 Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, welcome to everybody. This is a meeting, the second event of the 2024 Development Matters Lecture Series, which is kindly sponsored by Irish Aid. And over the years with the IAA, it's been a remarkably valuable partnership. And this isn't just the next installment. 2024 also marks Irish Aid's 50th anniversary, which was a prerequisite for Ireland joining the EEC. And we're delighted to be joined today by Dr. David Nabarro. David will speak for about 20 minutes and then we will go to Q&A with our audience. And our audience is not just the people who are here today, but we have a substantial number of people looking in online and welcome to them and we welcome any comments or questions they have. David is, I was going to say he needs no introduction, but he's going to get one anyway. David is Strategic Director of Ford SD Foundation in Geneva. He's Professor of Global Health at Imperial College, London and Special Envoy on COVID-19 for the Director General of the World Health Organization. He served as Senior UN System Coordinator for Avian and Pandemic Influenza. He was Coordinator of the UN Systems High-Level Task Force on the food security crisis 2009, 2014 and was Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Food Security and Nutrition and Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition, the Sun Movement. In short, David has been a remarkable leader at international level and has been a huge, the collaboration between Ireland and David over a long number of years now has been extraordinary and this is just the latest installment. So we're going to have you talk about what you want to talk about for about 20 minutes and then we want to try and make sure that there's a chance for interaction. So, David, over to you. Thank you very much, Tom. Tom, you have been really very much one of my mentors since we started working together when you were convening the Irish Hunger Task Force. It's wonderful that Peter is here, given his role in that whole period, but there are many people in this room who I've worked with either inside the same organization or on issues at the same time and I want to structure this as part of a continuing discourse that we have. I want you to trust me to take your ideas and your energy into the avenues and corridors that I tread and I would like to share some of our thinking with you because Ireland is such an important country in global efforts for development, for equity, for human rights, for dignity and it's celebrating that I'm here and I'd like to continue with my colleagues, Florence, who is the Managing Director of our Foundation and Arnie, who is the Partnerships Advisor in our Foundation, we'd like to keep engaging with you. 2008, the Hunger Task Force reported it was one of the best joined up examinations of the links between food production, how people live and whether they were able to access their basic needs and then nutrition and long-term wellbeing of societies and it just connected everything so nicely and I remember when the report was handed over to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2008, he turned round to us with a wonderful smile and he said, these people really do understand what's going on here, they see the whole system joined up together. In fact, that systems approach then carried through to 2015 when the Sustainable Development Agenda was launched and we saw in goal two a real effort to bring the different components together and to recognize their interdependence and then from 2015 onwards, it was a very exciting initial period as we were all realizing what power the Sustainable Development Agenda had but then things started to get a bit difficult because we had the combination of accelerating climate change, COVID-19 and really an awful lot of conflict and the cost of living crisis in more recent years made really sustainable development a very big challenge and the difficult time started. In 2021, we reflected on this at the first ever Food Systems Summit convened by the UN Secretary General and it was at that summit that we recognized the interdependence between food systems and the systems in society, the power structures and all the rest but it led to a real effort in the international arena to deal with agriculture, food and nutrition as a joined up system rather as you had proposed in the Irish Hunger Task Force so many years before and then after that Food Systems Summit, we had a follow-up process with more than 120 countries developing pathways to sustainable food systems of the future and then trying to implement them against the headwinds of the four seas as I mentioned but particularly accelerating climate change conflict which became very, very dominant as we moved forward into more recent months but I want to bring in now somebody who really made a big difference in 2022 and 2023. In the UAE, there was a minister responsible for Water and Food Security called Merriam-Hulmary and she with the support from her president said, let's try to really recognize that there is a profound link between agriculture, food and nutrition security and climate and nature and so she said we're going to make that a feature of COP 28, the meeting that just took place in Dubai in December and what happened? They established a declaration on the linkages and invited all heads of state and government to endorse it at the time we thought we might pick up 2030, 40, no, 159 countries including Ireland have endorsed this and the declaration commits to converging the interests between