 Okay, and now we have confirmation from the voice in the cloud that the meeting is being recorded. With that, let me introduce our speakers. Thanks to Peter McDermott and to Shantanu Matul for kindly accepting our invitation to speak in this webinar. They're engaged in the frontline of international development, devising strategies to deal with COVID for the respective institutions. Thanks for taking out the time. It's much appreciated by us here at SOAS and by the audience that has joined us from around the world. Peter is the head of global impacts of the global impacts department within the foreign commonwealth and development offices C19 directorate. You will be aware of course that DFID no longer exists and has kind of merged with the foreign commonwealth office. Peter has taken up this role in May of 2020. The GID, the global impact department's role is to coordinate the UK government's international development strategy, programming and response to COVID-19, working across departments and wider and the wider government. Among his other tasks, you know, his developing strategy and policy briefing ministers reporting on global impact of C19 and risk management and evaluation. Prior to this Peter was the deputy director of the stabilization unit where he led a department of 60 country and thematic specialists seconded from a range of government departments. To analyze the best practice on building stability on preventing conflict and meeting security challenges and to share their research training and operational expertise across government and with international partners. He was the acting director of the stabilization unit from May to September of 2019. Before joining the stabilization unit in August 2016, Peter spent nine years overseas with the department for international development DFID, where he was posted to Pakistan, Zambia and then Burma, where as country as as a deputy different country director, he oversaw different humanitarian programs, its work in the peace process and its support to the landmark 2015 elections. He's also worked for several years in at her majesty's treasury, where he also worked on international development and conflict financing. Our second speaker Shantanu Matur is the lead advisor for global engagement and multilateral relations at if add the international fund for agriculture and development. Previously he was a lead advisor to the associate vice president program management at if add. In his roles he has also managed if adds engagement with the G 20, the UN reforms coordinated the UN, the UN Rome based agency collaboration between if add the FAO and the world food program and selected multilateral partnerships and platforms, including the committee on world food security. He has previously served as the head of the quality assurance group at if add in the office of the president and the vice president. He served as the co chair of corporate grant of the corporate grant secretariat he managed the if add grant program for over 25 years. He has been a UN development practitioner for over 35 years, three at the FAO. And after that for 32 years at if add in Rome. He served as the global donor fund for rural development 2016 to 2019. And he was the first consultative group for international agricultural research fund council chair of the evaluation and impact assessment committee. He has served as vice chair of the CG IR finance committee between 2001 and 2004, and the vice chair of the gfar in 2017. Shantanu holds two masters degrees from Cambridge at Tripos, and also from Delhi University. And he's contributed to or edited five books in the fields of rural development, research, and impact assessment. So, in for today, Peter will speak first, followed by Shantanu, and then we will open for questions. Over to you, Peter, and do let me know when I should start sort of sharing your slides. Excellent. Many thanks, severe and many thanks for the invitation to speak here. So I'll briefly cover our sense of the pandemic just will show a few sides about how the pandemic is going. I will also talk about the UK response to that. And then I'll have some few info reflections about what this might mean for development more broadly, although recognizing that it's really early stages. And I'd be also good to have time for a bit of discussion because I'd very much welcome your views on that as well. I was saying, I used to head up the DFID kind of COVID hub that provided a coordination strategy coordination is kind of policy and briefing function for DFID is a COVID role. And we've now kind of rolled up into the foreign commonwealth and development office from the start of September, which is the merger of the old foreign commonwealth office and UK department for international development. Thanks to your patience, I shall be looking even a lot more shifty I've been severe, because I had all this on my work computer, but our sort of connection to zoom isn't very good. So I'm doing this from my personal computer and I'll be looking over at my work computer where all the materials are wrong. So I wonder if we could almost rattle through the first two slides they're just really titles and perhaps quickly go to the third slide and talk a bit about the state of the pandemic. Yes, I'm struggling to do that at the moment. Yeah, so if you could just carry on for a minute and I'll just admit a couple of people and bring my tech support in to help me with that one there. So just as having the slides by name means essential. It's just to give a bit of a visual but actually it's almost probably easier if I just talk it through. So I mean, basically I think the main message. Our perspective is that, you know, this is a compound and a protracted crisis, as well as a sort of urgent, more immediate crisis. And I think the initial evidence we have so far is that it's going the impact on kind of health, the economies stability in society is going to hit the world's poorest and most vulnerable countries, the hardest. And so, I think the third, the third slide just gives you a broad sense of the state of the pandemic, a kind of overview. So we've hit over 40 million cases, well over a million deaths. Again, just, you know, the sort of pandemic flips a bit between continents, but I mean you've got Europe in the Americas reporting the majority of new cases and new deaths in the last week. And Europe kind of obviously rising sharply. You've also got this graphic of the kind of weekly deaths per million population, although again I mean a heavy caveat with that is obviously the data is very different between the continents. And basically, until recently, actually, most of the fastest growing countries, in terms of cases, were those countries, countries that are eligible for financial assistance. And then just a couple of statistics there. We've got, you know, large number of people will be pushed into extreme poverty anywhere between 80 odd and 115 million people according to World Bank, we've got a global recession forecast. The economic contraction for developing countries in aggregate, maybe a bit less, but actually the, but ahead of population is probably a bit more and the recovery in developing countries because of sort of lack of financial resilience is likely to be greater. In terms of, this is another slide giving you a bit of a pandemic, just giving you the highest countries, absolute deaths, sense of the percentage weekly change. And you can see, in terms of that percentage weekly change, blobs of red in Africa, in sort of