we put forests at the center of our discussion on green resilient and inclusive development and as we think about these pillars we make sure that for each one of them they integrate immediate development dividends there has to be immediate results that make life better for the people who live in those forests it also has to deliver on the climate agenda and we know from the IPCC that 37 percent of the solution to mitigation of the way we can keep this planet below warming two degrees above where it needs to be is nature based services it's through forests and and of course helping on the nature agenda but we have to make sure that we do that in partnership with poor countries and in partnership with poor communities in every country because we cannot have an agenda on forests that asks the poorest among us to bear the burden of keeping forest standing unless those forests deliver them benefits as well and that's why our four pillars focus first on creating an enabling environment that does integrate development climate and nature and that's talking about putting forward robust policy and building credible institutions which are important to implement that robust policy and to ensure that standing forests and all of the services they provide are both good for the global agenda but also good for the local agenda our second pillar is about doing the actual hard work of protecting forest assets restoring forests this is can be everything from gazetting new protected areas to managing existing protected areas better as we have a discussion around the new global biodiversity framework we talk about the 30 by 30 agenda we cannot forget the protected area state that already exists that is poorly managed we have to improve protected area management not just build new protected areas and of course it's all about doing restoration at a big scale our third pillar is it is all about growing and diversifying businesses around forest capital sustainable businesses and that's important whether it's sustainable forest management whether it's agroforestry nature-based tourism these are just three but this is really really important and finally of course it's about sharing benefits it's about the type of red plus finance that serena mentioned it's making sure that forest deliver not just for national treasuries not just for the global agenda but for the indigenous people in local communities who steward this forest for the small holder farmers who depend on the ecosystem services that flow from forests to increase their income reduce the uncertainty and reduce their hunger we and and this approach works we've showed it in places like Ethiopia we're restoring and better managing 900 000 hectares delivered benefits more money more food security for two and a half million people those are real numbers in the amazon i started talking about how bad things are in the amazon right now but through the amazon sustainable landscapes program we work on with the global environment facility undp and wwf in brazil colombian peru just in 2021 alone we were able to work on improving management of 43 million hectares of protected areas restore over 5000 hectares and that benefited 28 000 people and those are 28 000 of the poorest people in brazil colombia and peru and so Veronica i just wanted to say to you and to everybody else that the world bank stands ready to apply our money our technical assistance our analytics and our convening services to really unlock the power of forests to help us all achieve agenda 2030 thank you thank you so much Valerie for your strong and very passionate call of you know of us needing to step up action and to work together and also you know to put the the expertise of the world bank at the service of forests it's very much appreciated and also you know the insights you gave on very concrete examples how these practices work and that they can change the life of of many and i also found it very interesting you mentioned you know the growing and the diversification of business opportunities and this brings me to my next speaker who is kindly joining us from indonesia dr christianto um he's the director of forest product processing and marketing at the director general for sustainable forest management at the ministry of environment and forestry in indonesia and he's a senior scientist and he's worked on in the areas forest product technology focusing on wood bamboo and rotten processing technology um as as an area of research and mr christianto um it has not been mentioned that much today but we know that the ana global consumption of natural resources will be increasing and is expected to double more to more than 290 billion tons in 2016 and forest can play a huge role in providing these new needed renewable resources and indonesia is currently holding the g20 presidency and is focusing on recovery from the covid pandemic and indonesia has also made many efforts on a national level to use natural resources more sustainable and for us will be interesting if you could reflect on how we can achieve food and nutrition security but at the same time manage to protect the forests while using them sustainably and in that sense you know supporting the livelihoods of many with this question the floor is yours thank you thank you very much everyone good morning good afternoon and good evening here in indonesia my name is christian talk and yes first of all from my point of view when it comes to land based sector such as forestry and agriculture the main principle that must be upheld is to ensure that every inch of the land is wisely utilized indonesia's forest area with an area of more than 120 million hectares or about 60 percent of indonesia's land certainly has an important and fundamental role especially in providing land and space for the benefit of national development one of the main land needs for indonesia is to meet the food needs for indonesia's 275 million people social forestry is a national priority program to manage forest sustainably to improve community welfare including through agroforestry where communities earn income from forest products and intercropping agriculture and plantation