 I'd like to welcome everybody to this webinar today. It's in the IIEA Development Matters series, and we have, as our guest speaker today, Dr. David Nabarro. My name is Tom Arnold. I'm thrilled to be able to introduce David. This is his, I think, third time he's spoken at the IIEA. The first time was in January 2016, when I had the pleasure of welcoming him as Director-General at the time. And in the meantime, of course, he occupies an enormous responsibility, a number of important roles, and we'll be hearing about some of those when we get down to speaking. I just want to go through a couple of housekeeping arrangements before we start, just to reiterate that this is the series Development Matters supported by RJAID. The initial address and the Q&A session are on the record. I'd invite guests to submit their questions via the Q&A function on Zoom and to identify themselves and their affiliation before asking the speaker a question and encourage guests to tweet using the handle at IIEA. David Nabarro, I think, has become a household name in Ireland in the last 18 months in particular, as he's given such important commentary on the COVID crisis and always with a level of wisdom and huge experience. And I think his voice is one of the most trusted among the Irish public on the many difficult issues associated with COVID. But today, his main focus is going to be on the food system summit, which took place in September and for which there was a huge amount of work in preparation for that over the previous 18 months. So we really look forward to hearing David at that point. I just, before we go to David though, we're going to hear from Sinead McPhillips. Sinead is the Assistant Secretary for Agri-Food Sector Policy and Strategy Development in the Department of Agriculture and Food and Marine. And Sinead had a key role from a national point of view in helping prepare the Irish contribution to the food system summit. So Sinead, could I firstly hand over to you and then I'll introduce David subsequently. Thank you very much, Tom. And it's a pleasure to be here today and to, in particular, for David's address. David has played a vital role in coordinating and encouraging the massive global effort leading up to the food system summit. He's a good friend of Ireland as we all know and it's great to have him back here speaking to us today. In Ireland, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in partnership with the Department of Foreign Affairs and with the ODS convened a series of four national dialogues on Ireland's food system as part of Ireland's engagement with the summit. And we were pleased to have David as one of our keynote speakers. These dialogues provided an opportunity for all stakeholders from producers to consumers to learn more about our food system and to contribute to its future sustainability. Almost 9,000 people participated either live or watched back the dialogue sessions highlighting the interest and engagement there is in improving our food system. I was delighted to be the national convener for the dialogues and they were a very successful part of Ireland's strong engagement with the summit. The Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConnelough, was directly involved in preparations for the summit and attended the pre-summit in Rome in July. And President Higgins delivered Ireland's national statement at the UN Food System pre-summit itself in September. Ireland also looks forward to playing a meaningful role in the summit's follow-up. The dialogues coincided, obviously, with the development of our own national strategy for Ireland's agri-food sector, Food Vision 2030, which obviously Tom chaired and played a vital role in bringing into a conclusion which was published by the government in August. The strategy was developed by the Irish agri-food stakeholders, including our farmers, fishers and food businesses, using a food systems approach, taking account of the linkages between policies for food, environment and health and nutrition. We look forward today to hearing David's reflections in the aftermath of the summit and how the outcomes of the summit will be taken forward and implemented. For all of us who are policy makers, the question now is, what next? However difficult negotiating strategy may be, implementation is always even more challenging. So thank you again to the IIEA for hosting this webinar today as part of the development matter series and I really look forward to hearing it from David. Thank you. Thanks very much, Sinead. David Nabarro has a very long CV which I'm not going to read, but I'll give you for today, for the purpose of today's meeting, some of the key elements that I think are important. He's a senior advisor for the UN Food Systems Summit Dialogues, of which Sinead referred, and there were over 1,600 dialogues held around the world in advance of the summit which took place on the 23rd and 24th of September. David is also the WHO special envoy on COVID-19. He previously was the special advisor of the UN Secretary General on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change. He is a physician who studied at Oxford and holds a master's degree in reproductive endocrinology and public health. I've worked very closely with David for about the last 15 years. He has provided outstanding leadership in so many areas within the international sphere and it's a real privilege to introduce him here today. David. Thank you, Tom. Everybody, a couple of quick words really as a disclaimer, it's an absolute privilege to have several decades of experience working closely with some of the greatest people that I've ever encountered in the international relations and development and they happen to be people in different parts of the Irish ecosystem, not just in government but also in civil society and business, local authorities and even many individuals and community groups that I've had the chance to be in touch with. You enrich me, you enrich thousands of development practitioners, you enrich the world because of the particular way in which you combine an