Europe on the borders of Asia, even in the past six, so you can see this is a very wide ranging pandemic. And again, you can look at the sort of detail of your leisure. But if we go perhaps to the fifth slide. And this is the kind of, I thought what's interesting here is that we've got a significant variation in reported cases between different countries. We've picked out at and also different regions. So for example, you know the pandemic, in terms of the recorded cases really raging across South America, less in Africa, although there's probably issues of data and underreporting. And we've picked out kind of an example of the apparent contrast between India, which has seen a massive number of cases, and has also seen major secondary impacts of the pandemic, where we see that India has had an economic contraction quarter on quarter of over 20%. And then there's a forecast economic contraction for the year of between eight and 10%, depending on which forecast you believe. So really massive impact. And then Pakistan, which is the next door country, having far fewer recorded cases and deaths per head of population. It's one of the few countries in the globe that isn't contracting economically, according to the latest figures. And so the question is, why is there this difference. And I think, to be honest, we don't have the answer to that. And it's also worth noting that cases now on the rise in Pakistan and Pakistan Medical Authority is raising concerns about what the winter will hold. But we've just noted a few points about why there might be these country variations. So demographics with youthful populations, therefore less people at risk in terms of age. Pakistan is a little bit more youthful, for example, than India. The timing of implementation of disease suppression measures. So earlier is better if you can get in early. Then there's kind of what we're calling different subpopulation connectivity. But that's also partly about the social connections across social groups. And the more of those there are, that may well be good for social and cultural interaction and the economy, but it really accelerates the progress of the virus. And then kind of density of populations. So these really concentrated urban areas, more densely populated areas, obviously more risk, geographic connectivity, especially between urban and rural areas. And in fact, you know, India's locking down of cities preventing migrant workers working, but then not looking after them and not preventing them going back to their villages almost certainly accelerated the spread of the pandemic around the country. And then we've got, you know, some other potential issues around, you know, social and occupational norms, data weaknesses, etc. So if we go on to the next slide. Again, I won't spend too much time on this but this is really about the variation sort of sort of between within countries as well as between countries. In India, for example, we've got more than 50% of the cases and more than 60% of the deaths reported in just four states. And then so you've got in a country like India the variable factors across states, and then we've already talked about the population movement to driving transition. So I just thought it's useful to get this sense of the variation in the pandemic, just to note that when we're talking about the secondary impacts and the development impacts it's not necessarily one size fits all. And we've really got to do the kind of underlying analysis country, not only country by country, but region by region. So if we come on to the next slide, that's really where we're talking, trying to summarize some of the indirect secondary impacts. So again, a very strong message that it's the indirect impacts that are greater than the direct impacts. So you've got, you know, falling incomes, school closures, disrupted health services. And nutrition insecurity is a major issue. Say more about that in a moment. And also, you know, vulnerable groups are disproportionately affected, because they have less resilience across a whole range of factors, whether it's, you know, health savings for the financial impacts, food and nutrition, and so on. The other interesting thing is that at a country level, we think there's increased potential for shocks, and also for instability. As COVID has compounded with existing vulnerabilities and contributed to increasing health risk, economic exposure and social vulnerabilities. But often I think the challenge is that COVID exacerbates and drives already existing vulnerabilities. So if we look at the debt burden faced by some developing countries, that was already rising before COVID, and then obviously COVID exacerbates that. If we take food and nutrition insecurity, UN is predicting significant numbers of people with greater food insecurity, and even the risk of famine in a small number of countries. But actually, the risk of famine in places like parts of Yemen, Bikini, Fassar, possibly North Nigeria. The main drivers of that are existing vulnerabilities, including conflict, insecurity, lack of access, and so on. And COVID is a sort of compounding factor that's pushing things over the edge. Probably isn't in itself the major factor, but it compounds with these other factors. And again, when we're thinking about the international development impacts of COVID, it isn't necessarily the case that COVID is the one big issue. We're not just driving some of these vulnerabilities. We've really got to think about, you know, how does it interact with other vulnerabilities. And then you've got, you know, I won't read out all these examples of direct impacts, but I think that the purpose of this is to demonstrate the breadth of the indirect impacts across the kind of, across the development spectrum. So if we go to the next slide, we'll just, we've just got a couple more slides about the UK government response. So if we go to the slide nine, I mean, here what we've tried to do is summarize, you know, the main UK response. And this is the kind of, if you like, the new programs that are focused specifically on COVID. So again, I won't go to all of them, but some of them are around, you know, providing resilience to vulnerable countries around the health and economic impacts, and so on, so a range of those. We're putting a lot of money into recession development into vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics. And this is a good example also of where we're trying to be global or international leaders. So it's pretty clear that UK aid and UK programming alone is far from sufficient to deal with this in a sense to state the obvious. So if you look, one of the biggest amounts we've put in is to what's called the COVAX AMC. And so that's the COVAX Advanced Market Commitment. And Spears very helpfully kind of picking that one out. So this is for work to produce and distribute a vaccine for COVID. And the Advanced Market Commitment bit of it is that we're essentially saying to the private sector, you know, if you produce a good vaccine will guarantee sort of purchasing of it. So it's a way of trying to incentivize people to produce things and distribute things for the developing world, where there might not be a sort of ready market for that in terms of the money. So this is money we put in to help that. So 250 million of that is will guarantee to put it in. What we've said is the second 250 million pounds will only put in if others put in as it were more than that. So what we've said is we'll put in one pound for every $4 that others