 Okay, so I'm going to get started and I'm sure more people will join in the next few minutes. So first, we do have a poll for those who just joined. It's a quick poll to just get a sense of where people stand in terms of using climate information. So it's just asking whether you've used climate information in your activities in the past, yes or no, and then what kind of information you might have used. Is it information about how climate has affected your sector in the past, how it's affecting your sector activities in the present, whether there's a risk that might occur in the future, in the short term or have you used information about the long-term future or you haven't used information at all. So go ahead and fill out the poll and in the meanwhile I'm going to do some housekeeping. So welcome everyone to our Climate 101 session on climate information for community-based practitioners. My name is Melody Brown. I work for the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, IRI at Columbia University. And this session is co-organized by the International Center for Climate Change and Development, ECAD, Slum Dweller International, SDI, the Hueru Commission and the World Resources Institute. The session came from a comment from Sheila Patel actually at Ganesh and I are saying that we need Climate 101 in conferences talking about adaptation. So we all came together to design this session and it's designed as a dialogue between practitioners and climate and scientists. And so we hope that you like it. We welcome any feedback and we hope this is just the beginning of more discussions on this topic. So quick housekeeping, the meeting is being recorded. The meeting is only accessible for people who have registered to CBA and who have access to the link through that. We're also broadcasted live. So please don't share the link on social media because people have to register through the conference. If you have issues with internet, you can close all non-essential applications on your device, for example Skype or Teams. You are initially muted. You will be able to unmute yourself in the discussion part and also in the breakout group. So the icon is the little microphone. I think by now, if you've attended other sessions, you're probably all very familiar with that. You're welcome to start your video. We love to see you. It's very nice to see actual faces and not just names on the screen, but also it's up to you if you're comfortable doing that and if your internet allows. You can see the list of participants also at the bottom of your screen. And you can use the chat box if you have any issue, any question. If you have questions for the presenters or questions about what's being discussed, please keep them for the discussion part or for the breakout group. But if you have any immediate question or you need attention, please let us know in the chat. We would also like to invite everyone to just for now write your name and where you are and what's your organization because that would give us a good sense of who's in the room and we can get to know you. You cannot share your screen or record, but you can share your reactions if you want. And please update your names if you're able. So when you click on the participants list and you see your name, you can click on more. Don't unmute yourself, but you can click on more. And if you can add the name of your organization after your name, that would be really convenient. But it's only if you're willing. Okay, so the meeting is reported and then let us know in the chat box if you have any trouble. So for those who just joined, welcome. And please fill out the poll. We're going to look at the results in just a minute. The way the session is organized, we're going to start by listening to speakers, talk to us about how communities respond to climate risks and what are their challenges in three particular areas for cities and urban poor communities, for aquaculture and agriculture and farming communities and for coastal aquaculture communities. Then we're going to have a short presentation on the basics of climate information for adaptation. And then we're going to break out group discussion following the same three topics. And finally, we'll come back in the plenary for a discussion. So before I leave the floor to our presenters, let's look at the results of the polls. Thank you. Okay, so a majority of people have used climate information in their adaptation activities in the past, but there's still 22% that have not. Most people have used information about the past, 50%. And then actually exactly equal number, 44% have used information about the present, the near future and the long term. And then 22 have not used climate information before. Perfect, thank you very much. And I hope this session is useful for you. So I'm going to close this, yes. Okay, so without further ado, I would like to give the floor to our first speaker, Sarah Nandudu. She's a national coordinator of National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda, act together. And she's also a community mobilizer. Sarah, are you here? Yes, yes, I'm here. Fantastic. Okay, so just let me know when you want me to go to the next slide. Okay. Thank you very much and I appreciate this opportunity to share what we do, what we have. However, for today, I want to appreciate the organizers for this meeting. And back to the question, I'll be very, very, very, very straight to what I'm going to do. So the questions are clear and I want to look, focus more on irregular rainfall patterns in my country. And this is one of the challenges that we do have as an issue. Because the weather changes have changed, the pattern has totally changed and once we may not predict when it is going to rain, we can't predict when it is going to shine. And however, when it rains, it rains like never before. And there's a lot of disaster cause because it comes in with a lot of falls, destroying people's plumes, destroying people's gardens, making people not to go to work, making roads impossible. So this is one of the key issues that we are really marveling with because the weather patterns have totally changed. However, the challenges encountered, like I've mentioned, things like flooding because when it rains, it's really, really very, very heavy. And many times, all roads are impossible. Flooding is really high. And then, of course, people can't move to go to markets to do their user business. And that means making life very, very difficult as well as people can't. And when it rains, like in slums, there is no good sanitation unit. So people open the smaller units that they have. And then the waste is drained into the drainage channels, contaminating it and everything in the settlement. So then you end up with things that are like diseases like cholera. Many slums have ended up having cholera as an issue. And this is as a result of poor weather patterns that come in. And previously, when the good patterns were OK, you would never have such heavy rainfalls that destroy things. But here comes a situation when it rains. It comes when you're not even certain that it's raining. And when it comes, it comes with a lot of force and destroying things and breaking down rooms. So this is one of the issues that is affecting. And hence, once it rains, because proper crops are destroyed, it is also affecting somehow nutrition for the people in the community. However, as regards to interventions, what we have tried to do is that we have had to innovate around sanitation blocks that are friendly, that are weather friendly and environmentally friendly, such