ability to tangle with and often achieve great results when up against incredibly difficult political, institutional and structural challenges and you do it with just humility and it's a genuine humility because as a society, you really do realize that there's only so much that any one of us can do individually and that everything great comes from people working together for common purpose. So thank you. And that's why I keep coming back because when I connect with you individually and collectively, I'm inspired. Particular, particular shout out to Sinead McPhillips in her role as Assistant Secretary for Agri-Food, Sectoral Policy and Strategy Development. She was actually able to dovetail the requests from the UN for a multi-stakeholder series of dialogues about the future of the food system with the ongoing processes that you've been leading so brilliantly from inside Ireland or between Ireland and the United Kingdom because of the land border you have with them or between Ireland and the rest of the wonderful European Union or between Ireland and the world through your well-established programs of long-term trustworthy development cooperation. So thank you, Sinead, for bringing that totality of Irish engagement on multiple levels with that hallmark of consistency and respect for the rights of all humanity into the dialogue process and doing it so skillfully. I'd also like to give a special shout out to Paul Killen who represents Ireland's interests on food and agriculture in Roma as part of a relationship with the different EU and systems agencies as well as of course all the different people who've been active in other parts of the world where the UN has a presence, particularly in New York. I'd like to mention the leadership of Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConnallog. Charlie met with me during the pre-summit on the 25th to 27th of July in Rome but Charlie didn't just come along and say, I'm gonna talk about Ireland and I'm gonna use this pre-summit moment to push my own national interests. No, quite the reverse. He came and he sat with us together with Sinead and together with Paul Killen and he said, what can we do from Ireland to make this summit process a success? And he redrafted his remarks following our discussion and presented them at the beginning of a key ministerial roundtable and they were true framing remarks from a real statesman who wasn't just talking about priorities with Irish eyes. He was saying priorities with Irish eyes but with a whole global intention. And so having respected those good people perhaps one other person or two people to refer to. One is Tom Arnold who is a friend and is also an advisor and is for me a mentor and he's mentored me since we started working together during the Irish Hunger Task Force in 2008. And it was Tom who was able to connect Irish history, Irish culture and Irish preoccupations with the challenges of growing food insecurity and a lot of policy incoherence in 2008 and use the findings of the Task Force to really create a broad arc of engagement right through from hunger and malnutrition through to the interests of smallholder farmers and food processes throughout the world. And that came at a time when the link between food production and nutrition was not widely appreciated around the world. It was Ireland who helped to make that link and we all built on that as we were then taking forward the work of the High Level Task Force. I'd also like to refer to Jill and David Donahue, two people between them. Jill with her work in IIEA and David with his extraordinary leadership when it came to the Sustainable Development Agenda and his role in that general assembly process. Everything we've done on the Food Systems Summit has as its ultimate base and its total focus that sustainable development agenda that was negotiated by the UN member states between 2013 and 2015 and then was approved at the UN General Assembly in 2015 as the only plan that exists for the future of our world and of people. And we have to take that plan seriously because we don't have a spare planet. And because that plan has been agreed by world leaders, all of them, it really is worth taking seriously. Whenever I get the chance, I like to explain, particularly to younger people. Yes, I say there is a plan for the future of the world and it was approved by all world leaders and it's super accessible and it describes the world that people want. And that is so often my starting point. So thank you all. There'll be many more that I can't thank personally and perhaps now I should stop. But you know what I'm doing this? Well, I'm talking about all of you and your leadership and what you do. It's because it really matters. Sometimes when a group of people have played a profound, farsighted leadership role, over time amongst themselves, they look at each other and they say, are we right to see ourselves as leaders? Are we right to be recognizing what we've done? And I'm gonna say to you, don't underestimate the power of Irish focus and leadership in this whole area of agriculture, food, nutrition, poverty reduction and wellbeing. It links to climate. It links to health and nutrition. It links to the wellbeing of individuals. It links to gender consideration. It links to young people. It links to everything to do with environment and to do with climate and nature. And in fact, what you've shown and what we've all shown is that it's only with enlightened interconnected leadership that we hold the subject up. If we're not keeping it up through our leadership, it falls down again and it falls into those divisions between sectors and between departments, between ministries and between disciplines that constantly weaken our collective ability to respond because once we are divided and fragmented as everyone here knows, our ability to encourage collective advancement reduces so much. When Mr. Guterres decided that he needed to have a Secretary General Food Systems Summit, he was thinking very carefully about what was needed. The discussions took place in the middle of 2019. The