 Hi everybody and welcome to this event today. My name is Juliette Tunstall and I'm the events officer here at IID. So today's event closing the transition financing, sorry closing the gap financing the transition towards an inclusive blue economy forms part of IID's debate series which through which we aim to create a space for conversation and debate on key and current sustainable development issues. We've got a fantastic panel today and also really encouraging an amazing number of you on the call. And so that's it from me. I'm going to hand over to Laura to introduce our panel and today's event. Thanks very much. Great. Thanks very much, Julia. And really great to see so many people joining us. I'm just seeing the little introductions come up and we've got people who look like they're coming in from Asia from Australia. So you guys, thank you very much for getting up in the middle of the night or staying out very late. And we've got, you know, panelists from the other side of the Atlantic on the north coast of North America. So it's really great to see so many people here. And it's been a really busy 10 days for for the ocean. Last week we had the virtual ocean dialogues the high level panel to replace what would have been the big Lisbon Ocean Summit. We participated as IID in a number of those events. And I think there's been really great discussions around sustainable blue economy around finance around plastic. And by ID we really wanted to do something to particularly mark this, this time and to take advantage actually of everybody being at home. It would be great if we could all be together but by being online it doesn't mean that we can bring in people from as far as feels Australia and British Columbia. And that's really great. It's also the sort of the time of year when you know people are starting to think about holidays and freedom that obviously in the COVID environment we are pretty much locked down at home. So we thought this was a really opportune moment to look at the issues around the challenges that the ocean face. Natural resources, marine resources support, livelihoods with Gulf fishers through to tourism. And they face growing pressures for climate change and they've officially but now they also face pressure from from COVID and that was a theme in the ocean dialogues, a theme also in the launch of the FAO Sophia report on Monday this week. And we are very interested in trying to come up with concrete solutions. How do we address these these challenges and the issue of finance that we're going to look at today. Nobody has all the answers or resources so particular importance of public and private sector financing coming together is one that we wanted to explore. So we're really pleased to have this really distinguished panel and join us to talk about that. We've got people looking at the financial incentives, fiscal tools, the Rishi Malia from University of British Columbia is a good long standing friend of our ideas. So very pleased to have him joins today to talk about some of the work that he's been doing on the financial incentives that governments can provide in this space. But then the private sector angle is very important and increasingly so great that torsted deal from the international institute for advanced studies in Potsdam and also fellow at London School of Economics is able to join us to talk about where where we are on getting private finance into this agenda. And then actually, when all this money comes together, what does it look like. And so that's why we've got actually great weight from blue finance where they're actually grappling with these problems, almost on a day to day basis, looking particularly at sustainable financing marine protected areas. So we've got, I think, a great panel and as I can see popping up in front of the all the time some really great people participating. So, as Juliet said, please, as we start to go through our dual Q&As into the box, we'll have around about 20 to 30 minutes of presentations and then we'll have 30 to 35 minutes for the Q&A at the end. So I won't see any more than that, and let people get on with the discussion and presentations. So my great pleasure to Rashid ask you to kick off. Thank you. Good day to all of you participants and thanks a lot for the introduction. And for giving me the chance to be part of this discussion, which is looking very promising from that tendancy list I see here. So I got into thinking more deeply into financing of ocean economic activities. When I got asked by the high level panel put together by the Norwegian Prime Minister to look at how to make our ocean economy sustainable. So some of the things I'll be saying here is part of the work we are doing. This is not published yet. So it's going to be a kind of preliminary kind of statements that you would see hopefully later how we publish this report. So the first point is that our ocean is really important and I don't think I need to belabor this. All the participants here know this. We get lots of food. We have all sorts of ecosystem services. We have the climate contributions and modifying. There's just too many things to do that I have time to name it. So the ocean is important. We need to take care of it. And we also know that in our modern economy, without financing, you cannot do much, you know, material good intentions. So we need to have proper, good quality, adequate quantity of financing to be able to keep our oceans sustainable inclusive. And so it can continue to provide us the services that not only us but also future generations of people. So this is a very important topic. So the first question I'm going to ask is, are the current investment into the ocean adequate? How is the quality of that? Is it helping us sustain our oceans in an inclusive way? And I'm sorry to tell you, but you probably know this. The answer is no. We are not funding our oceans adequately. And this is a $1.5 trillion economy if you just see the ocean as a country. It's projected to grow to about $3 trillion very soon. And yet when we look at the data, there is very little private sector investment going into the ocean. We could find only about $13 