 Welcome, I'm Sonya Diakusumarewi, researcher at C4Ecraft and I will be your host for today. I'm joining you from Bogor Indonesia, it's the city where the Center for International Forestry Research is based. And together with our partners from World Agroforestry, No Combine at C4Ecraft, also with the European New Forest Institute, Perfinity Innovation Fund, CETRA, the Global Landscape Forum and the Sustainable Markets Initiative, we are very pleased to have you joining us today to discuss the very important topic, putting nature at the heart of our economy. And today, we want to bring partners together to share transformative solutions to some of the world's most important challenges, such as accelerating climate change and environmental degradations and also loss of biodiversity. And we have a very full program right now with expert speakers from around the world, and they will be addressing the big questions, how can trees and forests help to shape a better world and solve these problems. And we will be also focusing on how this affects the global south. I think this is the very first event of its kind to do so. And during the event, I want you to engage with us and you can type your question into the Q&A box. And if you're watching us on Facebook, please share your thoughts and we will get as many as your questions to our panelists. And on social media, we are using the hashtag CBEF2021, please follow along on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. And to begin our digital forum, we are very pleased to have with us his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, who will share his insights about the nature-focused transformation that is needed. And your Royal Highness, the time is yours. Ladies and gentlemen, as we move from crisis to gradual recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, we have a unique but narrow window of opportunity to transform our economy and to bring forward the changes that have been long delayed and which our society needs in order to create a genuinely sustainable future that is within planetary boundaries. To achieve this, we must put nature at the center of the circle. And to make this possible, we must act for health and well-being. We must recognize the true value of biodiversity and the fundamental interdependence of all living things. And we must invest in nature as the true engine for a new economy, a circular bioeconomy that gives back to nature as much as we take from her in order to restore urgently the balance we have so rashly disrupted. The advances of science and technology at the intersection of the biological, physical and digital worlds provides the circular bioeconomy with the innovation potential to replace the current fossil-based economy. The pandemic we are experiencing is a symptom of the wider challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. The crisis caused by our fossil-based economy has peaked dramatically in the past 50 years of intense industrialization. Science also shows that biodiversity loss and deforestation are important factors explaining the emergence and transmission of zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19. So this current crisis is just another wake-up call demonstrating in dramatic fashion the fact that we are crossing the resilience boundaries of our planet. What we need now, ladies and gentlemen, is a new way of thinking as a basis for a new economic paradigm, one that is circular, not linear, one where prosperity and human well-being takes place within the ecological boundaries of our planet. In other words, a paradigm based on a renewable, regenerative and inclusive economy powered by nature and that prospers in harmony with nature, a circular bioeconomy relying on healthy, biodiverse and resilient ecosystems, offers a conceptual framework for using renewable natural capital to provide a more durable form of well-being through the provision of ecosystem services and the sustainable management of biological resources such as plants, animals, microorganisms and derived biomass, including organic waste. At the same time, the circular transformation of biological resources into food, feed, energy and biomaterials within the ecological boundaries of the ecosystems is absolutely key to move away from an unsustainable fossil-based economy. All of this has the potential to create entirely new sustainable industries and livelihoods. Now, having been engaged in these issues for, I suppose, nine on 50 years when I made my first speech on the environment and issues of waste and having talked to countless experts across the globe, I've come to realise that it is not a lack of capital that is holding us back but rather the way in which we deploy it. And I must say, in all these years of trying to raise awareness of the crucial need to take action before it is too late, it is only now in the last year or so that the level of interest in sustainable investments and innovation has suddenly never been higher. Therefore, to seize the rapidly closing window of opportunity we have before us, we must act and act now to catalyse the paradigm shift we so desperately need. It is utterly crucial that we connect investments to investable circular bioeconomy solutions. And this is why I am so delighted that the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance, as part of my Sustainable Markets Initiative, is working to connect the dots between investors, companies, governmental and non-governmental organisations to advance the circular bioeconomy globally. The Alliance serves as a central hub for supporting an informed transition to a circular bioeconomy that is climate neutral, inclusive and prosperous in harmony with nature. If we are to achieve results, we must take the necessary action with speed and determination, quickly and through a multi-stakeholder approach. The time for talking and testing our world to destruction is long past, so I very much hope you will join us in this vital effort as we work collectively to put nature at the heart of global decision making. And I need hard to say, I much look forward to genuinely effective outcomes from this critical conference. Reflections and also for the call to act urgently. And now we are very honoured to have with us the European Commissioner for International Partnership, Yuta Urpilainen, who will share her perspective on the importance of the circular bioeconomy. Dear friends and colleagues, my thanks to the European Forest Institute for organising today's event on the UN International Day of Forests. As many of you know, this translates as the forest answers in the same way one shouts at it. Human actions are mirrored back by nature and all actions have consequences. Science warns us of the consequences of the environmental crisis on our planet. We must act now and we must act together. The EU's answer is the Green Deal. It is our sustainable growth strategy and blueprint for recovery. The Green Deal is a transformative agenda to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and eliminate pollution. From biodiversity to sustainable food systems and from climate to circular bioeconomy, we need a comprehensive response. We will only achieve the 2030 agenda if we ensure that environmental sustainability cuts through livelihoods, economies and resilient societies. Colleagues, bioeconomy is global. So are its value chains and therefore challenges. Our response must also be global. This means working with our international partners to promote a sustainable and circular bioeconomy that creates growth and jobs. This is very much the case with the EU's work on forests. I am committed to work with partners. We will promote sustainable forest management and protect and restore forests. This means also making the most of economic opportunities, for example of the use of wood for construction and innovative new materials. There are other opportunities as well. Think for example what more training and education could do for young people wanting to have a career in sustainable forest management. With Team Europe initiatives the EU will aim to promote this holistic approach. We will address governance, socio-economic development, climate, biodiversity and deforestation. Dear friends, forests are essential for biodiversity as a resource, as a cultural reference and far more. Let's make sure they still are all that for the next generations. It's very much highlighting that the European Union is and will play a critical role in this transition. Before we jump to the discussions, now I would like to invite the director of the European Forest Institute, Mark Palahi. He is a leading expert on forests and working with a new vision of the transformational role on how forests can play in fighting climate change and developing a circular bioeconomy. Hello, Mark. Thank you, Sonia. Thank you very much. Dear colleagues, a pleasure to be with all of you here today. Yes, Mark, before we start our discussion, maybe could you please enlighten us what does the term circular bioeconomy mean? Thank you, Sonia. Yes, before coming back to your question, let me first thank His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, not only for his great contribution today, but also for his visionary leadership in establishing the circular bioeconomy alliance. It is a great honor for me to coordinate such an initiative, an initiative that as His Royal Highness mentioned, is about connecting investors with sustainable investable solutions in order to accelerate the transition from the current linear fossil-based economy towards a circular bioeconomy. Because Sonia, the circular bioeconomy is about rethinking our economic system, a system, remember, addicted to fossil resources and to growth at all costs that has failed to value our most important capital, and in fact the basis for human health and well-being, nature. So the circular bioeconomy means, above all, creating a new economy where life and not consumption is its true engine and its true purpose. Remember that bio means life, and biodiversity is the basis for life, because it is a prerequisite for life to adapt and evolve in a changing environment. Therefore, a circular bioeconomy ultimately is powered by biodiversity. And a circular bioeconomy is also an opportunity to rethink holistically our land, food and health systems to reimagine our cities with ecological lenses, to transform key industrial sectors that will need to become carbon neutral and circular in the next two decades, because biological resources, if managed sustainably, are renewable and circular by nature. And the good news is that with emerging technologies and innovative business models, we can transform them into bio-based solutions to decarbonize our economy and restore biodiversity, all that while creating new jobs and supporting inclusive prosperity. But to put forward such an unprecedented economic transformation, we urgently need transformative policies and massive investments. Transformative policies that understand that the climate and biodiversity crisis are not different crises. They are just different consequences of the same fundamental problem, our linear fossil economy. And we need massive investments, but remember, it does not mean necessarily for massive projects, but rather holistic, inclusive and well distributed projects around the territory. So we need investments to cover the whole value change from innovation to infrastructures, from human capital to natural capital. And this is what we will be discussing today, how to bring the circular bio-economy vision to action. But remember that now time is our most discussed resource. So after the discussions today, it will be time for action. Thank you very much Mark for very insightful explanations. And maybe now I'd like to introduce Robert Nasi, the managing director general of C4 eCRAF that has decades of experience in forest management and ecology worldwide from Europe to Africa to Asia. And I'm welcoming Robert. Hello Robert. Hello Sonia. It's very nice to see you here with your buddy. And Robert, maybe could you please explain us a little bit about how can developing economies use both the practices of the circular bio-economy and also the resources of forest and trees, and also how to adapt them to their unique circumstances. I can try to do that in three minutes. And first of course also thank you to the INS and thank you commissioner. It means a lot to all your support for this event. Now, when we look at the balance between the natural and the fossil economy, developing country rely much more on the former than the latter. As such, they are in a theoretically better position than developed country to shift from the natural economy, based on subsistence farming, traditional biomass use, low productivity, and ultimately leading for degradation to a bio economy that relies on renewable resources to produce food, energy, products and services while minimizing biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. And of course, wood should play a significant role in this shift from the natural to the bio economy. Wood is almost versatile renewable material. To mitigate climate change, we have to replace fossil-based material like concrete, steel, plastics, synthetic textile with sustainable renewable material like wood. For this, we need healthy forest and a proper mix of conservation, sustainable use, reduced waste, waste and increased efficiency. However, the tropical wood of the bio economy must not come from the remnant, untouched forest and woodland. They should be protected. It should come from more efficient and sustainable use of the existing managed tropical forest. If you look at the wood production in developing country, which is about 2.3 billion cubic meter, 1.6 billion cubic meter of 70% goes into smoke with very low efficiency, knowing that one ton of wood gives you about 170 kilo of charcoal. And a lot of associated issue like respiratory issue and environmental degradation. In the timber business, the most efficient sawmill in developing country have about 50% yield. So each time you produce one cubic meter of lumber, you also produce one cubic meter of waste and sodas. And generally, someone burned this somewhere near the sawmill. So in 2020, the tropical sand timber sector likely generated around 53 million cubic meter of waste. There is therefore a huge opportunity of having more wood material without having to cut another tree simply by making processes efficient. And we know how to do that. Another example is the proposed Amazon third way initiative, which is a new opportunity to protect the Amazon ecosystem and the indigenous people who are the custodian while developing a socially inclusive biodiversity driven green economy in Amazon. And this can be done by harnessing natural value to the physical, digital and biological technology or the force and neutral revolution. This technology are increasingly harnessing this natural asset across many industries from pharmaceutical to energy, food, cosmetics, material and mobility and making profit. So we can do it. We know how to do it. So now let's do it. Okay, thank you very much, Robert. And I would like to thank you again for Mark and Robert. It's very insightful indeed as a starting point of today's discussions. And now I think let's we jump to the discussions. And I would like to start right now with the opening plenary with title, Why do we need a circular bio economy. And I would like to inform you that don't forget to put any questions you have for the panel in the Q&A box. And the moderator for this plenary sessions is Mari Pansar, the director of sustainability solutions at the Finnish Innovation Fund, CITRA. She has 20 years of experience in Climtech business development. And I'm welcoming Mari. Yes, Mari, over to you. Warm thank you, Sonia, and happy International Forest Day for all your colleagues. So I am Mari Pansar and I lead the sustainability solutions theme at Finnish Innovation Fund, CITRA. And I want to very warmly welcome you all to our opening plenary panel debate and for the next 50 minutes, we will discuss why do we need a circular bio economy. So as we all know, the bio economy is actually the original economy that we have had for thousands of years. Now it is transitioned into substitution of fossil-based materials in a shift away from the fossil economy. And finally, the bio economy must also become circular. So that is the reason why we are talking about the circular bio economy. We all know that the ecological sustainability crisis with its three dimensions, climate change, nature loss and pollution is threatening the foundation of our economy and also our well-being. And therefore we really need a systemic change towards the circular bio economy. And that is what our panel is going to discuss now. We will discuss what are the key elements of this systemic change. And we will also discuss how we could use the circular bio economy as an effective tool to build more sustainable, more prosperous and also more inclusive societies with plenty of new opportunities for jobs and new industries. So we will discuss how we can do much more in creating synergies to address holistically climate, biodiversity, economic and also social objectives. And I'm very happy to introduce you our four excellent panel speakers. At first, we have her Excellency, Minister of State for Environment Nigeria, Sharon Igelsior, Minister, you are most warmly welcome. We have Akansha Katri. Akansha is the head of Nature Action Agenda, World Economic Forum's platform Global Public Goods. Welcome Akansha. And then we have Yanich Potocnik, who is the Co-Chair of the International Resource Panel and Partner of Systemic. And also Christopher Martius, who is the Bon Hop Leader and Managing Director of CIFOR Germany. And in the end of the opening plenary, we also have an opportunity to take some questions from the audience. So please be active and place your questions in the Q&A box in the Zoom. But now let us start with an intro remark by Akansha Katri. And she will focus on the new relationship with natural capital, which is at the core of the circular bioeconomy. And Akansha will tell us what needs to change, especially considering the way natural capital has or has not worked for developing countries. So over to you Akansha. Thank you Marie. And then thank you also to CIFOR for inviting me and the World Economic Forum for this very, very important discussion. As you mentioned, I think I'll just kick off with some ideas in terms of why we need a circular bioeconomy. We strongly believe that there is an urgent need to rethink our relationship with nature and shift our economic and business model from an extractive relationship with natural resources towards a regenerative or circular relationship. So for the purposes of the next five minutes, I want to cover a few points. One is to raise the question that we today have a serious asset management problem. The second, recognize the unprecedented opportunity that the pandemic provides us. The third is to look at the role of natural capital and lastly to see how we can shift the power dynamics between developed and developing countries. So it was brilliant to see his Royal Highness Prince of Wales actually kick off this discussion because I also wanted to touch upon the report which was released last month at the UK Treasury, which was on the economics of biodiversity led by Sir Parthadas Gupta. That review is extremely rich in many insights, but one that I want to call out today is that we fundamentally have an asset management problem. Over the past nearly 70 years, we have had an unprecedented increase in economic output and human welfare. The average person has become 4.4 times richer and today lives 25 years longer. Many have called this the great acceleration. However, this great acceleration has come at a great expense to our planet and its resources. Or as Sir Parthadas Gupta says that our human physical and financial capital has been consistently rising, but the natural capital on which all of these other assets actually depend is declining. So we truly have a lopsided distribution in our asset portfolio. Then looking at the pandemic, one could say that we have an unprecedented opportunity to take a pause, reflect on this great acceleration and ask ourselves that do we need a great reset