 The University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. It's all of you here in the room and to everybody that's joining us live. I hope the streaming is working. It's wonderful to have you all here tonight to mark this occasion with SEI. I can see lots of friends, long time friends, colleagues, affiliates, interns of SEI coming here today. They're coming in to check with us and to share what they feel is real in a moment. of SEI and colleagues and partners from many other organisations. Some we've only met virtually, it's great to have you here, and lots of new faces people I've never met. Welcome and I hope we can work together and get to know each other better. My name is Ruth Butterfield and I'm the Centre Director of SEI in Oxford. Thank you all particularly for making the journey to Oxford. Some have come quite considerable distances and for making the time to be with us, both here in the museum and online. And a special thank you to our event participants for lending us their expertise as we mark this special occasion. We want to observe this milestone in our journey in the same way we try to conduct our day-to-day work by bringing people and organisations together to bridge research policy practice and to help build capacity and learn from each other. With COP 27 in a couple of months and in Africa for the first time, the global stock take is well underway and the regular heartbreaking reports of climate extremes resulting in terrible human suffering. There's never been a more important time for us working on matters concerning climate resilient development and sustainability to push our agendas forward to advance knowledge and action on these issues. The nature of this occasion is our anniversary after all requires at least a bit of a backward look. 20 years ago we were so excited about a new gadget that allowed you to do something we never thought of before. To carry all your music around with you in a timely device. Smaller than a pack of cards it was an iPod. Also, anorthodox multi-orthod encyclopedia had also been created. It was totally online, generated by anonymous contributors from around the world using their PCs. It was called Wikipedia. These will be mentioned later, they are relevant. In the early 2000s, adaptation was only starting to surface as a concept coming out of responses to climate variability and also the impacts work, mostly on agriculture and crops. A few researchers including some at Oxford and also very much in the wide-resi eye were just beginning to address the issue. In Oxford in those early days, there was just four of us looking at social issues and impacts related to climate risk. Three of us are here tonight. Kate Longstall over here. Sir Cain of Arwani and I. Tom Downey, who was the founder in Oxford unfortunately, is celebrating his birthday and isn't here tonight. We're very proud to have established a team that has not only continued for two decades, but has retained its relevance. Times, research and funding agendas have changed and we have managed through the ups and downs to adapt. In our early work to reduce the vulnerability of communities and sectors, we could see that multiple actors with many different kinds of knowledge and experience would have to come together. It was the start of our signature participatory approach to our research. So we practise role-playing to facilitate discussion and identify actions to support watersheds in Europe, I think this was. This was Kate's idea. We took on the roles of coastal farmer, landowner, water company executive, environmental agency representative. We didn't discover any natural or hidden acting talents, but we did discover a shared passion for including different voices and ideas in the debate and learning from walking in other shoes. Adaptation issues at that time struggled to gain attention. It was sort of the ugly stepsister to mitigation, largely because of the tendency to think that addressing adaptations somehow meant giving up on trying to reduce emissions and limit temperature rise. Despite this lack of international attention, five years down the line, we pioneered a wiki to share learning on climate adaptation, wiki adapt. This grew into a global adaptation knowledge network and platform covering multiple themes which now reaches 200 countries and hundreds of thousands of people each year. There was a lengthy discussion about the name. After much debate, we settled on we adapt, a signature we chose to reflect the collaborative nature of the work. This was our take on the prevailing trend at the time of the iPod and iPhone, much more individualistic, but the we in we adapt has served us well over the years. Of course, our history is still in the making. In the 20 years since our work in Oxford began, it has become increasingly high profile and urgent due to record setting temperatures, storm intensity, sea level rise, droughts and floods and so on, particularly because the world has yet to really grapple with it successfully. Once only a term used in academic discussion, the use of adaptation is now often in news stories and reports from the cops and is finally recognised as a global concern, requiring imminent action of finance. Those of us assembled here know well that actions have yet to rise to the challenge. In the UK, for example, the Climate Change Committee concluded last year that adaptation action in the country had failed to keep pace with worsening, the worsening reality of climate risk. The committee concluded that alarmingly, the gap between the level of risk we face and the level of adaptation underway has widened. As researchers, policymakers, practitioners, we know that the risk of climate to individuals, communities, cities and regions in all economies around the world is also compounded by many other stresses, conflict, insecure, energy supply, political extremism, the continuing pandemic and, dare I say, an imminent recession, just to mention some of them. It's easy to feel overwhelmed at the size of the challenges. However, we mustn't underestimate the capacity for humankind to rise to this occasion, particularly in times of crisis. In the past 20 years, we've seen the unimaginable become commonplace in every day, two decades ago, no-one carried a smartphone and we didn't use wifi. Gene editing, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, now widespread in multiple industries and endeavours were in their early stages of development. The sensation of the early 2000s, the iPod, is now obsolete. But we're happy to say that we're actually celebrating its 15 years anniversary, along with our 20 year anniversary. The new technologies and functional advances in web design mean that we're reaching wider audiences and bridging the silos that are in the climate change science arena. These are good reminders that things can change and quickly and together with our partners, with you and with the help of our funders, we hope to continue to navigate this path together. So finally, I just wanted to say some thank yous. Obviously we wouldn't be here. It's not an activity we do alone. So I would particularly like to thank our partners and funders from all over the globe, including development banks by laterals universities and so on, NGOs, and particularly to the Swedish government for our core support without whom we wouldn't have made this journey. And we've learned so much from our partners along the way. To our many talented employees, affiliates and interns have come through our doors. A lot have gone on to great careers in different universities and other climate organisations. And they continue to champion our work, and particularly our weird after work as well. To SEI, the leadership in Stockholm from the Global Institute, which is now some 300 people strong in seven countries. And of course to my wonderful colleagues here in our own centre. I'll introduce them in a minute. I can't take to the time to detail all our work, but we do centre and focus our work on adaptation. We also cover other areas including climate services, nature-based solutions, animal welfare, just transitions to lower meat diets, and of course knowledge co-production. Today all our staff are wearing green badges like this one, with our logo's on. So they should be identifiable. We have colleagues here from York. I think, yes, York and Stockholm. I don't think any of the other centres. I'd like them all to stand up to recognise their contribution and also their contribution to the anniversary today. Turning to our activities for the evening, we're focusing on the future of adaptation. So we're going to kick off with a panel discussion led by Karen Brandon, who's down here, our Senior Communications Officer. She's going to lead a panel discussion on scaling and speeding up adaptation. Then Rob, what our Communications Director will then moderate a fireside chat. And our SEI Deputy Director, Orsa, will make some closing remarks. This will close the formal part of the evening and leave our lovely colleagues who are following us online. We'll conclude the evening with drinks, canapes and cakes downstairs in the main court of the museum. And this is an opportunity for you to have a look at some posters of our work and videos of our tools and so on. So, with that, I'll turn over to Karen. Thank you very much for listening and I hope you enjoy your evening. Yes, can you hear me? Thank you, Ruth. As she said, I'm Karen Brandon. I'm the Senior Editor and a Communications Officer here and it's my privilege to introduce our topic tonight and also to introduce all our panelists who bring just a wealth of knowledge. So, in a nod to our setting, I am introducing our topic why ripping out a page found in a naturalist notebook. Behold the Homo sapien, an extraordinary adaptable creature she lives in incredibly inhospitable places, an extreme cold debilitating heat and on the planet's tallest peaks where oxygen itself is scant. The species is characterized by fascinating contradictions unlikely to be ever fully understood. DNA analysis reveals a complex mix genius, ignorance, altruism, barbarity and stardust. I think there is a display of that out there somewhere. A field guide to this species indicates that while man has accumulated great stores of knowledge on climate change, he has thus far failed to mitigate or adapt to it. Field observations record the following pattern of behavior. Early discovery of the problem followed by an extensive period of widespread disbelief. Swift understanding about the sources of the problem followed by a prolonged period of denial. Rapid recognition about how to fix these problems followed by ongoing debate about who should do what and who should pay for it. Thus, this species finds himself and herself, if I'm honest, in a crisis of his and her own making. Not yet mitigating the sources that threaten his and her habitat and not yet adequately adapting to the threats that can no longer be mitigated. A growing number of extreme and deadly weather events appear to have made some members of this species far more aware that they