 Ladies and gentlemen, allow me now to invite to the podium Dr. Balram Khabar, co-ordinator of the Climate Change Network NIMA. I am Mr. Sussan Gaurava, chair of the National Civilization and Secretary of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, Dr. Peshawna Koda. I am the chair of the LBC Group, UNRKCC and the joint secretary of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, Dr. Ghazmatema. I am the chair of the Adaptation Plan Board, Sunil Mulham, the senior fellow IED and director of the National Center for Climate Change and Development, Dr. Ramand, the director of the National Center for Environment Studies, Sam Dikers, CBO, Climate Change and Development, Knowledge Network, Distinguished guests, participants, ladies and gentlemen. Firstly, on behalf of the conference organizing committee, let me extend the warm welcome to all of you in the back, and to the eighth annual conference on community basic adaptation. I know several of you arrived in the country about days ago, and have had the opportunity to see the grassroots community adaptation work in the field. I hope you enjoy the field trip, and I also hope that you will be able to make the most out of this conference through the process of collective sharing, learning and influencing over the next few days and beyond. The selection of Nepal as the venue for eighth annual CBA conference is a strategic, specific at a time, where the government of Nepal has made the policy decision to allocate 80% of global funds for adaptation to be made available at the local, the least developed economy level, which is the smallest of political and agricultural unit in the country. The development of the global adaptation plan of action in some local framework further reinforce the government of Nepal's commitment to combat climate change challenges, particularly adaptation, as adaptation is most likely to leave the majority of people out of poverty. This primary level framework aims to enable communities to grow from the local knowledge to engage in local adaptation work. The level process intends to be bottom up, flexible and responsive. While this initiative is very encouraging, we must be supported, expected and monitored by all stakeholders, but if you look at the fifth summer, the benefit of such policies and plans are far more probably realized by the last misery of people, especially those who are most oppressed. It is true, the progress on adaptation work has been incremental, but the pace is much slower than anticipated. The theme of this conference is financing local adaptation, and I would urge the conference participants to look at adaptation financing both from global and local perspective. That is, global financing for local adaptation and local financing for local adaptation. The participants who managed to go on the field trip last week would know the tremendous amount of time and effort invested by the local communities at the grassroots level on adaptation work, and the variety of local initiatives and innovations. These are people who have contributed least to the problem, and the effort alone does not produce impact at scale. They must be supported by the national government and international community in the end of the month. The theme of this conference comes at an approaching time as climate finance is one of the most popular topic in climate change negotiations. While progress has been made in security places for climate finance classes in developing countries, with both mitigation and adaptation, however, the resource amount continues to be disbanded. Then more work is needed both by the national government and international community to set the adaptation of financing residing with global and local financing as well as to ensure that climate finance reaches the poor and places where it is being involved. Today in this conference, we have over 450 participants representing 62 nationalities across the world. We also have a number of high-profile communities this week with us. I hope we will be able to take a full advantage provided by this conference to update and access information about the latest thinking and develop in taking place with regards to CVA financing and good practices around the world. Let me conclude by saying that there may be several context-specific pathways for climate-resident development. However, strengthening of institutions, pursuing a strategy of adaptive management, investing and bringing research in policy discourse or policy interests, explaining knowledge of sharing, managing adaptation in global global planning processes, integrating adaptation and disaster risk reduction and more importantly, innovative mechanism to improve adaptation financing going forward and making it more accessible is critical which can provide a viable option for building a climate-resident pathway. Thank you and once again and very warm welcome to all of you.