as eco-sand toilets that can be sustained in any weather climate. Once it floods, they never get spoiled because the sanitation units use worms. So we don't dig deeper to the water level. So it is convenient even when it rains. And because it doesn't have a septic tank, even if it rains, there is no way one will open it to flow into the drainage channel because it is self-contained within itself. So we had to innovate around such sanitation units that are supporting communities in terms of sanitation blocks that can withstand any weather pattern. And then what we have also tried to come in is to support communities to understand abanigadening. And because once it floods roads, people don't even bring food to town. So what we have tried to support communities to do abanigadening is your use of water that is used for cooking to flood, to water your food at your veranda so that even if it is shining or raining, you still have constant food that you can feed in terms of vegetables. So this is how we have approached it as a network. And also what we have done is to sensitize communities to be able that when it rains, because many of our friends have drowned, please be patient until the floods have gone down before you move because many of our colleagues who got to the markets to go and sell their used goods have drowned because of this flooding of the roads. They end up falling into ditches in the road. Of course, the roads are also impassable. They are so bad, so they end up drowning. And so we have lost life because of this. So we have tried to educate members of our network to understand that when it rains, the heavy rains are always sweeping away our manhole covers from the road. So please be patient. Don't move in the rain until it stops. When the water has gone down, then you're able to move. So sensitization has come in in that we support communities to be able to do, be able to predict and be able to avoid instances like drowning. The youth have come in also to support each other in terms of innovating because one of the key issues why these things are flood is that there are blockages in the channels that drain water. So youth have put in innovations, even as we build these eco-sand toilets, they use the waste products that can be recycled like plastic bottles. They fill in the soil and make it like bricks. And in the end they use it to build sanitation blocks that are sustainable even when it is flooding because a plastic bottle can't be soaked. So they end up to be resilient to communities. And like it is there, those are the plastic materials that we recycle from the community. From the drainage channels, our communities dig them out and then they recycle them. Some of them is used for building sanitation blocks. You can move to the next slide if you can. I'm about to finish. That is the urban gardening on the middle slide where we teach our members to do a bit of gardening in their homes and then the extreme light. Those are the sanitation blocks that communities have come up as innovations to build using the plastic containers that they collect from the garbage from the drainage channels. So they use them to build the ecosystem toilets. I don't know if I still have another slide because I edited them. You can move on to another one. Yeah, we also use the biodegradable materials from the drainage channels to make Chaku. The communities have been used to make briquettes, we call them briquettes. So the youth are doing some of those projects, mold, burn the biodegradable, make molds. And here you see the one in our borough is just fading the biodegradable. And then the one on the left is trying to show people how to make it. And then they sell them, one, they sell them to make income. Two, they are averting the effect of climate change using the waste products that are blocking the drainage channels. And then they're having an income. How will they do that? Is there another slide? No, that's the last one. Thank you so much, Sarah. Yeah, thank you very much. When I edited this slide, so I couldn't remember which one was still running because I edited. Yeah, briefly, that's what we have tried to do, but basically we are not leaving out their youth because they have to own their country, they have to own their settlements, they have to own their settlements and so innovations around them. And because there is jobs in security, there are no jobs for their youth. So they are trying to create jobs for themselves through such innovations. Thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you, Sarah. And we'll have a chance to talk to Sarah more in the breakout group discussions and also at the end. So now I would like to introduce Doreen Maguti. She's a grassroot leader, a trainer on climate change adaptation and mitigation. She's going to talk to us about how women's group are accessing weather and climate information and communicating it across wider community networks and how that's affecting livelihood activities, how that's benefiting livelihood activities. Doreen, are you on? Yes, Melody. Perfect, so the floor is yours. Yeah, good afternoon, everyone. And thank you very much for being given this opportunity to talk about climate science for community practitioners. Climate change has really affected many communities in the world. And this is because of activities, human or nature activities. In my community, should be a community health workers, which is a member of Wairo Commission. We've been working tirelessly to empower grass roots women to be resilient whenever they are affected by climate change. In should be a community health workers, we have climate centers. These are places established by grass roots women working on resilience in order to translate and interpret climate information to the people. We have two types of information that we rely on from the meteorological department, which is run by the government. And we have the local climate information, which we also rely on. The meteorological department reaches people who have forms, radios or televisions. And most of our grass roots women are not able to afford the forms of the radios. So because of this, the established information centers should be a community health workers collect this information and then put them in a central place where we call the climate information centers, where the grass roots women who are not able to access forms and radios come on weekly basis to learn about the information that has been collected from the meteorological department. And then the indigenous information is where you look at the trends in the community like birds migrating or ants from one place to the other. When you see this taking place, we have special people experts who can interpret to you that when you see birds moving from one area to the other, it's because they are foreseeing a lot of rain or prolonged drought. So the birds may be moving for safety or to look for food in case it has been predicted that it's going to be a prolonged drought. In the climate information centers, grass roots women compare both the information and by doing this, they are able to give a projection to the community, like for some weeks, for some month or even a period of a year. Why are these climate information centers important? The climate information centers helps the grass roots women in preparedness, i.e. in case there is going to be prolonged rain or prolonged drought, the grass roots women are able to gauge or to decide on what type of crops they are supposed to plant in case there is going to be prolonged drought or in case there is going to be long