commit. And so we're trying to kind of leverage that. And we're also then using the full convening power of the UK government to do that. So it was a big part of the Prime Minister's kind of speech at the UN. And we ran a UN hunger event with the Foreign Secretary, our Foreign Secretary, and also others attended, for example, Angela Merkel, you know, Bill Gates and others, the World Bank, and there are a lot of them commitments off the back of that. So it's really this sense of the UK doing programming, you know, as sort of almost traditional different programming, but you also the UK putting money into international efforts, and then using the full UK convening power, whether it's senior diplomats, which is an advantage of us coming together with the Foreign Office, but also UK politicians, including the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary to really kind of try and show that that global leadership leverage others, you know, to contribute to this. As an aside, the COVAX AMC was very interesting because that hunger event, we did it as a coalition of the willing if you like, without China, without the US, and indeed without the EU as an institution. And I think two or three years ago, we wouldn't necessarily have imagined that we would have a relative sort of diplomatic and development success on quite a large scale without those players. That said, the money still falls well short of what's needed. So we'd kind of, we'd need to bring them in, I think. And then if we just go to the last slide. So this is a bit more about what we're going to do, or what we're doing, sorry, in the UK government response. So I think I've talked about the COVAX facility. We do do we do deploy expertise to provide direct relief so emergency medical teams. And then, you know, we were talking about this being a compound and protracted crisis where the impacts far away the direct impacts. On food and nutrition, Foreign Secretary has appointed Nick Dyer, who is our Acting Permanent Secretary for DFID as a very senior Special Envoy for Family and Friendship and Humanitarian Affairs. So he's sort of, and we've allocated money behind that as well. But again, you see his job is, is not really to spend the 190 million that's more for sort of different program staff, but to leverage the kind of international community and international leadership. And we've got the money committed to Gavi over the next five years on routine immunization, et cetera. I mean, maybe if I just also offer some more, I don't know if I've got, if I'm at the end of my time severe or if I've got. Four minutes to go and then of course you can come back later if there are things for you to say during the Q&A as well, Peter. So that many thanks. So that's sort of perfect timing. So I won't take more than that. Yeah, but just kind of some some kind of thoughts as well going forward. So one thing we've tried to do is pick off particular areas for international leadership. So on the economic response, you know, working within leveraging the IFIs on the health response where we think we've got expertise, including on vaccines. And then we're sort of leveraging our kind of international, the international community as well. So that's good. And then on the, on the international development more broadly, but particularly this sort of famine for ancient food insecurity and humanitarian affairs. So picking some channels where we think the UK can provide leadership. So in terms of what it means for international development in the future, I mean, I think COVID is here for the short to medium term, because even if there is a vaccine, which is relatively effective, and that by the way definitely isn't a given, then it would take a potentially years to roll that out to developing countries, even with a lot of funding and a lot of capacity, and so on. So that would be a, I think a challenge, I think. So that that will be the first point. And the second point is, you know, how much do we need to do that is very specifically COVID, and how much of this is a sort of wider response to these policies. In other words, doing what we were doing before, but even more of it. So I think I would put the famine and the food prevention. We sent out some sort of intellect or the food insecurity work is kind of doing more than we would do before. So that kind of more so, if that makes sense. Whereas I think the work on the vaccines is sort of new and different. It's very specifically COVID. So it is worth noting we've also been, you know, reprioritizing a lot of our programs in the field as part of this sort of more mainstreaming of COVID. And then I think the secondary impacts will last for years, you know, sort of beyond, even if we've got a vaccine, even if that were to be successful, you know, the secondary impacts would last for a long time. So we'll have to deal with these kind of economic challenges going forward, etc. And then I think another issue is, you know, does this change the balance between short term and long term work. So I think, you know, given limited resources, we probably have to prioritize a bit more money on the kind of short term life saving work. But obviously we still want to prioritize and carry on with the long term work as well. So I think that that's an issue. And then I suppose the final point would be, does this kind of contribute or again drive or exacerbate or indeed reverse some of the geopolitical trends we've seen. So there's a bit of a kind of, you could argue there's a bit of a geopolitical competition in terms of people positioning themselves as firstly being able to tackle COVID, but also to help other countries tackle COVID. And we see a sort of Chinese, what's being built is mass diplomacy, you know, as the Chinese try to drive that. I've talked about the COVAX and the sort of coalitions of the willing. So I think, again, that that's interesting. And also, whilst we face the challenges of greater nationalism in some countries that have a skepticism of the multinational system will the challenges of dealing with COVID actually drive stronger international collaboration, and a return to kind of capitalism as it were, not that we've ever, not that people are necessarily turning away from it, but it seems to be challenging for some countries. You know, actually, there might even be positives that come out of COVID in the longer term, even though those challenges in the medium term. So that would just be a few kind of thoughts. But again, that's ready to help discussion. And I definitely welcome people's views on that. So I'll pause it there. And I think I might have time anyway. Thanks. No, thanks very much, Peter. Lots to talk about. And of course, this is the first time I've had someone bomb a zoo meeting with sort of unparliamentary video and they've defaced your slides here. So I'm just wondering Shantanu, since you're next, do you quickly want to see if you can share your slides from your computer since now you're a co host. Yeah, can you can you just quickly check yours, whether you can. Can you hear me now. Yes, I can hear you now yeah. Okay, so let me just see if I can. I have now changed and made you host. Okay. So, let me quickly see if I can, if I shared my screen. I mean, I could do it. If you want me to. Yeah, looks, can you can you see my slide. That's right. We can now share. Yeah, that's great. Perfect. So I don't need it right now. Yeah. I'm going to stop sharing so that I can say a few words before I come to the slide itself. Okay, so thank you very