agriculture, food and nutrition and water on the one hand and climate and biodiversity nature on the other. Some of you may think well that's blindingly obvious. It's so clear that climate change is affecting food systems but no, but as we've heard and we just heard it just now from our colleagues in World Vision, there are quite big divides in many governments between the sectors responsible for an environment and climate action and the sectors responsible for agriculture and food and indeed the sectors responsible for nutrition and in a bizarre way it's that fragmentation between the sectors that now seems in many places to be holding us up. So to help countries as they implement the UAE declaration on ag food and climate, the UAE government is encouraging an effort for greater convergence across these different sectors in every national administration, greater convergence in thinking across the sectors among the different stakeholders are involved in agriculture and food and also greater convergence in the way in which agriculture and food are taught in schools and studied in universities so that we defragment the way in which agriculture and food is being examined. That's of course only part of the work that remains. The other part is the sense among many people that when it comes to the future of agriculture and food that there are people whose interests are not being taken into account. I mean, you can just see it actually not looking very far from where we are now that there is disquiet. On the one hand, those who produce food want to have a decent income and life for them and their families. And especially at their small holders, there are real challenges with doing so, especially with the cost of living crisis. At the same time, it's important that poor people in particular are able to purchase the nutritious food they need for themselves and their families, but they're finding it harder and harder to do so because of the cost of living crisis. Just even in the newspaper this morning, it pointed out that in Ireland, you have growing levels of food poverty just across the Irish Sea. There is also evidence of 18% food poverty in the UK. This is a bad, bad situation. And what happens is under those circumstances, people buy cheap food, but it's not nutritious food and there is increasing levels of malnutrition. But then you've got another problem. You want your farmers to have enough income. You want kids and adults to be able to enjoy good nutrition. But at the same time, you've got to reduce the amounts of fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides that are being used in agriculture because the long-term damage with that industrial agriculture is clear for everybody to see. We just don't have to look very far to see how it is leading to either problems with water supplies, with excess nitrates in the water, or challenges in sea with runoff from fertilizer leading to alga blooms, altogether, the environmental dimension needs attention. And so there's another problem, and that is that there is inadequate attention to nutrition and that people may be able not to get adequate nutrition if they don't get their diets right. So taken together, the need for the food, the need for farmers to have a decent income, the need to pay attention to environment and climate, and the need to pay attention to nutrition creates big challenges in the future of food systems. Some say it's an impossible equation to resolve. You just can't do it in the current economic systems we have. But farmers who are currently protesting, say in Brussels or in Cork, they're not going to accept that. And so what do we do in a situation where the systems seem to be so densely interconnected that we can't unlock them and get them to work better for people and for the planet? In our judgment, there is only one way to work in that situation. It's not to have more and more scientists coming along and blasting people with PowerPoints. It's not having those with power coming along and saying, sorry, farmers, you're going to have a tough time for the next 10 years. You've just got to lump it. It's not saying to poor people, oh, unfortunately, you're not going to be able to enjoy good nutrition and have well-nourished children who can see well and grow up with good brains. We can't accept that degree of, and far as I'm concerned, injustice. I wanted to find that word, injustice in the way in which we respond to the food systems challenges. Instead, we have to initiate and sustain multi-stakeholder dialogue everywhere because that is the only way to work through these very difficult-to-solve challenges. And in fact, they may not be soluble challenges. They may not be clean solutions to them. So the only way to deal with it is with continuous, open, unfettered dialogue in which everybody has their chance to contribute. These are not easy dialogues to do, but you have experience with it. When you were developing Food Vision 2030 in Ireland, you had dialogues leading up to that as part of the food systems summit process 2021. I think that dialogue process has stimulated in Ireland a continuous willingness to talk, talk, talk and to work these things through. If, as a result of one dialogue, you've still got people feeling very unhappy about the way to go, you've got to have more dialogues. You persevere, don't give up. And we are saying not only do you need the dialogues, you also need the space for what we call safe, fail experiments. Gotta try out different ways of doing things, different forms of agricultural production, different ways of