of the 4.1 million hectares of social forestry permits that have been issued an area of 285 thousand 530 hectares have been planted with food crops spread across 30 provinces the ministry of environment and forestry in collaboration with the state-owned forestry business entati we know it as perhutani and the ministry of agriculture has initiated the social forestry food security program this program aims to encourage community participation in social forestry programs and provide assistance for the development of rice and corn commodities production facilities and equipment technical assistance in rice and corn cultivation and post-harvest production the social forestry food security program is carried out using a natural forestry system in forest areas both on java island and outside java island forest areas in java are suitable for the cultivation of rice and corn as intermittent crops the potential area of rice cultivation and secondary food crops in java island cover an area of 196 thousand 240 hectares of this so far 100 106 thousand 212 hectares have been identified of which 30 thousand 400 hectares are suitable for corn cultivation in social forestry areas and 15 thousand hectares and 60 thousand hectares are suitable for rice and maize cultivation within the perhutani management area respectively meanwhile the potential agro forestry development area for rice cultivation and food crops outside java islands includes 46 thousand 670 hectares in the community forest area and 72 thousand 950 hectares in the village forest area furthermore the fulfillment of food needs is not only applied through social forestry schemes but can also be pursued through forest utilization permit sims or PBPH after the enactment of the omnibus law there has been a paradigm shift in forest management previously production forest management was true a timber based management approach which later transformed into forest landscape management like what Serena mentioned and the current forest utilization permit sims scheme uses the multi-business forestry approach multi-business forestry is defined as the implementation of several businesses by management units in forest management right areas forest utilization business permits or forest areas environmental services forest product so what i mean by forest multi-business is forest areas environmental services and forest products collection of forest products social forestry as an effort to optimize the productivity of forest areas especially production forest the main keyword of multi-business forestry is optimist optimization of forest area productivity which means not only optimize optimization to produce timber forest products but also including for non timber forest products but also including sorry but also including for non timber forest product and environmental services including the provision for food needs through the development of agro forestry programs with communities around forest areas multi-business forestry's main principle is how to meet the various national development needs that can be provided from forest areas with condition ecologically sustainable socially accepted and economic economically visible thank you very much thank you very much for giving us this overview on how um Indonesia is working on reconciling on one hand the food security needs but also you know providing economic livelihood and sustainability but you know from the environmental social and economic sites and you know through a range of products not only you know timber but also rice um and corn and you know within you know landscape management approach uh with this i would like to move to our next speaker to bring in the perspective of youth um Gabriella Reneiros holds a bachelor in forestry engineering from the national agrarian university of Peru and she serves as a commissioner for itto at the international forestry students association and Gabriella at the world forestry congress which took place from second to fifth of may in korea this year we also the adoption of a youth call to action which is entitled work with us and what actions do you consider necessary to scale up the role and the involvement of youth to bring on board their knowledge and their ambition and maybe their innovative ideas to support the the global challenges particular of halting deforestation and forest degradation and promoting sustainable forest management uh Gabriella the floor is yours thank you thank you very much for your question uh good morning or good afternoon everyone it's an honor for me to be here to talk about the role of youth as an innovation driver to build a future with forests and trees i believe that the actions to be taken to involve young people in the fight against deforestation and forest degradation should be the following first access to quality education we must ensure that inclusive and equitable access to high quality forestry education and training is warranting for young people everywhere from the beginning of a pandemic to the present day many families especially in developing countries such as Peru which is where I live and study have been hard hit by the lack of work bringing economic problems to households many young students have had to drop out the university because it was impossible to pay for it and instead had to generate incomes to support the family this was even harder for students living in remote areas as they had no access to to internet and computers to take virtual classes a big gap has formed between those who have the privilege to of accessing university and those who do not therefore in order to reduce this gap we propose the following ideas first improve programs that prepare the youth in technical knowledge but also on socioeconomics and global political economy perspective of the forest sector and expand the number of scholarship ability available particularly in developing countries and enhance international support for implementing effective and touch of capacity building programs the second idea is ensure decent work and there is development for your everywhere many of the job with a decent salary for a decent life especially in