billion a year going into this through mainly philanthropy and also overseas development assistance. So $13 billion, $1.5 trillion economy. Just think about that. That is not adequate. And a lot of the public funding we see in there are usually misdirected. Subsidies that are harmful. We put in about $22 billion each year into our fishery sector, the ocean fisheries that lead to overfishing, overcapacity, illegal fishing, crazy stuff. We don't want to do that. And the oil industry, gas oil and gas have seen estimates of about a trillion dollars a year of subsidies going into this, which is aggravating climate change. So there is a lot of bad public investment going on and we need to redirect this. So the answer to my first question is not adequate financing and usually not good financing at the moment. There's a lot of work to do. The next point I want to make ask the question is, why are we doing this? What are the barriers to having good financing going into a very important part of our economy, the ocean economy? Some of the few points I'll drop here in this list is long. It's again, we have market dynamics that are distorted. We have distorted markets where we are supposed to tax people, we give them taxpayer subsidies. Because we don't subsidize overfishing under any circumstances in terms of economic theory and sustainability and inclusiveness. And this is what we do. Talking about inclusiveness, most of the subsidies we give go to large, big industrial complexes, whether it's the oil companies or big fishing fleas, which aggravates our inclusiveness goals, whether it's gender or no hunger, taking care of people who are really in need. We're doing a lot of bad financing in my view. Then there is a mismatch between projects and available capital. If you look at fisheries, for example, a lot of our fish stocks are in the developing world and more and more people depend on this. And where does the financing go? It doesn't go to the developing part of the world, it's concentrated in the developer. So there's a lot of mismatch that we need to deal with. And the ocean is generally more risky to invest in. So there is reluctance by the private sector to invest in the ocean and therefore we need to do something about their higher risk there. And this requires an enabling environment, which is what our public sector is supposed to provide. And a very important point is that there is a gap in understanding. We don't understand the ocean very much. We don't understand the investment environment much. People who want to do sustainable ocean activities in many parts of the developer world don't actually have the means and the knowledge and the human capital to actually access this. So again, there's a lot of work to do. Now, what can we do? What can we do there? A few points I'll drop here. Number one, I think we have to stop financing and ensuring activities that undermine sustainable oceans and inclusive ocean economic activities. We just have to stop that $1 trillion. Take it away, redirect it, let it work for the ocean environment ecosystem and for people. Rather than giving it to big oil companies who are already making lots of profit in general over time, you know, strengthen the knowledge base, build human capital. So we need to finance this. And when I say we are talking about different layers from individuals putting their energy to companies, really private sector investing in the right places. And above all, our public money, so tax money should be used to help ensure we have the knowledge and human capital to do this. We need to deploy. Deploy new forms of financing. And I think my colleague to still talk a bit more about this. There are new blue bonds and also some lendings that are being done because to help bring up new ways of doing it. Insurance has a big role to play in many ways, but mainly in de-risking, de-risking, helping come up with insurance schemes that will help us ensure that small scale woman-led ocean economic activities in a small developing country can actually participate with the little capital available to actually participate and improve lives. So that is another thing. And we have to boost new approaches to de-risking the ocean economy. To conclude, I need to talk a little bit about the need to increase public funding redirect. In fact, there's a lot of your tax money that goes into this economy, ocean economy, but usually in the negative when we need to redirect it. And this is important because the public sector sets up the framework and enabling environment for all of us in our private capacities to operate well. For example, if you take investment and you look at them in terms of risk and return of investment, there are certain activities on the ocean that have competitive, that can generate competitive returns. They can compete with any sector. There's a subset of all activities that are like that. And this can survive on their own because they can compete for investment funds. Then there are investment that are able to generate returns, but they are not competitive. This is where public funding comes into place. And so if you have an activity that helps a lot of people, vulnerable people, and the returns are not high enough, this is where the public resources can be used to boost that kind of investment to make it competitive. The third category are investment that do not generate market value. So this will not attract private investors. And again, this is where we come in as a society, as a nation, as the world to make sure because they are important. For example, carbon sequestration so far, there's not much market for it, but we know it's value. It's a great investment because it helps us with climate change, makes our environment stable for us to thrive in. So there we almost solely need public investment, philanthropy and things like that. So with this, I will just stop here and allow my colleagues to add more to the main points. Thank you Rashid. That was great. And I think you made a really important point about sort of redirecting public finance, which is going to be even scarcer in the context of post COVID recovery. We're hearing governments with billions of