heavy rains. Because there are different variety of seeds that we are supposed to use during the short rains and the long rains. Maybe the crop is the same, like the corn crop or the bean crop, but we have varieties that we are supposed to use during cold rains and long rains. We as an organization have really tried to build partnership both with the meteorological department, which is run by the government and the local community, which have the traditional weather knowledge. Shibuya is a go between these two parties, whereby we are able to invite people from the meteorological department and people from the local weather department plus the grass roots women, bring them together so that those from the meteorological department in their own language can easily interpret the meteorological science or the information, the weather information that we have collected from them, they are able to interpret in a simpler language to the grass roots women so that they are able to understand. And in case there is any contradiction, they are able to differentiate. By doing this, the grass roots women are able to empower each other, even those who just stay in the community are not able to attend such seminars or attend such meetings where these two parties meet. But when we have at least a good number of grass roots women attending, they go back to the community and are able to empower the others who are just stay at home women. They're able to interpret to them what has been forecasted and this has really helped them. The meteorological department uses these centers to send the information to grass roots women because they are not able to reach these grass roots women one-on-one. So by us working with them and storing the information in the climate information centers, we help them to reach a bigger number. Like we have science, like the meteorological department uses visual science like when it's going to rain heavily or when we are expecting a lot of wind, heavy winds or prolonged droughts. So when we store this information in the meteorology in our climate centers, we are able to interpret to the grass roots women so that if they come across such science even elsewhere apart from the climate information centers, they are able to understand and even translate it to the other grass roots women in the community. Thank you so much, Irene. So in the interest of time, yeah, we have to stop but just I'm going to show you other slides. So if you just want to say a few very quick words as we go through the slides and then we'll move to Mustafa. Do you want to comment on the pictures very briefly? My own melody. So I'm just going to very briefly show your pictures and then we'll move to Mustafa. Okay. If you want to add anything briefly. Yeah, so we can see the community meetings, the meetings on climate information. Okay, thank you so much, Doreen. And again, we'll have more opportunities to talk to Doreen in the breakout group and then in the final plenary discussion. Thank you so much, Doreen. Thank you very much, Melody. So now I would like to introduce everyone to Mustafa Rahman, who's a senior specialist on environment and climate at Feed the Future Bangladesh on the aquaculture activity of Feed the Future Bangladesh for world fish. Mustafa, the floor is yours. Thank you, Melody. Next slide, please. Well, I consider climate and weather events as important inputs for aquaculture just like fish trade, particulars and so on. We take advantage of good weather events to grow fish. On the other hand, we are to cope with bad weather events to avoid or minimize loss and damages. Fish grows in the coastal zone of Bangladesh experience additional set of natural calamities because of certain types of bad weather events which inland fish growers may not have to. For instance, a cyclone may cause storm surges and tidal boat in the coastal zone. If the landfall timing of the cyclone matches well with the timing of high tide or lunar transit, that means coastal fish growers need to cope with both day-to-day and extreme weather events. Now, about distance-making to cope with bad weather events, my key message is, this cannot be the same thing for all. Instead, it has to be specific to the context of the individual points because mitigation measures may vary in the neighboring points, even against the same weather event. Next slide please. There is an example of climate service for coastal fish growers agnest and extreme weather events. The cyclone Josh set it on 26th May last month. Well, the decision-making process included here three elements. We did profiling of the cyclone. We did analyze the context of the individual points and then we made decision. This is science. Next slide please. This is an example of climate service agnest a day-to-day weather event, which also includes the same three elements, like the others, right? I can invite questions now or- We'll do question at the end. Yeah, we'll do question at the end. So thank you so much, Mustafa, and we have a breakout group discussion specifically on coastal aquaculture, so we can discuss that more in that breakout group. Thank you. So now I would like to introduce everyone to Sylvia Trasca, who's a research scientist at the IRI. She's going to give a brief talk on climate information for adaptation. Sylvia, are you on? Good morning, good evening, good afternoon to everybody. So we just heard such wonderful stories about all the initiatives at community level, and I'm sure that there is many, many, many more such stories or initiatives out there. So my job here is to maybe take a step back and provide a little bit more of a bird's-eye view about climate information, and I hope that this kind of view will be still useful in some ways to you. Next up. So before we delve into the information itself, I think that maybe we should sort of revisit a little bit some basic concepts of whether climate and climate change, they are cousins, but they're not the same individuals. So I think that it's kind of good to keep in mind and be able to recognize them, keep in mind the differences. So whether it's really a state of the atmosphere at a given time over short periods of time, right? And we look at temperature, precipitation, humidity, air pressure, wind, cloudiness, sunshine, et cetera. And it basically is whatever is happening outdoors right now or within a few next hours. And it can change a lot within a very short time. Climate, on the other hand, is the total experience of weather at any place. So it could be the cycle of the seasons, but it also is all the extreme events that we can experience leading to such as cyclones, leading to floods and heavy winds or heat waves, et cetera. And climate is oftentimes reflected in the vegetation or economic activities. Climate change is basically the changes in the characteristics of climate over very long periods of time. And when we talk about characteristics, it really is all of the characteristics. It's not just the average. So it can affect the cycle of the seasons, can affect the average rainfall, but can also affect extreme weather events. And we heard, I think, the first presenter talking about how less predictable weather is and how heavier the rain is in Uganda. So those changes can be related to climate change next. So if I think about an analogy, maybe a simple one, would be that whether it's a sort of collection or a sample of individuals or all the individuals in a population and there are some taller individuals, shorter individuals, bigger, smaller, et cetera. And the climate would be when we start trying to describe the population