developing countries require require at least one of to three years of experience master degrees diplomas and training course but how can we meet these requirements if there are no job opportunities many of us forestry students come out of public universities and since we have no work experience the salary we receive are low and it's very difficult to get a diploma or even a master degree most of the job for students or recent graduates are on a project basis or for a short period of time there is no possibility to gain suffice enough work experience and the result in the love of your young talent because they have no opportunity for development so they have to work in other areas than their studies in ordentum air uh the sensibility so how can we fix that well it should be a priority engage with you to better understand how the forest sector can be a more appealing career option for you and create more decent job and career development and advance opportunity and also a strange and heist multi-sector collaboration between governments and the private and academic sector to provide high quality mentorship opportunities to ensure a small entry into the workforce for you finally I would like to say that effort should not only be focused on those young people who have been able to access higher education but also on those who live in the forest uh many young people prefer to give up work in the fields because it's not enough money to survive they migrate to urban areas to look for a better opportunities so we are losing man powers and knowledge because what they know about farming they have learned from their parents and grandparents this is that is what why invest must be decentralized inclusive and sustainable over the time that's all thank you thank you so much gabriella and some some interesting food for thought and maybe something to think as as programs are being set up how to keep alive the generational knowledge through youth and to really finding a way of creating jobs for youth in the forestry sector and I think you had a point there of making sure that the sector becomes more appealing especially as we discuss how it can contribute to solving those global challenges and I think this would be a good moment now I would like to open the floor to the panel discussion I see we've received some questions already um some are already being written um I responded to in in writing um as I'm not sure that all participants can see the question I would just you know start with the question that Patrick Carlos has put forward and I see Valerie Hickey has already replied but maybe you can just quickly um respond here as well because you talked about the four pillars and I think many of our audience would be interested where you're basing these pillars from and maybe to learn more about thank you no thank you Veronica and thank you Patrick for the question so this has come out of us doing an awful lot of thinking around how do we actually integrate development climate and nature because I think we all agree with the narrative and we've all been very good about speaking about this but we've been looking at projects and really trying to decipher how do you autopsy a successful project that has delivered real benefits for people that has delivered mitigation or adaptation benefits from a climate perspective and that has been good for biodiversity and these four pillars are really what we began to see as the common threads throughout and we think it's very important now for each of these pillars we think about the policy the the institutions the infrastructure and the finance that are important to make each of the pillars work including that first pillar where we talk about policy and institutions but the type of integrated planning that we heard from several people from Sheem from Iwals from from Serena and others today that is so important but for each of them when we we talk about for example growing and diversifying sustainable businesses around forests it's very important to think about what are the policies that matter there and this isn't necessarily about forest policy it's often about business policy what does it look like how do you connect with the types of work that with the the types of international policies for importing countries where we're looking at things where people are trying to decouple deforestation from commodities what does that look like how do we make sure the policies and countries work and of course being a bank we spend a lot of time thinking about how do we make sure there's finance available for each of these pillars and this is one of the things that lately we really realize that what we need to do is catalyze a chain reaction of finance too often in finance we look at it as about financing a project one project to build a strong forest institution to create a new protected area to do sustainable forest management and yet what we realize is instead of financing green projects we need to finance green economies because otherwise we continue to suffer from the boom and bust of project finance where you have a project it works well while the finance is flowing and then the results erode quickly when the finance is gone and to do that Veronica we're really thinking about how do we better connect grant finance which is so important to support things like policy reform which countries aren't going to borrow for which private capitalism going to finance how do we connect that to international public finance so world bank finance for example which is highly concessional loan money that can be used to build public infrastructure that often doesn't have the revenue profile to attract private capital but that is necessary to increase the potential reward for private capital that will attract private capital so how do we connect grand financing to international public financing to ultimately attract private capital and to make sure that domestic public finances domestic budgets can be better used to make sure that the money that governments have which is less and less because of how difficult things are at the moment can be used to the best extent so that's where we tie these four