can no longer choose whether to mitigate or adapt and in fact that they must do both. There's some early evidence that understanding is growing that adapting to climate change does not mean giving up on mitigating it. This species is capable of doing two things at once, at least so long as it's not texting and driving. Long time observers of the species document that at such times of crisis the species tend to display their best and worst characteristics. This is a species, after all, that first created primitive tools out of the Stone Age period and now has managed to devise extraordinary implements. Things those people in the early days could never have imagined. Technologies that allow the species to glimpse the component parts of the atom and to peer into galaxies billions of years away. Human beings write their own story and the pen is in their hands. And that was the end, mercifully, of the script from the naturalist who was clearly an amateur. Now I bring us here to the panel that brings the full expertise. I am so grateful that we have these people who can share their expertise, their experience, their insights, their knowledge and they've all traveled and made a great effort to be here with us tonight. So now I'm going to introduce them. I want to begin by welcoming Nassaf Nassaf. Wave your hand. The director of the adaptation division of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or as those of us who are hipsay, the UNFCCC. Natalie Seddon. And she is a professor of biodiversity and a senior associate at the International Institute for Environment and Development here at the University of Oxford and she's also a senior fellow at the Oxford Martin School. Lisa Shipper, there she is, is an SEI associate and soon to be professor of development geography at the University of Bonn. And then I welcome Magnus Benzy, who is one of our research fellows from SEI Stockholm and from right here at home, Sukena Barwani, senior research fellow at SEI Oxford. And before I let them rip through with all they've got to say, I just want to say we have other experts who could not be here tonight and we can still tap their insights if you'll look at the video recording that's in the great hall there joining us in that format are Catherine Brown, the director of climate action for the Wildlife Trust and she is the former head of adaptation for the UK Climate Change Committee. Gilbert Siami, associate professor of international urban development and planning at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and last but not least, Albert Salamanca who is a senior SEI research fellow in SEI Asia and I know they wanted to be here but could not come. So please do hear what they have to say out in the hall. Okay, I know this is a crowd who loves their acronyms so I'm giving you all one, the triple A, the adaptation action accelerator. Are you ready? Ysif, why don't you kick us off because we have three questions we're going to discuss tonight and they're all broad and interrelated what would you say are the main goals for adaptation? Thank you, Karen. Allow me to reinterpret the question because if you take it at face value you may assume that there is one goal for adaptation and it's a standalone thing but I think we've changed our mindset from the days when we used to ask adapting to what now we need to ask adapting towards what, where do we want to land as a result of this adaptation action and I would propose that there are four levels of ambition in terms of what goals of adaptation we should assume and we've been talking about this a lot in the context of the global goal and adaptation discussions and in looking at the goal another mindset shift is that we're not just adapting to the world as we see it today but the future world is not just today's world plus a climate change signal it's a totally different world so we need to look at where we want to be in that future world and we heard from Ruth that the technological transformation we've seen over the past two decades so let's imagine what the technological transformation that's coming in the next few years will land us all the way from AI, big data, internet of things satellites, biotechnology and what are the implications of these technologies both as opportunities and as challenges in terms of haves and have nots but also in how it can be used to reduce risk so taking that into account if I were to identify the adaptation goals for some it may be just survival if you're a country, if you're an island that expects to sink in the coming few decades so the goal for that community is to avoid disappearing now, if you're like many countries who submit their reports to UNFCC the goal is to just undo the climate impacts that are expected to come your way which means you're looking at retaining the status quo for others now going to the third level of ambition there it could be to sort of merge your adaptation priorities with your developmental priorities in terms of for example achieving the SDGs and retaining them in a climate change world and here's where I say adaptation is not standalone but links to everything else so that's a world where you've achieved your development goals saying them in a climate change world beyond 2030 and the fourth one which I find really interesting and response to what the science has told us since 2018 is the transformational threshold we've been told that we need to transform in the coming decade or else we're doomed both by the IPCC and by IBS the year after in 2019 and so what does that mean perhaps for a country it means that it will transform from being an LDC to being a middle income country by 2025 and there are countries who have that goal and how do you do that in the presence of climate impacts so increasing your resilience to enable whatever transformation or aspirational state new state that you want to get to so the answer to the question that it's in the eye of the beholder it depends on the level of ambition it depends on the context today but more importantly it depends on the context tomorrow and that's what's usually forgotten in many of our assessments so it's worth to start with thank you Natalie can you weigh in on that as well yes of course with pleasure so I think those are all extremely important observations and I wholeheartedly agree I think I want to add to that I think maybe an overarching one could be the rapid scaling up of fundamentally place based holistic approaches to tackling the impacts of climate change and key things which in themselves could perhaps be framed as adaptation goals one of them is to ensure that we think not just about reducing exposure to the impacts of climate change but also thinking about how we reduce sensitivity and critically how we build adaptive capacity so holistic in that sense holistic in ensuring that we're thinking about can an adaptation programme tackle multiple societal challenges simultaneously so thinking beyond adaptation thinking about can it also address mitigation, biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation because in so doing those interventions are much more likely to be sustained over time for various reasons and also thinking holistically in terms of who benefits so ensuring the equitable distribution of those benefits in a way that respects land rights, human rights and in fact the rights of all living beings and I think and you'll probably go I knew you were going to say this but really we need to scale up nature based approaches because whilst we do need technology and there's already been quite a lot of discussion of tech, mention of technology a lot of that technology simply isn't ready to go to scale and yet nature based solutions which traditional communities and local communities have been using for millennia to deal with the impacts of climate change are already there, a scalable, a flexible some ecosystems can actually evolve and adapt to the impacts of climate change and there's growing evidence that those interventions can be especially over time when the plural values of nature are taken into account can be much more cost effective or at least have much higher benefit to cost ratios. So those are sort of like the key components and clearly we need to understand how nature and technology and behavioural solutions can work together but I think that all needs to be unfolded into an adaptation goal. Thank you. Lisa, could you also weigh in? Yes, thanks. So I think the question is really sort of the question is also the answer to the next question about the barrier to adaptation because I think picking up a little bit on Yusof said you can also slice it differently so it's also adaptation what are the goals for adaptation when it's laid out in the science as a kind of ideal type of adaptation which I think is what most of us work in this space we're really happy. This is what kind of adaptation that we'd like to see. I think what Natalie described us now is that kind of adaptation but then we also have the policy process and the policy process is very largely detached from that scientific ideal version of adaptation and then we have the practice which is also somehow detached a bit from the other two and so I think the challenge with adaptation to some extent is that there are these goals that we can articulate in a kind of academic way that just don't actually happen in the policy or in the practice and here the challenge is really about the funding architecture and the policy architecture but we'll get to that when we talk about barriers but I think it is also that adaptation over time has evolved from this policy kind of side activity for some people to now a very central policy goal for everybody and that has also meant that we need to really think about how can we practically do this and from that perspective I think we actually just honestly have to park the fact that we cannot do that kind of adaptation that would love to do that ideal adaptation that is not going to happen in practice and so the goals for adaptation have to be scaled back not up or out because what we're seeing is I would call and something you may have heard me talk about this is like hijacked adaptation it's another kind of adaptation it's a reduced form of implementable projectisable adaptation so maybe that means we need to push more transformation as a narrative but I think this is the big question is what actually are the goals for adaptation and unfortunately I cannot quite read what I've written here but oh ok so the challenge I think is all this work on adaptation and it's degraded in my eyesight but I think the other way to think about it also is the counterpoint that is also that in many places what we're seeing now we know from IPCC AR6 that temperature levels are an adaptation limit that we cannot adapt in many places when we go over 1.5 and we're already seeing that in many places even before 1.5 so the question I think that emerges are also these development paradigms, the development models the development approaches that we have actually also a limit to adaptation and in that