much. That was excellent, Peter, by the way. And I'll try and compliment you. With what I said, of course, there will be some parts where I might even reiterate some of what you said, which is important because we need to reinforce some of the messages. So thank you very much for, for having me here. I was very much wishing that we had this conversation with all of you and in person, face to face. And, and in London, my favorite capital. But for now, I think we have to, to make do with this virtual modality. Signs of the complex times that we are living in. Clearly, COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on every aspect of our lives. And of course, work as well. So let me start by recounting some of the challenges that COVID-19 has thrown away. First and foremost, I would say the devastating loss of human life itself. I think Peter alluded to it a little bit. The pandemic has totally overwhelmed our public health systems. He mentioned the 40 million people already affected globally infected and 1.1 million people who've already succumbed to the disease. So far, apart from the extensive coverage that I see on the tele on the health crisis, we haven't heard much, haven't heard that much, let's say, on the food systems challenge on the new channels. But we know that that is looming. And I will come to that in a few moments. The economic and social disruption, I would say is caused by the pandemic is truly disturbing. Let me focus a little bit on the on the world of work. It's an absolute turmoil. Millions of enterprises are facing nothing less than an existential threat. Many small and medium enterprises are actually disappearing. About half a billion jobs are gone. That's 500 million jobs are gone. Nearly half of the workers in the current 3.3 billion global workforce are at a less risk of losing their livelihoods and about. Well, tens of millions, let's say, or people are at a risk of falling into extreme poverty. The number of hungry people, as we know currently is estimated about at about 6,690 million. That's already such a shame, really. Now we know that this could increase by up to about 132 million. By the end of the year. Now that's a total of about 820 million people who do not know where the next meal is coming from. Most of these people are going to bed hungry every day. And that includes about 3 million children who die from persistent hunger and chronic under nutrition every year. And that is absolutely unacceptable. I'm not saying that all of the incremental 130 million hungry people figure that figure is not entirely attributable to to the COVID COVID-19 alone as Peter was also talking about. There are a lot of self reinforcing factors here which include conflicts. As Peter was mentioning, climate change, natural disasters and economic shocks, all of which conspire together and confound the situation even more. And COVID-19 is of course an important clue in it all. I'm using statistics fresh out of the state of food security and nutrition report, the Sophie report, which in 1920s a flagship publication of the UN Rome based agencies and sister agencies UNSF and WHO. I've used the term UN Rome based agencies. I think it's a good way for me to briefly introduce to you where I work in the room based agencies and what we do before I can tell you how we are responding to the pandemic. So I wonder how many of you on the call are familiar with the 2030 agenda. The, the UN development system and the global partnership for development came together in 2015 and devised this 2030 agenda which is composed of a spectrum of 17 SDGs. 17 sustainable development goals. I hear what I'm going to do is to share my screen. Can you see what I have. Yes, it's beginning to come up now. Yes, thanks very much. Let me put it on slide show. Just wanted to show you this slide. Can you see all the 17 windows there? Yeah, this right there. So, so the global development partnership that I was talking about and the UN development system actually came together to develop a coherent agenda. We've talked about 17 different goals, different thematic areas with something like 150 different targets. And basically, it is an interlinked and interconnected and an indivisible set of goals actually where what we do in any of these areas does have a bearing on the other. So let me point, for instance, to SDG 10. This is a sustainable development goal on reduced inequality. I wanted to mark that in your heads, because I'm going to refer to it later. Anything that we do there has a bearing on what's happening in the sustainable development goal number two, which is about zero hunger and sustainable development goal number one, which is about no poverty and leaving no one behind. Now, the UN Rome based agencies, which comprise three different organizations are actually a lead entity cluster that is responsible for the SDG to on zero hunger. I'm going to stop sharing for a bit. I can tell you a little bit about these three Rome based agencies. The first that I'm going to talk about is the food and agricultural organization of the UN, which was born in the aftermath of the World War two in 1945. It's an information knowledge bank provides evidence based policy and technical advice to governments. It implements a wide range of investment support activities. It's a huge convening power, and actually brings together sometimes 200 countries in the same room to get policy convergence on treaties on standards on on normative instruments for instance, and also provides agricultural based livelihood in some humanitarian contexts. Now this stuff tells very well with the work of the World Food Program, which you may have heard of a lot has been in the in the news a lot recently. It's got the highly deserving Nobel Peace Prize for 2020. Now it's the humanitarian organization dedicated to saving lives by delivering food assistance in emergencies. Now WFP's efforts focus on emergency relief rehabilitation, providing logistical services to the entire humanitarian community. And that includes you and you and humanitarian Earth air service flights that they that they have delivering food and staff as first responders delivering them to the front lines of emergency. So we work with the International Fund for Agricultural Development as we said earlier, and we are an international financial financing institution. And we are the only one in fact, in the UN system, which actually has a credit rating and an engage with the capital markets. So a fully fledged international financial institution. And I'll say diffid is a very important donor to EFAD as well. We work with governments, providing them with investment vehicles and other development partners and provide loans and grants worth somewhere in the region of about $1.5 billion annually. And this is really very sharply focused on inclusive rural transformation, focusing very much on on small scale producers, owners of very small and medium sized rural businesses that employ very poor people, marginalized rural people, unemployed people. You know, indigenous people, marginalized people, women, the youth, disabled communities, etc, etc. So part of my job is actually to try and build and look for complementarities between these three very vulnerable organizations and looking for collective engagement also with the UN development system as a whole. And all of those constituencies working in development NGOs, civil society, private sector, etc. So, while these role based agencies have distinct mandates and governance