pillars to the importance of finance for each one and within finance to the idea of running a finance marathon to green and economy where you plug in grand finance you make sure that attracts the bigger loan finance at scale that in itself attracts the private capital that can really deliver the jobs and GDP and deliver the results we need at scale thank you very much for illustrating that very clearly and maybe if I may use an image it's a bit like planting the seed to have a tree come out that has different roots and therefore you know it's stable and you know it can you know help help in many ways and I think the the idea of you know moving to green economies that don't need the initial finance anymore because there's been a you know a spilling over effect is very interesting and I think that leads me also to the question to to serena because the red plus team is also working in the area of of carbon finance but maybe you can illustrate on the project that's FAO is is working on and you know focus a bit on the ideas of policy reform and how to link that with finance because I feel like this idea has been already introduced a bit now by Valerie yeah thank you Veronica and I think uh very very good to be in the same line of thought with Valerie as well I think I was thinking a little bit how do we scale up all of these sort of actions that are needed and indeed beyond the commitment and from the political point of view and both in the short, medium and long term what is really really needed is finance I think this was one of the points also that was coming up from the World Forestry Congress in the specific sessions that we organize also on the ministerial forum on forest finance and other other sessions and it's very much in line with what Valerie was mentioning this renovated call for synergies between public and private funding and when we say public also really from national to international so having this sort of virtual virtual circle of of finance that can let's say lead to rearrangements of the of the investments in the in the land use to rearrangements of investments that are of course not to detriment of the forest but actually can boost agriculture production in a more sustainable sustainable manner and indeed when thinking about international final public finance we do think very much also on the green climate fund in addition to World Bank that Valerie already elaborated very very very well but of course we also think about a green climate fund and also the all the carbon finance that are linked to the rewards to those countries that have demonstrated results and success in the reduction of the forestation so try to close the circle a little bit on the preparatory of the very intense work that the countries have been doing the last 10 plus years of preparation of surplus strategies for example identification and connections of their actions to reduce the forestation in the surplus strategies within the season therefore also this passage that the countries have done into the the the progress with the the Paris Agreement so connecting red plus with NDCs implementing actions on the ground really to achieve the results and finally achieving their results based payments through GCF window opportunities that we hope that it will be eventually reopened for for countries to to be able to access to those payments but also through increasingly emerging market systems and emerging standards that are calling for also the connection with the private sector for more an enhanced environmental integrity of the emission reductions and therefore all the discussions or are trees that describe discussions on the on the leaf coalition for example and other opportunities of carbon finance that can really link the the rewards to to the to the efforts at various countries we have been supporting various countries in achieving results based payments especially in Latin America because they were the pioneering countries in moving progress in in these results Chile, Colombia, Argentina but also in other countries in other regions such as Africa in Asia there are a lot of opportunities and the FAO stands ready to support I would have other points about the time being I'll stop here Veronica. Thank you very much Serena also you know a very concrete bunch of ideas of how we can link you know the governance and with the finance and it's a very dynamic sector that is you know growing in terms of green finance you know maybe not and maybe forestry is not yet the area that's you know among the biggest in the in the green finance sector but definitely growing. I wanted to see again with Dr. Cristiano because I'm curious about the question of agricultural production and also you know Serena mentioned it there to you know boost agricultural productivity and maybe you can tell us a bit more about the forest permit schemes and the social forestry schemes that that you have mentioned how they work you know in terms of you know increasing productivity but making sure you know the resources are still being used sustainably and maybe already as a follow-up question with this and this is already a question also to the other panelists what would be needed to to scale up to those innovative ideas that we already have you know and very concrete suggestions to policymakers as we're now moving to the HRPF later today. Dr. Cristiano, the floor is yours. Yes, thank you Veronica. Yes, I'm from the government point of view that we need to include the people near the forest the social forestry is one of the form of it and they can ask for the permission with the government with individually they have a cooperation a group of people that they gather together and also one of the small small MNDU enterprises they can ask for the permit to go from the social forestry and this social forestry is an area with the omnibus law with the Ucheka we try to open it's not only utilizing the area for the from the forest from the timber but also for what we call it multi business so they open for nowadays people is going for the natural based tourism it's not only it's not a big deal when they're making with the selfie with their phone cell with