of our economic model. Because if we look at the world that we want to live in 2030, we clearly are not on the same. According to the IPCC, despite our best efforts, we are nowhere on the 1.5 degree pathway. So tinkering a few efforts here and there is no longer an option. What we need is a fundamental shift to how we operate. According to the report that the World Economic Forum released last year entitled the Future of Nature and Business, there is a $10.1 trillion business opportunity, which could create 395 million jobs by 2030 if only we shift towards a net zero and a nature positive economy. There is just one example that I would like to take when thinking about these pieces is what would it take if we were able to transition across all systems and across all sectors. If we look at a sector like textiles which actually affects all of us individually. If we move towards reducing and creating a circularity of textile waste and moving it from 14% which it currently stands at to 30%, this could generate a savings worth of $130 billion by 2030. So this is just to say that there is an economic case for moving towards something which is circular and having life as Mark had said, like the bio piece of it at the very center. And the natural capital and nature based solutions have a very important role in this mix. Because despite our significant advances in technology and best efforts, the material productivity which is defined as the GDP relevant to relative to material and energy inputs has basically stagnated since the turn of the century. It's not surprising that a huge chunk of the natural resources, which come from the developing or less developed countries are at the fundamental core of defining our global economic growth. So global resource extraction actually has tripled in the last 40 years, while 814 million people lack electricity. So there goes the point that you were raising earlier Marie is that we don't have to only look at our climate and biodiversity goal, but when rethinking the system absolutely make sure that social equity is at the very center of it. So the question today for our global commons is how do we safeguard our natural assets incentivize the custodians of our land and marine spaces to create an economic model that values nature. And we all should accept that it's not going to be easy. It is a wicked problem that cannot be solved by any one organization or country or business. It truly requires a multi stakeholder collaboration, but requires it on steroids, because we are really running out of time. One of the pieces that I wanted to raise here is on the external sovereign debt, which for many developing and less developed countries was any which was pretty high pre pandemic, but today is actually getting worse. Most of those countries are seeking more debt relief more in investments so they can invest in their healthcare and job creation. The international financial institutions, multilateral development banks and sovereign wealth funds and pension funds have an especially important role to play in this. By committing to instruments such as debt for nature swaps, we can help countries reschedule their debts in exchange for nature related performance, because for far too long we have leveraged physical and financial capital to build economic strength. Can we look at natural capital and its production its protection as a contribution to global economy, because as we have identified more than half the world GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its risk. And the second idea that I want to leave everybody with is on nature based solutions that if you look at examples like Costa Rica where carbon finance has actually supported urban development forest conservation and education. Can we learn from these examples, because we have never had this opportunity to facilitate a significant economic wealth transfer from the developed countries to the developing countries in exchange for the ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration rainfall patterns soil health, which are fundamentally provided by most of the developed countries which are rich in forest rich in natural capital, but not as rich in terms of economic growth. So I think that those are some of the ideas that I want to leave us with, and I'm looking forward to discussing this with my very esteemed fellow panelists. Thank you. Thank you so much for the very valuable insight so we will come back to these important issues that you raised later in the discussion. But now we will move forward and I have a pleasure to invite her Excellency Minister Sharon Ikeasar. So thank you so much Minister for joining us. And my question to you is then even with ambitious global climate agreements, the greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. As Akansha mentioned, we are nowhere near the 1.5 degrees fast. So for your country of Nigeria, how can the circular bioeconomy provide a better alternative for sustainable development, more jobs and also growing economy. Over to you Minister. Thank you very much Marie. Well, we all know that climate change is a major threat to sustainable development. But the, like they say, a quarter of the global greenhouse gas system from land use, including the conversion of forest and agricultural and destruction of our mangrove forests, the draining of our pitlands. So restoring the sustainable management of the world's ecosystem could provide more than a third of our climate mitigation solutions. So we here in Nigeria, we realize that nature is essential to us achieving a sustainable development. So how do we tackle the biodiversity that is declining? Well, our present economic models we have seen threatened nature and our future well being. So this transition to circular bioeconomy. It's a model that builds on nature and we realize that. So for us in Nigeria, this would help us fight poverty, help development, and also help us with the sustainable forest management, that we all know are interrelated. You know, a majority of our people in our communities here in Nigeria live in forest dependent communities. So if we come through restoration of degraded landscapes, we can definitely drive economic development and create employment. Also, bio-circular economy will provide Nigeria an opportunity to experience industrial and technological transformation. Since bioeconomy, bio-circular economy depends on technology, but on one hand, it still relies on traditional methods which we have in abundance in Nigeria. So this technological transformation should be able to enable us to make the best use of biological resources such as wood and bamboo to produce products that can grow our economy. Then another area I would look at is how do we now maximize the value of our forest based products? You know, to compute with agricultural products in sub-Saharan Africa and also to compute with the profits of illegal activities in our forest. If we want bio-circular economy to work, we have to look at these issues in Africa. Then bio-circular economy would help us in contributing to climate change mitigation, like I said. I would have numerous opportunities for job creation and economic growth that will exist along the biomass value chain from biomass production to agriculture. Then we're looking at having a value chain in our palm oil produce, which we can use for food, detergents, palm kennels to generate heat to process implants and all that. And having fertilizers applied back to the farm. So I would believe that the bio-circular economy will contribute greatly to our achievements of our SDGs, most specifically on poverty, zero hunger, good health, well-being, gender equality, and of course SDGs 12, 13, and 14. So I'm glad that we're having this conversation, but how do we also get governments to measure and value their nature capital in Africa? It's a question I'm drawing to the economists to help us out with that. We, the policy makers, will see how we'll marry all this together. Over to you, I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Minister, for this extremely valuable insight and especially thank you for highlighting the inter-linkages between environmental, social and economic aspects. And I can tell you that you mentioned that we should find an answer to the question, so how we can get the governments to value the natural capital in Africa. But that is not only a problem in Africa. So I guess that is a global problem, so I hope that we in the panel we can discuss about this issue. But if there are any comments or remarks from other panelists, so please feel free to take part in the discussion. So we still have some 20 minutes to go before the audience questions. So there is nicely room for discussion, but I kindly ask everyone to be very concise so we can get a number of remarks. But next I would like to give the screen to Janets Pototsnik by asking Janets that the circular economy will change the use of natural resources as we have heard earlier today. So can you explain how it would or should do it? And can you give some concrete examples, for example, from Europe and what we can learn from those? Over to you, Janets. Thank you, Mari, and hi everybody. In the global resource outlook, international resource panel, which is a natural resource management, UNEP science based interface has estimated that if following the current trends, sorry, that if following the current trends, the global material demand is projected to double by 2060. In no way we can decarbonize all the production and make our economies and society sustainable without massive tradeoffs. Therefore, the only realistic chance for reaching our 2030 and 2050 targets, climate included, is to deploy all measures possible to address this likely potential increase. This means that while we strive to improve our well-being, we have to reduce the need for additional virgin natural resources as much as we can decouple growth from natural resource use and environmental impacts. How could we reduce these impacts in a systemic way? The most effective way is to start at the end, where the product systems meet the societal need with a question. Let's take an example of houses and vehicles. How many of them are actually needed and used? And could we redesign these systems in a more efficient way? And here is where natural resource management and circular bioeconomy as an important instrument comes into play. There are great opportunities across sectors to design and create better and smarter. Cities can become more compact and buildings more space and material efficient at high living quality. Transport can become shared, connected, more integrated to avoid cars standing out, empty and clogging traffic, saving massive amounts of materials. This would also free up space for nature. Of course, also the production and systems elements like houses and vehicles must become cleaner using renewable energy and alternative materials like bio-based materials. But once we have designed the systems better to service societal needs at minimum resource input, there is much less production to be cleaned up. Interestingly, current climate policies mostly start from the other end of the picture. They first ask how to clean up energy production and how to use cleaner energy in production, not asking how much of that production is useful for society in the first place. More and more they do indeed start looking at energy efficiency, but they barely look at how could the systems such as housing or mobility be more resource efficient as a whole, avoiding energy intense use and production in the first place. There is a double benefit to such circular measures and these are rarely talked about, not even if I'm frank inside, let's call it our circular community. What I mean is the inherent synergy between systemic dematerialization measures and operational energy use measures, a double win for climate, biodiversity and pollution and a double chance for humanity to win the climate battle and improve human well-being. So we should start from improving our well-being and meeting human needs rather than from overuse and underutilization of natural resources, chasing higher production growth rates and the logic of putting more products on the markets regardless of the price we are collectively paying. And I'm not talking about degrowth concept rather about fundamental system change approach following our needs. Of course, one has to acknowledge that challenges are not the same for all the countries and that major task is on developed part of the world with higher environmental and consumption footprint. But circular bioeconomy as we have heard from the minister, it's a great opportunity also for developing countries to avoid mistakes done in our regions. I have to add that important developments were triggered lately in Europe by so-called European Green Deal, which is a new growth strategy acknowledging that environmental and economic goals are not in contradiction, setting zero net emissions of GAG by 2050 and introducing also the need for decoupling growth from resource use based on circular bioeconomy and of course acknowledging also the need for fair and just transition. Back to you, Mari. Mari, we don't hear you. Unfortunately, thank you, Janne. I have some technical difficulties, so I was away from the line for a couple of minutes. So I'm sorry for not hearing everything that you mentioned. Next, I would like to move to Christopher of Martius. And we would love to hear your view on what does the current science and research tell us about the circular bioeconomies benefits if it is implemented and what kind of new research needs to be done. Then we would very much like to hear your view also on the definitions. So do you think that we have commonly shared definitions for the circular bioeconomy? So over to you, Christopher. Thank you very much, Mari. These are huge questions. I'm not sure I can answer all of them, but some of them. I have a slide which I would like to share if that can be shown in the background, because I would like to give some background on our new program on bioeconomy landscapes that we develop as what we call it a transformative partnership platform. And it has three large elements. One is called common ground where we look at these large questions. Janne has just mentioned that nobody questions the amount of energy actually being used and whether we really need all this energy. And similarly, we can also ask what are we producing and what for and under which conditions. For example, palm oil is coming from Asia to Europe to support European green fuel policies, but actually generating a lot of emissions back where the oil is being produced in Malaysia and Indonesia, or maize is being produced to a large amount globally going, not serving as food security, but actually going into a sugary drink. So is that food security? No. Do we need all this land for this maize then? Perhaps not. I think these are the big questions we need to address through research and modeling. When we also look at something we call it going green, we see a lot of new technologies coming up, food tech, food tech and so on. And these offer huge opportunities to replace fossil fuels and replace cement and plastic. And also linking this with health and diets coming from forests and forest based products. So we're looking at these elements and particularly how this relates to circular by economy in developing countries and how this technology progress can be made available in developing countries very soon. And third is what is in the middle here weaving together, adding value locally, not shipping out raw materials and then adding value somewhere else, but adding value in developing countries where the products come from. Pulling resources, reducing waste, of course, we know that a lot of food is, for example, is being wasted and that generates emissions. And as Robert mentioned in the beginning, a lot of wood is being lost in the process and that also generates additional emissions that we may not need to produce if you could be more efficient. And also bringing in the private initiative and capacity development and other elements to scale things out very quickly in an action oriented support. So what what you see down here that we that substantial emission reductions can be achieved through this what what I call the overlooked pathway of of emission reduction. You see, I made a very big back of the envelope calculation. So some 10 gigatons per per year can be saved and that if you link that to the missions gap. You see there's, there's huge potential here, but it also could create an adaptive just and social transition. If we look at social elements at the same level as at bringing nature into into this. And this is what we have done in our report. We just launched yesterday, Sabrina Rosa was an author from the University of Helsinki and myself and she and I, she and I took a desk study of the social aspects of for of a forest based economy and Sub-Saharan Africa, Africa. And remind you this is a literature study. We looked at some 300 papers or so. And we found out that by economy activities in forests in Sub-Saharan Africa are still mostly traditional as was expected there's nothing really innovative, or not much. Social data are not very easily available. Many people talk about them to justify their studies but data are not often there. The data that are there the outcomes are slightly more positive than negative. And this refers to income jobs, better market access, tenure and distribution of benefits across the population. But when there are negative outcomes, they are associated to a natural resource loss due to overuse, dispossession of people and displacement of people so land grabs are a huge problem. And we find that progress is hold back by unaligned and uncoordinated policies in the forest area but also development policies. And this requires more work. And finally the unsolved problems of rights, tenure, graft, elite capture, also hamper progress. So we see really that bioeconomy approaches could have benefits and particularly if we move into more forward looking approaches and modern approaches, but they need to solve these underlying and still existing big problems in the transition process. So to nature, social inclusiveness must be at the heart of bioeconomy otherwise it will not move forward in countries which are stricken by poverty and missing policies and so on. So you can find the report online and at the link here. It's also shown behind me and on this on the slide and actually we invite everybody to join us on this on this on this partnership and so for that please contact us. Thank you very much. Thank you, Christopher. Thank you for mentioning this very important report and as you mentioned the circular bioeconomy offers a promise of improved well being. So what do you think how would this actually work in the global south also so and what needs to be done in order to ensure this. This is a question to me. It is to you Christopher. Huge concert effort needs to be done to to actually solve these social problems alongside the technological problems. We are often. Progress is often seen as mainly technological and very often engineering solutions are seen as is taking us forward. Everybody has seen the advent of, of huge, huge giant steps of digitalization in the last 20 30 years and basically we think the speed can be as quick in in the in the industrial area but it is not it takes a long time. It takes very patient work dealing with with many communities and with many stakeholders and bringing everybody to the table. And, and so it's a long term process that that requires long term investments and into these processes not necessarily finance investments. Other finance investments are also urgently needed that is sure and we also need to, to step up the financial input here in order to make progress but I think financial and social and policy development have to have have to go hand in hand. Thank you so much Christopher. Do you have any comments from the other other panelists to please for example, Janet, would you like to comment what Christopher just mentioned from the perspective of the European cream deal. I think Christopher was quite clear about that I think it's essential for me what is essential it's really that we start addressing those questions