sense it doesn't really matter we have climate change and if we're reducing the greenhouse gas emissions great but I mean is it also are we focusing enough on the development processes that are probably very much a limit and are not going to allow us to adapt in many places so so again you know that brings back is a goal about rethinking development as we talked about in the more radical days in the early days can we still have radical adaptation I guess maybe is what I should finish on I'm wondering if either one of my SEI colleagues would like to weigh in on this so maybe just I mean linking to the sort of practice side of things and again yet this I think touches on the barriers I think linking this the adaptation goals to practice the main barriers come when trying to incorporate multiple voices that are experiencing the largest inequalities and I think the needs of marginalised groups when it comes to devising this policy are what's missing having multiple voices around the table when creating these goals like adapting towards what and being holistic like what is the context of tomorrow really depends on having the voices around the table that can describe what is being experienced now what is the lived experience now and a lot of the policy that the reason why practice fails so often is because these voices are not included in that design process in an adequate way when we talk about programming adaptation programming one of the biggest barriers is still that there is not enough social science integration in the physical science that is ongoing and I mean the sad thing is we've been talking about this for 20 years since we started SEI but a lot of the same problems are still there Magnus you have a minute and I'll maybe drift into the temptation of a scientific or conceptual answer that Lisa said is not enough but a goal of adaptation should be in my view systemic resilience and what I mean by that is we can adapt nodes as individual systems or individual places and that might be successful at that local scale or for a certain group of people but surely our ultimate goal should be that the systems that we're part of are resilient themselves and that often means not just that the individual nodes behave in ways that have adapted but the way the system functions whether that's an international system of trade or whatever it is but that the system itself is resilient and that's a different framing and it means different things and has different implications for how we do and how we conceive and how we research adaptation so systemic resilience should be a goal as well So I'm going to move right on to the second question which is about what the barriers are for adaptation and if you are out there in the audience in the room or if you are watching this online you are not off the hook we're going to ask this to the panel but we also want to get your insights on this so with any electronic luck there is going to be a mentee meter code up there and you can weigh in on your thoughts about what the barriers are if any of you have any difficulty accessing the wi-fi there is a free wi-fi here in the museum so use that if you have any trouble I can't give any more advice than that who would like to start off talking about the barriers that we need to think about Yusef you want to start again? From my perspective the biggest barrier is short termism and I think that comes a lot from our dynamic practice I mean look at how we do cost benefit and as you have a discount rate but discounts future costs and benefits working sort of against intergenerational equity so we are always implicitly prioritising actions that have short term outlooks and with adaptation you don't want it works also against the ecosystem based adaptation so I see this as a systemic failure in our current modalities in dealing with a long term problem because both our economic approaches and business decision making and perhaps some political angle to that promote or go against thinking long term despite what we might be saying but the tree doesn't work that way then the second thing is the cognitive biases that are preventing the general public from seeing the seriousness of the problem as it really is so whenever any crisis comes along economic or otherwise usually climate action is the first set of actions that suffers simply because they woke up today and found that it looks exactly like yesterday and they know they wake up tomorrow it looks like today so there's no sense of urgency there it's like the story of the frog being thrown in the boiling water and when you see something like COVID you see the impact right away everyone wants action everyone wants to invest unfortunately adaptation and climate change action in general does not enjoy that type of urgent mindset so that's another challenge we're facing third I think is some agnes mentioned that we tend to do adaptation in sort of little nodes but we're not really thinking holistically so yes you could have one country adapting at the expense of its neighbors and we know that SEI has a project on that on transboundary impacts but global adaptation is not an aggregation of adaptation in individual countries these are two different animals we tend to just think in these local terms and one country could decide to adapt it has a food insecurity problem so it can destroy its forest to convert them into farmland and they're very happy but what has that done to adaptation globally so I think this outlook looking at the different levels and making sure that we are becoming resilient at all these different levels is one of the barriers that we have now now it's just done at national level so yeah these are my three barriers yeah anyone else want to list some barriers that he didn't mention yes yeah so those are really really high level and if I can just bring it down to sort of the place based nature thing so talking to implementers of nature based solutions for adaptation in the UK what they tell us is that one critical barrier is lack of or limited access to information about what works and what doesn't work when it comes to interventions in the landscape what works and what doesn't work in terms of ways of financing projects but also in terms of effectiveness and cost effectiveness there seems to be problems accessing the most relevant information partly because of the place based nature partly because a lot of that information is tucked away in journals and isn't accessible enough but then also a challenge around sharing best practice many communities around the world have been dealing with variability and have a great deal of sort of on the ground understanding of how to adapt and others that have perhaps historically been in more stable less variable climates are really struggling and so I think there are and that's where some technology can come in in terms of like enhancing sharing of best practice in a rapidly warming world so I think that's often identified in the conversations with practitioners from my perspective the nature based solutions initiative and the work we've done on this in Oxford or is that lack of access to information critically important I mean what you've already said that whole mismatch between the whole systems thinking approach and integration which is all sort of we're now talking about systems of systems thinking when it comes to tackle adaptation and that all sounds great from a sort of scientific point of view and a philosophical point of view and it kind of resonates and it's coming up in all sorts of conversations across multiple sectors but again how does that land with very siloed governance and obviously we've been talking about siloed research disciplinary in places and that's fantastic but then as you say Lisa how does that then translate into extraordinarily siloed policy structures in most if not all governments around the world and big organisations and so forth so that's really really challenging and then the third piece is of course finance in sufficient finance but sort of beyond lack of sufficient finance you know it's like ensuring that the right sort of finance gets to the right people and the projects that need it most and there are many examples of really not maladaptive investments in our landscapes because there's been too much money or it's been money that's been targeting one particular problem which isn't actually the problem that the local communities face so those are my three. It's interesting what you say and also what's coming up it's awkwardly behind you but it's interesting finance comes up a lot other things related to economics capitalism politics but there are like a lot of things that are connected up there just Lisa is there anything you'd like to say it's difficult for the panellists to see but but yeah well I wouldn't add I mean I think just to pick up on what I said beginning I think the challenge is really main barrier is that we're looking for adaptation within these climate change projects or programs and we're narrowing our activities in this very kind of in this siloed way I mean the UN and FCC and you know anything that gets labeled adaptation resilience and I think actually a lot of adaptation could happen outside I mean outside those labels outside and in fact I mean I will come back of course always to you know other kinds of development and particularly activities that will help to address the drivers of ability and that's not what the adaptation that we're seeing implemented is doing and so I think you know we need to probably a barrier is the lack of wide broader thinking or the more holistic thinking that allows us to kind of say oh maybe maybe this is you know it doesn't have to be called climate change and actually it's contributing to adaptation in some way but because we have this UN and FCC process and it's sort of everything has to be tagged and the way that the financing works and so on it limits us very much to this thinking around climate change and I think that that has created I mean I would say that one of the biggest problems that we then have we must see it as climate change otherwise it's not doing something for adaptation to climate change but actually there's a lot of other activities that are also probably helping build resilience we just don't consider those as part of the sort of the suite of adaptation activities Yesif may have something to say about that but I'll turn to my colleagues first Magnus would you like to weigh in? Yeah thanks echoing what Natalie said I think there's a escalating complexity both in adaptation research itself when we start to bring in systemic systems of systems and cross border risks and that we're very we struggle with that concept as we work on such risks like this is making the job of adaptation harder for our target audience by complexifying the problem and at the same time that's the real world it's an interconnected complex world but so the science and AR6 was very clear in saying adaptations more complex than we thought it was there are these cascading compound complex risks and that makes adaptation