with some statistical measures maybe, like the average, but also looking at what the shortest people are and how tall are the tallest people and how many people are, for example, in a given country are above two meter or taller than two meter. And climate change would be the changes in this population as depicted here. So in this case here, we have a few individuals that are taller than before, but we still have individuals who are relatively short. Click. So it really is the change in the characteristics of a population and it's typically over a generation or longer. So when we talk about climate change or even climate variability, it's really not about comparing 2020 to 2019, not even comparing 2020 to 2011 or the last decade to the previous one. It really would be comparing two different generations. For example, the latest 30 years compared to the 50s to the 80s, right? So we're really talking about something that is on very long time scales. Next. So what climate information can I get? And there's many different types of climate information. We have heard about a few of them. And I think that maybe one useful way of thinking about climate next would be to look about or to try to think about past information, current information and future information. And past information can tell us what is the risk? Where is the greatest risk? Is the risk changing? Is there a trend? The current information is more about are we getting enough or too much rain? Is there going to be a cyclone next week? Is there going to be a dry spell or a heat wave? And then we can talk about prediction or we can use prediction for the near future next season or more distant prediction. Is it going to be too hot to grow my crop in maybe 20 years? Is my village going to be flooded more often? And so basically the past information is about risk description. The current information is about the current change in the risk. And the future information is a distant change in the risk. And an important and confusing part of anything related to the future is uncertainty. And I know this is something that is sometimes difficult to include in our decision-making, but it's a very important thing. And it's not something that we will be able to get rid of at all and in the next slide, I try to explain why. So when I think about forecasting, I think about forecasting where will the dot hit the target? So we do know the physics of the movement of the dot. So what will determine its arrival point? So I would say two main elements, the exact conditions of the departure and the conditions that influence the trajectory and both have some uncertainty attached to it. Because the person can throw the dot with different speed from different levels, et cetera, and then there can be a draft on the trajectory. And another element is that the farther the target, the more difficult the estimation of the arrival point. So if I were to kind of depict a little bit what's going on, so the weather forecast, your target is very close and the uncertainty can be relatively limited, but the seasonal forecast is a target a little bit farther away. And there is more uncertain things along the trajectory of the dot. So the uncertainty of the arrival is going to be larger. And climate change is really your target very far away and many, many things can happen along the trajectory of the dot. So our uncertainty is going to be much larger. So now that we talked about different types of climate information and uncertainty, the question is where can I get this information from next slide? And we already heard in previous interventions about climate services. So yes, climate services are built in recognition that this climate information should reach a wider number of people. And we heard that there are constraints about this information reaching some communities who don't necessarily have TV or radio. And so a way of formalizing climate services is maybe looking at climate services as a sort of value chain where the information is generated by maybe med services or researchers. Then it gets translated and by translation it's not just in, or it's in this case it's not into local languages, but more into advisories. And we have heard about advisories in the agricultural sector. What type of crops should we be planting? And we also have heard about advisories from Mustafa. And also, so the translation part is about people who are involved in the sector like agricultural researchers or extensionists or people like Mustafa who are able to understand what is the important information for your sector and who are also able to understand the context and provide advisories that are just right for the users. And then there is the transfer leg which is how do you disseminate this information? And we've heard the wonderful initiative of climate centers that Doreen talked about where this information is disseminated to women who otherwise wouldn't have access and it's explained to them. But it can also be extensionists. It can also be NGOs and any community practitioners who access this information and then disseminate it to the final users. And I would say that the important part here are the gray arrows, which should actually be probably in red because the very important part is the bottom up circulation of the information about the needs, about the constraints on this information and about needs constraints and how this information is being used. And my presentation about with a short anecdote a couple of years ago, I was working on climate providing information for a project that was working within fishing communities in Sierra Leone. So people living in coastal areas and the project initially thought that the most important information would be about sea level rise and floods during heavy rains and things like this. And when we went to those communities, in all of the communities, people told us that the biggest risk for them was actually fire. Fire because they use fire to smoke fish and in situations of heavy winds, this fire actually propagates very easily and burns houses. And so the information that they were most interested in was not about heavy rains, was not about long-term sea level rise but getting early warnings about heavy wind events so that they could be prepared. They could, for example, have buckets of water to stop the fire quicker. They could also take a decision of not going to the sea because boats would capsize and also take measures to secure their roofs because those heavy wind events were also ripping the roofs off. And if we didn't go to those communities and really listen to what their main concerns were and what their context was, the project would be disseminating an information that is actually not very useful for those communities. And with this, I will hand over to you, Melody. Thank you, Sylvia. Thanks very much, Sylvia. And thanks very much again to Sarah, Doreen and Mustafa for sharing your experience. And we'll now have a chance to talk more about each of those topics in the breakout groups. So we have three rooms that you can choose from. Each room has a lead facilitator and reporters and we'll have Sarah, Doreen and Mustafa in the three groups. You can choose cities and urban poor communities led by Ariana. You can choose agriculture and farming communities led by Surajana. And you can choose coastal and fishing communities led by Tasvia. So you will have 15 minutes and you will be discussing the two following questions. So what opportunities or additional capacity do you think is needed to help communities better access climate information in a way that can