dollars or euros or pounds of pressed packages. So yeah, that's an important stimulus. How can that work together with private sector financing? So you know, talk to us over to you. Thank you very much indeed. And it's a great pleasure to follow Rashid and be on this panel with Angie. And indeed, I've just had a look at all this fantastic attendees in this panel. So we will have a great, great discussion. I will first briefly talk about what I call blue finance, next slide, which is really having heard from Rashid the context of how we need to get the economic incentive rights, as well as the governance context right. Blue finance is an implementation tool in the blue space to do exactly that. So we're talking about public and private investments in the marine and coastal space that bring us along these pathways that we are committed to. So those include zero emission pathways delivery on the STG's protection of biodiversity. So blue finance is delivering these societal outcomes in the marine and coastal space. And in order to do that, a key tool to make those investments is to be able to assess the risk environment, the ocean and coastal risk. So in particular, from sea level rise extreme weather men's but also other changes that threaten people and livelihoods and indeed the infrastructures on which all of these depend. So by integrating the finance into the interval structures that are responsive and able to make that transition, we are redirecting fund flows and we are wrecking actually very large amount of finance that would otherwise go misdirected into this space. And then the third element is very much the local livelihoods element. So that's micro finance that's community finance that is really targeting in particular the just transition and taking into account the need for nature based solutions. So that focus on the ground bottom up the key component of this. But at the same time, we have large institutional players we have national development banks multilateral funders, their function as arrangers, both in terms of loans and blue bonds and in delivering blended finance so bringing in also lower cost finance, all aligned to key standards and principles, green finance principles, the sustainable blue economy finance, but there are lots of efforts around clarifying what these principles are and the role of the multilateral funders and lenders is very much to provide that cover, ie a format behind with which private sector banks can come in, as well as these capital market structures, always keeping in mind that the capital market is the largest and cheapest and most efficient source of funds on the planet. But it needs to be directed into the space and so it needs a tool to do that. And then the fifth category I want to introduce is blue natural capital as an emerging integrated asset class for long term capital to support these efforts of mitigation adaptation and ocean ecosystem. And what I mean with that is, it's our everybody's pension fund money. It's long term patient capital, and that patient capital should think about where it wants to sit. Where do you want to be in the long long term and you want to be in functioning ecosystems and functioning societies. And that is exactly why that sort of patient capital needs to be directed into the blue space. So if that is the context of blue finance, let me move on to the next slide, which describes this now in the context of the sustainable inclusive blue economy. So what are we talking about this is about transforming those maritime sectors as well as those land based activities that already impact the ocean. And at the moment, a lot of these impacts are negative. So the financial contribution needs to be towards this transformation towards sustainability, circularity and resilience in these sectors. We just know they're active in the ocean, they affect the ocean, but they need to be brought into this transition. But we also have a whole new range of activities which is really a shift for an extractive economic model to one that is based on knowledge on exploration on building new values and new systems and in developed economies, the knowledge part is the biggest part of the economy. That is exactly what needs to happen in the blue economy. And that means engaging with a lot of sectors who may not immediately think of themselves as ocean related, but actually have ocean impacts and see ocean opportunities. Whether it's the health sector, the finance sector, the retail sectors. So we need to explain, understand, impress upon them these changes and then create new opportunities for new markets, new pathways around bioproducts, data, ecosystem restoration, resilience, smart infrastructure, livelihoods. So I'm describing a big emerging sector. Next slide. And we put this into a recent paper where this chart obviously is not correct in numbers. It doesn't give you precise states, but it gives you a trend. It gives you the trend of opportunity that is a sustainable blue economy would mean that it over time develops based on this different way of thinking and financing develops far beyond the scale and capacity of what a traditional ocean economy can deliver for us all. Next slide. So my argument is we can increase a need to increase the financial resources dedicated to the ocean and facilitate access to these resources by strengthening those national multilateral funders in their efforts and commitments to marine type projects, explaining to them exactly this context of a new blue economy around conservation and restoration of coastal and marine ecosystems. And integrate those types of climate and biodiversity considerations systematically into all these approaches into coastal infrastructure process into global logistics approaches. And that means also facilitating the access in particular for developing countries to green to the green climate fund and other mechanisms whose primary or starting ambition has been focused on climate but we now all understand that ocean and climate is intrinsically completely linked and these ocean opportunities are the ones that that we need to focus on and that means also delivering faster access to funding in