a more a bigger challenge so the knowledge is making the job more complex and meanwhile decision makers are facing essentially a world of repeat crises that are related to climate change but they go beyond climate change so landing a message that's increasingly complex to a group of decision makers that are dealing with increasingly complex crises is a huge barrier that's a sort of research challenge on the practice of adaptation I think a major barrier is the insufficient and unclear risk ownership around adaptation and we've seen, we've traced the history of adaptation from being framed as an environmental concern essentially governed and most naps are led by environment ministries and there are lots of good reasons for that but adaptation needs to be done and owned beyond the environment ministry and that's a huge challenge and it's something that I think a lot of countries are struggling with particularly as they embrace the complexity of adaptation who owns these specific risks that we identify in research and it's not a problem that anyone has solved well and I think it plays into a bigger challenge within government which is how to build resilience and manage risk strategically within the government architecture, the silos that Lisa spoke about and a number of governments are struggling with non-climate risks as well whether that's cyber, terrorism supply chain resilience or health pandemics and I think there's a strong case for governments to create new areas ministries even ministries of resilience is an idea that we've started to discuss that goes beyond climate change but deals with these external strategic risks in centres of decision making and power that are beyond the environment ministry Sikena, I'll give you the last word OK, just maybe to go back to the point about how are we reaching the scope of adaptation, how are we reducing vulnerability, understanding the drivers of vulnerability and risk and increasing adaptive capacity. I think we still have a major fundamental problem with power still being held in global north institutions when it comes to project design and implementation and conception and there are efforts now I think to change that but overall that's still a major issue and I think there is no way we can, I mean when we talk about structural change that is one of the major structural changes that needs to happen on a fundamental level by donors and by institutions like ourselves as well so I think that's the one thing, the other thing is around as Natalie alluded to information and knowledge management so I would obviously mention that, coordinating we adapt with an amazing team at SCI and around the world but I think we don't have enough understanding about what works and what doesn't work already there is already so much we can learn from what's taken place there is a lot of replication and redundancy in the work, new work that's happening and part of the reason for this is again the siloing of information but also a lack of sharing knowledge and I think as we alluded to we're not this is not about tools of the solution there is no silver bullet there but technologies moved on there's so much more that we can harness now that we couldn't before 20 years ago and we should make the most of that and really try and use it to our advantage and there's a lot of work going on around that which we can talk about more later I think the panellists have made really clear that these issues are very interconnected and we'll move to our last question again I'm going to ask all of you who are watching this either in the room or on the streaming to weigh in as well as we talk we get to the heart of the matter which is how to speed up and scale up or how to progress in terms of adaptation so please do weigh in on that and who would like to start I don't feel we need to keep to a strict order or anything I'd love to hear you all debate what needs to be done I assume people are going to have some different views so I think one of the things that's important in the IPCC working group 2 report we were quite clear that there the as I said earlier that limbist adaptation are also global warming levels and that as the temperature increases we won't be able to adapt as well so we have to start adapting and I think talk about speed up so clearly we have to speed up but on the other hand a lot of research is showing that our adaptation isn't effective adaptation is actually making people more vulnerable and partly that's because the kind of adaptation that is implemented isn't really addressing drivers of vulnerability it's not considering local context it's not involving local people it's very top down and it is sort of the outcomes are validated by agendas that are set by the donors and other actors in the global north and so that means that we have to be much more strategic much more careful and considerate in the way that we plan adaptation projects but everybody's looking out there I feel like I'm missing out and so how to kind of how do we deal with this that we have on the one hand we need to speed up and we need to move really quickly but on the other hand we actually every adaptation project needs to be much more carefully planned through the consultation consultory process has to be very long and how do we do that in order to avoid maladaptation in order to make things worse and throw away money or whatever you want to prioritise is the issue so I think that's a big challenge and I don't really know how we can overcome that but I think that maybe the pressure to speed up we need to be cautious that we're not just falling into these traps of reproducing maladaptation projects Maybe you should speak next because I see that the Ministry of Resilience is leading the way in our mentee exercise When I started working on adaptation about 15 years ago I had a colleague who disparagingly used to say adaptation that's just green roofs or guns and as well as being amusing it was a challenge to sort of define what is in the space between green roofs and guns and there's nothing wrong with green roofs but adaptation is more strategic than hyperlocalised small technology fix projects but it's also less fatalistic than preparing for the apocalypse and arming yourself to the teeth but fatalism and doomsday planning often results in actors becoming much more narrowly self-interested so I think the solution lies somewhere in defining creating a narrative for adaptation existing between green roofs and guns and we still have space for a very multilateral approach to adaptation I'm most interested in this the global scale of adaptation and cross-border effects of adaptation and risk and we still have the architecture that can deliver us a multilateral adaptation set of solutions based on principles of interdependence and solidarity the Paris Agreement does lay that out and sets the space for a vision of global adaptation and despite very real threats to the multilateral order that we have experienced in the last few years we still have a system of international law and multilateral cooperation which we need to achieve that systemic resilience so I very much agree with Lisa that we shouldn't go too hard and too quick on a direction of adaptation that might not work and might be defined within paradigms that are counterproductive we have a lot of scope for model adaptation part of what we need to upscale our ambition on adaptation is a narrative that explains in a more persuasive way why we need to adapt and why we need to adapt together particularly and unfortunately the narratives we've had until now haven't really worked the level of investment both politically and financially in adaptation is woefully insufficient so we need to add to narratives of equity and historical responsibility which are extremely valid and some of that requires an appeal to self interest that if we invest in adaptation overseas it can have positive pay backs that's got a dangerous dark side to it which is that we securitise and strategise adaptation and we should be well aware of that but on the other hand we do need new narratives about why adaptation needs to move up the political agenda and why it's worthy of more investment and I think this narrative interdependence and of adaptation in one place delivering shared benefits systemic benefits even is something that we need to get right thank you I'm resisting the temptation to look behind to find out what you all think when people on my mind think as well I'll just sort of talk to you barriers in terms of finance and governance and on the governance side we clearly need a ministry of resilience we also need departments of resilience across businesses as well so I agree I think that will go a long way to helping but I want to speak a bit about finance because one in terms of an opportunity and another in terms of the elephants in the room and all these discussions about sustainable development and I'll start with the opportunity there's a huge funding gap for adaptation that needs to be plugged on the one hand on the other hand we're seeing generated through voluntary carbon offset market which is a wild unregulated west at the moment huge amounts of funding potentially there if we can somehow through proliferation of really robust high integrity boundary organisations ensure that that finance that is coming from the mitigation side of things through this unstoppable juggernaut carbon juggernaut we can somehow channel that to the projects and the people that need it most to support all those people all those farmers all those communities all over the world getting on with adaptation right here and now whether it's floating gardens in Bangladesh or farmers in Somerset that are just doing salt marsh restoration because it's stopping their crops becoming flooded we can get that all that finance to those local communities of doing adaptation you know I think there's a real opportunity there to plug that gap but we need to do it really carefully and we need to make sure it gets to the empower local communities and indigenous peoples to do what they've done for a long time the elephant in the room of course is GDP an economic growth the subsidisation of the destruction ongoing destruction of the natural ecosystems on which we all depend but where dependency is particularly high across lower income countries across the tropics all of us depend on nature very much but even more so in those regions if we can somehow trillions are invested every year that contribute to the that compromise our resilience by their harmful impacts yes in increasing climate warming but also in causing degradation of those ecosystems degradation of our landscapes that's the big elephant in the room we need to fix that and if we can stop talking about economic growth and start talking about where many of you are already talking about growth in well-being and that being the target then I think many of these problems could be solved so I just wanted to mention that. Those things are up there you'll be happy to know see various references Sucano what are your thoughts