different leaders of UNA entities working on food went and met the Secretary General and made their proposal. And he said, first, I'll do a food systems summit. If you promise me it'll be a systems summit that we really will look at connections between food and all other aspects of human wellbeing. He said, I'll do a food systems summit if you promise that you'll do everything possible to make it inclusive so that we don't just have the usual people there, but that we widen, we bring in different stakeholders, we bring in different interests, we listen to the people who've not normally been heard. And he said, I'll do a food systems summit if it's a summit that focuses on solutions, on ways to move forward that doesn't just identify the problems and have hand-wringing about those problems, but it actually identifies the ways to go. The preparations have been really exciting because we had two years in which to get focused, but we had this COVID-19 pandemic. Imagine trying to plan for a summit where you're getting a lot of involvement of people. You're trying to bring together people with different points of view, but meeting together is totally discouraged because of the virus. So as COVID was really becoming more and more pronounced as we were going into 2020, many of us wondered whether countries and communities would want to engage in the summit. They have. So the first thing that happened in response to Mr. Guterre's positioning of the summit was he appointed Agnes Matilda Calibata as his special envoy, the somebody from Rwanda who has just got a huge history of being firm and clear and resourceful and active on trying to bring about shifts in food systems. She is action-oriented and Mr. Guterre's wanted such a person. He knew that in appointing Agnes Calibata, he would inevitably incite some degree of sucking between teeth by people who have particular interests as to how our work on food systems should be done. But the secretary general was clear. He said, if we're going to have a strong envoy, we're going to need somebody who's not scared of really raising up the issues and getting them talked about. And indeed that's what's happened. Agnes Calibata has led us through the summit and continues to lead us after the summit and is doing it in a sensitive way and in a way that takes account of some of the criticisms that are made against her and against the summit process. In addition, the secretary general asked Agnes to set the summit up with two distinct tracks. The first was to focus on the science and what's got to be done. And the second was to focus on engagement through dialogues. And she did that. We were asked to do with the dialogues part. We offered a methodology for dialogues to all countries. Dialogues that bring together different stakeholders over a series of stages in time. And the dialogues process has been remarkably successful with 148 countries agreeing to undertake them about twice the number that we expected on our wildest and most ambitious dreams. Why? Because of COVID. Because COVID is focusing minds on the need to find solutions for the future. Solutions that are meaningful for generations to come. Solutions that focus on equity and not on widening differences between the haves and the have nots. And that's what's happened. COVID has woken us up and through COVID, the interest in dialogues has been huge and the dialogues have been run in such a way within countries that despite the problems about people being able to meet together, they have still happened. And the numbers involved a total of, if we look at it, somewhere in the region of 108,000 people in more than 1,600 dialogues all over the world, for that to happen amid COVID is amazing. But countries went further and Sinead has led this in Ireland as well. They used the dialogue process to come out with overarching strategic pathways for how stakeholders in country will move forward to the food systems that are needed by 2030, food systems that are equitable and sustainable. And the way they did this was to bring together actors through the dialogues process to produce the strategic pathway documents. And then to get them endorsed within government at an appropriate level and to constantly revalidate them with the stakeholders in the dialogues. We thought it was gonna be impossible to get more than a few governments endorsing these pathways. In the end, we had 108 endorsed pathways. More are still coming through. So taken together, we have a very active multistakeholder engagement all over the world through dialogues. And we have pathways being developed and then actually being revised and put in the public domain. All this is informed by a strong science group with action tracks developing propositions and with leaves of a change coming up with how those propositions can be put into practice. And the summit brought it all together with more than 140 national position statements which invariably built off the wonderful work on and the dialogues. And by the way, thank you President Michael Higgins for setting a fabulous example during the summit talking right at the beginning of this process and showing that the energy unleashed through multistakeholder dialogue in Ireland is energy that is ready to be put to good use on implementation and not to be scared of dealing with the really difficult political issues that surround the future of food systems that you're facing in Ireland. And they're just the same as what is being faced in most countries around the world. There are tough choices ahead. So finally, how are all the exciting discussions and all the brilliant ideas that are going to be taken ahead in the coming few months and years? Firstly, the Secretary General said clearly at the summit we've got to have another summit in two years time because this is a progressive process transforming food systems. We've got really tough issues to do with on climate and the environment, but tough issues to do with on nutrition and health. Tough issues to do with on rural poverty when it's alleviation. Tough issues to do with on terrible