a good scenery it's it's good for them to get good creation in every village because the every place they got their own space they got the specific scenery so we in that particular area they can develop in this very small scale in the village and then they put it in the instagram they put it in the facebook it's it's going around and it's it's open the business opportunity from the village that previously they don't have any income so people come to take the the specific area to take the the picture of that area and they put it in instagram that's that the power of the media social and the other thing is that we also think about the the the non-timber forest product even in the area is they have a specific area like the specific potential like bamboo or ratan or the other resin or honey they they can pursue from the permit and because of the the new regulation the permit is not complicated so they asking for the permit to the government and the government will be granted the the the way they they they need to do business the the area and to scale up the the the point of the social forestry is not only for the people who understand or to the area but they also helping basically to helping people in the in the near and the forest because as you may know that the only business in Indonesia that survives during the pandemic is the forest-based business so it's it's good good example that they're not connected they're not have they're far away from the the crowd they they they produce the timber of course and also some of the area they're producing more on the honey they're producing more on the resin they're producing more in the bamboo and ratan so basically i'm uh uh from the government point of view we try our best to to achieve the hdg's target by optimizing the land and optimizing the the uh we also involve the the people near the forest but we push it with our our government as a regulator so we provide the policy that support them thank you very much thank you very much i think it's been a very good illustration of how the government can support you know local initiatives by you know providing a supportive and innovative framework there and also as you mentioned that it's not you know the people working and living directly in the forestry but you know also the neighborhood and the jackson communities that thrive um from from the sector so there was a very good reminder there and i think that leads me to my next question it has already been partially responded to in written um but it um leads to the role and the linkages of poverty and also in the hrpf that the title of the session is sdg 15 and interlinkages with other sdg's um so the question from justine has been that poverty is both a cause and effect of deforestation and forest degradation poverty is massive and increasing in much of africa what should be done to solve the problem i see that that valeri hiki has responded but maybe also sham wants to to step in there as well um if she wants to you know elaborate a bit more what the two of you have put in written i don't know who wants to go first maybe valeri thank you Veronica i mean largely i think it's absolutely critical to remember that barists are one of those solutions that are that can be win win win when done properly and it's important to remember that being done properly doesn't mean simply left standing to manage a global agenda while forgetting that there are national interests and local interests and local institutions that need to have their interests served to and that's why thinking about integrating development with the climate and biodiversity agendas are so important gabon for example has been a leader in thinking through how to do this in the congo basin where they're thinking about how do you look across the landscape recognize that forestry is absolutely critical in terms of the ecosystem services it's providing for the rural poor and we all have to remember that of the 10 percent or so of the world's people who live in extreme poverty most of those people live in rural areas they're not living in cities so these are smallholder farmers who are food insecure these are indigenous peoples and local communities who are living in dire poverty around forests and so gabon is thinking about where do we leave forest standing we're leaving those forest standing can attract red plus payments and other payments and that money can be used to create social safety nets and create welfare and pats out of poverty for local people where else in the forest can sustainable forest management be done where you can do sustainable harvesting not just to export round wood for example but really to think about how do you do value-added processing where else in the forest can we do nature-based tourism where people want to go see the famous forest elephants of gabon and how do we make sure how does gabon make sure that its local communities are benefiting from that tourism and tourism is designed in a way to leave the money locally and not to leak out and leak into other areas and so that's a kind of integrated planning that has to happen but the foundation of thinking about how do we use natural capital and forests to deliver on this sort of triple agenda to fight the triple environmental crisis but deliver on development it means understanding the value of natural capital understanding where it is and what it's worth because we've seen too often we've all heard if we can't measure something we can't manage it and too often that means where it's not measured it's not managed it's liquidated for the pockets of already wealthy people leaving behind even poorer people and more vulnerability and so understanding and we're helping every country through program we have called the global program on sustainability gps formally known as waves the wealth accounting and valuation of ecosystem services we're helping countries actually account for their natural capital know where their forests are what the value of those forests are and the value that those forests are creating through ecosystem services so that that that information can be used as part of a decision-making framework so completely