on this? So I guess just linking to the first point I made you know scaling up and speeding up is about is still for me mostly most sort of fundamentally about whose knowledge counts and if we're thinking about how to do this quickly but at the same time not sort of rush into things I think there is a huge tension there and but at the end of the day I think we have to develop these knowledge co-production processes co-develop knowledge together with you know a range of people around the table researchers, decision makers, climate scientists, practitioners, civil society organisations on the one hand but then on the other hand between ourselves as academics and scientists between the different disciplines and I think all of that is really hard to do so how we do that quickly I'm not really sure but I think we need to build capacity for how to do that. There are ways to do this and they do take a lot of time and a lot of resources but I think doing that well co-producing knowledge well is possible and it is really the only way to well designed interventions and we need to build the capacity of more people to carry out those processes so moving away from products and models and tools and moving towards processes that allow people to do that sort of knowledge co-production together and that links to my point about shifting the power from the global north to the global south institutions because they are the ones who should be leading those processes and then lastly probably I just would point to again the point about evaluating and learning from what's already taken place and how do we share knowledge on that more effectively that people are sort of taking on board in the design of new interventions and I think there's a lot of I know Yusif was going to touch on this aspect of AI but around technology there is a lot of really exciting work going on that would allow us to better describe the adaptation actions we are taking that have both successes and failures so that others can learn from them quickly and if that's what we need to do right now I think we shouldn't be afraid of tapping into those technologies Yusif Maybe I start with the change of narrative I mean this year is the 20th anniversary of SEI here and it's the 21st anniversary of the creation of the IPC adaptation definition co-authored by Richard it's also the 50th anniversary of the Stockholm Declaration the Stockholm Principles and if you read them you'll find they're pretty much represent an agreement collective agreement of the world to do stuff that we're still calling for today I also look at the Paris Agreement it's been around for 7 years almost and since then we've poured 4 trillion additional dollars into fossil fuels so there's something wrong with the narrative and the doom and gloom story doesn't work I mean you've had this message smoking kills on cigarette boxes for decades it's not what got people to stop smoking and similarly the story of you're all going to die so you need to adapt doesn't work either and I'm wondering if it's more effective to move to a positive narrative where if you do this right you will reach a state of resilience that entails all these good things in your lives in the future and that would require a movement away from a problem slash solution mentality which is one of creative design of the future we're so bogged down with the problem and solving it and it's grounding us in yesterday not in tomorrow and so this goes hand in hand with increasing awareness of the phase we're in I think Magnus said we were in an environmental phase we were looking at climate change from the perspective of it's being an environmental issue we moved towards seeing it as a developmental issue in the 2000s starting with the MDGs and we started trying to quantify everything now since 2018 we've entered into that existential phase but policy hasn't caught up with that we're still using the same tools economic and otherwise to figure out actions in a phase where this doesn't work how do you quantify human existence how do you quantify the persistence of the human race and we're still looking at this context where we're trying to make the business case for adaptation of course what suffers is nature because you have a context where a dead tree can be considered to be more valuable than a live tree and this is all stuff that needs to change so changing the narrative towards that new phase which includes both awareness of the existential nature of climate change but also the positive aspects of a transformation towards a resilient world not necessarily resilient only to climate change but generically resilient and with it comes an adjustment of our assessment methodologies using also frontier technologies and there's already a lot of startups using AI for risk assessment they're selling their outcomes to cities as far as I know at this point and they're working very well and so I think this change in world view change in mindset not towards an unprecedented mental state it's actually what already exists in indigenous communities the principles of connectivity collectivity intergenerational equity and transforming our modernizing towards indigenous values basically doesn't mean you have to adopt the practices and knowledge but the actual underlying principles and values as applied to modern life reforming humanities relationship with nature realizing the importance of our natural support system to our existence not as a factor of production this is what got us into this mess to start with and perhaps looking at climate change not just as a standalone problem but as one of many symptoms we've been seeing all the way from acid rain to ozone depletion species extinction etc and now pandemics you can keep trying to solve each of them separately but then you'll have something else coming up a decade from now and it's like we're playing catch up so what's that fundamental paradigm shift that we need to adopt in order to accelerate so I didn't start by saying you know pour more money or do this because you can accelerate motion in the wrong direction then you end up somewhere where you shouldn't be and so we need to align our direction first also align action with intent I mean I gave you a couple of examples where this is not happening and and revising our post industrial revolution narrative towards well being of humanity collectively not just individually thank you Lots of thought provoking stuff there especially like the idea that we could speed up in the wrong direction you know Seneca says if you don't know where you're going no wind is favorable and also the whole idea of grounding our approaches in thinking about tomorrow rather than yesterday that perfectly sets us up for our intergenerational chat where we are going to be talking about people who know about all these processes and have worked their careers in it and also up and young people who I'm sure are thinking about tomorrow so I'm going to use this opportunity to thank our panelists here and we do a little choreography and switch things up Hello everybody I'm so glad to hear the chatter the excitement it was a really stimulating panel but now we're going to move on and I'm going to invite you it's not really a fireside chat I'm going to invite you to join us around a campfire a campfire with an intergenerational theme I'm going to introduce the panelists briefly and say a few words and then we're just going to kick off and I hope that we're going to have a conversation rather than have too many sort of I'd like to hear what you think Innes so do feel free just to interject when you want to but let me introduce you to everybody here so Innes at the far right Innes is a research hotet at SEI based here in Oxford and we then have George George works at the UK Youth Climate Coalition of volunteers there he's the press officer then we also have Aram Aram is working at the World Bank and is a specialist in climate adaptation and then Richard here closest to me is a senior research fellow at SEI really grateful that you've joined us here today for our campfire around our campfire Yousef mentioned that this year is not only the 20th anniversary of SEI Oxford but it's also the 50th anniversary of the Stockholm Declaration looked back at the Stockholm Declaration how many mentions of the word adaptation do you think there are none, good very good even the word adapt doesn't appear in this tool but funny enough there are a couple of principles that talk about the need for rational planning about thinking about making sure that economic development isn't putting pressure on natural systems there's all sorts of stuff in there that's hugely relevant today earlier this year there was a big conference a UN Conference, Stockholm Plus 50 and for that conference SEI put forward a scientific report but also helped to facilitate a report called charting a youth vision for a just and sustainable future so we've actually heard a little bit quite recently from younger people younger scholars about what their vision is and surprisingly enough scaling adaptation was one of the key policy recommendations they come up with and I'm sure we're going to explore that in a little bit more detail right now I'm going to kick off with the question and I'm going to point it first of all to Ines and it's a very simple question why is adaptation an intergenerational issue a big question why is it an intergenerational issue well climate change is the result of one two centuries of emitting greenhouse gases and we've known for long enough that we could have avoided the situation in which we are right now if we had acted fast enough and in a concerted way but being where we are the young generation is the one that is facing and will keep facing the threats, the consequences of climate change and that is why today they are so involved in climate action that's why they are at the forefront and that's why they are the ones I feel leading some of the big changes in how the narrative evolves and that's why I think they are here to stay Richard do you want to just elaborate a little bit on the intergenerational aspects of adaptations we see it now Sure, and I think when you talk about climate risk and about adaptation and about the differences between the generations often it's the elderly that I mentioned as those are particularly vulnerable and those that need support and the heat waves in Paris in 2003 were a very clear example of how the elderly were particularly affected and it's interesting how adaptation has also very much become a priority for the younger generation and I think I can say that there's the only old person here at the panel um um um and it's maybe it's not because young people are particularly vulnerable in the same way as the elderly are but you have that incredibly strong sense of justice you can build a movement and it's really interesting to see how adaptation over the past say five years or so has become very much an issue of social and climate justice I think that is something that the younger generation has brought in that we've talked or