particular for these community based initiatives and small scale projects and just one initiative I want to mention because I'm involved with this, the blue natural capital financing community where we help exactly those starting in the space early stage companies just and opportunities at that just getting to bankability stage. So that's that's all helpful. Next slide. So where does that leave the concept of innovative finance. When I talk about innovative finance it really is attracting private sector money in in a format that is effective for the private sector and brings in money earlier. So it's a lot about timing. So give you example on the blue bun we worked on for the Baltic and by using a multilateral investment bank. The Nordic Investment Bank was able to raise 200 million dollar facility that then funds specific wastewater treatment plants in local communities all around the Baltic Basin. So if you're a small town. If you're a bigger coastal area you can go directly through this fund. So that's innovative finance. It gives you money for capital expenditure up front. And it allows the benefits to come through the system because for instance, improving fisheries in an area where the water quality isn't there where you have deoxynation. You first need to get that water right. You need to recreate those ecosystems within which you can then deliver. And that means working with the technology sector society on integrated ocean data architecture supporting research and management of these ecosystems, as well as doing the same the social space in that you need ocean finance instruments trust funds and I've been arguing ocean sustainability bank and all of these approaches that integrate nature based solutions coastal infrastructure and encourage this restoration, not just but importantly also through regulation, but also through results based finance approaches and use of these so that we create new market instruments, new tradeable opportunities that for investors are understandable and that give them an opportunity participate in this amazing transition that needs to pick place and that we all hope will take place. Thank you very much. Thank you. That was an amazing sort of tour of an awful lot of information on blue finance. I thought I knew about it. I don't know how little I know that it. But again, a really timely position of the issues and I was really struck by your charts, you know, in this context. COVID, you know, there's a lot of bad news out there but seeing, you know, they say it's not scaled the potential for benefit to come from an inclusive blue economy approach, I think is it looks really impressive. But moving now to how does this actually look on the ground when when some of these public and private sources of finance come together so that's why it's really great that we've got Angelique from the finance here today to talk about some of their experience. And I don't know what the Asian equivalent is of working at the core base that have working at the core base, Angelique over to you. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much. I'm grateful for this opportunity to present. So, yes, I work for a small NGO called Blue Finance. So I guess it's fortuitous we came right up to Torsten. And our NGO looks at developing sustainable finance and solutions for marine protected areas. Of course, the bottom line is to improve the marine and coastal ecosystems. Our model, our solution is based on three pillars. And the first one is to sign a lease agreement with local governments to co manage the MBA. So we use the terms co management and private public private partnerships interchangeably dependent on where we are, but it's a collaborative agreement signed with government. The second pillar is we need to develop tangible revenue models. And these models include integrating social entrepreneurial skills within the MBA staff. And finally, and most most relevant to what we're talking about here today, we also develop blended finance solutions for upfront capital so our blended finance is a mixture of impact investment, and also grants and philanthropy. And I think most people are aware of NPA challenges and I mean staff and budget capacity or some of the greatest predictors of conservation impact, and many NPAs suffer from insufficient finance and also kind of, you know, unstable. Most NPA financing comes from grants or governments with changing priorities and changing, changing budgets, and we all know with grants you're not sure if you're going to get the next one. It's not that the NPA staff don't know what to do there's broad awareness and knowledge of what they need to do, but this is limited by staff by staffing and budgets, and some skill set so this is where we come in and offer solutions. Just quickly right now we have NPAs working with us in the Caribbean Southeast Asia and Western Africa we have two under active management they're all at different stages, but two are in active management five are in a structure in phase and five others are in a design phase. Now each NPA has been selected with governments based on specific requirements such as legal feasibility for co management in the first place. Business model potential and existence of local support and capacity so this is important because our solution is not going to work for all NPAs diverse specific requirements that have to be fulfilled, but we do think in the next 10 years these lease agreements and self financed NPAs would be a lot more So we're looking for net positive social ecological and financial impacts and we measure these first of all when we go in we develop an environmental social and action plan to identify potential negative impacts social environmental and governance. And then we also develop key performance indicators with our local teams to look at how specific indicators are changing over time to make sure that the investment that we're bringing is actually produced in these positive impacts. Of course we also use structures like that to determine the management effectiveness of the NPA. So this provides great benefits to governments of course I mean it's a turnkey solution so it allows the governments