agree that that poverty and vulnerability is both the cause and an effect of deforestation the legal deforestation so we need to manage forest in a much more integrated way but we need to think about at the end of the day not just having a conversation that pits the global north against the global south where we want the Congo basin to stand because it's important or the Amazon to stand because it's important for global climate change but rather how do we ensure we will pay for it to stay standing but allow enough of it to be managed in a way that also delivers jobs in GDP locally thank you so much again you know for highlighting the value of natural capital and it needs to be better integrated in the decision-making process and then you know how this can also link to efforts to addressing you know poverty uh sham I think you also have responded to this question maybe you also want to elaborate here a bit further on your thoughts thank you very much excuse me thank you very much Veronica and yes I fully agree with what Valerie has already mentioned here and I put a comment in the chat to answer that question to say that the World Bank had issued and published a report in 2021 entitled designing fiscal instruments for sustainable forests ITTO had contributed to a chapter within that report which looked at the vulnerable economies particularly and how to design fiscal instruments that can motivate and incentivize respect and acknowledgement for the value that forests can bring particularly when sustainably managed my mantra has always been that harvesting from legally and sustainably managed forests is not deforestation because it is extremely key that the communities and countries that rely on forestry revenues as a national source of income need to be incentivized to manage those forests properly and not succumb to the fiscal attractions of other sectors such as agriculture mining or even infrastructure now it's absolutely true that there needs to be a mechanism that is agreed at the national level where a certain percentage of the forests can be left standing why because of its multi-dimensional contributions to international goals and at the same time the production forests need to be sustainably managed in order to provide for the three pillars of sustainable development so that's economic returns and environmental and social protection this is key and from an analysis that was done on forests worldwide from about a decade ago actually it was 2013 when I was in my previous capacity prior to joining the ITTO it is very clear that forests touch almost all of the sustainable development goals for 2030 this is something that we need to amplify even more at high level in order to encourage and provide incentives and motivation for countries to follow suit so some of this has already been advocated at the COP26 and I'm hoping that there will be a natural follow-through at the COP27 to capitalize further on the true value of forests now it's interesting that Gabon has also been mentioned I just returned from Gabon yesterday actually because that was the congo basin partnership on forests and it is extremely true that Gabon has been quite how would I say innovative in coming up with what they are currently pursuing but it will be very interesting for all of you to know that there have been several other producing countries for example my home country of Malaysia and even Indonesia that have actually executed such measures from at least two decades ago now the the thing that is in my head is despite all these efforts how is it that some countries gain traction and some don't in order to attract international public financing I think it's more a question of on our part and advocating further understanding of the value of natural capital has already been work ongoing for at least three decades so that's 30 years from 30 years ago but accepting that value for financing purposes is something that has been slow sorry for being so frank it has been incredibly slow in gaining traction from international large donors to get to that level to see why these values need to be financed and why that financing needs to continue and I'm not saying that this should be free finance all along grant based financing of course is extremely important due to the levels and differences of GNP and GDP between the donor countries and the recipient countries but grant financing can always be followed through particularly if projects are successful at the national level for them to include that in their annual or their five year or 10 year economic development plans there has to be a good return a decent good economic return in order to make those measures viable for the future I think I'll stop that I hope my intervention was useful thank you thank you very much and I think also a question to all of us of how we can support this process of increasing traction but also you know making sure that the return I mean in this case we're speaking of an economic one is there but you know also the people living on the ground in the forest with the forest how they see a good return and that they see a benefit of you know either protecting or using the forest sustainably and I think also Serena wanted to come in briefly on the question of poverty and the forestry how this is implemented thanks Veronica just very quickly and with two I call the very important messages Valerie and Shim but in my opinion it's also very important to stress that all the actions that countries at different level national subnational or very local do on halting the forestation restoration of sustainable forest management are not and should not be done just for the sake of climate change mitigation or for environmental purposes but these are always been done for sustainable development as well I mean the key sort of the key target of the actions on the on the ground is always as Valerie was correctly mentioned kind of a triple or quadruple win because it's a it's a very it's very special asset what we are talking about the natural asset that had so many co-benefits climate change mitigation adaptation because when we think about the the forest sector indeed