thought about an awful lot in the IPCC reports that I've been involved with we didn't really talk much about climate justice or about justice in the context of adaptation that's something that has come up with the new generation and it's got it has not only added a dimension that is interesting from an academic point of view it has added a dimension that can actually give extra momentum to adaptation action one of the things that came up in the youth vision report published today this year was the need for increased agency and I want to turn to George actually and I'll ask George a little bit about could you give us some examples or just reflect on the role of young people and the youth climate movement in adaptation and in scaling adaptation what agency are you looking for what do you have I noticed them on the board above me lots of people wrote in response to the questions we had before that adaptation initiatives need to be targeted more at local people and I think there's always a bit of a question from the youth movement about who constitutes local people and we tend to argue that a lot of local people targeted on adaptation initiatives especially in the global south should be the young those who have the ideas those that are willing to experiment and imagine what a good future can be and so rarely our young people are on the world given the tools genuinely to do that you know we're very fortunate that in us and myself can be on a panel like this today in a way that might not have been thought about maybe 10 years ago but there's a number of organisations that the UK youth climate coalition works with that don't really have a kind of tokenistic inclusion in these kind of discussions but don't actually have the tools given to them to act so a good example of this is an organisation called green African youth organisation GAIO that exists in Ghana and we have been on various panels with them in events over the past year they run a programme called adaptation for water where they go around like lots of young people around Ghana who live in arid communities that are looking to to drill boreholes for agriculture and also for nutrition and this is a kind of distributed network of young people that are contacting each other using social media they have projects ready to go where there are communities that will benefit from these interventions but they're not given the finance to do that it's very piecemeal to go to conferences and talk about the one borehole that they've drilled but then when they ask for more finance they're told you don't have a bank account you don't have collateral to put down against any sort of loan you don't have the ability to pay back a market rate loan there's no trust basically to give young people the tools to do what we feel like we want to do so I think that's the problem when you think about who are local people who are the young people looking to try and do something it's a bit of a trust based problem to some extent Thanks George Aram feel free to come in on how you and perhaps your colleagues at the World Bank see adaptation potentially through an intergenerational lens but also reflecting a little bit on what George said about how organisations like the World Bank support these initiatives and the entrepreneurial spirit of youth movements to actually get to scale so they're not stuck with just the one borehole I don't represent the bank here first point of clarification I was led by the topic the future of adaptation it had me flowing from Burundi all the way here don't know it's great I'll reflect on that in a minute but first I want to acknowledge how nice it is oldies I guess now really oldies yes there you go it's really good to see everybody as well as new colleagues I agree with Richard that we hadn't anticipated the young folks coming in and taking the climate activism by storm I still remember watching the young Swedish I forget her name Greta I was like whoa these young people will really make the difference whatever we haven't achieved they will achieve it I started an ACI you dating yourself makes us date ourselves as well I started adaptation 20 years back in the mangroves communities in coastal Senegal back then we didn't call it NBS it was just replanting mangroves to fight sea level rise or coastal intrusion of sea salt waters but it's interesting 20 years on to reflect on how we enable you that's how I would like to interpret the question I think a challenge to all of us is we need to at least pass on what has worked I think we haven't done that properly it's hard to have a definitive statement on what is effective adaptation but after 20 years we really need to get to a place where we have that and I work at the bank and as a development practitioner I get that question every day what is good adaptation at scale what is good adaptation so to me it's a defeat of our community that we still can't point them to a single place where we say oh you want examples of good adaptation that's where you go to get it so we adapt of course great job but I think we really do need to agree among ourselves this is where you go to see what has worked time tested, ground proven effective adaptation in climate smart agriculture in water resource management in coastal resilience this has been tried over the past 20 years and it's worked so why don't you give it a shot and scale that up so I think that's one challenge to this side of the room that we really should get to that place and hopefully pretty soon and I'm not saying and I'm looking at Lisa here that we should have an adaptation metric I do agree that's futile but I do think we do agree that there are good adaptation practices in design co-production that will affect the ground impact so let's put that some place so I think that's the first thing I'd like to say and hopefully that offers you a way forward as you do the good work that you have ahead of you I think the second challenge now to your side of the room is how do you not just stay an adaptation specialist I think the times have changed you work in the bank the question is not oh climate matters the question is how do you achieve development with climate in mind I think we're really in a different place than we were two decades back and your value added at the table where you have your health specialist where you have your you name it education specialist and among all these multiple competing priorities of development you've got to make the case that this is how you do good development bearing in mind current and future climate risks and we've talked earlier in the panel about the barriers climate information is still quite uncertain we don't know the localised there's a million stuff but I think around that table you still have to make that very articulate and Magnus I loved how you said it earlier a very articulate case for why it is that we will not achieve development impacts if climate adaptation is not done is not done well is not done effectively and at scale that's the challenge I have some ideas we'll talk about that but how can we make success is more visible if something fails then it's headline news but you'll never see a headline that says 50,000 people did not drown in a float or there's no famine because we actually did this really well that is a challenge isn't it because we keep being and of course we are doing things wrong and we should learn from that but it's much easier to to recognise the mistakes than it is to recognise the successes and I'm just hoping that wise people like Yusif can give an alternative to the metrics because you're saying there's a problem with the metrics but what else is there when we say that adaptation is linked to or similar to or connected to development when we measure developments whether that's in GDP or in a human development index or whatever we're not just counting the projects that were funded as development projects we have a much broader understanding of development and somehow we can take stock of that but when we try to take stock of adaptation we're just looking at what the green climate fund and the adaptation fund and the individual donors in the World Bank and the adaptation projects as if there's no adaptation happening outside of these projects and I think that's what Lisa's point was as well and it's not just a matter of definition it's a matter of understanding how you effectively reduce risk but also understanding how you avoid increasing risk because I think that's still happening way too much as well I'll just leave it there for now if I can follow up on that how we measure success in getting resilient in a resilient world I think you're right to think that adaptation needs to go beyond the silo in which it currently is and that was heavily discussed in the previous panel to me what's at the core of it is something that actually the youth movement is claiming again and again and again it's people before profit and when I say people before profit it means that when we're assessing what works or what doesn't maybe we need to change the perspective and ask the people whether they are happier whether they feel like they have more opportunities to achieve personal or collective goals whether they feel like they have a purpose in life get maybe more subjective qualitative measures in how we do science, how we measure whether adaptation works or not that's linked to I think it was Lisa who said that we need more social sciences in adaptation and in the end that links to the power dynamics it means stopping imposing the donors ways of measuring or of establishing programs and objectives but listening to what the people on the ground have to say what their priorities are and what type of action they want to implement and we can learn a lot from the field of development for instance which has a lot more experience in measuring what works or not I believe that cash transfers have been proven as an option that works surprisingly well because it gives the people on the ground the direct opportunity to use it as they wish the money and that could be a way to implement more initiatives at the local level to fight droughts, to fight famine to fight poverty and in the end it is a holistic thinking that adaptation is about making humans and beings in general including our environment more in harmony and happier Was it the end of my time? Someone has the answer I want to pick up actually something that came from the panel that we've just had that you've now mentioned around metrics Natalie was talking about part of the elephant in the room the barriers it's GDP it's how do we measure development so I'm going to turn to a ram actually straight away and say you talked about adaptation people at the world bank your colleagues they talk about adaptation they talk about delivery mechanisms with education or other things but ultimately I want to hear a little bit about how you take up the challenge from the previous panel around well if we measure development in terms of GDP then we're going to get stuck and end up putting in place some barriers to adaptation what's