structures, etc, etc. We are looking all the time for the opportunity space of working together and look for the bridge from humanitarian assistance to longer term development cooperation. And naturally, we are collaborating together on the COVID-19 response as well. Let me go back and share my screen again. This time to focus on a couple of slides. Can you see my slides? Can you see my slides? Not yet, no. No. I thought I was sharing them. Can you see them now? Yes, I think. Yes, we can. Okay. So, really, I mean, the big issue here, the Peter was also mentioning is how markets have actually collapsed. There's a huge disruption to supply chains. We're seeing here reduced access to inputs, services, and the supply chain disruption is basically affecting the supply of food all the way from the production systems of smallholder farmers, which is basically the farm all the way to the fork. These are supply chains that include processors and other market actors that actually deliver food. If you look at it, in fact, in many ways, even urban dwellers, their food security is fully dependent on these rural actors and food suppliers who are extremely vulnerable. And they are actually using losing their incomes and opportunities because of the disruption to supplies limits to the ability of markets to function have actually really created a huge problem. Keep shifting. What I want you to focus on is really in the southeast corner here that the poor and the vulnerable are disproportionately affected. So our responses here at this point in time comprises of four different pillars. We're trying to repurpose our current projects. They have already delivered a lot of benefits here and what we're trying to do is to safeguard some of the benefits that smallholder farmers have already received. So repurposing some $1.5 billion worth of funds that are already locked up in ongoing projects. We've created a rural poor stimulus facility here, which is going to try and create kind of a rural sub-economy stimulus and a vibrancy there that can keep the value chains going. And we're going to try and create some enabling environmental policy and institutions there also opening up some financial markets in the rural areas itself so that we can keep those businesses going and keep them solvent so that farmers can meet their immediate loan repayments and requirements there. So basically getting seed systems going there. Sometimes trying and trying to provide for instance, biofortified seeds that can also help in nutritionally sensitive value chains there, helping with, you know, for instance, stunting and wasting of children, etc. So a nutritionally sensitive value chain that we're trying to put in place. Logistical support and storage for instance to avoid food losses along the way. A lot of infrastructural investment there in opening up the market access. I talked about rural finance, which is extremely important but also drawing very much on what we would consider the fourth industrial revolution which is about also digitalization. We're mindful very much of the digital divide. But nowadays, you know, you go to a village in India and you can actually buy a SIM card for your smartphone. Even if you know they don't have proper sanitation systems in place there. So yes, there is a digital divide but some of the digital solutions that we are trying to provide are actually working at the farm level, giving farmers up to date information on production on weather and market prices, etc. So let me close here on my slide production and give you a little bit a few reflections there from what we're doing. Can you. Am I out already. Yeah, we can see you now we can't see your slides anymore. I think you've shut off your shares screen successfully. That's great. Okay, so one of the things that I wanted to really talk about is the fact that there is a huge unequal impact of what we're doing. I mean, the international development community of course is trying to galvanize some $14 billion to invest in these type of activities. And I can tell you that I am seeing and we are seeing a lot of significant dent that's taking place in terms of the impact on, you know, safeguarding our investments in the light of the impact of COVID-19. But I feel that no amount of money that we throw at the problem is going to help us address the problem unless and until we are able to squarely deal with the inequalities agenda in SDG 10 that I was talking about. So the point that I'm trying to make is that although the pandemic has, you know, such a huge impact globally, it has an unequal impact on society. The virus of course doesn't necessarily discriminate by itself, but fundamentally unequal societies exacerbate the impact on disadvantaged communities. So the downward spiral, or you know that we were talking about reinforces the structural inequalities in society, which already exists in some sense. The majority of the rural poor, the vulnerable that we're talking about lack social protection. They lack access to quality health care. They have lost access to productive, you know, productive assets. Many have lost their incomes. They can't even feed their families anymore. We're trying to prop that through our programs, trying to maintain their daily or monthly wages because without that, that means they have no food at best, please less food or in less nutritious food and access to a balanced diet. On the other hand, the weldier have access to savings that can tide over the lockdown, and they're using that to tide over, you know, the current period. They have also better access to treatment and options that can limit their exposure here. So these inequalities are often, you know, in coexistence if you like they're overlapping, they're interacting in many ways and creating severe compounded forms of deprivation and disadvantages and Peter was alluding to it as well. Small scale farmers are disproportionately at risk. They have limited assets and savings as well. A number of them are actually older in age, because a lot of the youth have actually left the rural areas they've gone to the urban areas looking for better economic opportunities. So we are also talking of some disability linked to age there. Some of these small holder farmers are actually farm laborers. They used to depend on remittances for instance, instance, and all of that is is disappearing because of the lockdown. And this means a lot of insufficient income to cover their basic needs. And even to invest in farm inputs, etc. So on, on average, I think a lot of people may not know this, but small scale farmers ironically are net purchases of food. They are not subsistence farmers, but they are net purchases of food. And so any impact on food prices, etc. Because of the market failure is going to negatively impact on them and conversely increase food prices are unlikely to flow back to the small holder farmers. So there's a particular concern that we have that the whole of e-files portfolio is at risk, we are going to continue to do the good work that we say we are. But we know that in about 83 of 101 countries that we work in, there are huge economic disruptions there, which are likely to undermine what we've done and there'll be a huge erosion of development gains over the past 30 years that we've had. There are other things that I can talk about. How much time do you think we have, Subir or we can go into. Sort of, you don't have time for your initial 25 minutes. So if you. So sorry. Okay. It's actually fine. But if you want to come back to