rewarding farmers for their produce, different relationships between farmers and those who take off the food. Do you introduce floor prices, yes or no? Discuss it, explore it, see whether or not it works. Look at the experiments that have been done in other countries like India. And then once you've done the safe, fail experiments, find the opportunities to put these into practice. May well be in one district or a set of districts or in a value chain, but unless there are safe, fail experiments that are going on and exploration of alternatives, it won't work. Now, dialogue and exploration is fine, but you also have to be able to accompany it with people who will mentor and support those involved in the dialogues. We did this in and around the Food Systems Summit and we found that there is a very subtle difference between accompanying a process of exploration and judging people while they're doing it. Accompaniment and judgment are completely different. When you accompany, you provide cover. Somebody is doing an experiment to change the way in which food is done. They want to empower women, but women then are at risk of being exploited if they're empowered and if there's not protection put in place. You cover the efforts to safeguard the women who are being involved by coming in from the outside and providing the accompaniment. And without that coverage, the safe, fail experiments can't happen. Now, you might say, well, that's an awful drag. Dialogues take time and to build trust through dialogue takes time and we can't afford it because we're dealing with 2030. We've got the world that's troubling us all around. I'm going to say to you, you have to take the time it takes to get the trust to enable the safe, fail experiments to take place, to enable the explorations to take place. Without trust, you're never going to be able to do anything. You break trust, it'll take a long time to rebuild and you won't be able to bring in the kind of systems, changes we're talking about. So yes, it takes time, but you've got to invest in it. Don't leave aside the dialogue saying it takes too long or it's too complicated and try and find the shortcuts. In our experience, the shortcuts lead to the kind of bust ups that we might be seeing in some countries right now where people will not talk to each other because they're so cross. So if we're going to work with dialogues, if we're going to concentrate on exploration, if we're going to do more safe, fail experiments, if we're going to invest the time necessary to build the trust, where can we get the lessons from? I still believe that come to Ireland must be one of the instructions that we offer people. Perhaps they won't be able to actually come to Ireland, but they've got to understand this is country where you have used constant, perseverant dialogue as a way to avoid the kind of bust ups that we know could so easily happen and result in conflict and perhaps even violence and warfare. So you have experience of doing this. You know that the investment is worthwhile and we come here because we learn from you. But what are we going to take to other people to help them to do this? Well, my group in ForestD Foundation has really decided that we're going to invest the next five to 10 years in supporting the process of dialogues and exploration and experiments and then introduction of safe, fail processes. We're going to accompany that in as many of the countries as we can reach who signed up to that or endorsed that UAE declaration that I talked about. That's 159 countries. We're going to do it of course with the UN and with others. We're going to look for partners, but it's got to be done in the style of accompaniment and not judgment in covering people when they take often quite risky decisions with clear learning from the process. You can say, well, have you got anything to offer us and sort of pointers to this way of working and what it actually means? It's uncomfortable. Often when you're trying to support systems transformation, you feel we're not getting anywhere. It doesn't feel as though we're advancing. Sometimes you feel that you're even going backwards rather than going forwards. So be ready for the discomfort. If you're a systems person, you often irritate people who want to get on with action and get results. They say, oh, why are you spending all this time talking? We should just be doing. So be ready for the adversity. Be ready for people saying, actually, you're not on our side. And inevitably it's political. Many of you have served in government. Some of you are still in government. All of you know that these issues we're talking about are shrouded in politics. So be ready for the politics. Be ready to get into that space. And finally, just five things to have with you as you leave. Whenever you're dealing with systems issues, number one, there will always be multiple perspectives. Accept that. Don't fight against it. Don't say to people you should all think the same. Accept the de-difference in perspective. Secondly, when you're dealing with systems issues, be able to deal with the detail and the big picture at the same time. And to flip between the detail and the big picture as often as you can. Because detail may shift. The big picture may stay the same. Detail may stay the same. The big picture may shift. You've got to be able to work at both levels at the same time. And remember, thirdly, that each system changes to reflect the characteristics of the environment in which you find it. We're just looking at food and agriculture. A policy done in the west of your