the saying what cannot be measured help me out here cannot be managed so I think that's where the obsession with measuring and having an adaptation equivalent to the mitigation carbon ton metric comes from but I think we've made the case that it's context specific it's locality specific and good adaptation is locally measured but we still haven't shown what to do with it that's where we stuck we said okay there won't be an adaptation metric but then we still haven't shown okay this is still in the development planning process how you know that you have achieved climate resilience development in subjective qualitative terms so I think that's the challenge from before we've just got to show what it looks like in practice in different localities so I hope that answers that first question but I'm still stuck on what Richard was asking how do you also show the good averted losses you self started I think responding to that question earlier by saying let's perhaps draw more on the positive narratives in countries where we don't have ministries of resilience but where now it's ministries of finance that are talking about the macro criticality of climate change I think that's success we've seen in a given country that you cannot develop properly without addressing climate risk those are success stories and when we start to understand most importantly the opportunities that also climate change poses by ensuring that early warning today averted losses in the future so I think the narrative globally is shifting in that direction it needs to be celebrated but again the role of research here is to show the way I really hope that we won't be having those same discussions about how we measure adaptation but rather we'll be looking at how to do it better in FCV context I flew in from Burundi so we still don't know how fragility and adaptation are overlapping I know great research is at the forefront of topics of that nature but I think we need to really now move on to those now new frontiers of understanding how effectively do we deliver and do adaptation in for example FCV context it's just one example I'm sure there's many more from you I think I was just going to say that in quite a lot of you know youth frustration maybe it's sometimes a little bit through ignorance of the adaptation and just general climate response area is that you hear these discussions about micro management and you know specific metrics and it all seems so complicated when you look at it from a policy level but from the perspective of the youth that we work with the only thing that matters to them is they've learned about climate change for the first time in school and they're terrified for their future and they take a it only takes 30 seconds to look at the adaptation gap report to know without looking at any specific metrics how far off we are from meeting the challenge I suppose and I guess obviously the question that we're trying to answer is what do you do with that I was trying to come up with experimental responses I think it's easy to forget how many people are left out of the conversation and that you know just to chuck in another example there's an organisation we work with that we've been on events with before in Uganda called Children's and Youth Forum for Environment and Climate Change and one of the biggest challenges they have is maintaining a network with our members because the internet access is everywhere in Uganda so they have lots of people that want to learn more about climate change and how they can act on it how they can study the issue how they can educate their local community but they don't even have access to the basic resources to do that and ultimately that does come down to the question of the development challenge that I know we've talked about on the panel already but I think the headline there is just a case of like how do you how do you extend adaptation further to more people just as a narrative and also how do you get anywhere near the finance necessary to bring people on board and I think one thing that we haven't talked about yet that I know Ines and I have done quite a lot of work on is around loss and damage finance that came up on the screen a couple of times this is sometimes referred to as the third pillar alongside mitigation and adaptation and I guess for about a thousand youth NGOs that are members of the UN official, the UNFCC youth constituency, Youngo that are all going to be going to COP 27 in November and they are going to be calling on governments to pledge loss and damage finance in the form of reparations from global north countries and towards the global south and the demand is very simple the global north needs to put more money towards financing global south climate action and we know that the response we are going to get is that's too complicated what are you talking about so I guess the question is that is that not absurd in some respects obviously it's so much easier said than done but I like to think that if if the world was run by more young people that question would be a little bit easier is that obvious just this answer not a further redistribution of wealth from the centres and towards the people that need it to adapt to climate change and if I just may add to that the person who should have been sitting at my spot is Ines Gres who is one of the leader of the youth movement for loss and damage she is the director and co-founder of the loss and damage youth coalition and she was invited to speak here tonight to represent the young generation that acts and thinks about what goes beyond adaptation she couldn't come because she didn't get her visa other justice issues but yeah I'm going to have a challenge one for each if you like side of the panel not that we want to be dividing but I'm going to start off with the challenge to Aramon Richard I remember in 2019 very vividly watching Greta Thunberg say over and over again shame on you how is the senior generation going to avoid a speech of exactly the same type around adaptation where the youth are saying shame on you what do you need to do yes well we start saying that we're empowering giving an awful lot of agency to the youth generation now so I hope it's not going to be the old people going to say shame on you no I think that's really difficult because on the one hand I think like I've been involved in the IPC for more than half my life I don't think that's healthy but that's where it is and I'm just increasingly wondering are we just do we just keep reinventing the wheel you know whatever we came up with in the second assessment report the third assessment report especially reports in between and so on it seems like we just keep saying the same thing but in slightly different ways it used to be planting mangroves and now it's nature based solutions we're not really making much of a difference but why is it are we as the older generation as we as academics are we as the adaptation community not making much of a difference would it be wise if the younger generation just forget about these we'll just start from scratch maybe you should or maybe some of the wheels that we came up with were actually quite useful but they're just being re-labelled I mean Ines and I have ongoing conversation very respectful but good conversation about whether loss and damage is basically just a re-labeling of adaptation and when you say loss and damage finance I say adaptation finance we both agree that there should be a lot more money going to vulnerable people to support minimising addressing and avoiding loss and damage but is that is the focus on whether or not it's a third pillar is that helpful for the people who stand to benefit from whatever it is that we are putting forward and so I think yes I'm having to take much of the blame I think for better or worse much of the discussion that we're having about adaptation in the IPCC and also the UNFCC has somehow been influenced by work that I've been involved with but it was the best we could do at the time and we're still doing the best we can and if it's not enough then let's come up with something better I wouldn't say it was not enough I think it was foundational but that's the first layer now they build on the second layer and do much more so shame on us if we don't finance to me it comes down to that I'm thinking of these women that we're supporting in the Collines of Burundi again vividly they need access to finance not just to adapt to develop so I think it comes down to the fundamentals of equity fairness global solidarity back to again something that Magnus raised earlier we won't do it by research we won't do it by I think it'll be all of you keeping to clamour and rebel and knocking on the doors of parliaments that's what it'll take in the global south it'll take the young folks rising up as well as we've seen with the activist movements too across Africa for instance saying climate matters and this is our future there's no planet B so I think that'll get a lot done so I have a lot of optimism and hope that through the activism of the new generation climate will become central to discussions and it'll become microcritical as you say in our development practice I'm not optimistic that it'll happen this year and I'm unplugged right now we'll see what comes out of COP 27 but we've been asking for loss and damage adaptation development so I think it really is at the end of the day how much noise gets made and how much political will gets invested into sharing wealth and redistributing wealth and ensuring that at the end of the day we are an interconnected world and that there is vested interest in preserving prosperity and well-being in all parts of the globe easier said than done Thanks Aram challenge to my Do you want to start George? Yeah, yeah I can be I'm just thinking about the question that Richard asked what is the difference between loss and damage and adaptation is a question that I asked myself I guess this morning in preparation for this event and part of the question part of the answer to that I think is in regard to how that finances manage I suppose so with adaptation we see each government you come up with your national adaptation plan and then there's all these conditions around the funding I guess with loss and damage the argument goes that this is unavoidable loss caused by climate change and therefore that should be repaid in form of grants kind of almost liability we try not to frame it which are a legal context because then the US gets very angry about it don't want any sort of liability on the shoulders of those who have omitted in the past but I guess the point that Ines made about direct cash transfer holds quite an important weight in this argument I think which is that there does need to be that if you are a youth organisation that has a bank account but no collateral to put behind a loan then how are you expected to put forward any kind of adaptation action it's that same kind of barrier of similarly volunteer youth organisations don't have the capacity to fill out a hundred page grant application form and I think