gender differences particularly on the wages made available to women working in food systems. Tough issues to do with on human rights and their realization in relation to food systems. Tough issues to do with on food and peace and how to cope with the increasing hunger and malnutrition associated with conflict or associated with COVID or associated with climate change. How are we going to deal with this? Two more years. But said the Secretary General, I'm expecting within the period 2021 to 2023 for even deeper focus on how transformations are going to be made, how the pathways are going to be implemented, who's going to be involved and when. And then the second thing the Secretary General said very, very clearly was, I want to make certain that we don't slip back to food being divided between different mission, different ministries that don't talk to each other, connect together, make it a true SDG issue, make it truly multi-stakeholder. So get better systems for food systems governance in place over the next two years. And then lastly, we're going to have to have much better and more sophisticated support for countries as they advance on this. Stop dividing food into separate pieces, production, processing, distribution, consumption, nutrition, environment, climate. We've got to bring food system governance together and also we've got to make sure that all the different actors at country level feel that they are part of solving the problem. And that means maintaining multi-stakeholder dialogue, maintaining the broad approach to action and then systems for implementation, coordination and review that don't involve all the different stakeholders to do that, the United Nations will radically shift the way in which it's doing the work and we're right in the midst of the redesign process right now and be very happy to tell you what I know, but some parts of it are still actually being constructed and there are some fairly important events coming up during the rest of October and early November to get it right. So thank you very much, Tom. That's some introductory remarks and I look forward to discussing them in more detail. Thanks again. David, thank you very much. Very clear and comprehensive account of what has happened in the last two years. I would encourage anyone who has questions for David to put them in the chat and we will deal with them. But just in anticipation of that, David, as you well know, the whole concept of food systems is a relatively new one and many countries have been grappling to, let's say, get their head around it. And now in a world, I think the summit was important in terms of putting more attention on the notion of food systems, but there's a huge amount of competing political priorities out there. There's climate, obviously. There's what to do to recover from COVID. There's the geopolitical realities of taking account of, say, Afghanistan and many other places. How can we leverage what was achieved at the Food Systems Summit to have a longer term focus and priority for food systems? Thanks very much, Tom. When we started talking with the UN Secretary-General and his deputy about food systems, there was a bit of eyebrow raising. Why? Why have you introduced yet new language? It's already tough enough to get people to focus on food security and to then bring nutrition and environment into that thinking about food security. Aren't you just adding to complexity with this sort of language? And I think who've recognized the value of systems approaches to dealing with a lot of the complex issues in development will be the first to agree that we should only introduce new ways of thinking and acting if they really do make a difference. Nobody wants to introduce something just to be a problem. And I think for me, the Food Systems Summit, which was the first one of its kind ever by the United Nations, the Food Systems Summit was a really important test bed. And I thought many times that if it was a really difficult issue for governments and others to cope with, then we should very quickly look for alternative conceptual framing. What we found very quickly was that whether people were participating from ministries of agriculture or of health or the environment or foreign ministries or prime minister's offices or national planning commissions, they found the systems approach to be super attractive because they realized that this is an issue that cuts across different ministries. That involves a whole range of stakeholders that responds to the interests of lots of people working in different areas in food production and food consumption. And therefore to see of it in terms of a system with multiple interplays makes good sense. The problem is that when you bring different systems like this together, getting them to come on to the same page and to align so that they can shift in a reasonably clear cut manner is super hard. I mean, everybody knows that if you've got lots of different views in a room, if you would attempt to try to force people into the same group thing, perhaps with nice PowerPoint presentations or skillful appeals to their inner nature and their values and ethics or simply to try to propose a discipline, a scientific discipline that somehow will dominate. I mean, I'm being as a public health person. I used to hope that people would pay super attention to me because I was Mr. Health. Unfortunately they don't. But I very much have watched efforts to align people through various techniques that some might see as actually quite forceful. Doesn't work. And so when we're approaching issues as systems issues, the most important thing we have to do is to accept that everybody who comes into the room will have a different perspective. Their perspectives are all valid. It's not a case of saying I'm right and you're wrong because I think right and you think wrong. On systems work, we've all got valid perspectives. And so then what we have to try to do is to find ways to enable everybody to be comfortable despite their differences. That's why I think that combining a systems approach with a