country, in the north of your country, and in the south of your country will look different because of the different contexts. Number four, whenever you're doing this work, feel into the rhythm and the pace of the people you're working with. Because that will determine the change that can happen. Not the pressure you're putting on the system, but the way the system is behaving itself. And finally, meet people right where they really are, not where you want them to be. We've all been in situations where somebody has said, they ought to understand what I'm going to say, so I'm going to talk to them as I believe they ought to be. I mean, that's super common, but no. Find out where they really are, where they want to be, and work with them on their terms. Those are five lessons that we've learned. It's what we've applied in our work on COVID. It's what we're applying in our work on food systems. And we hope that we have continued opportunities to work with you all as we invest in accompanying systems change because that is the only way that we move ahead with social justice, food security, nutrition for all, a healthy planet, and farmers and other producers who've got a decent standard of living. Thanks. Thank you, David. We've got about 30 minutes, and I want to engage from the audience with as many of you as possible. But the question has come in from the web. It's from Rex Hogan, from the European Commission. Were you disappointed that the COP28 outcome did not include a more detailed outcome on the food systems and agriculture topics? When we were in Dubai, hello, Rex. I hope you can see me. Nice. When we were in Dubai, we were super excited by the energy behind the Agriculture Food and Climate Declaration. And then we were hearing that actually in the negotiations around the global stocktake, that the negotiators found it very hard to reach common positions on some of these agriculture issues that were in the declaration. And for some, this represented a breakdown. And they got super upset. And the mood on day eight and nine and 10 in Dubai was not good. I think we then had to do a little bit of careful analysis. The negotiators, when they come to one of the COPs, have their positions set for them by their national governments many months before they actually come to the COP. There are often preparatory sessions in Bonn and elsewhere to establish these positions. And there's a lot of interlocking in the positions. You don't have an easy way to deal with any one area separate from others. We would expect the shifts in the positions of the negotiators to appear between six months to two years after the declaration. And we feel that we should not be getting frustrated that the negotiators got stuck. So although some round me were particularly anxious about this and it led to a lot of talk on social media, I was not surprised because of my previous experience with COPs. So I was at COP 28 in regard to food and agriculture and nutrition matters. And the link to climate was a significant advance. And the question is, of course, there are a lot of fine commitments there. The delivery on them is what matters to deal with next year. Absolutely. I mean, there were two great features of COP 28, as far as I was concerned. One was this massive advance in terms of the declaration on ag food. And the other was the declaration on health and climate, which led to some pretty major agreements. But as you said, Tom, it's one thing to have commitments, to bring things together. It's another thing to make them happen. So we've got, as well as this need to converge across the different sectors, there will be an initiative to support convergence in the 159 countries led by the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub in Rome. And secondly, there's an effort to bring together all the providers of technical and financial assistance so that they work in synergy with each other and bring the best possible benefits to countries. Otherwise, the 12 or 15 providers of assistance in the ecosystems of supporting countries may well turn out to be working across purposes. So that technical cooperation collaborative is super important. Then we can add in a number of other initiatives that are coming on board with the UAE behind them. And the hope is, and I think it's a good hope, that by the time of COP 30 in Brazil, there will be demonstrated shifts in the policies, implementation, governance, financing, monitoring and communication about agriculture, food and climate in the vast majority of the 159 countries. And I'm just back from Abu Dhabi and I'm feeling positive about the UAE's leadership. I mean, it's important just to remember the exact title of that declaration, Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action. So now let's go to the audience. Come, come, please. Maybe just say who you are. Thank you very much. Everybody doesn't know who you are. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Colin Rafter, member of the Institute and Retired Department of Foreign Affairs. When you talk about the different actors, there's a power imbalance. By definition, poor people are powerless. Whereas food, not food producers, but big food companies, supermarket chains are powerful. How do you rectify that? How do you incorporate, if you like, the big players, supermarket chains, the beef barns into what you're talking about and get them to mobilize their resources to achieve the objectives that you're seeking? Thank you. So thanks very much indeed. I wanted just to quickly say that this approach that we have focusing on dialogue is seeking to engage everyone, those with a lot of power, those without power, and having them behave in the dialogue space with similar rights of engagement, similar entitlement to be heard. And of course, it makes it very difficult for those with little power to do so. They feel extremely nervous. They're worried that they will be exploited, that they're exposed. We've faced this a lot in Dubai with smallholder farmers bringing them in. They needed a lot of care, whereas obviously people from the big companies, they've got no problems at all. So when you are seeking to engage people with less power in dialogue processes, it requires a lot of care and safeguarding in order that their positions are not undermined. And secondly, when you've got the big players in there, if they are participating in the dialogue, then is the time when they can be challenged and asked to shift. I don't think it's perfect, but we are beginning to see companies adopt different practices in production with regenerative approaches. They're not all adopting agroecology, but they are at least prepared to shift into biodiversity maximization. And then we have to work with them also on the products they produce and what they contain. Again, we have to do it through dialogue. We have to do it through engagement. The only point I would like to say is that I don't think saying we refuse to talk to the companies is a reasonable way to go. I appreciate that there was a big boycott at the Food Systems Summit in 2021 because there was an engagement with some of these high power commercial groups. My own view is if you don't engage people, you have absolutely no chance of shifting them. So I will continue to argue for engagement and then very careful monitoring systems so that if there is a commitment from companies to shift the formulation of their products or to change the kind of products they use in what they're producing and go for more biodiverse production systems, that they actually deliver on that and that this is not greenwashing. But it's a big, big task and I'm not confident that we've yet got anywhere and yet where we need to be on this and it's pretty obvious that we have. Were you indicating you wanted to ask a question? Yeah. Grace McCullen from Farrelly and Mitchell and also a board member with the recently established AgriFood regulator in Ireland. Just an observation that I think dialogue is wonderful. It's necessary. I think it also needs to be accompanied by enforcement and in this case the AgriFood regulator coming out of the European mission to promote fairness and transparency along the supply chain but it's through a regulated system of price analysis across the value chain and promote fairness and transparency to avoid unfair trading practices. So I think I'd be interested in your views on trying to add regulation to that dialogue. Thank you very much indeed. It's interesting how little of the food systems that we have in our countries, how little of it is under direct control of government policymakers. How much of it depends on the working relationships between the actors and how hard it is politically to introduce effective regulation. For example, on food environments for small kids in schools and so on so that we get better outcomes. If it were up to me, I would be keen to see much more regulation on the production side and on the marketing side and a little bit on the environment in which people access and consume their food. But it's not at the moment, at least in many countries, politically an easy thing to do. For example, in some countries when you talk about introducing regulation on the way in which certain products are manufactured and marketed particularly to children, the accusation is that this isn't the nanny state and it is unacceptable. I think when we go through the European elections and the coming mega-elections that are happening around the world this year, we're going to see a swing to the kind of governance that perhaps is less keen on regulation than many of us would like to see. But me, as a public health person, I think it's a key part of the process. And thank you for bringing it up. A new development here in Ireland. So it will be very interesting to see how it works. In fact, Frank, would you like to introduce yourself? Hello, Frank. Have you changed? Frank is former resident coordinator of the United Nations in Ukraine, where we met each other. First, I want to thank the two previous questioners. I thought they were very pertinent questions on regulation in particular. But you've mentioned Dubai and Abu Dhabi and about a week ago or just over that, we had the secretary general of the Global Council for Tolerance and Peace from UAE here in Dublin, signing an MOU with the Calcora of the Dahlaren, the Speaker of the Irish Parliament. And they've done this with 100 parliaments around the world. And it brings me to a question which is that, as you may know, UNICEF, UNESCO, I'm sorry, UNESCO, has guidelines on hate speech. And these are guidelines that I think we should absolutely be mainstreaming in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza right now. But it begs the question for you, and this would be the question, because you talk about the political dimension in which all of this has to take place and how important it is to reach out to people. Firstly, what do you think of the whole notion of stakeholder capitalism, which Klaus Schwab a few years ago addressed in the World Economic Forum and which something like 500 American major corporations signed onto at a certain point in