inform their decisions and try to think about also like whether they would need information about the past, the current climate or the future, short or long-term future climate. And then what is the role of community-based practitioners to support better access to climate information and improve dialogue with scientists? In this at CBA this year, we talk a lot about locally led adaptation. So basically how local is local and how do we create that dialogue between the scientists and the communities for something that is community led and what is the role of the community-based practitioners to support that? So yeah, we will go into the group. So you should have all the facilitators will be sent automatically to the groups and then the participants should be able to choose what group they want to join. Just briefly, you will then be able to unmute yourself in the groups. You can turn your video on and we will have reporters but we ask that in each group you identify someone who's willing to just report back to the plenary with one or two main takeaways and then we'll have a discussion in the plenary. So I will hand over to... I think Ophelia, is everything ready for the breakout groups? Can people choose their... Everything is ready. I can open the rooms now and please message me in the chat if you need any assistance. Hi, everyone. I think this is quick. Yes, hello. Are you trying to get into one of the breakout rooms? Yeah, I... So I did put in the chat the link to the Zoom instructions for how to participate in the breakout rooms. It is going to be different depending on the device that you are using. When I open the rooms, if you are using the Zoom app, you ought to have gotten a pop-up that would allow you to choose which breakout room to join. If there is... If you know which room you want to go into and you're having some troubles, just let me know and I can assign you to that room. Hi, everyone. I know this is short. Let's wait for people to come back, but the goal is to keep discussing in the plenary as well and across groups to see... To see what came out of the different groups and whether there are synergies or common points. So let's wait a bit. I see... Do we have everyone back? I think we have... The breakout rooms are closed and everyone should be back in the meeting session. Yeah, so I know this was a bit short, but we also want to keep talking in the plenary. So do we have a volunteer from... Well, hopefully we have volunteers from each of the groups who can just talk about one or two key main points and also if you have questions that you want that you think are really important to discuss with the remaining time that we have, please go ahead and let us know. So do we have a volunteer from the Cities and Urban Pool Group who wants to report? Hi, everyone. Yep, I can just give a few key takeaways. So we talked about how there is acceptance that climate change will occur, but there's still a lot of uncertainty at the local level. So needing to prioritize things like no regrets options and NDS. And we talked about how there is a need for more sort of improved long-term scenarios at the local level and whether there is in fact best practice on how to use these long-term scenarios at the local level even if we do have them. And nobody made the point that although we need future climate information, we actually can use the information from the state of the past 20 years to inform decision-making at the present. The really good point about information is really important, whether we're talking about future or past, but at the end of the day, the power structures are going to determine what decisions are made and how. And we do need to have better ways to simply communicate information and actually empower communities to use the information that we have to keep specific actions. So if anyone else in the group wants to add. Okay, thank you so much. Then before we jump into some of your points, do we have a volunteer for the Farming Communities Group? Yes, it's me, Surajna. So in our group, we have three farmers. So that's good. But what my big takeaway from the group basically was that in developing this conversation that links the climate and weather information that comes from scientists and then has to be applied ultimately by communities who are farmers, official. There are so many contradicting forces. So for example, one contradiction could be where indigenous knowledge contradicts the knowledge that comes from the meteorologists. Another one, which I thought was sort of the most interesting was the fact that when women in Kenya and the climate centers that Doreen was talking about, women receive this information in their climate center, which is not so much a physical sort of center, but a group of women who receive it. The government also provides some kind of plan and advisories or guidance around what kinds of seeds to use. And what the women do is when longer dry periods are forecast or longer rainy seasons are forecast, they want to use indigenous seeds. But that's not what the government promotes. They promote often whatever is sold by the private sector sometimes genetically modified seeds. So while on the one hand, the government is giving you this information that's telling you, that's providing sort of, let's assume accurate information about the seasons and the weather forecast. It's also then assuming that your only motive is to increase or maximize yield and profit in the short-term rather than think about sustainability and reducing risk in a more long-term sense. So that's what I got out of it. And I hope we can continue this discussion because it was actually really interesting. Thanks. Thanks so much Saranjana and the group. Yeah, there's also, there's a lot to unpack there. I'm very happy to hear these points. So I would like to ask the group that worked on coastal aquaculture communities to add their points. Yes. So Shubu, can you please share your screen and probably from our group, Laurel will come in and like we had a very engaging discussion. So I'm so sorry that I need to cut him from our group and probably if he has any points that he would like to add, I'll just tell to, like request him to add with Laurel if needed. Yes. Laurel, please go ahead. Sure. So we focused a lot on communication and different communication strategies for being able to effectively disseminate climate information specifically how to communicate just being respectful of local communication and local culture and creating a dialogue that builds trust so that we can communicate information that might be reaching sensitive communities or discussing sensitive topics that might relate to climate information. But also just developing these international and within country partnerships and cooperation, we found that that is really needed and necessary and it seems like there's a lot of potential for that as well as when we make these connections, ensure that external actors are taking a learning approach and working with communities that this is very essential so that making sure that we can make our resources retrofitted and allow for locals to understand and accept this information and just in general improving the data translation for communities, whether it's coming for the government or from some other organization. So that was kind of a general summary of what our group discussed. Yes. And for the second question, we actually did not have the time to discuss it properly but also it's with the other group members. We say we discussed that lots of dialogues with engaging dialogues in the local communities are needed so that we can take information from them and embed it into the national level and vice versa. Sorry that if you have missed any crucial points and I'll just request my group members to just jump in and if they want to say anything, just raise their hand if needed. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And I would like to open the floor to anyone actually who wants to add a point, ask a question. I took some notes and I think there are some interesting things that we can dig a bit deeper into but so I'd like to see if anyone, any of the participants want to add anything on what's been said or launch the discussion on a specific topic. One of those points. Did that capture everything that was discussed? Oh, okay. Selene, you have your hand raised. Go ahead. I may say something controversial again and press some more buttons. So the because we are focusing on science and because we are focusing on climate, we somehow seem to be missing out on the other relevant things that the communities are already doing which they are not able to put in a climate language. So Sarah is doing amazing work with creating new forms of institutional arrangements with her government in Uganda which she didn't think was important to talk about in this session which I think is the most important thing because it is about redefining that relationship with the powers that are in her city to be able to make decisions, to be able to be at the negotiating table and to be able to prioritize about what's important for her community. Similarly, the communities in the Philippines have been able to have this engagement with lots of their local and national governments. So I feel it shouldn't be like, you know, we throw the baby out with the bathwater while this conversation is important. I feel it's very important that the community stay with their capacities, what they are good at, what they're already doing and be able to tell those stories so we capture that and we don't lose that because Sarah is not about building those little black brickets what she's doing and she's much more than that and the Federation is doing much more than that but she made her presentation into these three little things. So that's my feedback. Thanks, Selina. Actually, I have a quick reaction. I think, I mean, I don't think this is necessarily controversial. I think it was a great point and the whole point about really finding the power relationships, I think it wasn't necessarily put in these words but it came up from what different people from different groups said. I guess the question is, yeah, like what do we need to do? How do we need to change those relationships and who do we need for communities to be able to actually be at the negotiating table, right? So in some groups, they said, well, the government is involved but then when they're providing advisories, they're sort of incentivizing people to purchase some seeds and that's not actually what the communities want. And then, you know, people have said external actors who come in need to really take a learning approach because we've seen, you know, there's so much top-down development where people come in and they don't understand the context, they don't understand communities and they have their plans already made. So how do we change that? And I guess that was sort of the idea behind the second question is like, so we probably need the government, we need the government to be involved in some way and that's also a way to communicate at broader scale but like how do we do that in a way that we make sure that communities are in the driving seat? And then what's the role of organizations like SDI, the whoever commission and then other organizations that are working very closely with communities who have, you know, built these trust relationships, who understand the context, what role do you envision these organizations to play in like helping change these power dynamics? And then, you know, how can climate scientists and researchers fit into that in a way that doesn't just strengthen the existing power dynamics that we're trying to change? So you can raise your hands or if no one has their hand raised, please just unmute yourself and feel free to react or add. And for those who are too shy to speak, please type in chat. Absolutely. And then I jump in here quickly. I just want to make a bit of a different point maybe. What I really find interesting is the mentioning of like how the communication works and that we really need a communication from the communities, maybe by the practitioners, but maybe not even towards the scientific community. Because my experience with working with scientists is they, I mean, the engaged ones, that they really try to make tools that really work for communities or for practitioners or for authorities. And I'm not saying that they always fail, but I think there's still really a lot of improvement because at the end of the day, a lot of the tools they create, they for them, it's very easy and totally understandable. But anyone who hasn't studied years of meteorology or climate science or physics, it's actually very difficult. And I think it's still, which I really found very unfortunate that it's still always kind of the top if you want to put signs on the top, which we don't have to, but just in this picture now, it's a top-to-bottom communication and not that actually then it's kind of validated from the ground back to the scientific models, especially on a local level. And I'm, again, not a lot of scientists that really want to improve their tools. I mean, they're always like, it's so easy, you have to understand it. I mean, this is the, you know, obviously everyone knows the direction, but still I know there's a lot of willingness to actually have better connections to the people on the ground, to validate the models better. And so I think it's, if somehow this link could be made better, the feedback loop from the grounds, back to the models, back to the scientific information what's needed, and so forth to the language barrier that somehow is less and all. I think this would be important. So actually, if no one has their hand raised or no one has a question, I don't know if Doreen is still on, I would be curious to hear how they started these centers that she's working on, because I think everyone agrees that we need to find ways to connect the scientists and the community so that we can learn from what the community is already doing instead of creating those tools that are, you know, supposed to help, but end up not being as helpful as intended. So how do we go about and create those spaces where we really put the communities in the driving seat? And so I think this was a really interesting example of what's going on there. So Doreen, are you still on? And if so, are you willing to just tell us a bit about how you started this? Yeah, the issue of starting a community climate center in Chubea community, community health workers is when we started working in the community and realized that women, grassroots women were facing a lot of challenges through flooding, prolonged drought, winds, or delayed rains. So we started working our partnership with the government when we started working with the meteorological department. We understood that most of these grassroots women are not able to access the weather information from the government. That's when we decided that we should have a center on place where these grassroots women can access easily without any fear. As you understand, even the grassroots women can have a fear of maybe going directly to the government