all the actions that we do to mitigate climate change climate change also link to adaptation on the on the local communities to promote and to support them in for example better resistance or resilience to to to climate change and to this to disasters at the same time also it's very important to think of how these actions enhance the um the rooting of the countries of the sorry the rooting of the communities in the territory in their territories very often we think we we've seen for example in one case comes from Argentina on the need and the and the sort of emergency of migration of communities from the provinces or from the local territories because of lack of kind of a livelihood or sustainable source of income now one of the projects that we're doing with them actually through the results based payments is to use part of the distribution use part of the funding part of the gcf funding to tackle to make them trickle down to the provincial level and to enhance investments in the territories and therefore in the local territories and therefore for the benefit of the local communities and trying to really enhance also the possibility of communities to thrive in their territories with no need of migrating if they don't want to do to do so and also just to echo the the important message of the integrated land use planning and really try to make best benefits of where the land needs to be or can be used for agriculture where it needs to maintain for pristine forest etc so just to echo so this is a very important message from our variation thank you thank you very much Serena and maybe let me give the floor again to Gabriella because you were mentioning the word territory and thriving maybe Gabriella has an interesting experience to share with us from a farmer's field school and how you know communities can be brought on on board you are muted Gabriella oh sorry sorry yes i want to share an experience that i have that last week i was working with farmers in the amilton rainforest we are doing an inventory of forests and we realize that there are a lot of lands that they could because they need to eat and they know that it's not a sustainable practice over the time but they don't have the technical support to change that so i think one of the main goals we must do is to provide them the technical support and also the capital to maintain the sustainable the agriculture in in their lands because most of the lands are sold to other people to do meaning or something like that and not to protect the forest so i think it's really important to provide them the knowledge i don't know how to describe that the have the the package of knowledge to the farmers thank you Gabriella i think it was a very important reminder making sure that moving to action you know means also you know sharing the knowledge making sure that those live from the forest can you know protect them and have a benefit from it but i think that is i think a point that has come out very clear from from this discussion that policies and development need to work with and for the people on the ground and with this word i would like to thank our panelists and also the audience for the highly stimulating conversation for the questions i see there's still some comments coming up in the chats and i see our panelists are still responding but i would like that now take the moment to move to avid rummage diner for his concluding reflections and maybe give us also his idea how we can build forward better differently more inclusively by investing into forest-based solution i've already introduced avid at the beginning he's the deputy director of the FAO forestry division and he has been coordinating the production of the state of the words forest report avid the floor is yours thank you valery and it is really a pleasure for me to to start with thanking you all thank you it to shum for for leading this today and also for your welcoming remarks and your input and also all of you panelists i really enjoyed very much listening to you you have been able to put together a very rich strategic discussion that is that is with us for a long time still because they we have been talking about this in the past but what i see a bit different today is that there's a lot of focus on solutions that wasn't here 10 or 15 years ago and many of you who who might have felt this discussion there is a shift towards solutions that we have heard from you both strategically but also concretely in in the many dimensions that that we have covered in these almost one and a half hours what comes through fairly strongly is here as they say there will not be a healthy economy on an unhealthy planet so this this basis of making sure that we effectively address environmental deterioration climate change and biodiversity was mentioned but also the pandemic that we have had and will have in the future if we don't get that environmental deterioration under control that needs to be integrated at the same time as we have seen now this needs to address economic recovery address the fallout of crisis inflation has been mentioned the rising poverty has been mentioned but you have also all of you provided some elements of how we can go forward with forests and trees providing solutions as one colleague has said basically during the during the pandemic when things shut down one of the few things where people could get additional income was forest and trees the issue that we have is not only as was mentioned how do we get this debate into into practice I think many of us if not all of you as panelists was sure you're working on these every day through your projects and pushing things forward but all of us we do know that we need solutions at scale that are cost-effective and that reach more marginalized groups that and that can be implemented rapidly the case from Indonesia and others very good examples of how this can be done and I think there are many more restoration wasn't too visible today but certainly there is a lot of restoration activity where it's also about giving jobs and income to people in often usually in rural areas what the SDG has in the center and has been underlined a