collectively together, because if we don't do that. Waiting one to another will not end up well. Any other comments so I can't ship what you like to comment. What has been mentioned. Sure, I just wanted to compliment what has been said and reinforced what the other said as well is. Yes, there is instruments which are required to be changed. Yes, there are fundamental shifts which are required at the macro level, but we should also not underestimate that it requires a shift in the way we look at our economy and our politics I think to the point that Janice was raising we need to shift away from this increase like productivity, but productivity from a pure numbers point of view. And then it start more from a well being perspective rather than how much you're consuming in the new economy. And the second would be how do we institutionalize this whole natural capital accounting or natural capital protocol both in terms of sector decision making of governments as the minister had raised earlier, but then also for companies like how do we get them to report on environmental PNL as well as their externalities. So thank you for mentioning the role of the company so quite often we hear that relying only on the interest by businesses will not solve the psychological challenges in time. So what do you think what kind of carrots or even sticks would we need in order to get this business transition to happen quick enough. Okay, so I think most of you would be aware of this movement and platform which was started called business for nature, which has received more than 500 companies actually signing up for an ambitious post 2020 global biodiversity framework. So what we are hearing increasingly and definitely there is a little bit of a bias with more European companies asking for more of a political policy will to make sure that there is a level playing field, because whether we like it or not today. Most companies are. They have a statutory obligation to maximize profit and maximize market. We need to make sure that it is baked into policy regulatory environment that businesses are as responsible for the environment as they are on the profit and loss. And then the second thing would be just the way the finance flows is we have to be fund activities which are harming nature. So this includes both from the public side of harmful subsidies but and then also in terms of the private side which we are increasingly seeing in European companies, choosing to not import deforestation choosing to reduce their climate and biodiversity footprint. Yeah, so I think the businesses need level playing field incentives for doing the right thing and a little bit of a stable environment and stronger institutions, particularly in developing countries. Thank you so much for that. So next question I would like to ask a minister. So what kind of new opportunities would you like to see in Nigeria in the circular bioeconomies. Over to you. Can you hear me. Thanks, thanks, Mary. And thanks to everyone who has spoken. Well, the opportunities I would like to see in Nigeria with a bio-circular economy shift would be opportunities in our forestation and reforestation initiatives, you know, that has the aim of income generation and ecosystem restoration. Because this would improve the community's resilience and their poverty conditions as well. And having employment opportunities in rural and coastal areas, like for instance in Nigeria, we have the largest mangrove ecosystem in Africa. And I think the third in the world. A lot of our coastal communities rely on the mangroves for their livelihoods. So if we have a restoration and conservation initiatives going along the coast, it will improve the livelihoods of the people there. Another opportunity I would like to see with the bioeconomies shift would be an opportunity to tackle economic gender inequality. And I want to see where women are more involved at the grassroots in biomass utilization, you know, both for domestic and commercial purposes. Then also opportunities to set up bio refineries, you know, where biomass from a range of sources such as crops, wood, forests and agricultural residues are converted to everyday products to us. But this shift to bio-secular economy of course requires funding and investments, especially in low and medium income communities. So we'll be needing, in Nigeria, we're needing a lot more public and private sector partnership, you know, committing to this transition. And I'm glad to hear everyone talking about the transition being just. Then also another opportunity I would love to see. And I want to learn from Saifu how they did it in other African countries is how we improve the quality of life for smallholder and local communities by targeting food, nutrition, security and health. I mean, under health, I would look into efficient cookstove, clean cookstove. Then market and income diversification, you know, how we get biomass based value chain from things like plantain and cassava that a lot of our people farm with. So I will end by saying, I would like us all to urge governments globally, you know, if they measure, record and account for natural capital in their budgets, they'll be able to make better investments into bio secular economy. So I'm glad that we're all here today. And I'll call you all progressive stakeholders as we raise the ambition and commitment towards the net zero nature based positive economy, you know, to help us build an equitable and resilient world. So I just hope this will gain traction in the global south, because we be at the brunt of climate change and climate injustice. So over to you, Murray. Thank you so much, Minister. So it is time to take some questions from the audience and we have plenty of those. So thank you for these. So the first question is that how can in the genius groups as well as small communities be protected and involved in sustainable economic activities when there are large companies who have more capital? So who would like to start? Maybe I will ask you. Sure, I can start. I have seen that we already have more than 100 questions, which it's quite encouraging to be honest. But, but I think the question is of course, excellent, because I think it's pointing us to the very essence of how we are driving incentives on our market economies. And why some things are so attractive for producers and some things less attractive also for consumers. So, and I firmly believe that we need to find a way how to together fix this global market failures. We actually live in market economies where signals to market players are essential for our behavior as we know, and this big company is a part of that. And we should stop giving producers the signals that destroying natural capital is free of charge. And how to value natural capital, which we discussed before, it's of course central part of that answer. And we should stop confusing on the other hand consumers by asking them to behave more responsibly, but again charging them more if they do so. So, until we actually until producing in in healthier and environmentally more responsible way is less attractive and buying that kind of goods. It's also less attractive. We have a problem. So I think fundamentally with all the government policies regulation, public funding and the things which we try to introduce that to remedy this mess on the markets. We basically, we basically have a lot of confused players on the market on the production and on the consumption side, and we simply have to go to fundamentals and to address them. And that will also give the right incentives to these big companies, which would, on the other hand, also protect them the intrinsic populations and the value of natural resources, which they have, and also give them a better opportunity that on the basis of that natural resources which they possess, they would have a better life, comparing to to the situation today. And another question from Marlon is that is wealth transfer from the developed world to the developing world a necessary constrictive element of the circularity of the circular bioeconomy. Wealth transfers. Are they necessary? I can't show a minister like to answer this question. How do you see the role of wealth transfer? Maybe I could kick off and then invite the minister to compliment or disagree with me. So I think the point on wealth transfer is a really important one and does not get enough attention as it should. And if we actually move towards the circular bioeconomy and start valuing natural capital assets and holders and people who safeguard the natural capital asset, that gives us an unprecedented opportunity to support and facilitate the wealth transfer from global north to global south, because today that is not the case. Today it's the owners of financial, technological and physical capital was sort of calling the shots of the global economy. However, if the anchor and the underpinning infrastructure of a global economic paradigm shifts towards natural capital, it allows developing countries and even indigenous people to come to the table with more of a right as well as an ability to almost call the shots. So I would think that is definitely the future that we need and we see. And then the last point that I would mention for this wealth transfer to happen. We need to also fix the market for ecosystem services, because today we don't value natural capital or the ecosystem services and therefore it's impossible to put a dollar value on it. So yeah, I guess the request fixing the market and giving equal seat at the table to owners of natural and financial capital. Thank you so much. Thank you. Would minister like to have something to this question. Yes, I do agree with you have it. I'm having problems with my condition I couldn't have the question very well. Yes, go ahead again. Mario muted. So we were talking about wealth transfers are they needed from the global north to the global south in order to accelerate the transition to the global circular fire economy. You're muted now. Yes, definitely, definitely would need the welfare to be thought out and for the global north to take responsibility and help to fund and invest in bio circular economy in the global south, because that would be a good incentive for them. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And we have a final question from the audience to Christopher. So the question is from it now, and it says as an economist, I just want to know whether there is an empirical data to show the feasibility of the concept, or rather any business model in order to show the link it sees of how the transition will benefit people. Yeah, thank you very much for this question. The problem is, I think what we have shown with our little desk study that data are not readily available. And maybe it's, it's different if you look at other regions of the world, then Sub-Saharan Africa but I suspect it's probably going to be quite similar and nobody's looking really know we don't have global data and we're just we're still just starting to develop these, these ideas, for example the idea of global demand, land availability availability of wood, which will be part which will be subject of the next scale, actually. And there is some, some work now being developed between C4 and EFI, but and probably many other players but but we still, and this is part of the, this is part of the objective in our program we want to close those gaps because we don't see, we don't see enough, enough information on on the subject. But the situation is changing. The bio economy is right now on Vogue, so to say, and there's lots of things going on, and I'm sure we will be much smarter five years down the road. Thank you. Thank you so much Christopher and the final comment from Janitz, you're welcome. And you have muted Janitz. I would just say that it's not, we are not so naked, I would say as economists in responding to that question so there are many analysis which are very clearly saying that at least if we measure from the economic growth rate possibilities that there are opportunities of the transition. And like in any transition, which has ever been, of course this is in an opportunity for innovative people. So one should not be afraid of that and should basically go. So we have a bit less clear, clear answers when it comes to the employment. And we are currently very actively working also on that. The thing which we basically know is that circular bio economy. It's providing more local connected jobs, which in a way it's a good positive answer in the context like the question was asked but if I want to finally just the last sentence to say as an economist to an economist because this was actually a question from my colleague from from the economy. My answer would be the benefits which we talk about are the benefits how humanity will survive. If this is not enough, then let's rather look ourselves economists in a mirror and try to create an economic theory which will be which will be sustainable with humanity in the future, because currently what we are teaching in the schools, it's simply not. Thank you so much. And this discussion is really so inspiring that I would love to continue this for for much longer time. Unfortunately, we are coming to an end of our panel debate and I want to take the opportunity and thank you very warmly all the panelists and also the audience for the excellent questions. So as a short wrap up, I would like to praise that we of course understand the importance of putting nature in the heart of our economic system and and it has been mentioned many times that business as usual is no longer an option but we really need to price externalities. In the climate side, pricing external externalities is a bit easier than what is on the nature side, but regardless of this, we just have to find ways how to do this. And then it is very important that when we talk about the transition towards the circular bioeconomy, we talk about global local jobs and local prosperity and then also how these locals connect to the wider global system. And as in every transition, we need all these stakeholders on board, so we need international institutions, we need international collaboration states, governments have been mentioned many times, communities and local and local people also. But with these words, I would like to once again thank you all and hope that you have an opportunity to follow the rest of the webinar. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Marty. And thank you to the panelists for that very inspiring discussions on the importance of circular bioeconomy and its relevance is for better global and local economy. And we are getting lots of questions on zoom and Facebook. Thank you very much for engaging with us and we will try to answer as many as possible. Maybe if not right now, we will do after the event. Please keep raise your thoughts and questions. And now before we move on to the next sessions, we will take a short break for 10 minutes. We will come when we come back from our break, our next panel will tackle the critical issue of whether the world will have enough wood for this economic transition. So please stay tuned. And we'll come back in 10 minutes. See you soon. To Forage is purposefully into the forest. A few miles south of his home in the Lee of Mount Kenya. To Forage for roots, bark, sap and leaves. His neighbors find this behavior a little odd. And his esoteric knowledge of the trees and plants eccentric. Most of them would choose paracetamol over his herbal concoctions of steeped and infused teas. Yet among the cedar, rosewood, waterberry and stinkwood trees, the 64 year old finds treatment for arthritis, toothache, ear infection, upset stomach and even prostate cancer. And bears knowledge of, and communing with, the forest's flanking Mount Kenya's craggy peaks is part of a value system that sees trees as being worth more than just timber or charcoal. That understands chopping them down has a cost to ways of living. And knowing that this outstrips the market price. Scientific research has caught up with traditional thinking. A recent study by the Center for International Forestry Research, C4, and the Kenya Forestry Research Institute, KEFRI, identified both the value of Kenya's Afromontane forests and the threats to them. But such beliefs are fast fading. The Mount Kenya Trust is a charity that works with the Kenya Wildlife Service and Kenya Forest Service to conserve the mountain ecosystem and improve the lives of those living around it, through tree planting, family planning and income generating activities. Increasingly modern conservation methods recognize the value of traditional knowledge of the land. It used to be known that God lived on the icy scarps of Kirin Yaga, Mount Kenya's original Kikuyu name, and the people lived below, farming and herding on its slopes, but rarely venturing into its sacred upper realm. But then the colonialists arrived, bringing Christianity and taking land, leaving less space for a growing population. Old beliefs faded, the land became crowded and the mountain's forest became just another resource to be exploited. Wildlife was hunted and trees cut down for firewood, charcoal, timber, or to make way for homesteads and agriculture. The old men used to believe that is where God is, and it's a sacred place that needs to be respected by all. Those traditions are kind of being eroded, and when they get eroded, they are eroded with the benefits that they used to carry in conservation. But the old ideas of managed access, sustainable use, and respect for the forest and its trees are beginning to show signs of a comeback. Samson Thirainira was born in 1923. Over his many years, he has gained too many grandchildren to count and lost every one of his friends. Deep inside the forest that ringed the mountain, a hallowed sense of wonder persists. In the old growth Marania forest, thickly tearing trunks of rosewood, cedar, and olive, adraped with lichen and moss carpets the earth, contributing to a cathedral silence. It is otherworldly, the ground soft underfoot, the trunks damp to the touch, the trees centuries old, the sunlight breaking through in narrow shafts, and the temperature several degrees cooler than the outside. David Muiraria, a 25-year-old forest ranger, patrols in Marania. It's his job, but doesn't feel like it. At the Imenti Forest, a wooded peninsula on the mountains north, connected to the other reserves by a narrow sprit of forest, another ranger, Haroun Metwiri, is also out on patrol. The 32-year-old shares his colleague's passion for trees and forests. Metwiri waged through, grasping weeds, and over loose basalt rocks to where charcoal burners recently abandoned a kiln, one of more than 20 found in this patch of forest this year alone. The diminution of Kenya's mountain forests has local and global impacts, affecting rainfall patterns, river flow, erosion, and carbon sequestration. It's not just about the trees and the wild animals in the forest, but also the people living around the Mount Kenya ecosystem. This concept is manifested in a rehabilitation program that sees local residents nurture seeds, plant trees, and oversee their growth in exchange for cash and the right to farm within prescribed areas of the forest. We know if we decide to plant the trees within the communities, the survival rate of the trees planted don't be as high as opposed to when we have the communities involved. At the Kitinka Tumaini Tree Nursery, a 15-person cooperative on the mountains northern fringe, indigenous trees are collected from the forest by hand as inch tall wildlings, and then grown in the nursery for six months before being planted. Mount Kenya Trust then buys the knee-high seedlings back at 15 shillings each, bringing in around 64,000 shillings for the group. In addition, the growers are permitted to farm within the forest boundaries as part of what is known as the Shamba system, planting potatoes around the young trees that they are responsible for looking after. At nearby Kiambogo in the Ontalili Forest Reserve, tree planting is underway to rehabilitate the once-denuded landscape of a cypress-lined half-acre Shamba a few hundred meters from the forest edge. We are ready now for the next sessions, and after these sessions we will have a video question from the audience, so please stay tuned. The next sessions, we