focus on dialogues and then the notion that pathways and ways forward emerge but that we don't expect everybody to say, I agree, I'm there. I'm part of it because we know that different people will align with the new directions in different speeds in different ways. But that style of systems working, we think is really helpful. Now, I want to stress, Tom, that doesn't mean that it's easy but it does mean that it's a way of holding very different points of view together in the same space. And that's what we're trying to do. And I think we're just at the beginning. It's like we're an American. And we've just done perhaps the first five miles and we've got a lot more miles to go. And we know that the rest of the journey is going to include some hardships and so on. But at least we've started off because otherwise if we'd hung around and waited and asked ourselves, is this the right thing to do? We'd never have started. And I think personally that what's happened has at least given us some reason to think this may be going in the right direction even though we may have to do some course correction subsequently. It's like that resistance work. Tommy, you and I remember when we started to get deeply into nutrition, we didn't know where it was going to go but we had a pretty good idea that came from your national framing and your global experience. And it seems to have held good with the scale up nutrition movement. Well, when I recall that time, David, I think most of us didn't know where it was going to go but we always had the sense that you knew that. I mean, I just want to say that. I mean, one has an idea where it might go and I've had that of the nutrition work or the food work or indeed other work, COVID work, but I'm also well aware that I don't have the monopoly. I could be so wrong. And so I suspect one of the things that's important in this system's work is recognizing that sometimes we have to stop, rethink, go backwards and start again. There is quite a lot of that and so it means that we have to not be scared of saying, I don't think I got it right last time. I'm prepared to try again. It's not easy for everybody to do. I mean, but that ability to demonstrate sort of humility in practice is really important. David, the substance of your answer there connects to a question that has been submitted by Sinead Moles, who is a research affiliate for Cambridge Central Africa Forum and who also produced an important report here in Ireland about the food systems for Trocara and Oxam. And Sinead's question is, how are the power imbalances between large agri-business and other stakeholders in the food system? In other words, SME, Small Hold of Farmers, Consumers, how are they considered in the summit outcomes and commitments? And perhaps attached to that was, I mean, the opinion expressed in certain quarters among civil society organizations that the food system summit was not for them. They chose not to participate, notwithstanding the emphasis that you, as you said, and indeed as Agnes Kelley-Bath had kept stressing, they wished to be inclusive. So if you could maybe attempt to respond to that specific question and my subsequent reflection about inclusiveness. Thanks very much indeed. I'd like to start in a way where you took us, Tom, because it's easier then to focus on the question in the present tense from Sinead Moulds. I'm just writing a note. The approach that the UN Secretary-General wanted was one of full inclusion. He did not want, as I understand it, to place impediments on engagement of anybody. So for example, he didn't want to say that only certain countries could participate or only certain enterprises or certain research groups or certain civil society organizations. He didn't want to put firmer entry requirements on. There were some principles set out about the summit in terms of the ways in which he wanted us to behave with each other, particularly in terms of respecting different perspectives, in terms of everybody having an opportunity to participate, in terms of seeking to build trust. But there's not trust in some parts of food systems work and there's quite a lot of mistrust. Now, some of the groups who are mistrustful have said we've spent many years trying to deal with imbalances and unfairness in systems. So we really want you to structure this summit in the institutions in which we've had some progress and to use that institutional base for the summit. And so the request was to use the Committee on World Food Security and to have a framing for the summit that was very strongly grounded in the primacy of human rights instruments. The right to food, but more human rights as well. And this was an effort to cope with the perception that there are such huge differences in power, mostly between corporate actors, businesses particularly, and people who actually do the work in food systems, many hundreds of millions of people, some of whom on the lowest incomes of anybody doing anything in our world. And the feeling was that unless the Committee on Food Security was used as the mechanism through which the work would be done, this summit would actually be irrelevant. And the civil society mechanism of the Committee on Food Security said if you don't do this, we're boycott. Now it was done in a very gradual way. At the beginning there was a request saying, please do this, and then it got stronger. And it was compounded also with two other things that the civil society mechanism didn't like. One was the involvement of Dr. Calabata as a person. And the second was the fact that the World Economic Forum had something to do with the summit as one of the conduits for engaging with the private sector. Well, in the end it was the UN Secretary General who had to make a decision. He said, he had to make the choice, sorry, do we frame the summit entirely in and around the Committee on Food Security and its processes and its mechanisms, not all of which are valued by the different stakeholders that the Secretary General sought to engage in the summit or is an effort made to try to encourage a wider engagement