time? And secondly, in so far as dialogue is important, do you think we have enough of mediation capacity in the world today, especially in an era when multilateralism is in very serious decline? And what do we need to do to strengthen the mediation capability that will allow stakeholders to reach agreements on fundamentally important questions? Thank you. Thanks, Frank. I kind of, that question needs, for me, at least a bit of unpicking. So you can have a dialogue in a pub. You can be sitting with your mates. You can have a dialogue at home around the dinner table where you invite three or four families over. And it can be very satisfying, sometimes liberates a lot of energy. But that's not the kind of dialogue process that I'm talking about. I probably need a better word for it. I'm talking about structured facilitated dialogue in which the facilitator is equipped to make sure that all those who are participating have an opportunity not only to speak, but also to be heard attentively and respectfully. You've got to be able to keep the process going long enough so that there is an opportunity for reflection in between dialogue moments. You've got to have people who are able to synthesize the outcomes of these dialogues and play them back like mirrors. And most importantly, when there is an issue or a series of issues that are so difficult that people cannot communicate, cannot even bear to be in the same space because they are disagreeing, then as you say, you need mediation because you've got to navigate through this. And I'm talking about issues which have to be addressed. What I'm not talking about is things where you can afford not to have the dialogue because you just let things slip. We're talking here about things that are vital for the survival of communities and the planet, so they are urgent, so they've got to be attended to. And I agree with you that whether it is having the skills to design these kinds of multistakeholder dialogues, to then implement them with good facilitation and good synthesis, and then to be able to navigate beyond them into new ways of thinking and working, which requires not just mediation skills, but also the capacity for weaving and blending that is particularly challenging. It's really a whole new syllabus. Now, you mentioned UNESCO. We've been participating in some of the lifelong programs of UNESCO, and our conclusion is that the skills in designing, conducting, following up on dialogues, the explorations that I mentioned, the capacity to weave and blend, and to mediate when there are really difficult issues. These skills are not being adequately covered in the education that we have, whether we are in school or university or coming to staff colleges for joining civil service. They are absolutely essential. Everybody who's worked in government, in the United Nations or in other similar groups knows that these are the skills that have to be learned. We're just simply saying, package them up. And if it's systems leadership, then let's talk about it as systems leadership. Let's teach systems leadership. And I'm very pleased that Martin Gallagher who's sitting here, sorry to name you, but you won't mind. When he was in the UN working with us, and in 2016, he wrote a very short paper that was, we were not only discussing with the Secretary General, but beyond, on the new ways of thinking, working and leading that are necessary for addressing the sustainable development agenda that led to a desire for more systems leadership to be practiced. And then those competencies of systems leadership worked their way into the UN staff college competencies for leadership, one of the five that is now taught. And I see it coming into other civil service trainings. Still people say they find it very hard to develop indicators for measuring whether people have learned this stuff. But I think it is really important. Sorry for the long answer, but it kind of was, and I wasn't expecting Frank to ask about this, but it's what I want to say that this is where we have to work now. It's a real task that lies ahead. Yes, could you just introduce yourself? Right. Thank you very much. Adeku Legumes, you made reference in your presentation to nutrition. And, sorry, I'm taking the liberty to link my question to health. Yeah, great. Because it kind of from the health background. Back in the 1990s, the Irish Times run a series on healthcare. And sadly, the author is no longer with us. But the one thing I remember very much from that series was that healthcare is 95% preventative. So if we agree that this is the case, does do you think that current policies follow this 95% preventative rule? And with that, I guess I want to know. Thank you. Mr. Gomez, right? Yeah, go on, Mr. Gomez. Yeah, no, I just think your name. It was Adeku Legumes. Gomez, that's right. Adeku Legumes. Thank you very much indeed for asking. If I wanted the plant question, that would be the question I wanted the plant. And I promise you, we haven't spoken. You know, I'm fundamentally a health professional. And I'm still at heart a health professional. My whole commitment is to people living as long as possible and having as great a functional capacity as possible. But I've chosen not to work as a clinician. I mean, I could, a bit rusty. I wouldn't want anybody to come under my treatment right now. But, and why? Because all my working life, I have come to realize that the best way to get health outcomes is through actions outside what we commonly refer to as the health sector, outside the health institutions because preventing people from