to focus their often scarce resources elsewhere and as we've heard before we're expecting these scarce resources to be even scarcer post COVID. But it allows governments to maintain overall responsibility in the public space. And they're also able to tap into abilities that are not typical for government agencies such as marketing. So what we do is we bring the finance. We try and instill a sense of social entrepreneurship and financial responsibility within the NPA staff. So that they will continue to generate the revenue that is required for this financing mechanism that we are producing. They're obviously a number of challenges. I mean impact investments in an NGO space is a very unfamiliar term even though we're hearing more and more about it. And now I mean most NGOs once they hear you know impact investments go running through the hills they're not exactly sure what it is. And they're also unaware of the available opportunities that exist for them in impact investment. NGOs, governments sorry, governments are usually quite open to this idea and the only hesitation is in relinquishing some of their responsibilities to an NGO and we always work with nonprofit NGOs. Impact investors. One of the challenges I see there is disparity in the amounts required for a single NPA and typical investors minimum investment size. So what we're doing now is we are providing a pipeline of projects for impact investors. Of course, the situation has changed quite dramatically because the the revenue model that we have traditionally used has been very top heavy towards tourism revenues. And of course, now with COVID and a decline in tourism revenues. We have to start looking and changing how we're going to change that that financing mechanism, but even before COVID we were looking at other sources of revenue generation such that we're not tourism related, such as blue carbon biodiversity offsets we're looking at payments for ecosystem services and the natural based solutions. But post COVID we've actually started looking a lot more intently at insurance, we're in the early stages of looking at business interruption coverage. And what this will do is cover the minimum staff costs for six to 12 months. I mean projections are early projections are showing that that you know the industry will recover or should recover by 2021. So we are expecting that tourism will come back in and be a major player, but in the interim we are looking at other ways of building this this revenue model. I think I will, I can stop there and delete the rest of questions. Thank you very much. Great. Thanks very much, Angelique. And I think that that's really sort of, you know, good way to bring us back to the sort of the here and now what some of the practicalities are that you're facing in this sort of COVID context. We've got a lot of questions coming in, which is great trying to sort of sort through them and find a way to bring them to the panel is the easiest thing to do in these situations, but I think we've got a couple that we could sort of kick off with. And one that I think perhaps could go to all panellists because it does cover each of what you've been talking about is that some with a lot of focus here on inclusion and sort of the need to support small scale projects but, you know, these might not look attractive to private investors and they might carry quite high transaction costs. So, yeah, perhaps to you first of all, I'd also like to get Rashid and Angelique's perspective on this. What do you think some of the strategies that can be used to aggregate some of these small scale projects to sort of make something that invests in the attractive to private investors. And I'd like to start with a really great little example of inclusion what I mean with it. I had the Philippines and in that community where fishing was depleted the question arose, what are alternatives. And so the community looked at seaweed farming and seaweed farming needed a small upfront investment for the farmers. The way the process worked is whereas traditionally the fishing was predominantly a male activity. The decision, which of the local households were going to get the $200, $300 startup finance for seaweed farming was made collectively by their saving a loan set up. During this meeting of 24 women who looked at the different proposals and decided which of the families would be getting this type of financing. So you moved to a very inclusive process. You moved to an inclusive activity because the seaweed farming in itself, because it was much closer to the household involved the whole family. You had a sustainable product because not only provide the seaweed background within which fish stocks can recover, but also the sale of that seaweed happened very locally. Now it was still a viable proposition, because there is demand for that product not far away. It's setting these different steps of process up that is the challenge, but it's not that the underlying proposition isn't solid. And that's why I think the move to thinking this through in a new more inclusive way actually opens up an amazing range of opportunities that can address the small scale issue that can address inclusion issue and in fact work better as a result of doing it. Rashid, do you want to come in? Yeah, so, so yes, thank you. This is, this is a good one to follow to send here with the specific example. I would like to focus on how our public policies can actually be not inclusive, right. And sometimes a way to define something is to show what it is not right. So, so take subsidies, fisheries subsidies for example. Data, data shows that about 85% of all the total 35 billion dollars that goes to the fishing sector in a year goes to life scale. And the remaining 1415% goes to small scale fishes. Clearly, not the way to use public policy. Why? We have lots more small scale fishes than the life scale. And by doing this, just by this one single public policy, you are making the fishery sector not inclusive because you are making everything unequal, the small scale sector being unviable and making them incapable of participating in the sector on a, on a level playing ground. So that is clearly