have a very interesting topic, will there be enough food? Our moderator is Joe O'Hara, formerly Senior Forest Executive with the Scottish Government. She is a professional forester and a coach working internationally with governments, academics, and organizations to support the progressions to acclimat positive futures. I'm welcoming you, Joe, over to you. Thank you very much. Thanks for that, Sonja, and hello everybody from Scotland. So we've got a really interesting session this afternoon, following on from just a really interesting discussion earlier before the break about the whole system of the bioeconomy. We're now going to focus in on the supply side. So answering the question and discussing the question, will there be enough wood? I'm very pleased to be joined by four, I'm very honored to be joined by four panelists. We have Minister Dr Mujo Amaria from Rwanda, who is the Minister for Environments. We have Larry Hetemecki, who is the Assistant Director for the European Forest Institute. We have Michael Allen Brady, who is the Team Leader, Value Chains, Finance and Investments from Seafall. And last but not least, Pina Darasi, Director of Climate Change with the Forest Stewardship Council. Welcome everyone, and I hope this is going to be an enjoyable and fruitful discussion. So to start off with, demand for roundwoods to supply energy and materials expected to increase significantly in the coming decades as fossil-based raw materials are replaced with forest biomass and wood products. The reality, however, is that there are currently no systematic studies offering up-to-date outlooks on the implications of the forest bioeconomy development for global forests. So in this session, we aim to bridge that gap in understanding and offer insights into demand and supply for forest biomass as part of the shift to circular bioeconomy, which as we've heard is so vital. This will include reflections on how sustainable wood supply should be reconciled with biodiversity protection and providing inclusive prosperity for local communities. So to get us going, I'm now going to introduce Larry Hetamaki to give us a scene-setting introduction about these supply questions. So Larry, I will hand over to you. Thank you, Joe. Can you see my slides? Yes, that's coming through well. Okay, great. So I will be asking the question, is there enough wood to support the bio-based circular economy? Before starting to look into the future, it's useful to reflect on the past. And on this slide, you'll see six decades of world roundwood production. And there are a few lessons you can learn from this. First, it has steadily increased in the last decades, but actually not that much. Especially rather moderated increase if you compare, for example, the last 30 years when the word economy has more than doubled and we have 45% more people living in the earth. Yet the word roundwood production or consumption has increased only 12%. The other lesson that you learn from this figure is that the word total roundwood is composed of two almost equal size of components. The wood that we use for industrial purposes like constructions and packages. And the other part, which is the wood that we are using for energy purposes, mainly for heating. If tomorrow was just another yesterday and the word roundwood production or consumption would increase as it has done during this century, this is what you would get. In 2050, 30 years from today, we would end up about 20% more roundwood production in the world. What does this mean and what type of a question this would raise? I pick up three questions. First, whether this trend is a likely one or could it be some other pattern in the future? Then if this trend was actually taking place, would we have enough wood in the world for this development? And last but not least, how could we produce more environmentally sustainable way around wood? It seems that the trend development is not necessarily taking place. First, there are some patterns that are causing the roundwood demand to decrease also. One of the biggest impacts is that people are using less paper for communication purposes, newspapers, magazines. We have already seen the word communication paper decline and it will continue in the future. Also, some of the new forest products, the bio-economy products that are currently under development are not using roundwood as such but rather the residues and the industry side streams. Then one third big aspect is that currently about half of the wood is used for energy purposes. In Africa, this is 90% of the wood production. Clearly, there are huge opportunities to increase the energy efficiency of using this and there are also possibilities to move for example to solar and wind energy in many places. So the demand is not necessarily increasing like the trend would forecast. On the supply side, we have increasing intensively managed plantation forests in many places, for example in South America which will provide roundwood increasingly in the future. There are some really big forest countries such as Russia where one fifth of the world forest resources are located that are not really harvesting. It's harvesting only half but for example the European Union is currently harvesting. So there is a lot of potential there. But the really boring thing when thinking about the future is that we are lacking systematic recent studies, what is happening in the word roundwood market. So the lesson is that we need to invest in analyzing these in more detail. Jumping from the global setting to more regional one, I take the example of Africa. Today, Africa is producing about 50% more wood than the European Union and it has about four times bigger forest area than the European Union. Yet the European Union forest products export value is 17 times bigger than it is in Africa. In EU it is 100 billion US dollars whereas in Africa it's 6 billion. This seems to indicate to me that Africa has a huge potential to get more value from its forest, even without producing more wood. While at the same time advancing environmental, economic and social sustainability. To do this it would be crucial for Africa to develop its circular forest by economy and the policies to support this. Clearly there is a need for know-how, right technologies, new investments, forest management and sustainability monitoring. And the social aspects are also crucial. We engage the people to do this. So my view is that the word roundwood resources are not necessarily the bottleneck for the circular bioeconomic development. We of course need new innovative and more resource efficient use of roundwood to produce bioproducts and bioenergy which help to reduce the fossil raw materials. In the beginning of this century the first generation biofuels were raising hope but unfortunately they caused a lot of problems in terms of environmental sustainability in terms of food prices. So in the future the lesson we learn here is that we really need to impose and monitor the environmental sustainability and we should not compromise biodiversity or the forest carbon sink. I think there are a lot of opportunities to build synergies with the circular bioeconomy and biodiversity for example. The most immediate need is to reduce unnecessary consumption. For example in Europe where I come I wonder if we really need these Black Fridays every November to have these consumer parties. Could we live without them? And my final thoughts. I don't think we are able to reach Paris climate agreement and sustainable development goals without circular bioeconomy being part of that. Thank you and back to you Jo. Thank you very much Larry for a very clear summary of where we stand on the information that we have about possible future trends in terms of supply. So some really kind of interesting points there that I picked up which is this is feasible but the system is very complex and the dynamics on supply and demand side is changing. There is a huge potential in Africa with know how and tech applied and social change. The overriding imperative to reduce consumption and also that we won't meet these sustainable development goals unless we address this. So that's great. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I'm going to move now to the minister. Minister, welcome and it's really a great privilege to be meeting you here today. Greetings from Scotland to Rwanda. So what I would like to ask you is in the context of sub Saharan Africa, people depend on wood for their energy needs, including as cooking fuel. So with a circular bioeconomy there. What would you like to see change and what would you like to keep the same. Thank you very much distinguished panelist ladies and gentlemen greetings from Kigali. I'm pleased to join this conversation. Of course, what I would like to talk about is is will there be enough wood for firewood for other activities than timber. Let me first start thanking the organizers for inviting us to this meeting that is discussing the crucial subject on nature. Of course, in Rwanda, natural resource, specifically forest use the philosophy of avoiding unnecessary generation of waste to the environment. We believe that this is where bioeconomy should start. We have in Rwanda, we stick to the principle of no waste is wasted. Rwanda promote forest plantation. Currently, we have 30.4% of the country surface covered by forest and our target was 30 by 20. So we had a target of covering at least 30% of our country by forest by 2020. This shows that bioeconomy concepts have a clear foundation in Rwanda and the regression of forest harvesting and allowing to harvest mature forest is the one of the strategies to have enough wood without degrading the environment. The generation of different products from forest by taking into consideration cycle bioeconomy aspect is one of the strategies to overcome the global issue of climate change. Rwanda believes that working with private operators in the whole forest management chain through private forest management to units encourages investment in import substitution industries and creates technology transfer jobs, green jobs, I mean, and homegrown solution. Toward the cycle bioeconomy development. With the conservation effort, Rwanda has set a target to increase our forest cover over years. So it is also worth noting that the affirmation the role of population is complemented by agroforesty plantation. Dear panellists, deforestation and rand degradation continue to be the most pressing global issues of our nature. As my predecessor just said, we are seeing that Africa is being deforested day by day, year by year. And Africa, of course, is becoming the highest trend. Human activities are main factors. Use of biomass is a source of cooking energy and the main cause of these issues. Therefore, we should use food for energy generation, but not as a firewood for cooking or to fire boilers in factories, tea factories, and in some manufacturing industries. By concluding, Rwanda believes that promoting other source of energy for cooking or to fire boilers for tea factories or other industries is the best approach to protect forest in Africa. Toward the cycle bioeconomy and climate resilience and you must take necessary action and you must take those actions now. We have good policies. We have good roles. We have the right institutions to monitor the reforestation of Africa. What we need is to take action. So we have to work together and let us work together, hands in hands for the purpose of adhering wood through forest landscape restoration for sustainable environment protection. As COVID-19, even the climate change due to deforestation of Africa or other continent, they don't need passport. They don't need visa to affect other continent. So let us work together to finance different initiatives, different projects to change the way we do business, to promote other source of energy for cooking rather than biomass. I thank you for your kind attention. Thank you very much, Minister. That was really, really good and covering so many things. I love that phrase, no waste is worth it. I think that's great. That really captures things. And you reference the forest cover, but it's also not just plantations. It's protect the natural forest and agroforestry and how all of these things work together is how the solution comes together. And then the discussion about firewood and finding other more carbon efficient sources of fuel to reduce that pressure that's coming from firewood so that that wood can be used in higher value and products. I think that's really important point. And then finally your point about we must. This is all interconnected. This is a global issue that plays out differently in different territories and the need for that interconnection. So thank you very much for that comment. I've gotten loads of questions coming in. So we'll probably come back to you with some questions in a minute. So I'm going to move now to Pina, if I could introduce you. So Pina from FSC. So I'm going to ask a couple of questions now to you from an FSC perspective. And I think you're joining us from Peru. Is that right? Yes. Thank you very much for the invitation and very happy to be here. And I'm based in Lima. Great. OK, so to start off with how do you see competing demands for wood, especially for bioenergy being resolved in the coming years? And probably following on from that, what are the scenarios for adding forest land restoring forest to ensure that there will be enough wood? Is there anything that the rest of us can learn from Latin America? Well, the use of wood biomass for energy takes place in a very complex framework where the forest based sector plays a crucial role in response to the changes in bioenergy demand. These responses are linked to critical aspects such as land use, forest management practices, industrial processes and consumption patterns, which at the same time imposes social environmental and economic challenges. In FSC, we recognize bioenergy as a key component in circular bioeconomy. However, circular bioeconomy should be approached with an integrated vision that connects responsible management and use of natural capital with responsible production and consumption. There needs to be a shift in industrial processes, in particular in the global south, to consider product life cycle beyond recycling and re-manufacturing. And there is also a big need of a collective effort to change consumer behaviors. We are closing with industry sectors that are advancing the circular bioeconomy agenda. For example, the wood based fiber industry for sustainable textiles. In 2016, the global production of textile fibers was 93 million tons and it's projected that in 2050, this will increase to 250 million tons. Another sector that we believe can advance the bioeconomy, the circular bioeconomy agenda is the wood construction sector. As you know, for each tone of wood products used instead of concrete, there could be an emission reduction of two tons of CO2. And assuming 100% market share of wood building mass, this can imply a 3.5% decrease or reduction of total European Union CO2 emissions. Considering the global trends on timber demand that Laurie presented very well in the introduction speech. There is a trend to achieve engineered and reconstituted wood products and this of course will have a land use implication. If we talk about the three main forest related activities that can ensure the provision of forest related products and ecosystem services, these are mainly three. The use of natural and protected ecosystems for ecosystem services delivery, creating new ecosystems through restoration and sustainable forest management. FSC certification on sustainable forest management covers now around 25% of the global wood supply. However, we haven't been able to change the starving forestation figure of 30 million hectares of forest loss annually, especially in the global south and tropical forests. To face increasing timber demand, political financial and corporate decisions should strive to maximize synergies between the different land uses, including conservation, restoration, sustainable forest management, agroforestry, and also minimize the trade-offs between the products and the provision of ecosystem services that should be able to provide local benefits and incomes to communities. I also believe that product diversification with high potential such as bamboo that was mentioned before, non-timber forest products and the provision of ecosystem services including carbon sequestration can be tangible solutions for the global south. In 2018, FSC launched a new procedure which was the ecosystem services procedure to expand the scope of FSC certification to verify positive impacts on ecosystem services. In Latin America, for example, one of the first implementers is a cooperative of small holders called Alba Bamboo. This cooperative is now selling FSC certified bamboo products with verified positive impacts on water conservation, and there are several other examples on this. Great, thanks very much, Pina. I think these comments about bamboo, I think that's a really interesting in the context of the global south, and the role of bamboo in this bio-economy is really significant. And having FSC working through some of the implications of that I think is building on what you've learned is really valuable. It's disappointing but maybe not entirely surprising that in spite of everything all of the amazing works FSC has done and how much it has transformed things that we are still seeing forest degradation and that hasn't stopped. But I suppose what I would say is just think how bad it might have been if FSC and others hadn't managed to do that. So yeah, but we can't keep on doing it going right back to what Pinch Charles said at the start. So thank you very much for that. We'll come back with some, I've got this huge list of questions from the audience. So hopefully we'll come back to you with some of those just at the end. I'm going to move now to Michael Allen Brady. Welcome, Michael. I think, are you there? Yes, you're there, that's great. So Michael joins us from C4. So nice to see you, Michael. A couple of questions for you. First of all, circular bio-economy approach would include new types of global value chains that involve forest resources. So how would a circular bio-economy style value chain be different than business as usual? So how will things change if we're successful in getting this circular bio-economy value chain? And then particularly with your perspective from Southeast Asia, with millions of people moving from rural to urban areas, how are their needs being considered in the circular bio-economy and will there be enough wood for them? Okay, well, thank you, Joe. I'll talk about value chains first. I'd like to build on Laurie's example of Africa needing to develop its circular bio-economy to get more value from its forests. As he explained, this will involve increased know-how, right technologies, new investments. I'll provide a little bit more detail on forest resources and examples of value added in a circular bio-economy. But I think as we all know, the dominant forest resource is timber, and timber uses can be split into three broad categories, construction, wood products, biomass for energy, and the paper and packaging industry. Sawn wood or lumber from saw logs is the highest unit value in growing timber and is consumed largely by the construction industry. There are many other forest resources as mentioned by PINA, NTFP, environmental services such as carbon, water, air, but let's focus on timber. A first type of value added is just generally more efficient use of wood based on value for lumber, wood products, and fuel and wood residues for energy. So to add value, do not use expensive lumber for biomass fuel. A second form of value added is using lumber more efficiently for wood products, and this is typically done through improved sawmilling technologies and the use of smaller round wood. Just go to your nearest IKEA outlet to see how small the round wood is in their products. It's quite amazing. Another value added is using lumber for new and different use products, such as for higher value products including new materials such as cross laminated timber, blue laminated beams, and even prefabricated buildings can be included here. Finally, wood can be used