getting cardiovascular disease or type two diabetes or preventing people from experiencing violence as a result of war or as a result of domestic disputes is much better than patching them up afterwards. Of course, when they do have bad stuff, you want to patch them up. But it seems to me that if I was the Minister of Finance in this country, I would be asking the question, how can 100 million euro best be spent on improving health? And my answer might be not by building more hospitals, not even by training more doctors, but by investing more in good nutrition, investing more in physical safety, investing in people being able to realize their rights, investing in equity, because perhaps one of the greatest causes of ill health is inequality in people's standards of living or investing in protection so that people don't get beaten up, women particularly, as a result of being in exposed situations. So I want to stress to you that for me, it is absolutely important that health policies focus on prevention of ill health, maximization of life expectancy, maximization of opportunity, and that means looking right across the waterfront, and yes, we need our hospitals, and please, we all need them and we need more of them, but we also need to recognize that often the most cost-effective way to achieve health is outside that health sector. And I think that might have been what you were getting at, Ben, I'm not sure. Yeah. Sorry. We're always talking about the fanciest buildings to treat people, whereas if we make sure that the people don't get sick in the first place, it will be much better. And if I can just give one example, like this, the organic food movement. Now, people complain that they are too expensive, and I just think, like, well, if you are growing food with pesticides and all these things, and they have a negative effect on you, then you have to go and get help incurring yourself, like, which is better? So in other words, if you spend money on good nutritious food, you wouldn't have to spend money in trying to kill yourself, but that's what I'm thinking anyway. Thank you. Thank you. David, I mean, connected to that, I mean, we have our understanding of what's called malnutrition has shifted significantly in the last 15 years. We now correctly talk about the triple burden of malnutrition, the undernutrition, which we used to call malnutrition, the deficiencies and the overweight and obesity. And yet, even though all the evidence is there that this is a huge issue and it's connected to health, still very few countries are actually acting on it. Are there other countries that you know of which are making that link and investing in the preventative? The difficulty with investing in prevention is that actually it's not easy street. I've been working a lot on obesity in the last 20 years. And I mean, in Amsterdam, there's been quite an effective program that's been implemented. It's multi-stakeholder and cross-sector and it's reduced, they say, child obesity levels by about 16%. And I mean, I really like that as an example, but I'm afraid I have to hunt to find these examples. And given that they say that if the hidden cost of food is somewhere in the region, I'm being careful here because the economist is sitting right in my eyesight just behind there. If the hidden cost of the food systems we have is 12 trillion a year and half of that hidden cost is to do with the health impacts of either eating the wrong food, not enough food or too much food, then clearly this needs to be given much more attention. And it still slightly surprises me that we don't see that given as much attention as it should be. And I think it's partly because it's difficult and it's partly because it's not fitting meekly into the center of political priorities of many political parties. So yes, more emphasis. Thank you very much. David, my name is Anne Mullen. I'm in the University of Galway, but we previously met through Springer Nature. Yeah, through Springer Nature a few years ago. David, first of all, I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit about how food systems dialogues could evolve potentially into citizen assemblies. In Ireland, we have a very strong and recent tradition of citizen assemblies on biodiversity. And I'm just curious about whether we have scope for a citizen's assembly on sustainable food systems. And the second part really that relates to that is, do you think that citizens have been given sufficient scope to develop their own vision of food systems? So we have a food system that is in equilibrium, if you like, but the outcomes are not particularly related to health or in human health or planetary health. And I just wonder if citizens were given sufficient scope to say, well, what is the vision of food systems for the future? What are the outcomes with that kind of turbo charge transformation? In a way, the way you ask the question has also answered the question. But let me and just say to you, how exciting it is that you raise this. The 2021 food systems dialogues were done in 159 countries. One country in particular concluded as a result of their dialogues that they wanted to move to citizens assemblies on food. It wasn't an easy journey because the members of parliament in that country said, we represent people's interests. Why should there be separate citizens assemblies on food? And there was a little bit of chewing and throwing in that country of Switzerland as the work was taken forward. But no, the citizens assemblies were set up. They were Canton based and they have led already to some localization