offices to seek some assistance. So we thought that we should have a community center near our office where the grassroots women can freely access and get the information that they need to know about the forecasted information on weather. And this has really helped the grassroots women. Thank you. Thanks, Doreen. Thank you so much. It's such an interesting example. And I just wanted to acknowledge Suleiman so in the chat, sorry if I'm not pronouncing your name right, was saying that climate scientists must take into account the use of the local and community-based knowledge in developing climate-smart agricultural approaches for ease of adaptation, ownership, and sustainability. Absolutely, there's so much that's done at community level that we need to start from there and then see how climate information can be complementary to what is already there. And yeah, does anyone have a comment or wants to add, please just raise your hand or just unmute yourself or add your comments in the chat. Really, Benazir had a hand raised earlier, but if you still have something to add, maybe. I don't see a hand raised, but... No, it was raised earlier. Benazir, a moment. Yes, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. I've been following the discussion skinly. And yes, I've had quite interesting feedback. And for me, I'm also looking at the other opportunities that exist within, I am from Kenya. So within the Kenyan context, is that we have opportunities for communities to participate in the county integrated development plans. But then the challenge is that when there is not enough information around this particular issue, then you find that other issues will always end up being prioritized within the planning framework or even within the resource allocation. So it is important for packaging. It is very important that we... I mean, scientists find a way of packaging this particular information because people are more or less visual. And so as they continue hearing about, I mean, the climate change and the different impacts of that, then it is important to see then how do we communicate and also pool or mobilize communities and even specific target groups to ensure that we are collaborating with the farmers at the grassroots level to ensure that they're also feeding into the whole process so that we have them also at that particular driving seat. So right now, decisions are made on their behalf. We've had about government marketing seeds that are not... The communities are not quite accessible to the communities or even we can look at the aspect of the pesticides that are also or even fertilizers. And so there has been a lot of bottom down approach as compared to using the readily available resources that we have. And so for me, I'm looking at, even if you're talking about agriculture and when we use these other chemical fertilizer, what now is the long-term impact within our farming zones? So then if you can also have such information showcased so that people can know if you utilize this decision or if you make this decision, this is going to be the long-term effect. And if you go through this other, like using the organic or even recycling and reuse or even just reduction of the waste so that we have food that is produced in a better way, then what is going to be the long-term effect? And then also now the cost and the financing that also comes in with that. And so just to conclude, the other thing that we can have is that we can start modeling champions. So if you've had a very good case study about Doreen from Shibuya, then how can we also propel those voices so that governments can see that the need and the importance of having such resources within the communities. And what that also means for food security within developing countries that are more or less reliant on even food aid. Thank you. Thank you so much, Benazir. That was a number of really interesting points. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the idea of having champions and propel those voices is really important. I believe Sylvia had a comment and then I see that Sarah has her hand raised. Just as we keep talking, there's also a poll that you can start filling out, but we still have a little bit of time for the discussion. So Sylvia and then Sarah. Yeah, so it was actually interesting, just a quick reaction to Benazir's very early sentences of the beginning of the comment that when the information is not there or it's not packaged correctly, it's unlikely to be taken into account. That's I think that's a very powerful statement. I mean, all the other statements were very powerful, but as a climate scientist, I take this one to heart quite a bit. But what I wanted to comment on is about, a lot of initiatives, adaptation initiatives are sort of externally funded within projects, whether it's by the government or international agencies, bilateral donors, et cetera. And my experience has been that those projects oftentimes do not allow the way they're structured, they do not allow a lot of initial information gathering, better understanding of the context and things like this. So it is then very difficult to develop tailored solutions. And frankly speaking, sometimes those projects have predefined approaches, promoting either improved seeds or some other strategies across the program, across the entire program. And so I think that maybe there is room for lobbying that those projects actually spend more time analyzing and understanding local context so that the solutions are truly, the supported solutions are truly locally adapted and they are not just convenient for the project that work across countries, across projects. I mean, for the program, not for the project, that work across countries, across regions, across projects and across communities. Thanks Sylvia, good point. I think there's a lot that needs to change the funding mechanisms on the way projects are designed. Sarah? Thank you very much. Again, the subject of community-based practitioners to support community, I think one thing we should first observe is that there has been, I think even the community-based practitioners, most of them were built up on the subject of climate change. So there is need to these community-based practitioners get enough information to understand the subject of climate change before they can even pass it on to communities. So I'll add you, I'll add you people are studying these issues of climate change and what not. To see that the people at the community level, the practitioners do understand it very well and so they have the information that they can be able to pass it on to the communities that they work with because without them knowing the information, then they have nothing to pass it over. So maybe they could put it as one of the areas that they would work on. Just like they look at other activities, the subject of climate change should be felt in some of these practitioners at the grassroot. So then we shall be able to see that information flows to the community. But I want to share. Thank you, Sarah. That's a really good point about community-based practitioners needing to better understand climate so that they can communicate it to communities. And for me, I mean, obviously, in the discussion, we hear this need and this desire to connect the scientists and the communities and then we know there are several actors in between. And it's very unlikely, it's very unrealistic to expect that the climate, and usually it's a relatively small team of people providing climate information in a country. For example, it's the meteorological services and