with all the risks that that brings with it. In the end, he went for a wider engagement but for an explicit position of the Committee on Food Security in the summit. But possibly it was too late or possibly it was just not acceptable in any sense and the boycott has continued and the continued anger of those civil society movements that have been involved in this is still evident. My own view, just because I'm here and Sinead, you've asked the question, my own view is that actually in life it's important that those who disagree do engage and do speak and in fact do try to work together. I also believe that that has to be done in a very carefully constructed way so that there is not any kind of bullying or intimidation or harassment of those who've got less power than those who've got more power which are all the elements of corporate capture that have been referred to by the civil society mechanism. But my position based on the political scientists who talk a lot about negotiation, finding common cause, my position is that the issues that we're dealing with in today's world are going to require those who've got radically different positions to find a way to talk to each other. Otherwise you never get movement. And if one accepts that there are differences of opinion and says it's just not appropriate to go on working together because the terms of engagement are not suitable, well, that's fine. But how do you ever bridge the gap and start moving towards some better system if there isn't conversation? And that's the difficult part. The civil society mechanism felt that the terms under which this process has been done were unacceptable. And so from their point of view, they said no. Whereas I think the summit secretariat said okay, but we want to try to do our best to create spaces where the asymmetry can be challenged and issues can be looked at. And so we did support Tom, sorry, I know I'm going too long, we supported a program of independent dialogues where anybody could do dialogues anywhere on whatever issue they wanted. And some of those were very angry dialogues and were dialogues where strong points were expressed and people did not want to associate with other groups. But that was desirable and it was within the context of the summit. And that was done quite quietly by some of these groups because they didn't want to be accused of breaking the boycott. But that is, as far as I'm concerned, politics. And that's a good process. And I do hope that over time, some of those who were involved in the boycott can come and say to the rest of us, face up, eye to eye, what they felt was wrong and then we can try to find some way through this. So we haven't had that discussion and I think we're the weaker for it. I mean, nobody could gain, say, your commitment to open dialogue with whosoever. One final question, which I'd like to put to you, David, it's quite a general question. It's from Connell Foley of Concern Worldwide. Do you think we got the right balance in terms of outcomes between sustainable and healthy diets, sustainable planet and sustainable economies stroke livelihoods? So we could spend the whole hour on that. And so if you could manage to give some initial reflections, because I do need to want to keep some time to talk a little bit about COVID, David. Thank you very much for the question. One of the things that the Secretary General tried to do was to pull together all the experiences that came through from the work of the science group, the action tracks, the independent dialogues, the national dialogues, the global dialogues, and then the constituency forums that met. And this was done in a thing called the Statement of Action that was presented at the summit. Right at the top of the Statement of Action was a recognition that by investing in food systems and trying to do it in the right way, as a world, we have a chance of actually making a difference to what happens to our planet in terms of climate change, in terms of ecosystem services, and in terms of the loss of nature. We also have a chance of making a difference on what people eat and their long-term health, given that there is currently an epidemic of non-communicable diseases around the world. We also have a chance of contributing to more equitable livelihoods and to more prosperous rural economies without attention to food systems, rural distress will just increase and increase over time. And in summary, the conclusion inside the Secretary Daniels Statement is if food systems are got right, then planetary development, diet and health, rural livelihoods all have a chance of coming to a much better place. But if food systems stay as they are at the moment, then failure on the sustainable development agenda is inevitable. Now, the economic analyses have suggested that of the three areas that you identified, the impact of food on diet and health possibly has the greatest costs for humanity, both in immediate and in longer term. But those who are preparing for COP26 next month are going to be very clear that as far as they are concerned, it's the climate change challenge and link to the nature challenge that need the greatest attention. And the concerns about livelihoods kept coming up. So I'm going to say back to you, these are all three vital priorities for the future of humanity and the planet. All three need to be the center of ambitions about food. And I believe that the next two years of intensive action in follow-up to the summit will help all of us decide where the priorities should lie. And I find it really difficult. As a public health person, I'm really fed up about the public health and livelihood and life expectancy implications. But as a climate person, I'm really worried about the climate side. And as I hear more about rural distress, particularly associated with the damage caused by COVID, I'm worried about livelihood. So I can't give you a firm answer. I think all three are absolutely essential for the future of the human race. So we really are back to interconnectedness and trying to get those parts of these particular aspects