to substitute other building materials such as steel and concrete and even combined and composite materials such as plastics. Timber frame skyscrapers and buildings are just coming to the market and are expected to replace heavier metals and concrete. An interesting and more recent example of value added is the use in my country, Canada, of residue wood fiber in masks for COVID-19 pandemic. So as Laurie concluded, there are many opportunities in a circular bio economy to add more value to using forest resources that I've not mentioned, such as conservation management offsets for emissions reduction, and even green investments by timber investment management organizations. These provide diversified income and capitalize on biological growth element for us. All of these examples will require increased know-how, the right technologies and new investments, and where forest resources are limited, good forest management sustainability monitoring are required to ensure adequate supplies. The question on Southeast Asia, I would say that there are at least three pressures on wood resources that are occurring in Southeast Asia, and for that matter elsewhere around the globe. These include urbanization, decarbonization and increased building. On urbanization, as you mentioned, Joan, we see global urban population is forecasted to rise by 53% over the next 30 years. This is driven by both population growth and the move from rural to urban areas to seek prosperity, better jobs, better health, better access to education, and whatnot. Urbanization and rising GDP per capita both increase timber demand. For example, growth in the production of paper, paperboard, since the last recession has taken place almost entirely in the Southeast Asia region. On decarbonization globally, the majority of countries have set significant targets to reduce carbon emissions towards a net zero by 2050. Timber will play a critical role in this transformation. Timber is the natural and sustainable low carbon substitute product in building and base load energy talked about earlier. More building will occur as a result of population increases and urbanization, and certainly happening in Southeast Asia. House building independent of the additional uses of timber continues to underpin timber consumption, and this applies to Southeast Asia as well. As an example, wood based panels such as veneer plywood, particle boards, fiber boards, they've all seen a strong increase in production in recent years, mainly due to the growth in the Asia Pacific region, although this is dominated by China. The increase in urban dwellers is concentrated in regions such as Southeast Asia, where there are insufficient resources of mature timber consumers here are driving increased demand on the fixed traditional sources of wood supply. So it is an issue in Southeast Asia. As a result, forecasts indicate an almost three fold increase in timber consumption over the next 30 years in this region. This goes from about 2 billion cubic meters consumed today to about 6 billion in 2050. As Laurie showed, there is a finite supply of timber. The vast majority of global commercial timber supply is sourced from temperate for us in the northern hemisphere and plantations in Oceania, where climates permit the growing of softwood timber. However, growth in the production of paper and paperboard since the recession has taken place almost entirely in the Asia Pacific region. So what does the future look like timber consumption is forecast to increase by about 3% per annum over the next 30 years to 2050. This is up from about 1% over the last 20 years that that Laurie presented timber consumption is therefore expected to overtake realistic sustainable supply. So if we move into a more inaccessible harder to reach timber supplies will likely drive up the cost of timber extraction and supporting increased global increase in timber prices. Southeast Asia and much of the rest of the world are set to change significantly in the next 30 years. Urbanization and economic decarbonization, occurring at the same time or forecast to be among the key mega trends between now and 2050. Wood is at the heart of both on a positive note, according to the most recent forest resource assessment in 2020, the area of forest under management plans is increasing in all regions, including Southeast Asia and put a plug in for FSC. So thank you for that Joe. Thanks very much Michael that's a kind of interesting counterpoint to the very zoomed out and global perspective we got from Larry and then seeing how that's then playing out in the different regions. And where maybe the global picture might look like you could get supply and demand in balance. But when you start coming down to the regional levels and that appears to be more tension and more issues arising there. And then bringing in the really significant importance of things like FSC global government and not global sort of governance and monitoring of supply chains and and the need for technology and good governance there to to get into that. And this this issue of increasing urbanization interested in your sort of your reference to offsite construction. And I know it's something that we're looking at in the north as well in terms of reducing waste so you can do offsite construction and then more of that wood goes into your end product. Most of it goes into sawdust or into biomass for fuel. So, really interesting and then also I think although you focused on lumber this this issue of non timber forest products and developing markets for those and trying to drive that value back to the forest. So we get those markets working. So great. That's that's really good. Thank you for those three panelists and I'm now going to come back to the to the minister and hopefully she's had time to catch breath after her earlier intervention. So, so minister, I'm going to come back to you now in terms of what what you said at the start about the things that you wanted to see happen. I just wondered, given what you've heard, and this conversation about the transition to a circular bio economy. What is happening in Rwanda, and currently, and what would you like to see happening what needs to change say maybe over the next five years. Yes, thank you very much. Of course, as I said, what is happening in Rwanda, we still have a wrong way to go, but we are coming for we are somewhere but we still have a wrong vision to attend in environment protection. For example, on cycle by economy, what we are doing, we are making sure that the management of forest is done from the from the from the community and by the community. Communities have their own private forest, and those forest, we help the community to put together what they have and to consolidate the forest, the small or the forest that they have. And consolidate them into a forest unit that they will manage and protect. And of course, with the time produce timber, timber and not biomass for cooking. They will produce timber, and the timber will go on into market to promote the made in Rwanda product. But the, the, the, the some years that they are, they are having by producing timber, they fabricate briquettes for for replacing the firewood. So those parents are then used instead of using the timber. I mean, instead of using biomass for cooking. And of course, it becomes a cycle, as I said, no waste is wasted. Not only does so many has produced the parent, but we have timber at the same time we are preparing the nursery for the next tree planting season. And the population is economically growing. And they are the one who are now protecting the forest. And on the, on the other side, the branches of the trees are used to, to, to feed, for example, cows. Because, you know, Rwanda is, is a country of cows and we, we do treat them as part of our families. And if you use those branches, it is for, for feeding cows. Cows are going to give cow dunges. From cow dunges, we produce biogas. And from by using biogas, we are reducing the use of firewoods. It becomes a cycle. That is how we are doing in Rwanda. And of course, when I'm saying that no waste is wasted, even the waste from our, our, our kitchen is used to produce fertilizers. That way we are reducing the money or the budget spent on buying industrial fertilizers we use from our kitchen. And in each, in each household, there is a promotion of having kitchen garden for each household. So that the fertilizer we are making from our kitchen are used to maintain our kitchen garden. And we are producing greens that we are using in our kitchen. It becomes a cycle. And families are trying all families, even the city, even the capital city, we have even, we are planting greens, even in sacks. Nobody can say no, I have small land, I can't grow greens, I can't grow vegetables. We use sacks and you can press that sack everywhere in the corner of our household. That is how we do cycle economy. And I think if every household in Rwanda will do the same, we will promote and will be economically viable and will increase our economy. Thank you. That's great. Thank you. I don't think we could have asked for a better kind of story of how circular bio economy works at a human scale. You know, I've been talking very globally and I think, you know, you really brought that into the kind of the community and the human level. So that was a wonderful example with the lumber, the timber, going from Mark's point, going for the high value end, you use the waste from that, you use that for your energy, then you use the waste from the energy to fertilize your crops. You know, that's just really beautifully captured. So lessons for us all from Rwanda there. Great. Okay, so thank you very much. We now have a question from the audience. And this is a first for this afternoon. We've got a video question coming in from Laura, who I think is in Kenya. So I'm hoping now we're going to get a video question displayed. I'm Laura based in Nairobi, Kenya. And my question for the panel is about the factors that need to be considered before the implementation of forestry solutions for transition to circular bio economy. So I'm curious to know, based on the evidence that's emerging, what are some of those critical factors or conditions that need to be in place for forestry solutions to work? What stakeholders have to buy into such initiatives? What incentives are required for each of those stakeholders to participate? What kind of skills and knowledge do they need to possess? And lastly, what kind of policy environment is required? Thank you. Thank you very much, Laura. So she's asking what critical factors need to be in place for this transition? And that's relating to stakeholders, incentives, skills and policies. So who would like to, would any of my panelists like to put their hand up to answer this? Or will I just pick one of you? Okay. In which case, Pina, I'm going to come to you first then, because it's about governance and maybe you could kick us off. Yes. One of the lessons learned in advocacy about the implementation of nature based solutions and our engagement now in many platforms connected to restoration conservation is that there's still a lack of proper investment on nature based solutions. And that most of the investments are always connected to a highly productive value chain. So it's really difficult to escalate community or local based projects to an extent that are attractive to investors. So that's one of the factors that I think are crucial. The other one of course is the political decision on supporting national and local projects and programs connected to nature based solutions. And that relates also to the governance factor that it's quite relevant as well. In FSC, we have the experience of connecting stakeholders of different kinds and local communities and indigenous peoples, but there's still a fragmented view on governance of the land level sector. So we need the proper integration of landscape level governance and better integration of all local actors to advance nature based solutions. So I will stay there. Thanks very much. Pina, Michael, you want to come in? Yeah, maybe maybe just building on what Pina has just mentioned. I guess I come from an economic enterprise perspective where, you know, if Timber and forest resources are to be used beyond subsistence, you know, where there's some kind of trade, then clearly there are prerequisites like markets, enterprise, demand. Pina mentioned finance. These are all prerequisites that really have to be in place and there's a lot of capacity building needed in all of these areas. Again, just to emphasize this is, if we're looking at a commercial, you know, commercial world beyond subsistence. Thanks. Thanks, Michael. Minister, I didn't know if you could bring anything in on this. When you spoke earlier about these community driven projects we are actually generating a cash crop lumber product as well as a more subsistence thing. I don't know if you could reflect a bit on how those markets have developed along the lines that Michael was talking about. Thank you very much. First of all, as you know, when we are talking about the coverage of forests in Rwanda, all the forests are not government forests. The biggest part of those forests are privately owned by the community. That's why we grouped them into private forest management units. And nearby those forests, we have water harvesting channels. And when it rains, we collect that water to irrigate those forests. And those are the populations themselves who are doing that. When we have those channels to collect water, at the same time we are protecting our land against soil erosion. And with those private forest management units, populations create jobs for God who will guard the forest against a cutting of trees. And of course, they are forming cooperatives. And those cooperatives now are the ones who are producing cook stoves. Cook stoves that will help them not only to use rest biomass, but to use the pellets they produce from the sawmill. And those cook stoves are not sold only in their locality. They sell those cook stoves to other communities. So you can understand when we involve community into implementation of policy. You become successful because it is not the government that we're going to implementation. It is the community that do implementation because they know the value of where implemented the policy. It works in Rwanda. Great. Thank you very much. I'm going to try and squeeze in just one more question from the audience. And if you could all use the raise hand if any of you are wanting to able to answer it as briefly as you can. So, and this is a question from Marlon. I don't know what country Marlon is in. But Marlon asks what is the main potential solution to prove the efficiency of wood production. So go Michael. I think efficiency can be defined many ways. You can have efficiency around the growing environment. So obviously wood production in the tropics is going to be at much higher rates than in the in the boreal efficiency can be technology related. So more efficient extraction transport systems efficiency can be also related to forest management where you can have improved forest conditions. If you know management is done appropriately. So I think efficiency has many, many aspects. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks and on that I'm gosh we could have probably had a whole session just talking about efficiency through forest supply chains if I'm entirely honest so well done for trying to answer a peanut do you want to quickly come in I've only got a minute left so do you want to come in. I mentioned before the need of a shift in industrial processes connected to timber production and wood production. So I think that's one of the key elements that we can use technology as well, but also the consideration of lifecycle of products and the consideration of course of carbon impacts in supply chains. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much, Pina. And thank you. Panel that was great. It was a really good discussion and I'm hoping that we've kept plenty of audience with us. So I'm going to close this this session now and hand back to Sonia. So thank you very much everybody for your participation. Sonia over to you. Yes, thank you very much Joe and also thank you to the panelists for the very insightful sessions that highlighting the importance of wood timber industry and forest management in the transition into circular buyer economy. Again, thank you very much for engaging with us with your questions on zoom and Facebook, please keep raise your questions. And we will now take a five minute break before we have our next sessions. And after five minutes, we will start the next sessions that we'll look at the innovative applications of the circular buyer economy in actions. So thank you and see you in five minutes. Forests for sustainable cities. Urban areas are home to more than half the world's population. They drive the global economy, but are responsible for more than two thirds of the world's energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Their importance continues to grow. By 2050, we expect that two thirds of the global population will live in cities. As the world continues to urbanize, cities need to play a leading role in fighting climate change. They also need to deal with challenges linked to their residents increasing demands for water, food, energy and materials. For example, the increase in population means more new homes, schools and other buildings. We have not yet built 50% of the urban fabric, which will be required globally by 2050. But the construction sector is currently dominated by materials like concrete and steel, whose production is not environmentally friendly. If we want to tackle climate change and other urgent environmental problems, we need to change our approach. How can our forests help to build sustainable cities and make them climate smart? Our forests provide wood, which is the only significant construction material that is renewable and can be grown sustainably. Using wood in construction is one of the most effective carbon sequestration and capture technologies we have. If we replace concrete and steel with wood, we can reduce the carbon footprint of a building by around 50%. Another way to improve the sustainability of our cities is to plant trees and urban forests. Trees can cool cities by between 2 and 8 centigrade. If you plant trees near buildings, it can cut air conditioning use by 30% and reduce heating energy use by 20 to 50%. Urban forests clean the air, reduce flood risk and offer health benefits like lowering stress. Forests outside urban areas are important too. One-third of the world's largest cities get a significant proportion of their drinking water from forested areas. Wood trees and forests are the backbone for sustainable cities. At the European Forest Institute, we connect knowledge to action. People are bioeconomy in action. Our moderator now is Mary Jenga, a research scientist with C4Ecraft and an expert on bioenergy. She works on natural resource management in urban and rural settings as well as adaptive technology development and transfer. I remind you again, don't forget to put any questions you have for the panelists in the Q&A box. Now I invite Mary over to you. Thank you so much. Welcome to our session on from theory to practice the Sakura Bioeconomy in action. In this session, we are looking really forward to very practical experiences from different parts of the world. We have a very good team of panelists and these four panelists include Vincentie, who is an architect, Rocio, involved in research, Nicholas in forest-based Sakura Bioeconomy businesses, and Isabera involved in policy. And the way we will conduct this session is that I will post two questions to every panelist and then they will talk to those questions based on their experiences. And I will start now with Vincentie. The question is millions of people are moving from rural to urban areas. And their energy and housing needs will be massive. What kinds of wood based solutions do you see as most promising? I want to put to you the second question, which is related to that and you can talk to both suggestions. Do you have for scaling up the sustainable use of wood and creating more sustainable cities? Over to you, Vincentie. Tell us. Okay, so thank you