they are just a small number of people. It's unrealistic to think that they will be able to talk to every community in the country. So we do need to have these systems in place with intermediaries, different types of intermediaries who can help translate some of that knowledge. And I think what I find very interesting personally in my experience is that those intermediaries, like the community-based practitioners, they understand they work in communities. They talk to community members on a very regular basis. They understand the context, the local context and they don't necessarily need to turn into climate scientists. They will not turn into climate scientists, but if we can develop, if we can train these stakeholders to just have a process that they can follow to then identify the right elements of context that find a way to package like, what is the context? What are the right elements of context that can help us identify what additional information is useful and what information is not useful? And that would be a way to just sort of distill key elements from what communities already know, what communities already access, what communities already do. And then from that, identify the missing points and communicate those missing points to the climate scientists. And if we had a process, like if we can develop a process on how to do that for these middle stakeholders, I think I would be super interested in that because I feel like they have the knowledge to do that. They have the capacity to bring in community members as we work on that. And then that can be a way to deliver something to bring the climate scientists in the conversation and just identify missing points based on the existing knowledge. But that's just my take on it. Anyone, does anyone else? Yeah, so Tasfia, do you wanna talk briefly about BACs? I see you put a comment in the chat. I don't know if you would like to... I do not want to take more minutes, like in 30 seconds that as we talk about more dialogues, more structured dialogues to understand all these different dimensions in the top level and the bottom, and in the ground on the ground. So we believe that communities are in the better way to bridge this gap just for now because we really haven't explored anything to work closely with the communities, like being the researchers or the science institutions, but yes, we would like to enable the communities so that they can work with the communities better. And we actually would like to train practitioners on different issues and on climate services and climate information. That's what just I wanted to say that if you have any good examples, if your organizations are willing to have training, please contact us so that we can say that if you can explore the opportunities. We have done this in Bangladesh and I think Melody can share examples from other countries. I think they're doing academies. Thanks, Tasvia. So we're reaching, we're close to the end of the session. I just want to make sure that everyone has a chance to respond to the poll because basically we want to know what you think would be most helpful in the future related to this conversation. Do you think the most useful would be to have access to trainings and training dialogues on climate basics to be able to better communicate about the risks and the needs with the information providers? Do you think it would be more useful to develop more discussion spaces where people can talk about the generation, translation, communication and use of climate information? Do you think it would be most useful to have access to intermediaries who can explain and translate climate information to us? Or do you think it would be being able to provide feedback on the existing products? As somebody was saying, there are a lot of products but climate scientists tend to think they're obvious and easy to use and actually they're not for many people. So you can, I think you can click several of the answers. No, it's just one. Okay, so pick one. The most important for you. And then in the, so I'll give another minute or two. Is there any other, any last comments that anyone wants to make or any last points? And please don't leave quite yet because we also want to ask, if there is no last point actually, would you be willing to turn your videos on for just a few seconds and we could take a group picture? Actually, I guess we need to because we have two full screens of people. That's where you're muted. I could just see you speak, but... Yes, yes, sorry. I was just saying we probably need to take two screenshots, two, three screenshots. So yes, probably you can take it. I'm taking it on my computer as well. Adi, but please take it as well. Perfect, okay. Everyone ready? Smile, we'll take a few. Smile, one more. You can hear my little click. Okay, one more. Smile. All right, great. That's a great picture. I love it. Any final comment from anyone? Take the vaccine. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, Mustafa. Take the vaccine. Take the vaccine. Okay, so let's have a look at the results of the poll. 47% are saying they would like to see more access to trainings on climate basics to be able to better communicate about risks and needs with information providers. Also 33% said developing discussion spaces where people can exchange. 20% said having access to intermediaries. I guess a lot of the people in this group are already sort of intermediaries, so they don't need access to more. And then not so much interest, or at least people think it's not the most important thing to be able to provide feedback, but it's more, which I understand because providing feedback on something that already exists is probably not as important as creating these spaces and having these conversations where communities are fully involved from the start and not just providing comments here and there. Okay, I'm just gonna share my screen one last time just because we have a slide with our contact information if you want. So, this was from before. Yes, here we go. So I just put one contact per organization. These are the lead facilitators and then the key contact points, but if you are interested in reaching out to anyone in particular, I mean, feel free to reach out to us and we'll communicate with the rest of the group. If you have any question, if you wanna keep this conversation going, if you have ideas for collaboration, any inspiring things, please feel free to reach out to us. And yeah, thank you so much everyone for joining. Thank you so much to the organizers. We had a bit of a technical issue at the beginning, but I think it was solved and thanks so much to all my fellow co-organizers for their patience and all the work that they put into this session. And yeah, thank you so much everyone. Have a great day, have a great evening or night depending on where you are. Thank you. All right, thank you everybody. Thank you. Bye everyone. Bye-bye. Hi Meli, do you want us to be here or like we can just leave? Do you want to do any quick? Not right now, I'll have a quick follow-up with Adiba and Aisha, but we have a separate Zoom, so. Yes, great, okay, thanks. Thank you, thank you for such great moderation. It was great, it was very timely on time. And thank you like others, yes, and Laurel as well. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thanks to you and we'll do a debrief. Yes, we'll do the debrief and we have another call also coming, so yes. Okay, we'll talk, bye-bye. Thanks everyone. Oh, Prudence. Oh yeah, you were muted, I saw you were trying to speak. Saying bye, how are you? Thanks for joining. Thank you.