something that you would like to bring up in response to a question that would be great. Do you want to take a couple is to just wind up your thing or do you want to just. No, I'm absolutely fine. I would love to talk a little bit about the compounding factors of other adversities like the climate change and other aspects conflicts are absolutely key. You know, the vicious cycle of conflicts and hunger. Okay, so I can start you off with that question. Thank you for the audience. Thanks very much both to Peter and to Shantanu for quite extensive presentation managed, not very much time. It is very illuminating for us within the university setup to get a view of what those of you who are actively engaged in dealing with coven from an institutional point of view have have to say to those who want to ask questions. You can raise your hand and that you can do by pressing on the chat function, where it can basically have a function of raising hands. Otherwise, just put your question in the chat. And then, you know, we can take it from there. So, here, can I ask both Peter and Shantanu in fact exactly that question which is, you know, there is, there are obvious challenges with relation to food and perhaps some not so obvious ones that both of you have mentioned. Exactly. How do you sort of see your interventions with respect to coven 19, given the fact that we have at least several other overlapping problems within which, which kind of provide the context within which coven 19 has to be approached and you know, climate change, long standing conflicts that seem difficult to, you know, which will continue whether or not coven is playing out. So in some ways they're kind of a structuring context for all of this. And, you know, third, we are kind of in a kind of global geopolitical scenario of enhanced nationalism, and in fact in country after country questions concerning science or data. How reliable is government data that we often need in order for us to think in terms of proper policy interventions. So how do you respond to that and if you could be, can I ask both of you to address that question. There are other questions which are coming up in the chat which I'll take up after after you respond. Do you want me to take on a couple of things in the context of the adversities of climate change maybe and then maybe maybe Peter, Peter can compliment me on on the government data, etc, which is which is a key thing really. So, of course, we cannot blame coven 19 for all our woes, and we've been saying that, and even before the pandemic pandemic came upon us, we were already facing huge adversities of climate change. And we were actually dealing with a lot of this as one would say, you know, the hotter and more variable and dryer climatic conditions are coming on, you know, farmers are having a huge problem in making their investment decisions, whether they should even so their seeds, how much are they going to invest in input systems, etc. If they're going to face crop failure at the end of it. Just because, you know, even a 1% increase in unseasonal increase in in in temperature or a one degree centigrade increase in temperature can lead to a crop failure completely. So the unpredictability of the patterns is going to really create a huge problem for farmers and that's where the Rome based agencies who deal with food and agriculture are coming in and trying to deal with not just the recovery from COVID but but but in rehabilitation work and also building resilience at the farm level so looking at a holistic approach, maybe a whole range of interventions that can improve the resilience of farmers, better or more robust seeds, for instance, that can withstand drought. And also building very much on on a whole range of of germplasm that can deal with that reform management practices building on indigenous knowledge systems also etc that have dealt with such adversities in the past. The other one that you talked about is nationalism conflict etc. And here, I would go back to the inequalities agenda again, which is actually at the root of a lot of the conflicts that are taking place in countries like northeastern Nigeria, for instance, and Mali and Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia, Syria, Yemen, all over. It's, it is actually the main driver of conflicts there inequalities, and that is leading to increase poverty and hunger. It's a vicious cycle there for a lot of decades now. So conflict induced migration is now becoming a huge issue. And what we need to do is to try and see if we can go back to some of these rural areas where, you know, we can try and create a rural vibrancy economic vibrancy and rehabilitate those systems, and perhaps also address the the peace humanitarian and development nexus, if you like, if you like, and, and actually, we can see that the go with 19 and in a very ironic way. The fact that it has gripped a lot of southern Italy we've actually seen that there's been it has actually discouraged your tide of of human migration across the Mediterranean from from North Africa in the in the recent months. So, so there are lots of interconnectedness in in all of this and a vicious cycle that we need to break through our investment programs. Let me go to Peter. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Sorry, Peter, would you like to come in. Sure. Sure. Just a few quick thoughts. I mean, I think is a concluding the presentation. I mean, the way COVID interacts with the other compounding factors is very interesting. And I think it's working out, you know, where are we having a specific intervention, I think, which is the case where we're perhaps trying to develop a vaccine but I think more often than not, we need to do the analysis to think of covert covert is one kind of potentially exacerbating or driving factor, whether that's so within conflict, let's say food and nutrition, those sorts of issues. And so, in some of those issues, it doesn't necessarily mean that we need to shift or transform our approach, but it may mean that we need to move with sort of greater urgency or in a different way to tackle the challenges there. I think there's a lot of challenges on governance, you know, also links to the disinformation point but I think, you know, some governments are using this as an opportunity to be more authoritarian to clamp down on protests that sort of thing. This can then lead to distrust in government. And then there's the wider issues of disinformation as you say so, you know the Russians, for example, trying to discredit the AstraZeneca vaccine recently, that sort of thing. And obviously, we need to do what we can to rebut that. But equally, I mean, there are positives. So whatever the outcome of the US election, I mean, the US election is settled in a few key battleground states where the polls are closer that there are millions of Americans who are, I suspect, moving changing their views because of how the current administration or president is seen to have engaged with the virus and some of the statements made on that. So I think we do see, I mean, there is a greater premium, perhaps on government confidence, that sort of thing. Go back to the point about coalitions of the willing. So, I mean, again, we see this increase in nationalism, but I'm not convinced that will be the only outcome of this. So we've seen in other crises that actually people come together and maybe more multinationalism. And I think also some of the people working on climate change and building back better are a bit like