not inclusiveness. And what that does is it has a lot of ramifications if you think of the sustainable development goals. So these big boats go out with your tax money, fish over fish, which means there is less fish next time aggravating hunger in the, in the small scale communities. It is affecting gender inequality in the sense that there are more women active in small scale fisheries than in life scale. So you are aggravating the problem that is global or women disadvantage in so many different ways. We don't want to do that. So that is just one example to show you how, how to be inclusive for my, by showing you how we are not inclusive at the moment. So actually that's actually very helpful because some of the other questions have been about, you know, how are we defining inclusion here and I think it's really important that you talked about the role of women in fisheries, because it may not be the ones going out and catching the fish. They are involved in a lot of the processing, a lot of the marketing. And he talks from you on how to make the small scale into an investable product. Yeah, I was going to focus not so much on the inclusivity of it, but I was, I really latched onto the high transaction costs that you were talking about because that's an issue for us with impact investments and with small MPAs. So the way that we are dealing with that is, as I mentioned in the proposal, what we're trying to do is we're trying to provide a pipeline of projects for impact investors so it's not just one MPA. We're trying to split those transaction costs and all of the costs between a number of MPAs and one impact investor. So that is how we're looking to deal with that. In terms of inclusivity, I think when people hear impact investment, they think inclusivity is perhaps the exact opposite thing that's going to happen there. But what we've been doing with our MPAs is we have been using some of the money from the impact investment and from the other work, our commitments that we're doing in order to build up livelihood enhancement programs for the MPAs. And I think everyone is aware that MPAs cannot work without participation from local communities. So we're looking at for fishers, for example, if you want to move out of the fishing community, if you want to, we will help you with other professional, other jobs that you might be looking to get into. Or even if you want to stay in it, we're going to assist you with making your fishing, for example, more sustainable. Thanks, Angie. I think a question that sort of picks up on some of this and puts this sort of into COVID context that we're currently facing. The OECD predicting global economic downturn of around 6% to 7%. I think it's actually much larger in most developed countries here in the UK. They're talking about 11% to 12%. But that's going to be sort of significant, not just in terms of a country's economy, but also impacts on global trade. If we're going to move away from this kind of more extractive-based approach, what would be the first priority task that would need to think about for inclusion of these marine issues into the national budget? So I think, Rashid, that's probably one more for you. I think we're talking about extractive, which is quite big now. We have the oil and gas sector, and they get in a lot of public funds, subsidies, as I mentioned. So how about moving the budgets and supporting renewable energy, for example, renewable energy activities, because that way we can generate new jobs that are sustainable. And if we do it properly, it can also be inclusive. So that would be one thing. If I was looking at budgets, we'll look at to move public funds that aggravate our environmental problems to those that give us renewable and circular economy activities. If I may add to that, the renewable companies have done better in the crisis than the traditional fossil fuel companies. So already we have tested the theory that ESG-consistent assets in this class of sustainability did better in the crisis. So invest in those assets. But I would add to that, that the opportunity, and I'll pick up on another question around blue carbon, the opportunity is really to go beyond this commodified approach. Obviously, if I think of a carbon credit as just carbon, I disregard other value. And this is what is so amazing with the blue carbon space and why this is such a revolution. It's the mangroves that at the same time protect the coastline. So it's an adaptation value. So when I buy the mangrove credit just for mitigation, I miss out on that adaptation value. And if I miss out on the fact that the mangroves promote diversity and fish stock recovery, then I lose another bit of value. So in this crisis situation where there's fewer realising these points of value is really a way forward for investing. So this is exactly the right time to switch to impact investing to really see the value that is in these coastal spaces and invest accordingly. Thanks, Torsten. And I think another group of questions that have come up that sort of linked to that that are actually sort of for UNG, again, related to COVID impacts and reductions in tourism. And as you said, tourism is one of the potential finance flows for NPAs. What are your thoughts around where this might go if a reduction in tourism leads to reductions in revenues? Yeah, I mean, I would love to say and I mean, I'm from Barbados, a tourism dependent country, I've always been jumping up and down and screaming about about reducing the reliance on tourism. But the reality is, is that I still see most of the revenue for NPAs come in from tourism because of those ecosystem services that are delivered. I mean, it's just so attractive and and in a sense, easy to get revenue from that. But I think, and I think that will continue. I personally think the tourism industry is going to recover and I think the majority of the user fees will still come from tourism. But I think what COVID has shown us is that you can't put all your eggs in that tourism basket. You really, really have to reduce to some extent your dependence on tourism and look at some of these other ways of generating revenue that have nothing at all to