couple of time is this protection the restoration and the sustainable use of forests and trees but what is really important is that and it has been underlined this this capacity of forests and trees and forestry if done properly to provide a lot of benefits to people and with that basically help a range of other SDGs not only to make progress but with this change in the in perspective of forest and trees actually being a powerful solution rather than just a contribution and I think that has not yet fully trickled in given that we that we often really fight with with the deterioration of forests and trees because agriculture seems to do that faster and better but not sustainably in the long term we've had recently Stockholm plus 50 and and and there this issue that was brought up in the 1992 and some of you have sort of hogged back decades this environment and development to go together so this was a good point in time to ask what is different today from 1992 and I think a lot of it is actually yes it is the same a lot of it is also different there is climate finance there is the carbon neutrality there is the circular economy use that wasn't so strong 30 years ago or 50 years ago in this case and that is something that we are moving into we will need the world will need more renewable and more carbon neutral materials and the private sector not so visible today the private sector has a critical role to play here in driving such a transition and that brings in the loans and the access to funding and the access to opportunities to do that in a way that protects and restores at the same time as it's helping scaling up businesses with sustainable materials with sustainable services to provide income and to use forest and nature in a in a in a positive way in a sustainable way one element that is critical that has come out very often here is if we want to change things they need to be changed on the ground by the small holes by local communities by indigenous peoples that need to be empowered and to lead and scale up their own ways of developing in the context of sustainability and that they need to derive sustainable substantial tangible benefits for doing so fact is that currently less than 2 percent of global climate finance is reaching small farmers indigenous people in its local community so there is a long way to go between the big numbers of finance and the real realities on the ground there are just no good transfer mechanisms that we have available to scale up red plus is doing some others are doing others the world bank is working working strongly in this area but we need to get better at local communities and small holders getting access to the potential funding that there is there we've heard and we are very convinced that the young the youth is wanting and needs to build a future that is better than maybe we we can offer them today but we have also heard how important education is how important farmer fields schools are how important it is to get from from a graduation into a job getting a foothold early to do to be able to develop the leadership and the innovations that drive us forward this I think is a topic that needs even more attention than we have had in the last decade building a new generation of leaders in the localities not only at the global levels and we are happy to have it here at the this voice here at the global levels many of you have referred to the climate conference on the UN food systems summit some of you have referred to the world forestry congress that was held recently and we are here in the context of the collaborative partnership of forests bringing together 15 international entities around the forest agenda here at the global and regional levels and I think it is really important and you have underlined this we need to build on that COP 27 is coming up the FAO committee on forestry is coming up there are many of those occasions where we need to drive this agenda forward in order at some point in time to really be able to measure this progress on the SDG 15 and that's why we are here today at the high level political forum because it it focuses and it discusses SDG 15 and the way forward on it and I hope this has been for you as much as it has been for me a really really interesting discussion fantastic panelists with fantastic contributions thoughts concrete sharp and strategically at the right point in time focused on solutions how can we make things work in practice we will need a lot of these energy and a lot of these refreshing thinking and acting to achieve what the world community has set up to achieve by 2030 the SDG 15 and a range of others forest forest pathways are a critical element of enabling this in the in the rural areas so let's make sure they have the chance but let's also not forget that forests and trees are critical also for cities both as a carbon neutral material and for carbon and biodiversity services in cities and with this I wish us all a good rest of the day thank you once again panelists for your excellent contributions and with this I hand back over to you Valerie for closing thank you thank you very much ever for for wrapping up the discussion so so nicely and comprehensively and and indeed to make sure in the discussions also afterwards all of us that forest are not only a contribution but they become a real solution for development and that develop works with the people and and for the people and with this we approach the end of today's event but not the end of the discussion as you all know very well we hope that today's reflection will feed into the liberations at the high level political forum the session would just start right afterwards as well as FAO's committee on forestry that ever just mentioned and of course the UNF triple C cop in Egypt later this year I think we all had a lot of food for thought and points to take away to make sure that we come towards a more integrated approach on forestry and to coming more from a food systems perspective with this thank you very much for joining us today to our audience to asking many questions and I wish you all a very nice rest to your day thank you very much and goodbye