the people who did the beverage report in the Second World War, you know, they're thinking of a great future. And I think, I think that's really important. Yes, I'll probably. I'm trying to think. Yeah, I mean, I'll probably leave it there for him. Thanks. A couple of questions have come up. I think one specifically for Peter and perhaps the other one more specifically for shantanu. One question for Peter is, how does the new policy of merging different with the FCO impact different response towards a crisis such as COVID. And for instance to an already existing country country level different funded projects in Africa. You know, how does that work out. Is it a disruption is it is it an enablement of some sort exactly. How do you see that going on. So your question after after Peter is what are your thoughts on cash handouts for which the world food program has been has been one of the biggest actors, instead of food and resources being handed out. Peter first and then shantanu please. Yes on different FCO I mean, I suppose the first comment is it's early days so we're six weeks into the merger. And I don't think it undermines those programs in Sub-Saharan Africa so the department remains committed to 0.7% and to spending that money in the best way possible. So I think that will that will continue. And our different offices continue in Sub-Saharan Africa to deliver programs I thought that would be even greater premium on, you know, value for money and doing that in the right way. So the potential advantages which I think we're already seeing in terms of getting that more coherence and stronger UK convening power. So I think there's a different psychology now in that, you know, people at the top of the foreign office, rather than seeing it as their role to help that other department over there with their objectives, and their spare time, if you like, you know, the development objectives of DFID are now at the heart of the new merged department and are the responsibility of the top managers, many of whom are the top diplomats, whether it's, you know, the top diplomats at the UN or the US ambassador and so on. And indeed, it is the responsibility of the Foreign Secretary directly, rather than as it were indirectly. So I think on our, I mean, I talked, I won't repeat about the money to raise for the COVAX AMC, where I think we got a lot of that help. I mean, the Foreign Secretary's day one announcement for the new FCDO was not a kind of diplomatic initiative or trade, you know, was the 119 million for COVID and famine, extra money to tackle that, the employment of the special envoy for famine prevention and humanitarian affairs. So I think there are potentially opportunities. And then what we're working on, I mean, I'm former DFID is really aiming to keep a strong voice for development in FCDO and to maintain the valuing of development expertise. I think that that's really, really important. And that's really what we're, what we're pushing on, I think. Yeah. Hello, Shantanu, do you want to take up your question on cash? So when we deal with the humanitarian assistance, you know, in an emergency, I think WFP's work is absolutely phenomenal in the way they're able to actually provide what is required, you know, to avoid hunger and hunger related deaths. So in the first instance, when they go with handouts, I mean, handouts can be a very bad word or dirty word, in fact. But when you look at it from a different perspective, this is extremely important as a social protection measure in the first instance as a first response. So cash becomes important in the context of propping up the rural sub economy. So it's not a bad thing at all, when you're actually trying to improve the purchasing power of the disadvantaged people, people who've been hit badly, not just because of the health pandemic, but, but because of the social economic fallout that has happened. So in the first instance, a cash handout can be a very useful one in terms of driving up a slacking or a sagging rural sub economy. But WFP has taken it to a different level now. They're in fact dealing with, with cash in the form of contactless cards for instance, which are important in the context of the pandemic, you know, not spreading infections so those cards are contactless you just go and you can purchase your daily rations or whatever, which is great really and it's COVID friendly. So in the first instance, cash handouts, great, but you can't sustain that over a long period of time. You have to start thinking of graduating, you know, the target groups into becoming more self sufficient players in the rural economy. And that's what we're trying to do. So WFP dealing with really affected populations that really don't know where the next meal is coming from. And then, with these cash cash handouts, slowly, tapering off these subsidies, so that organizations like if I can come and pick them up and graduate them into longer term, longer term self sustained development. That's, that's the kind of strategy we should be looking at. Thanks Peter and Shantanu while we are waiting for more questions. Can I just ask, maybe something that you might have some thoughts on, which is that, you know, in many cases, sub national units of government have done quite well, even where national governments and the country as a whole has probably not done as well. So, from India we have the example of the state of Kerala, which seems to be, you know, be to be talked up at the moment. So if you look at so called slum areas of Mumbai, and that goes back to the resilience of people who are poor and on the edge that slum areas, which were feared to, you know, when the pandemic broke out in Mumbai, for example, one major fear was that the poor would get very badly hit in massively densely populated slums like in Haravi, likewise for some Brazilian cities and so forth as well, but that has not been the case. So are there any lessons to be learned from sub national governmental units that can be spread into different parts of the world, maybe generalizable is too strong a word but what do we learn from the places within countries where there is the relatively successful intervention. West Africa, which seems to have done reasonably well in terms of dealing with the pandemic and they say this is partly because of the infrastructure that was built for dealing with other localized epidemics and things of that sort. So do you have any thoughts on that Peter and Shantanu on sub national units of government. How does your, how do your institutions deal with them and so forth. And by the way, to the audience please keep your questions coming. We have at least another 15 minutes before we think in terms of winding down. So that's a great question to be here maybe I can kick off and then Peter might wish to compliment what I what I would say I personally I wouldn't bet too much on on on the resilience of human beings necessarily to the pandemic. I mean that's not necessarily the reason why some of these slums that we're talking about some areas really poor areas. There's been some kind of resistance to the virus. And it's not probably because of health resilience, but it's just, you know that they're probably lucky in not having been exposed to it. But there may be different opinions to that there's no empirical evidence saying why they have been somehow protected from the spread the virus there. To some extent you did answer your question there so beer by saying, you know, it's a lot to do also with the capacity of local