when it comes to the question of why is it different then the answer is perhaps a relabelling of the same thing with some slight differences around the way in which finances kind of operationalised but ultimately I guess it's a question of a movement rallying around a cause and you know it's if I was to make one prediction between now and the end of the year I think there's going to be a massive bust up at COP 27 about loss and damage because the entire civil society group of progressives i youth organisations and organisations in the global south and some global south governments are going to be asking where is the money we want it in the form of loss and damage but they may also in a different world have said we want that in the form of adaptation and I think it's ultimately going to come down to a question of is this kind of wealth that is needed is it going to come in the form of trickle kind of trickle down loans and insurance programs over time or is there actually going to be some kind of finance facility kind of created so yeah I don't know the answer and I think to be further people we need to convince so probably not the people necessarily in this room but that's the way it is I'm happy that we can talk about adaptation and loss and damage I get very excited about this but Richard said that we could argue that loss and damage is an adaptation I would argue the opposite in the UNFCCC context just being a nerd about this right now we talk about averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage and well averting is basically mitigation minimising is adaptation and addressing is what happens after so I would argue that any climate action is loss and damage action but getting back on what you said about Richard Dunberg is a very famous shame on you to me this shame is to be addressed the ones who should be ashamed are the ones who hold power who have benefited benefited from the system that we have in place that has caused climate change the people who have caused it who have accumulated wealth who have accumulated power in their power to maintain it because it is in their interests and all of us to some extent we are contributing to this and we have a certain responsibility to this but I assume based on the mentee answers that I saw on the board that most of you would be willing to give up a bit of that privilege for the common well-being but yeah, the shame on you is not directed towards researchers in particular or you Richard or the old generation not the old generation I think old, what does that mean like we've all been young and we've all been dreamers and they've been the hippies and they've been like each generation have their own fight and want to change the system and the generation is facing the same issue the ones who should be ashamed are the ones who are keeping the money the ones who are keeping the power the ones who are emitting fossil fuel for their own benefit extracting resources and exploiting humans humans for their own benefit and who are imposing the pace of this transition and this transformation but what gives me a lot of hope is exactly the fight and the engagement of more and more people young and old who are saying that it's enough and time has time has come to change this system and I hope it will happen sooner rather than later but I have faith that it will happen because our system as it is capitalism is very good at evolving and adapting to maintain itself but in the end it's also distracting itself so we don't have another opportunity and another choice then to change thank you when I was being here encouraged that I'm enthused we are still all dreamers there's a bridge across the generations we're not that old now maybe just one thing that is well I don't know if this is news at all but it's not that long ago that it was not at all popular to talk about adaptation or let alone to build a movement around it and to have young people rallying about adaptation and loss and damage I remember being in a conversation actually quite a heated conversation with somebody from Greenpeace at a cop in Bali in 2007 who was adamantly against discussing adaptation within the civil society community there because it was such a distraction from mitigation as if the two have nothing in common or as if they have nothing to do with each other and in the end and this is going back to the shame on you question as well if we fail with adaptation that's not just because our ideas about adaptation our practices are artificial it's also because we have failed on mitigation and that's where the two are connected because if we fail on mitigation adaptation becomes so much more difficult because we'll have to adapt to higher global mean temperature we have to adapt to higher sea level rise and greater impacts so let's not forget that let's not even within climate policy let's not talk about pillars and silos and all that sort of stuff I mean in the end mitigation is still by far the first priority but because it we have failed on mitigation for so long the urgency to talk about adaptation and the need to talk about loss and damage has become so much greater I would like to add one point if you allow me and it's also the danger of green evangelism and I'll give you a specific example that's playing out right now in the global community we hear that African countries should not be producing fossil fuels we hear the strong call and this is playing out as internal politics that it's important that in all our reports for instance that we be careful not to encourage countries I just came from Angola in producing and continuing their old production I think that's wrong so we also have to be very careful not to fall into dogmatism because again those that produce and are responsible for climate change are the ones that are the object and audience of this video of our work in our discussion we should make sure that in whatever we do going forward we do not punish those that were not responsible and in our global push for the end of fossil fuel production African countries in particular will not be on that same timeline for energy transition I'll give that example as a very pragmatic example of how also it can flip and the discourse can end up leading to maladaptation as we've been saying in the practice so another word of question adding to the two wishes thank you very much an applause for our panel thank you very much and we're now going to do a very quick change because we're pretty much the only thing holding you back from mingling and drinking and getting to know each other I'm going to ask Osir Pashon to come up Osir is SEI's research director deputy director as well Osir thank you so much good evening everyone really great to see a lot of friends and colleagues here tonight so as the last speaker I think my main job is to make you even more impatient for the cocktails and the canapes and the cake out in the great hall but we really hope you will enjoy them and enjoy the socializing but I'm also here as a representative of the global family of SEI centres to really show our appreciation for not only the speakers tonight but of course all the colleagues friends partners funders of SEI Oxford over the last 20 years and last but not least of course the staff which I think are the real stars of the evening for your really dedicated work in these 20 years so it's a bit of a paradox that we're in this natural history museum talking about the future of adaptation but I think we heard some really good things from the first panel there maybe it's about scaling back rather than scaling up or scaling out adaptation maybe we need ministers of resilience and really there are no shortcuts around inclusion and empowerment when walking in through these doors I'm sure some of you felt like me that this is really a sanctuary considering this vortex of change that we seem to be going through just in the last four days this week we see these examples of climate crisis economic crisis geopolitical crisis and I think as climate researchers we have been quite used to working in very systematic ways with our data and our tools and we often have these five-year horizons for our projects but now reality is catching up with us very quickly just I mean in the last four days it's ironic really that our fossil fuels experts at SEI hosted their third bi-annual conference here in Oxford on fossil fuel phase out and supply side climate policy how can we achieve this orderly, responsible, equitable transition out of fossil fuels also this week in Washington our air pollution experts joined the meeting of the climate and clean air coalition talking about the global methane pledge and you know how can they work with countries to reduce their methane emissions in a sort of structured cost effective practical way in the same space of time we have gas pipeline leaks in the Baltic Sea not far away from here of course we don't know exactly what has happened and why but it seems to be maybe a sign of this toxic cocktail of fossil fuels, energy security geopolitics tonight we're talking about adaptation in this week we have a hurricane hitting Florida typhoon in Southeast Asia recently the floods in Pakistan and of course coming out of a heat wave summer across Europe so how do we manage with this vortex of change what does it mean for climate research at SEI and I think more broadly in our community and I think the last panel really nailed it it was exactly the same points I wanted to make I think what I would like to convey to our Oxford colleagues and adaptation researchers more widely is that it seems like we need to do two things simultaneously one is to challenge ourselves step up, think new I loved hearing the examples from George there you are trying new things looking in new areas for inspiration so I hope the Oxford colleagues can use this anniversary this evening as a springboard for thinking new questioning old assumptions and I'm also pleased to say that at SEI globally we are exploring how we can consolidate and innovate our adaptation research of course together with the Oxford colleagues so anyone in here who has ideas you want to discuss please get in touch with Ruth and the team here maybe we can work together the second takeaway I think is this need to really still work on this cumulative knowledge building I was really pleased to hear insights from those of you who've been working for so many years on adaptation who really have this kind of institutional or collective memory who bring us back to the core questions of what works we have so many new concepts new narratives but at the end of the day we need to know what makes the lives of people better planting mangroves it's a native-based solution yes but it's also planting mangroves so with that I wanted to say enjoy the evening and a big thank you again to the speakers joining us tonight to all the partners and funders of SEI Oxford and last but not least everyone at the Oxford Centre have been involved in making this evening so special and nice for us to attend so big round of applause and enjoy the evening