do with tourism. And I mean, and I think that's also a very, very good thing because we all know that if tourism is not managed well, it's actually going to end up impacting negatively on the same ecosystem that you were trying to preserve. So, unfortunately, I still see quite a reliance on tourism, but I do see that now people are starting to look at at other ways of generating revenue that perhaps they would not have looked at previously. That's good. And another couple of questions have come in on plastics, unsurprisingly, but I saw some pictures the other day that we're seeing a huge increase in plastic waste discarded masks and gloves that people have been using for personal protection during the COVID crisis. Any thoughts from across the panel, I mean, perhaps to start with you, where potentially public finance could be put into sort of blue jobs and might that leverage private sector to finance? Yeah, I think this is where creativity and innovation really needs to come in. And we published a paper right in the beginning of the COVID crisis pointing out that the first test for COVID is based on a marine organism. Marine has solutions. And it's the same thing. We need a whole new value chain based on, for instance, macroargy to replace plastics. So these are real deep technology investment opportunities and a switch that the private sector can make to actually deliver more solutions around it. So you have to address the issue from these two ends. So one and really come up with new innovative solutions for a different form of dealing with the problems. But at the other end, obviously reorganizing waste management, making sure that that becomes a reliable process so that we don't have to go into beach cleanups every week. So this is a real shift at both ends. And I think there's there's a lot of activity around that at the moment in including from from the corporate sector. So, so let's keep pushing in that direction so that this happens quickly and we don't miss this opportunity. And that we don't go back to bad business as usual. That's great. That's really good to hear that enthusiasm. Rashid, what do you think the potential of the government here? Yeah, it's to add to what Tosina has said really is a great opportunity. You talked about the materials and so on. I will emphasize the opportunity at the policy level. So, so and the use of public funds and how that can be used to help us improve because and plastic, for example, is this nice simple idea, which if it is implemented and scaled up could be a nice way to do it. So, so there are people who are arguing that why don't we use public funds to pay fissures because some of them want to be underwater to clean up plastic rather than catch fish. So pay them to catch plastic rather than fish, which would be a brilliant way to do it. You will clean the ocean, you will give the fishing break. So we have better biomass and more potential in the future. And you will keep people alive by paying them salaries, right? So they are livelihoods continue, which we all want. So you have win-win-win. So as I, as I tried to say, we need to be smart with the way we design public policy and use public funds. I don't want to use the word, but I feel like using stop being lazy, okay? Our public officials think through the dollars and COVID makes it even more important because there will be less resources. So how do you get, how do you save two birds with one stone? That should be the thing we should think about. You save them, you don't kill them with one stone. How do you do that? That's a great, great sort of analogy to pull it together. Rashid, I think that that's, you know, this is the kind of thing as innovative, it's not just innovative finance, it's innovative thinking. Angie, what do you think the prospects are for this to actually happen in reality on the ground? Are we going to get fissures fishing for plastic? That's tough and that's site-specific as we all know. And I think we all know fissures love to, I think it's a brilliant idea. I love it. I'm here smiling. It's something I would like to see work and I would say it is, it would be very, very site-specific. And I'm going to end there. Great. Great. Well, as you said, I think there is definitely some sort of smiling going on around that because it's, you know, the potential here for really negative impacts. There are a couple of questions saying, really, are we going to attract investments in this time as a global recession? But I think, as Joseph said earlier, you know, the renewable energy companies, companies that are resilient, that are forward-looking, that are responsible, are actually doing better in this sort of economic contraction. So we don't have much time left. So perhaps, sort of, one last question at the panel and then I'll sort of ask for just your sort of summary of reflections on this. I think particularly, as we said at the beginning, you know, what is it we need to do together to be moving forward on this agenda? So the other question that's had a lot of interest is, you know, government principles. So I think the EU, with its sort of Green New Deal, is talking about financing principles for its investments. And somebody has asked if, you know, what do panellists think of that? And is there anything similar in the US? I don't know anything about this, Rashid. You may have heard being close to it, but I'm sourcing it better to start with you. Yes, and I'm very enthusiastic about this approach of better principles. I was involved personally with the European Sustainable Blue Economy finance principles. I believe that the work that the EU is doing on these green finance principles are really important to deliver what in the end will become a global standard. It's really interesting how you already see careful choices made based on where do I get better financial governments because that's risk reduction. And so having these principles is helpful. We need to make sure, however, that the green finance principles fully include these ocean issues and concerns. And that's, it's part of the work plan, but we need to do that now. We need to bring it in now because this is exactly a moment where