of food systems and attention to the different impacts of those food systems on people, on farmers and on the planet. And I think it's been really a very exciting experiment. It's the federal office of agriculture that did it and their people would, I believe, be very happy if you were to encounter them to talk about it. One of the things that we want to do is to let these different experiments surface across countries so that people can, just as you've done, learn from each other and find it easy to do. The best way to do that, we believe, is through a platform on which people share their experiences. So is the citizens vision the right way to go? I personally think it is. And I was very excited that as a result of the food systems dialogues, these 120 pathways from different countries, in some cases were very strongly influenced by the result of these discussions. In Chile, for example, they started with free dialogues and they were in Santiago, but then the decision was made because of the energy released by the dialogues. They have dialogues in all 17 local authority areas. I hope I'm right that it was 17. And out of that has come the emergence of a synthesized vision for the future of food in Chile. That at least is there. I mean, the question is whether different government actors will find it convenient to act on it. It's not straightforward, but that sort of thing is emerging. And particularly during COVID, and there were all sorts of experiments that citizens initiated, for example, cutting out some of the middle people in food systems and going directly from consumer to producer. That subsequently people have thought, well, why can't we introduce those more broadly into the way in which we do food? So yes, people needing a voice, people developing their visions, people establishing assemblies, and then people lifting up what comes out through the assemblies to those in positions of power must be the way to go. So yes, thank you. Lovely to see you again. Mary, very quickly, because we're almost out of time. Yeah. I'll try to be brief. I'm Mary Van Liesout. I'm from Gold, but David, I'm also a public health practitioner is in my background. You've made a really compelling case for dialogue in your five points. Everybody's been writing them down. So thank you for that. But I'm struck by some of the really bold initiatives that our government has taken that I wouldn't say they came from nowhere, but they really required bold vision. So smoke-free workplaces, not a popular thing. I was in the health services when that was introduced. There were many stakeholders who were opposed to it. Levies on plastic bags, another really great initiative, but the most recent one speaks to Adakunli's question. The free childcare places for our young children and the hot food in schools, these are bold political vision. So where does that brave idea fit with the dialogue is my question, because we wouldn't be where we are if we only had dialogue is my concern. Thanks. No, you need the leadership. Leaders function well when they feel they're reflecting the current and emerging public mood, the best leaders pick up on the emerging mood and can present it back to their constituents even before it's become articulate. That's some of the things that we're seeing in this country. But for me, therefore, you can't just rely on dialogue alone. You need the leadership. But I find that in the dialogue process that we've been involved in on food, 110,000 people, we know we're involved but we think it was many, many more than that. We have seen leaders emerging all over the place as a result of the energy of the dialogue. You can say, well, how many and where and so on? I can't give you the precise number, but we've watched as the national conveners who've been pulling together the dialogues have grown as a result of what they've learned and had the confidence and courage to move forward. The only point that I would wish to add, last point, is for a leader to be able to lead and stick her or his neck out in front of the rest, it's quite useful if they know there are others doing the same. So as well as encouraging dialogues, we also encourage platforms where experiences can be shared so that sense of isolation and nervousness that people sometimes feel and I mean there are people from all walks of life but on food they tend to be women, that the sense of nervousness they might feel can be compensated by the sense that they're not alone, there is solidarity. So dialogue, platforms for solidarity to let that leadership come out and that will help us to get through what some of us feel is a very depressing environment at the moment to where the world and its people need to be in the future. This may be a very fitting way to conclude because David, if there's anything you represent over the last 20 years, as I've known you, it's leadership, whether that gets expressed through being a one man international fire brigade which UN Secretary-General looked to but it may be even more important, it's the sustained and systemic leadership on issues like nutrition that you've made such a huge contribution to. So thank you for that, David. Thank you for being here today and thank you to all the audience online and here for attending. Thank you. Tonight, just stand here. This is the guy who's my inspiration. You are my inspiration. There's a film some of you may have seen called Don't Look Up. Do you know that film when an asteroid is gonna hit the earth and all sorts of... Well, I'm saying don't give up because perseverance is everything. Thank you.