with food policy or climate or health and nutrition. Find those areas that can be worked together to achieve the maximum impact as early as possible. I mean, it seems to me that that's the part of the answer. Now, David, on COVID, as I said earlier, you've been, I would say, one of the most trusted and authoritative voices. And you've made yourself available to so many of our media over the last 18 months. And it's been, I think, of great importance. You are aware that we're at a particularly sensitive moment here where government have important decisions to take about where to go, what policy to follow over the next period of time. Now, I don't expect you to come up with an advice to government or a full advice to government. But you are observing similar trends of increasing cases in other countries and also, in particular, in the UK. One of your advices from the very beginning was that we, as a world, are going to have to find ways of living with COVID. So, I mean, what do you want to say about COVID? Now, today, the 18th of October. So, Tom, this is the big, big challenge for us all. This virus is tantalizingly mild when you look at it in sort of abstract. It's, fatality is quite limited. It seems to kill perhaps between one and 5% of the people it infects. Others get a nasty long illness, but they don't die. And it's the fact that it's not massively lethal that make it really hard to deal with, because then that means that all the judgments about how to tackle it are requiring a trade-off. A trade-off between restricting whether kids can go to school or whether people are able to go to work on the one hand versus the incidence of the disease, or perhaps a trade-off between whether you're going to say that people should be encouraged to form their own decisions about what they're going to do, or it's up to the state to decide on behalf of people what they've got to do. And each one of these trade-offs is now becoming really profoundly politicized, politicized within communities, within nations, and within blocks of nations. And that's making it really horrendously difficult for any government anywhere. So if I strip that aside, here are my five key points that I'd like to share. First, as you've already said, Tom, the virus is not going away any time soon. It's here to stay. And humanity has to work out how to coexist with it. Number two, it's the virus that is the problem. People are the solution. People are not the problem. And that means that at all times, those in authority have to find ways to work with people in order to be able to deal with COVID rather than to be seen to be in conflict with people. We've learned this with other diseases. If you've got soldiers out patrolling, perhaps even with weapons, trying to ensure compliance with COVID measures, you've got a problem. Now, there is an issue here. We say people are the solution, but actually very poor people in all societies are affected much, much worse by COVID than people like us who are reasonably well. And so remember when we say people are the solution, it's much easier to be part of the solution if you have got the capacity to continue to function despite the various privations that we have put on us. So people are the solution. But remember, it's hard for poor people to be inside the center of that solution. Number three, people can't work out how to live with this virus on their own. They have to. They have to be able to be guided. And that's why you need strong public health experts. You need Tony Hulahans, lots of them all over the world because these are the people who can connect and can show and can really make a difference. He's one of my role models. And fourthly, you really have to be humble because we're learning about this virus at all times. New variants keep emerging and we don't know what they're going to do like this Delta variant. Or we've got issues with vaccines. We don't know which of the vaccines are going to have the best long-term protection. And so maintaining humility in the midst of this challenge is absolutely key. No public expert should be speaking in a dogmatic and certain way if they do question them hard because they must be scared about something. So in conclusion, Tom, it's going to be quite a long haul. It's going to be here to stay. People are the solution. Public health services are vital. And we've got to maintain humility because it can come back. It'll come back in surprises. And to you, Tom, and to everybody else listening, I would just say vaccines are great at saving lives and preventing severe illness. But to do with the pandemic, I am in encouraging everybody. Vaccines plus the personal protection of face masks and physical distancing plus strong public health services well-organized at the county level that can integrate a local response. Plus a well-supported World Health Organization full of scientists allowing them to change their mind if they have to because they're learning like the rest of us. And one of the best scientists in the world is running the COVID program in WHO. Many of you know him, Michael Ryan. I'd like to respect him before we finish. Thank you. David, that I think brings us inevitably to an end because we run out of time. There's two words that you used. One word you kept using. Humility. And the other word which I associate with you is wisdom. And this is a remarkable combination which underpins your leadership. At so many levels. I think we are deeply indebted to you in so many ways here in Ireland and everywhere else in the world. So thank you, David, for as usual your tremendous contribution today. I should say I know this to be the case that this is probably one of perhaps seven or eight engagements, intense engagement that you have every single day. Samana perhaps added to the humility and wisdom is a necessary component. So, David, thank you so much. It's been a great play here. You're super nice. Super kind. Actually, I feel like I've had a huge infusion of some of the very best energy and inspiration that I could possibly have. Thank you all. Bye-bye. Thank you.