we have two things happening. We have large public finance going to be directed to help the economy and we need to make sure that's directed in the right way. But it's also the frameworks that are shifting. And so that's why this is such an important moment to get these principles right and get them globally adopted. And so there are ongoing discussions between the central bank governors and the Basel process, etc. So there's work in this direction, but in the end it is the user that drives this process. And so if investors insist on financing being done in that way, then that will be the way forward. That's great. Thank you. Rishi, do you have thoughts on the principle? Yeah, no, I'm a big supporter of principles. Just think about it. Think about it. Think about a person who has no principles. Just think about that, right? You don't have God raise. You don't have anything. You don't have limits. No red lines for yourself, right? So I'm all for principles because this set standard for you limits for you and and and they guide you. So yes, it's good we are developing this. We should develop them all. They have to be diverse. I don't believe in one global principle because things differ. Communities differ. But I think each country, each community, central banks should have principles that will slowly speculate and become key principles that we all should have by investors and public and individuals when it comes to investment in the ocean. Yeah, principles are important. We should give everyone principles, right? If we can't. That's great. And it's no means, no means, but there you go. It's really good to hear both of your support for principles, but actually implementing principles on the ground sometimes comes with cost, financial cost, and sometimes it's the poorest to end up bearing those costs. So I think that you also have a perspective from actually working on the ground on how these principles might actually help to improve the flow and quality of investment into the economy. But I mean, we're already guided by principles. I mean, one of the first things to one of the first requirements for the impact investors actually is that environmental and social governance plan. We are already guided by principles, and yes, there's a cost to implement them, but I think the cost of not implementing them is going to be a lot higher. The only issue with the principles and Rashid alluded to it, it's not one size fits all. You have to adapt it to your specific requirement, which is why in each case and each of the MPAs that we're working with, we worked with the local staff in order to develop, in this case, indicators for change, for example, the KPIs we work with the local staff in order to determine what import what indicators are important and which ones are likely to change also. So, yeah. Yeah. Just one quick one quick example here of the insurance companies right we my postdoc Dana Mila she's now working with Oceana actually she took her postdoc worker got employed and she's leading this helping to lead this effort. She found out in her postdoc work that a lot of insurance companies actually end up insuring illegal fishing boats, which will be crazy right why will you do that. So, so the now a principal husband was signed by big insurance companies where they, we are not going, not knowingly going to ensure illegal fishing entities. And that's a principle and it's a red light for that whenever they do the checking and that's the kind of thing that that's great. Thank you. I mean that is a sobering thought that, you know, you've got a very responsible sector insurance it's facilitating legal fishing. I'm conscious that we're right at the end of time it's been a really great discussion but I did want to give each of our panelists a final 30 seconds minute at most just say in terms of taking this agenda with what do you think is one most important thing that we should be doing so she does start with you. Yeah, in terms of message I mean the WTO the World Trade Organization is currently working hard to get an agreement on how to redirect or move harmful subsidies that is those who it overfishing of a capacity. And all those on the audience if there's anything you can do to support them, whether by writing to your to your parliamentarians or by even thinking of three or so people in your country or in your domain who you think can help push this over the line the finish line their target is by the end of this year. Please do so because that will redirect a lot of helpful public funding into something good for fish and for people and for the ocean. Thank you. That's great. Thanks very concrete recommendation to Austin. And I'm very encouraged by the broad range of participants here with very interesting questions. This is what this is about we are building a new community with a new focus that understands that in the largest space of our planet largest livable space. And solutions sit that we need to apply the development and for people and with nature. And so let's keep this process going. That's great and we've got all the details of people who have registered will we recorded this will be sharing it. So hopefully as you say this is the beginning of a community working to take this agenda forward and Angie final thoughts for you. This is very fluffy. This is a very fluffy thought and I admit that, but my final thought really is you know what go and take a dive, enjoy the marine environment enjoy the wonderful coral reefs and the fish, come back out and get inspired. And I know that we will all come up with ways to protect marine environment. And that's what all the impact investments and grants and everything is all about it's all about protect and our marine environment. So yeah, go go take a dive or snorkel. It's a really great idea and for those of us who are in lockdown and can't get anywhere near an ocean. It's a very nice thought. So, we can't give you a round of applause, but thank you very much to all of our families to receive and Angie, it's been a really great questions from our participants. And we really look forward to taking this work forward. So thank you all very much and goodbye for now.