institutions, and their ability to be able to work with with local communities. And that's the kind of resilience, perhaps, which has, which has helped more in terms of their not being afflicted with the virus as other parts of the country and the world. So social institutions extremely important. And there have been some fantastic developments that have taken place in the past 30 to 40 years of local capacity development local institutions, policy support, and the use of innovations, both in institutional architecture. There are more multi stakeholder decision systems where the communities themselves have a role in in, you know, decision making those kind of structures have really helped societies to somehow become more resilient. And to galvanize their resources very quickly, as first responders within the community itself, not waiting for external help to arrive and arrive too late. So this is one conjecture that I can put forward. This is not empirically. Of course, forward, but Peter might wish to compliment what I'm saying. Hello, Peter. I have very little to add. I mean, one thing is just that that's something we're looking into and funding research on is this sort of variation apparently between regions and local areas. And I would agree with, I think Shantanu Shantanu is set out some of the hypotheses very well. And I think more generally, you know, by having by permitting local authorities to respond in different ways. So that you're a bit of experimentation. And then you can, as long as you can bring that learning back. I think it's good. I mean, I'm, you know, not an expert on the UK domestic response, but we have these debates about, you know, localize the support for testing and then you've got the devolved administrations doing different things and they'll be interesting to see what's there. But I suspect the final conclusions may not come for a few months because it may also be that there are further, you know, waves and challenges to come. But I've also read about in the character example. It does seem very promising. So there's probably a lot in that. You know, for the last set of questions, unless more come out. Can I just ask, let me put this on the table. A lot of what we talked about today and the questions that came referred to the pandemic as it has existed so far. And of course it is not over. But there's fair bit of trepidation as to what the next few months hold as the weather conditions and, you know, they change the benefits of clean air, you know, that one sort of heard about when the lockdown was very draconian in the initial months of the pandemic around the world, we can see in the cities, particularly of South Asia, the annual smog and things of that sort, plummeting temperatures conditions that we were told, you know, are by and large suitable for the virus to reach its most deadly potential. You know, we are also, I think the world as a whole is more aware and more prepared. But how do you, how do your agencies see their main tasks in over the winter, which we are told is the more kind of dangerous period for the virus and its effects. Peter first and then maybe we can move on to Shantanu. So firstly, I think you're right. And there's quite a lot of uncertainty about how this will play out. It will play out differently in different countries. And, you know, have we had the peak of the first wave? Are we going to get a sort of second waves? Is it going to be sort of multiple waves? And then eventually how will this end? So will it be a sort of vaccine that kind of largely solves it? Or will it be a combination of better treatments, a bit of herd immunity, a vaccine that reduces deaths, perhaps reduces some of the impacts without solving it? Maybe that we have to live with this becoming endemic, but it has a sort of dwindling impact over time. So a lot of it is unknown. So in a sense, I think we're sort of preparing, preparing for different scenarios, rather than saying this is absolutely what's going to happen and doing a bit of work to prepare for the kind of more worst case scenarios. And I think it's largely doubling down on the areas that we spoke about. So there's sort of global health, both the indirect impacts, but also the vaccine, therapeutics and diagnostics, trying to get others to contribute as well as ourselves. So I think the economic response will be very interesting. So, I mean, you could argue, we haven't quite had the economic crisis that some of the most pessimistic scenarios were predicting, right. So, I mean, it's obviously really bad, but there were more doomsday scenarios. So the question is, both individuals and countries have less resilience for further waves. So, I mean, that is an issue that we need to be prepared for and kind of mitigating. So I'd pick out the sort of, if I had to pick out a couple of things, the economic one, and then the sort of food insecurity that I don't think is fundamentally driven by COVID, but is exacerbated by that. And I'll make a final point. I mean, in a sense, what I've tried to keep this about, you know, the developing world, because I think that it's more relevant, but you know, we are thinking about how do we prepare for crises. So I think we're trying to be better at, or even better at preparing for crisis, whether it's a pandemic or another crisis. So I think we've learned a lot about crisis response. So there's the impact on kind of staff. You know, we had to pull back a lot of staff from a number of countries and we're putting them now back. And again, managing COVID is one of a number of health challenges, rather than seeing it as unique. And that is another aspect as well. And then, you know, final point is, can we use this to drive a greater interest in multinationalism and collaboration, because no one country is going to solve this on their own. Yeah, thanks. Thanks very much, Shantanu. That's a great answer. There's very little for me to compliment there, except to say that, you know, we need to keep galvanizing all of the support that we have to, you know, provide healthcare to provide better nutrition. So that, so that, you know, communities, disadvantaged communities can actually continue to do what they can in terms of, you know, their jobs, etc., to feed themselves, and to become resilient to the extent possible. I mean, the pandemic is here to stay through the winter period, I completely agree, but we will need to work hand in hand, in a sense, in a multi stakeholder manner, building strategic partnerships where we can to try and see that somehow, you know, the employment of the rural poor, you know, etc., can continue to be increased so that, you know, they can use their income to get better access to healthcare, etc., and deal with the pandemic in a better manner than if they didn't have this. I just thank Shantanu Mathur from IFAD and Peter McDermott from the FCDO. Thank you so much for taking out the time and speaking with us on this ongoing crisis. Very insightful for us to be able to understand exactly how people in the opposition are dealing with that. Thanks very much to those of you who found the time to join us as members of the audience and for your questions. The next series is, well, the next sort of webinar in the series will be on COVID-19 and authoritarian populism in Brazil and India. And it'll either be on the 2nd or the 3rd of November. There will be notice given once I have confirmation from the speakers. Thank you very much and see you later. Bye bye. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.