very much for the invitation and thank you very much for the questions. Yeah, indeed. Many times we say that by 2050 will be around 70% of population in urban areas. But if we make the numbers, we'll see that in the next 30 years we need to organize around 1 billion people. And this means to be building a city of around 4 million people every month in the next 30 years. And this is a huge process of urbanization. And what is important to understand is that if we follow using the same approach as we did during the 20th century, we'll destroy the planet. So we are in the process of destroying the planet, but then even in this next 30 years we'll be able to accelerate the process that we are doing about urbanization. And at that point of view, I think that, well, there are some parts of the world, especially I would say America and Europe, that cities are already built and we need to do a lot of retrofitting. But there are many places like in Africa, some places in Asia and in Latin America, where many new areas need to be urbanized. And the first message is that we should learn from the mistakes of the past. We should learn from the mistakes of what we did during the 20th century. And then it's important, during many times, ecology was something that was used and argument in order to make a balance with the process of destruction. We're not doing developing the fuel and the oil economy. But right now, we don't have time anymore to do this. So that means that we need to develop a new forms of economy that are directly ecological. So that means that in some places in Africa and in India, for example, that you have an incredible knowledge as we saw in the previous sessions about how to deal with the forest. The important thing is try to avoid to make another 20th century in Africa that you will be somehow destroyed to your resources in order to try to save it later. And somehow you do the important thing and this is something we are working also with the European Forest Institute is develop the new principle for the bio cities. You know, every 50 years, we change the model of how we make cities. We did 100 years ago with the modern, the so-called modern city on the Bauhaus school that was created in Europe. We have another big change in the in the 70s 50 years ago. Right now, we, after these global pandemics announced so in front of these global warming problem. The first one is we need to reinvent how we make cities and not to use nature as a kind of way to to soften the process that we do when we build with concrete, we should go directly to invent the way we make cities, and the principle for making cities is that by your cities are the cities that follows the principles of natural systems in order to promote life. So it's not that we use trees, we plant trees near the buildings is that we follow the rules of the nature, the rules of the forest in order to imagine why we should make cities. So, if forest absorb CO2, why we make cities that make that the mid CO2. If in the forest, the animals are not moving too much in order to look for food, why we live in cities that we are all day moving, trying to go from, working areas to our living areas. So I would say that the cities are the solution, but we need to do a new generation of cities. And connected with the second question that you were mentioning about the sustainable management of both. I think that also as the minister was saying in the previous speech. These must be done by the community. You know, the process of making cities should emerge from the community. That's why we are developing projects. Also in Africa, developing the construction of plans to manage the vote. For example, this cross laminated timber the CLT plans, in order that the CLT plan is a fundamental part of the urban development. We're going to take the booth from Africa to send maybe to China to do a panel somewhere in Europe and send it back to China, send it back to Africa, because you have already the, the raw material in Africa. The question is that these new cities that well the same in Indonesia that is a country with a lot of timber that we need to develop a model where every city includes the facilities to build itself. And this is where people are learning about how to manage the forest about how to produce energy about how to produce food in order that the circular economy are applied to the scale of the cities. This is really a very first of all is very strong revolution, but in the second hand is something very realistic. You know, what is unrealistic is that we destroy the forest, and we make our buildings with concrete. This is unrealistic. And this doesn't make sense in any way. So that means that to learn how to empower the communities to create the economy for to empower the local people in in Asia in Africa and Latin America. This is a fundamental challenge for the years to come. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's a good perspective of sustainable cities, you know, from ecological perspective, let's build using nature. Thank you so much. You are in research. And you see as the biggest challenge in the circular bio economy transition. When it comes to energy and the demand for it and the related teams. That's the first question. And the second question. What is different about the eastern African bio economy strategy compared to ones from the global north. Thank you, Mary. And thanks for the to see for for the invitation to this conference. Thank you also for for the questions Mary. I think the first part is regarding the challenges in energy is really to understand the differences on when it comes in particular to buy your energy. When we are talking about bio economy we are talking or referring more specifically to bio energy. So we know and we heard it also from the previous sessions about the differences between the forest in temperate areas and forest in tropical areas or semi tropical. And we use how we utilize these resources, particularly for bio energy. It's going to make a difference on where on location where where you are how they are utilized, but we have also to remember that there is a biomass trade, and it has increased in the in the last years. International energy agency has a task dedicated to that, but also has shifted into sustainability of this biomass trade. We, we know that there is trade of pellets for example from United States to Europe for energy power for energy generation, but it is different in the context of South Saharan Africa, for instance, and we heard already several explanations about the importance of fuel, fuel would, and the importance of charcoal production and how this may affect some of the areas on some of some of the forest where the event advantages of having natural forest where people can rely on other type of both benefits and products. So I would say that in terms of the challenges for energy is really how this bio energy can be related to, for example the use of residues and how they can be utilizing a different way for agro industries with forest residues, with agricultural residues, but also with other type of, of, of methods like cogeneration, we know that in the case of Uganda, the utilization of bio gas for, of, sorry, sugar cane by gas for, for the cogeneration of energy is in use. In other countries, South Africa, for example, is using it and of course, Brazil is, is another one that has put the example for these alternatives. So I think that the way we have to look at how they are utilized in each region, the case of Asia, for example with palm oil, and how it can be used for production of liquid biofuels. We have to remember that some of the aspects of energy access are related to how they are conceived, according to the SDG, so there is much emphasis on electrification, access to electricity, but we need to remember that South Saharan Africa has a big problem when it comes to the cooking sector and how this is sorted out for the population that is different from rural, urban and peri-urban areas. So how we reconcile the use of all these different type of fuels, let's say, or these other alternatives for the local populations, it's one of the main aspects to consider for energy access. Now, regarding your second question about what is the difference about the bioeconomy in the global north compared to the global south, well, this is going to be a little bit more tricky. Bioeconomy and circular bioeconomy, their circularity should be implicit in bioeconomy, because bioeconomy has come out particularly from Europe, United States, Canada, with the strategies they already have, focusing on how to reduce the use of fossil fuels, not just for energy but also for products. How can we substitute many of the products that have been produced through the fossil fuel industry? So in the case of the global south, many regions have already started to look at these possibilities. We have been collaborating with the Bio-Innovate, ISTECO, C-Innovate, ATPS and Bio-Innovations with the Stockholm Environment Institute, and we have developed the first East Africa bioeconomy strategy. We have the first event last year, and we focus on four thematic areas. One is on food and agriculture and forestry, another one is based on health, another one is on bio-products, and the last one is on energy. So how these different countries in East Africa are going to adopt this strategy before their national strategies is one of the important aspects for the region. So just to finalize this point, bioeconomy also has different meanings depending on which region you are, but in particular for Sub-Saharan Africa, we can focus on supply chains that are improved. So this does not necessarily need to have high logistics or high investments, and that can be done at a later stage, but it was mentioned also in some of the previous presentations. There is a vast number of resources in Sub-Saharan Africa that can be utilized in a different way and improve it for sustainable value chains, but also for a proper bio trade market in the region. Thank you so much, Rasheel. That's good that you're bringing the whole idea of bioenergy and the related residues and how cooking energy, for example, in Sub-Saharan Africa relates to the SDG and so on. Now, I want to go to Nicholas. Nicholas, what are the most promising wood-based innovations you are seeing today? What else would you like to see? Where are the finance-related bottlenecks when talking about bringing forest-based innovations to the market? Nicholas. Thank you, Mary, and thanks also for inviting me to this event and inviting Finland to this event. I hope you can see the background picture, which is a typical Finnish forest in wintertime. So if I look outside the window, it looks like that, but this is fake or this is a photograph. So greetings from Finland. So, Mary, your questions. First of all, most promising. I think you need to take into account that we have the three pillars of sustainability. So when you talk about the most promising innovation, then you have to have a nice balance between all three pillars, not only look at the economics. But having said that, in terms of the short term, I would claim that the conventional businesses are still quite interesting and include a lot of potential for the future. And if I just take two examples of the conventional businesses first, first of all, packaging sector is developing very fast and this pandemic has really accelerated that. So wood-based packaging, which is a conventional product, for instance, board, I think that will see great innovations in the future as well. The second thing I have as an example of the conventional businesses relates to what Vincente was already talking about building with wood. And when I say building with wood, that is of course a mix of different raw materials, but increasing the amount of wood-based solutions and having innovations in that field I think is important. In terms of the longer term, I would say that or I typically put forward two areas. First one is replacing plastics. And obviously we cannot replace all the plastics, the fossil plastics, but we can have great innovations with wood in that space. And you have more or less two ways of entering this market. Either you make from the wood-based material directly the plastic-like product, or then you make a chemical, which is then later on turned processed into a plastic-like product. The second example of the second area, which I think is promising, relates partly to the first one, but that's textile fibers. So the market for textile fibers is huge and there is a lot of room for growing the share of wood-based textile fibers and there is a huge demand for more sustainable raw materials. So those areas I think are most promising. In terms of the finance related bottlenecks in this scope, if I only think about the long term to keep my answer short, I think and also if I focus on such business ideas where you are manufacturing a physical product. Obviously we also have these digital tools and services which you can provide, but I talk about now a physical product and the manufacturing of that. So typically you go from lab to pilot to demo and then you have a first commercial factory. And this is quite expensive because you need a lot of financing to cover these different plants, especially the demo plant can be very expensive and not a profitable unit. So you need to cover the capital expenditure related to that and it's not so easy to find financing for that kind of activity. So that is really a bottleneck for why we are not bringing forest-based innovations faster to the market. And also one needs to remember that if we are focusing on bulk products, then the customers that you are trying to get, they tend to keep a low profile as long as there is only one supplier of that product. So if you really protect your idea with patents and stuff, it will not really develop fast because the customers expect for many reasons that there are many suppliers for the same product. So this in brief. Thank you. Over to you, Mary. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Nicholas, for giving us that perspective from the business and what bottlenecks exist. A circular bioeconomy is premised on achieving climate change mitigation goals. What does the Amazon experience tell us? That's the first question. The second one, what are some examples you've seen of successful circular bioeconomy type approaches at the sub-national level? Why do they work? Tell us. Thank you very much, Mary. Good morning from Brazil. I'm very honoured to have the opportunity to join you, our friends in this panel to discuss, indeed, how to act. Okay, and in Brazil we have this sensitive situation considering this setback related to Amazon, the first technique of deforestation. But also, it's very important that you can make clear what are the challenges that we have today, not only to go against deforestation, but also how we go into the future. Consider sustainable management and also an innovative approach for the forest protection and Brazil development. It's very important. Sometimes people, everybody likes to discuss Amazon, but the numbers are so impressive. Amazon in Brazil means 6 more than 6% of a national territory. Okay, we're discussing more than 5 million square kilometres. We are looking for to address 17% of the country's energy. Also, more than 25 million people live there and Vincent, 8% of these people live in cities. It's a huge challenge to address urban areas in Amazonia. Okay, and also, we cannot forget that to have more than 20% of the planet's water in Amazonia and the lowest rates of human development index in Brazil, unfortunately, in Amazonia. And you need to tackle two different situations. No carbon, no economic carbon, the carbon that comes from illegal deforestation, and the economic carbon that comes from the economic activities that you need to promote transition, looking for for low carbon economies, all the new green economies. So for this, we need to bring society together. Okay, and Brazilian society is impressive, the recent research about this and the new number. It's fully engaged to go against deforestation and also to find innovative ways to protect Amazon, also to tackle climate change. But they highlight always that you need to have an inclusive national strategy for mitigation and adaptation in climate change agenda in Brazil. Why? Because you need to tackle to face social inequalities in Amazonia, the numbers are really the gaps among Amazonian region and other regions in Brazil are really deep ones. So what's happened today in Brazil? When we discussed deforestation to tackle deforestation, I was, I know a lot about this because the lowest rates of deforestation in Amazonia was exactly during my term as a minister of environment in Brazil. But we need to go there to tackle this, and unfortunately, the federal government today and not necessarily will succeed with the strategy they adopt. That's it, we are raising the rates of deforestation in Amazonia. But the subnational players, the governors and the mayors and civil society, they are looking for innovative political arrangements and society engagement, the private sector engagement to bring solutions not only to tackle deforestation, but to go into the future, consider how we can manage and can protect the forest and how we can promote the close of systemic development in Amazon vision. So I'd like to highlight here three or two or three experience on because you don't have much time, but we have now a private and private sector and financial sector and also civil society under the umbrella of concertation is an initiative to bring everybody together. And they are looking for to understand better there and to finance from private funds to finance innovative ways for based on the social biodiversity developed model. We're looking for to positive impact the development strategy. So we named this bio economy for 4.0 industry based on innovation and conservation and new business model. This is really a huge debate in Brazil with newer arrangements looking for with the political support from this consortium, this alliance of the governor of states to looking for to put in practice, not only small projects, but really well defined well with structure building blocks for a new way to promote regional development based on green economies in Amazonia. The other side of the coin, you can have a really good example from Natura. This is everybody knows this, but the moment that Natura has is important industry in Brazil based on the bio economy that have a new cycle of development and challenges for this company based on exactly net zero deforestation in 2025 and also low net zero net zero emissions for carbon 2030. This is the advantage of the company, and these are coming with a really high level of ambition, not only to address what you call biocosmic strategy, but also to understand better how the role of the company to promote GDP based on this economy and the social progress index for the territories in Amazonia. Natura used to play in different territories in Amazonia, not only one state, and also they are looking for to be more efficient with natural resource management and also value supply The second example also in Amazonia have the new, the good, well-success experience based on agroforest system. This is based on then there, it's a palm oil in the state of Pará, we're exactly knowing that we need to avoid the negative impacts of the agriculture that are so well known, so you have agroforest systems now with innovation system based on bio economy and mitigating climate change emissions. So then their production is based on this system today, really a huge project with good outcomes, showing that you can bring productivity, biodiversity, soil fertility, carbon stocks, and also small producers together. So as you call SEA's AFD&D project shows that the use of agroforest systems for the production of the palm needs, in the case of D&D, meets the needs of small holders, contributes for the conservation of natural resource and promote the sustainable development of the rural population. So these are three examples, the new approach standing for us in bioproducts based on Amazonia 4.0, the echoes lying from Naturia that since 992, we start the process in Brazil, after the 992 conference, it's impressive the trajectory of private sector and step by step need to learn with the process until you can have what you have today. So now, the agroforest system, that's not only Amazonia but to have this really huge project in the state of Pará with really good outcomes based on carbon stocks and addressing social inequality and sustainability with value supply chains. My feeling is that we know what we need to do, we know how to share our technology, we have a really amazing technology developed in Brazil to tackle deforestation, not only to tackle deforestation, but to go into bioeconomy and circular bioeconomy. And my last comment, when you go into I'm sorry, just one minute. Just summarize, thank you. Thank you. I want to make clear that also to go in full circularity of packing, including e-commerce, the strat of the comments it's more than 95% of efficient based on packing and e-commerce including. So this was, I think Rosario mentioned circularity should be included in bioeconomy. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Isabela. That is very interesting and showing the importance of having national prayers, governance, and mostly also involving the community, the society. Now, I will give one minute or two to the panelists who want to comment. And I already see, Rosario, you want to say something? Please, it just, thank you. Thank you. I think just this last point made by Isabela, and we heard it before, landscape governance is starting to make a change also in how we see bioeconomy around the world. So I think it is not new as such, but I think it's the way it is applying now, starting to be applied for bioeconomy, that's an important aspect. And also a point that Nicholas mentioned about bio-packaging, we have started to see some companies in sub-Saharan Africa working on bio-packaging, not necessarily from lignocellulosic, as it is done with those who have the resources, but from starch. So as I said before, how we utilize the supply chains in the global south without really high technological level or high logistics. It could be a good way to mobilize bioeconomy without removing it from all the sustainability aspects, the three pillars plus governance. This is the fourth pillar that those who work in sustainability assessment, as me, are utilizing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your intervention. I will now allow us to have a question from video. And then after that, I'll take some questions which are coming from the participants. And then I will post them to the panelist. So time for the video question. Hello, my name is Truna and I'm a startup entrepreneur in bio remediation and waste to asset space. And my question is, how do we translate these linear notions of growth and scaling up in a circular bioeconomy? Are we able to scale not just in terms of quantities and volumes, but also in terms of biodiversity? Scaling up, as I mentioned before, we are not addressing small projects more. The need to action is really robust and permanent solutions. And for this, we need political and economic support and also innovation must be together and bring people together. If not, as in the past, we have really good experience in my country, for example, based on solutions, nature based solutions and brings communities. But this is not enough to structure robust solution for economic development. And this, unfortunately, indeed, we cannot manage to make sure that we promote GDP growth. So when we're discussing this, we are discussing new economies, new economies that are coming to change our way to live to change our way to produce to change the way to consumer. And we need to bring this into the core of the debate of national strategy for development. Climate change, biodiversity loss, water stress, these are not only environmental issues. These are critical development issues that we need to face and consider the local reality. We need to address local needs with global car benefits. And for this, scaling, scaling up more than this to identify the trade offs. I think the recipient makes me clear how we can indeed go into by an agenda and understand how we want to change that we need to promote. How we can make it clear for people that they are part of the solution, not part of the problem. This is really important political shift. If you want to have a new reality in short term perspectives. Okay, so my feelings is that it's more than we agree. We need to be part of the solution. We need to act as a solution. We need to access things, make clear that we can act together. If not, again, we are going to have the environmental exclusion as unfortunately have today, not only social inequality, but also environmental inequality for people that cannot access resource. And when we go into this, we need to understand what hunger means, what no access means, what no housing means. So how we did we can bring things together, not as a as a messiahs, but with something that we can have bottom up approach and make clear the difference amongst society. The solution in Germany will not be the solution in Amazon region. Be sure, but they spirit the guidelines also in Kenya. How we can it did we address this my last comment agriculture land use strategy approach agriculture is absolutely key to address solutions concrete solutions and also to host the challenge of circular by economy. This is absolutely concrete, because people understand what food means people understand what water means people understand what consumer consumption means, we need to make it clear, touchable, make clear that we can do this, more than as a message. This is part of our behavior. And so scaling up to face the challenge to make concrete, we need to recognize the difference reality, even in global cells, if our ambition is for green global cells. We need to understand how to bring, for example, the forestry countries together. And we don't have an arrangement for this today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, it's a better. I will now take the questions from the panel from the participants and post them to the panelist, but I want you to remember also something that has come from that video about bio mediation in the circular by economy. Wow. The first question. First to incentive. What are the limitations of the existing building codes. In many countries. Well, in many countries that are limitations about the building codes to make building with timber. For example, the big, the country that is the biggest producer of timber that is Russia, don't allow to make buildings higher than three floors. I would say that this is a question, a cultural question. Also in China, the regulations are not promoting the use of timber. And in many other places like in Europe or in America, you know the regulations are more related with what you want to achieve that not what which material you want to do. For example, the regulations about 90 minutes protection again fire, you can solve using timber or using concrete or using a steel steel in fact is worse than timber in many cases so what we should do is to have some regulations that are independent from the material. And then to try to do architecture following these regulations. I think that there are some cultural elements related with these regulations. But, I mean, architects we say that in the 19th century we start to use steel as important material in the 20th century we use concrete as the new material, and in the 21st century, the new material for construction will be the timber, the industrialized timber, because it's the only renewable material that we have in front of us. Okay. Thank you. And how do you address cultural differences in the promotion of circular bio economy. Anyone of you can answer. How do you address cultural differences in the promotion of circular bio economy. Who want to answer that from the panelists. Let me know. Okay, I see your head up, please. So quickly, I think that, as I mentioned before I mean you have to consider for the use of bio resources, locality regionality. So, that would be the first, the first thing to address how, how the resources are being used locally, not just in an industrialized form or not just from traditional communities in general how it is used, but that does not necessarily mean they cannot be trade of the bio products in other regions or across, across the regions, as long as it is, it is done in a sustainable form. I think that is the way that it can be addressed and there are several ways of doing it. As I mentioned, landscape governance could be, could be one, but we've heard the presentation in the previous session with FSC. I mean standards can also be used. Some indicators are now being developed also to ensure that this the social aspects are the cultural aspects from the social indicators are also considered within this. And Isabella also gave several examples about that and we can see them according to the different regions where we are working. Thank you. Thank you so much. Nicholas, want to follow up? I actually wanted to also point out that using forest certification standards is a very good tool to have the same rules for certain aspects all around, but also you need to then also keep in mind that the same rule and I don't talk about certification, but in general the same rule doesn't work in all countries or regions. So I do agree very much that you need to take into account the regional situation and optimize for each region separately. So even within the European Union, I think we cannot have one rule for each country when we are so diverse. Thank you so much. I think the whole idea of the world getting more urbanized. There are quite a bit of questions coming into this. How long does the buildings created with wood last? How are these buildings created with wood going to rust? And what about the issues of calamities? Well, you know there are very old buildings in Russia, in Japan, in China, made with wood, more than 500 or even 1000 years. So I would say that the timber is a very good material and the industrialized timber that is this new generation of timber that is creating panels, the cross laminated timber is even better. So from that point of view, I think that wood is a good material that can last for decades and for sometimes for hundreds of years. And another important thing is that in general we mix wood with some other materials like insulation, sometimes we protect outside. So it's not only wood materials, it's wood as main structural material, but then there are so many other materials around. And about the resistance, you can design buildings with wood for, I mean to resist for example earthquakes, wood is a perfect material to resist earthquakes. And about file, they are better than steel for example. So I would say that it's a cultural question to start to use timber in a new way. And there are my colleague Niklas from Finland, he knows better than I because they have been working for many, many years developing these technologies and making construction using timber. Good. Good. Thank you. Thank you so much. There is the question that is relating this session to the session that passed. And it's the whole idea of non tree forest product like cosmetics. And the question is, how can they contribute to green economy to address the COVID pandemic. May I add a comment, Mary? Okay, go on. I mentioned that to have a good experience in Brazil, based on the regenerative bio-cosmos, cosmetics, okay, and it's based on the product chains that respect nature, animals and people. This means that the production keeps the forest alive, standing and regenerate and also regenerate the greater areas by human activities. This is a private sector approach, okay, and this means that they are looking for also to defend human rights and also be human kind. So, when you protect the forest, when you go there, you are wanting to have a disruptive to promote disruption in the ecological cycles based on deforestation, we will avoid exactly the new pandemic crisis. And for example, the emergence of arbor virus that comes from the disruptive disruption on the ecological cycles into the forest. So, when you have business sector, looking forward to a trash solution based on circular economy, and also a bio-circular economy, doing what we need to have our business, new business way, bring people together but you cannot go there based on deforestation. You need to protect and you need to restore the greater area. This is a really impressive approach that you can combine business interests, you can combine the local realities, you can restore the greater areas and also you can have important industrial bio-cosmetics strategies to come into the market, not only at the national level, but also at the international level. So, this is really important strategies and vision. This is the sustainability vision for this company in Brazil, as I mentioned before, and they are connecting everything exactly based on the standing forest and protection and sustainability by economy and also to avoid new emergence of the arbor virus, for example, that will probably become an health crisis based on deforestation. So, it's a clear example that's happened today in my country. So, fundamentally, we have this situation in Brazil, but what I'm seeing here, we have this society reacting and we have other people engaged in to go against these setbacks that unfortunately the national government we have managed today in Brazil. Thank you. Yeah, may I continue? Okay, Nicholas. Yeah, yeah, very briefly, very briefly, Nicholas. I think we all know that the original medicines, they all came from plants and from nature. So, there is potential and they are used to widely today, but of course, most of the pharmaceutical industry is something else. But I would say that there is a new wave of biopharmaceuticals, biobased pharmaceuticals coming up at the moment, even we have invested in a small company who is extracting from spruce components and then they can also use for medicinal purposes. So, that's very short. And Mary, if I may just add to that, I mean, even with the East African strategy, we also made, we conducted some research to see how was the state of the pharmaceutical sector for sub-Saharan Africa and a lot of the traditional medicine is still used, but it is another way to move it forward also within bioeconomy. Okay. This Nagoya protocol is very important. Okay, then. Okay, then. Now I want to just quickly wrap up. And this has been a very interesting session and there are a few points just to, as a way of lapping up. One of the things that has come out from this session is that we need to run from mistakes. We must not make another 20th century, you know. So let's make, let's use the reasons that have been learned in going forward. And then the second one is that when we are looking at the issues of bioenergy. We also be able to consider the related forest residues. You know, and let's also look at congeneration issues generating heat, as well as power, using residues in respect to bioenergy. To the business, forest-based businesses from a circular bioeconomy perspective is that we look at ideas that are really patented, really protected. Then they take some time, you know, to get actualized or developed even further. And as we look at sustainable cities across, we are looking at the issues of urbanization. In future, a lot of people will be living in the cities. The other point is that as we talk of circular bioeconomy, wherever, we need to look at the issues of national governments and also the society. The community. How are they being involved into these whole issues? And then how are we having national strategies? And then the other thing is that it's also very important when we are looking at the whole bioeconomy, circular bioeconomy issues, to consider landscape governance. And then we look at the issues of regulations and how are these regulations prohibiting or enabling. And with that, I want to bring this session to a close. Unless somebody wants to have a very quick wrap up message from the panelists. Thank you, thank you. Nobody can thank you enough. That has been a very good point brought from different perspectives, sustainable cities, biobased, wood-based enterprises from a circular bioeconomy, policy issues, and also strategies, strategies from the Global South and those from the Global North. And thank you very much. All the participants, thank you so, so much for all the questions you have sent. A lot of the questions have been responded to by the panelists. And we are so grateful for everybody's participation in this session. I saw a quick hand with Nicos and Isabella crossing remarks, crossing remarks. I think one of the key points for any of these processes or products we are thinking about is designing the products for reuse. So in the future, we have to understand that everything is circular. We have to design the products so that they are easy to recycle, to be recycled. So that's, I think, a take-home message, how to develop any bioeconomy solution. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Recycling in mind. Rosio, one quick crossing remark. Three closing words from my side. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Okay, thank you so much. Vincente, one, two, three words, closing remarks. Thank you. Thank you all. Isabella, two, three closing words. Human develop integrity must be part of this, our solutions. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, everybody. And we bring this session to a close. Bye-bye. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye. Take care. Thank you very much, Mary, and thanks to the panelists for very interesting discussions about actions and application of circular bioeconomy in various sectors. Very, very interesting. And we will now take a short five-minute break, and please stay tuned with us. Because after the break, we will have our final planning sessions. So looking forward to final sessions and have a nice break. The year 2020 marked a year of change in three countries, over 4,000 participants and 80 side events. The first fully virtual world circular economy forum online took a deep dive into why and how a circular economy can help reboot and build resilience in the economy. Top speakers from around the globe shared practical examples that would help us rebuild our economy's stronger, greener, and better. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape our economy. During the two days, we heard inspiring examples of solutions for clothing, energy, farming, wastewater, technology recycling, and food. Anyone around the world could take part in the discussions. The key takeaways were that there's no time for short-time fixes, and we need everyone on board. We need to invest in R&D and innovation to accelerate the shift to a circular economy, to build a resource efficiency, resilience, and inclusiveness. To engage women and youth to make the circular economy mainstream. We need courageous caring and collaborative partnerships, and we can turn the economy into a solution by tackling the root causes of global challenges. Join us at the next WCF events. Thank you for staying with us. And I think the last sessions has led us nicely into our final discussion for today. And in this final discussion, we will know top deeper on the circular bioeconomy future and also the need for finding things. And our moderator is Justin Adams, the co-director of Nature-Best Solutions at the World Economic Forum and executive director of the Tropical Forest Alliance. Again, don't forget to put any questions you have for the panelists in the Q&A box. And now I'll give the floor to Justin. Over to you, Justin. Thank you so much, Sonja, and great MCing through the afternoon. So it's my great pleasure to moderate this final panel. As Sonja said, my name is Justin Adams, the executive director of the Tropical Forest Alliance. And we've had a wonderful session. I hope you've been with us throughout the two sessions we've had and of course the opening with his Royal Highness. And I think really inspiring to start looking at how we bring this idea of a circular bioeconomy to life. I think particularly as we start tearing in the last panel some real life examples around sustainable timber and use of timber for buildings of bioenergy and how we get that vexing issue right. The great examples Isabella gave us from Agroforestry and Natura and how a very different vision for the Amazon is possible. And I think around the world we're seeing how and where this transition could start to take place. What I worry a little bit about is it still, it probably means a different thing to lots of different people. And it's certainly not an area that I think has started to mainstream in terms of where and how large scale investment is going to flow. And so what we hope to do with this last panel is to really bring this idea of how we can make this real and how we make this investable. And we've got three great speakers to join us. So let me just introduce each of them and then I'll go to each of them for some opening remarks. But firstly, we will hear from Minister Lee White. Minister White is the Minister for water, forests, the sea and the environment in Gabon, the beautiful country in equatorial Africa, critical part of the Congo basin. Minister White is also in charge of climate planning and land use across the country and has more than 30 years experience of conservation and working with the forest in that country. We'll then turn to Jennifer Price. Jennifer is the president and the CEO of Calvert Impact Capital. And for more than 25 years has been really at the heart of and at the forefront of how we drive impact capital into, into how we drive social equity and inclusion, but also environment and really excited to hear some of her perspectives as to how we bring impact investors into this space. And then lastly, we'll hear from Christopher Kaminka, who is the head of sustainable investment research and strategy for Lombard ODA, which is a leading asset manager. And Christopher brings many years experience working in the space. But I know Lombard ODA has recently launched a circular bio economy fund and made some very interesting investments so really interested and excited to hear directly from him. And that's the panelists that we've got. So I am delighted first to turn to Minister White to talk about what the circular bio economy means in Gabon and how do we really bring this to life. Thanks, Justin. And good evening, everybody. My challenge is to, is to find a way to make the tropical forests of Gabon valuable sufficiently valuable to the Gabonese people that they're still standing in 50, 100 years time. Tragically, in most tropical developing countries, wood is seen as a source of cheap raw material that gets extracted and sent far away and develops countries far off the African continent. It's a sort of the tragedy of development in Africa, the cliche. When wood is treated that way, what tends to happen is a spike in deforestation degradation. You get into a cycle where you you you forfeit your environmental services for the for the small amounts of money that you make from this raw material. You lose the forests, the ecosystems become more and more degraded. It's bad for the health of the planet. It's bad for the health of your nation. And so what we're trying to do in Gabon is to to get away from that that failed model and find the model that will allow us to add value to the forests of Gabon. Through maximizing the value of the forest of the Gabonese people by developing things locally. When we exported logs before the president banned export of logs, we were capturing 78% of the value of our timber and creating 6 or 7% of the jobs that potentially we could do. And so if we're going to provide jobs to the 800,000 young Gabonese people who are in school today, we again, we have to develop our timber resources in country. And if we get that right, there are many advantages. If we get that right, if we can create sustainable forestry industries creating semi finished or finished products. We can create hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that gives us a constituency of people who's who are vested in maintaining the forests. I think that's how we get the Gabonese people to become as a nation that the forest protectors that we need them to be. And we all know that what's at stake, we all know that if we lose the Congo Basin forests, we lose the fight against climate change. If our 1890 billion tons of CO2 go up into the atmosphere. Then there's no hope of a 1.5 or two to degree world so we have to find models that will work. Classically, and if you look around Congo Basin and West Africa, when you do transform timber locally, you use 30% and you burn 70%. We're very inefficient. So what we're trying to do now is to create what we call industrial ecosystems. I guess what the world is calling the circular economy. We're creating these industrial ecosystems where in our special economic zone just outside of Libreville now we have 100 factories transforming Gabonese lumber into finished products. We're up to, we're already up to about 70% efficiency and by June, July, we'll have new factories going in that will take us beyond 90% efficiency in terms of transformation. So all of our waste hardwood is becoming activated charcoal, which is a valuable product. All of our waste soft words will be going into particle boards. And so developing these cycles, recycling, using wood as efficiently as we possibly can, maximizing the added value and the job creation in Gabon is the way we think we're going to be able to preserve the Gabonese rainforests into the future. That's a wonderful example. And as you say, losing the fight or losing the Congo Basin, we lose the fight against climate change and the critical biodiversity challenges we face. And yet it still feels a mountain's climb. We saw statistics or somebody presenting in one of the earlier panels that despite having a forest four times larger and actually larger forest harvest in Africa than Europe. The European forest product sector was worth 100 billion per year versus Africa as a whole was 6 billion per year. And so the model you're talking about is one of actually working to develop jobs through a more value added forest industry. But how can that become a norm rather than an exception? And how are you getting on actually making that real in Gabon as an example? We have to have examples of where it works. In Gabon, we banned the export of logs over 10 years ago. The first thing President Alibongo did when he was elected was to ban the export of logs. The Central African Economic Community has just taken a decision now that by the end of 2022 all of our countries will ban log export. When we made that decision, one European president came to Gabon to tell us what a bad idea it was because his country were going to lose jobs and income. So there's that stress there. If you develop these jobs and this value added in Africa, then somebody's going to lose out. But as I said, if we can't make these forest pressures for the people that live in them and beside them, then we're going to lose them. We've seen that in West Africa. What we need is we need a real partnership. If we're going to save the Congo Basin forest, as you said, it's a major challenge. You look at what's going on in the Amazon. And even though the Congo Basin is only a third the size of the Amazon, we're now absorbing more CO2 every year than the Amazon because the Amazon is sick. And it's already responding to climate change. And so these Congo Basin forests become more and more vital. But looking to DRC to the east, the forestation rates are already going up. And so we have to do something quickly. Small payments from the red process in the UNFCC is not going to do it. What we really need is investment. We need what I'm trying to do is to bring in responsible investors into Gabon who will bring in good advanced technology so that we can be as efficient as we possibly can in terms of transforming our wood into finished products, get more and more value out of less and less timber. And if I have good investors whose livelihoods rely on Gabonese timber being legal, being sustainable, being good for biodiversity, being good for local people, people in Gabon, if they're putting pressure on me to improve the governance of the forest, that's the way we're going to save the Gabonese forest. And I think that's the way, perhaps by example, we can then transfer those lessons to other countries. I think it's a wonderful vision and a wonderful example. And as you said, we need lighthouses of what good looks like and how we can then actually bring other countries to that same aspiration and find different ways of partnering. And I think that this whole inclusive growth and the global north has a responsibility rather than just protecting jobs in Europe or in other parts of the world. And obviously China is a key actor here as well. But how do we create these new partnerships, but I want to turn to Jennifer and bring some of the other panelists in. You talked about the need for investment. And, but Jennifer, maybe before you get to how we can help Gabon bring more responsible investors to support Minister White's vision. Talk to us about impact capital and the great work you've been doing with Calvert and how that connects to a circular bio economy as well please. Thank you Justin and a pleasure to be here. Yeah, so stepping back, kind of the big picture, the perspective I bring and where we sit within connecting investor capital to projects and communities. And that capital, I'm based in the United States and Washington DC, and we work with investors in the global north, United States and across Europe institution retail investors development finance institutions family offices high net worth individuals, and bring their capital into investments that will have positive impact in society so they're looking for impact investments, where there's measurable change that can be captured in the impact as well as financial return. And we work closely also with communities, ensuring that the right type of capital is reaching projects. We work in and over 100 countries, and across multiple sectors. And so a few just general observations that every as it relates to the circular bio economy conversation, and those are, you know, one investors talk about components of the circular bio economy. So renewable energy, or food to waste regeneration, or forestry and investments in responsible forestry projects. But the investor base is not talking about this larger strategy of circular circular bio economy that is not in the lexicon and the investors I speak with that larger strategy that you know idea that we have a strategy to get to a carbon neutral is just not brought in. And why is that you know just a few thoughts that I think then we'll begin to connect to why the capital and how to get the capital into these types of opportunities is one, you know we measure what matters so to speak, and what we're measuring are the output. So reduction in GHGs or carbon, but we're not measuring this market systems change that is a result of a bio economy, a circular bio economy that's not being captured that market level impact, which is tremendous. It reminds me very much of gender, I've worked within the gender lens investing space for over a decade with a growing movement now of investors. And that is one where in the early days, 10 years ago when we were first participating in that work, there needed to be made a business case. Why gender lens investing and I heard that over the course of today that it's a 10 trillion dollar opportunity. What you need to do though is demonstrate so minister you just said we need examples that's exactly right I found people need examples what does that mean in practice, and that did happen with gender. So this idea of demonstrating been educating and then leading that to scale. So I think there's great opportunity but there's enormous awareness and education that we need to bring into the investor base so they can understand this market impact the systems change of investing with a circular bio economy lens and really bring that into the investment making decision. That's great Jennifer and I think yeah I think it's really important to highlight just just how far we've got to go to mainstream this is a as an idea I imagine you're seeing more and more investors who are thinking about climate impacts and what that means and we've seen this tremendous growth in in the voluntary carbon markets. We've seen a 10 fold growth I think just in the last decade around corporates investing into what are called natural climate solutions. But the bigger system change that you're talking about and how we make that attractive given the multiple benefits that come how, how can we, how can we go about that all you saying we're still at the education phase from from from the many investors you speak to. And I guess maybe to link that what would make what would make it attractive for the minister whites. You know, great new forest products industry that they're building outside Libreville how do we make that attractive to to the type of investors you're speaking to. Yeah, it's a big question and a great one, because it's definitely where we need to get to, and I do think we're on the early end, but there's a lot of evidence, and a lot of the components of this work happening. So, how do we educate build a narrative, and then bring investment opportunities and products back to investors so they can easily access these investment opportunities which I'm sure my colleague Christopher is going to get into. One of the challenges where I work, which is more in the private markets space of the finance continuum. So often working with blended finance, you know, transactions that are bringing government nonprofits and investors together and blending their capital is they are difficult transactions they can take time. And they are hard at times for investors to easily put money to work in. So I think there's a whole conversation we can have about how do we make it more accessible and easy for investors to engage in these types of investment opportunities. But I think there's also a piece the minister said that's really vital. That is changing behavior, both of the people to see this is a natural resource of generations to come and have investors investing not just in a project, but in a larger thesis. An example I can give on this one is we were an investor in the food first blue bond, the Seychelles issued a blue bond. It was a sovereign debt obligation. The we as investors were betting on the country, and the rising economic benefit of a blue economy of a protected marine area to that economies. And so it's a lot of growth over the next decade. And for that bond really work. The government and the people needed to see the value in that asset, so that the tourism businesses, the educational sector the small fishers, all were motivated to change their practices to be more sustainable and really protect that natural ocean. So I think there's more I can get into on the details of that transaction but I think it's illustrative of what's possible in really starting to value the whole resource, not just a sliver of it, not just one business, and bringing that value proposition to the investor base. Wonderful well let's let's come back to that in a moment and but I think the Seychelles is a great example of a sort of a package deal or a blended finance deal that brought different investors with different risk appetites together as well but let's turn to Christopher and bring him into the conversation and would love to learn more about the fund and and how you see this, this whole sector developing and and what you're looking to try and do with the fund. Sure. Thank you so much. So it's been a great conversation so far. Maybe I'll give you a little bit of a different perspective and we can start really by going back up to the macro level we're an investor in global markets right so we're a $350 billion asset management firm and private bank, and we invest in stocks and companies. We also invest in projects where a lot of the discussion has been focused but for the most part we invest in stocks and bonds issued by companies. And so for us, natural capital is a central investment pieces for investors and we find it's actually a very commonplace discussion that we have with our clients, but you do have to spend a little time unpacking it a little bit and when you consider that half of our global GDP. And we can have a discussion about whether GDP is the right metric to discuss natural capital on, but take it as it is half of our economy relies on natural capital. And the problem is that our economy our prevailing economy is a linear one will know this it's a take make waste economy we take too much of the natural capital. We make stuff with it that we don't really use much of the time. We generate an enormous amount of waste and a lot of its toxic to the natural capital that we're taking from in the first place and you know hardly any of it has any price on it but it's got insurmountable, you know unlimited value. So, so this is the investment thesis why investors should care really should care about in natural capital because so many of the world's industries are dependent on it from the pharmaceutical industry. Many people know that the pharmaceutical industry is worth a trillion dollars per year, but some people might be surprised to learn that's over 60% of new drugs introduced are linked to natural products and biodiversity. That's the same for the agricultural industry, the blue economy, all of these big parts of the global economy are relevant to natural capital, and it's in a state of decline and it's it's really a very, a very dangerous state of affairs for investors. For our natural capital fund, we think it's the first of its kind to invest in small to mid cap companies that are involved in their business models in either harnessing natural capital, the power of natural capital for growth, the circular economy, we can talk about that, or they're investing in companies that are preserving natural capital through the industrial circular economy, resource efficiency, the outcome oriented economy these revolutions that we're seeing in more efficient and productive use of our natural capital, zero waste move towards zero waste economy. So that's what our natural capital fund does in a nutshell, it creates an opportunity for investors to position capital into companies that we think are going to ride a wave of innovation and economy as it changes as a metamorphosis occurs from this linear economy to a circular bio economy with two wings harnessing nature and preserving nature. And if you like, we can discuss some of those investment opportunities, and some of the revolutions that we see happening. Well, why don't you why don't you give one two examples of the types of things that you see as really revolutionary and bringing bringing this whole vision of the circular bio economy to life. I think that would be really valuable for the audience. Sure. So why don't we talk about the circular bio economy first since that's that's exactly what you just said. So here, what we see is companies through technology are beginning to unlock the secrets of nature. And Mark Palahe likes to say that nature has a two billion year ahead start on us at figuring out, you know how companies really should operate. Nature is incredibly efficient at what it does, because it's had so much time to figure out the most efficient and effective way to do it. But now because of technological innovation and and all of the rapid advancements that we've seen in recent years going exponential, we're starting to unlock those secrets, biomaterials bioenergy, all of the different water and smart agriculture related implementations of technology to harness the inherent power, the regenerative nature of natural capital, and there are there we've identified 350 companies that are involved in synthetic biology, or in fixing the broken water system, or in fixing the broken agriculture system. And then maybe I'll just end with something on the circular economy side here industry 4.0 additive manufacturing 3d printing step function changes in productivity, where you can generate value by using new technological capabilities that lessen the reliance on natural capital in the first place. So, lots and lots of opportunity, all, all starting to bubble up your you can just sense the enthusiasm as you're, as you're speaking. I want to just address a paradox though that for me is something I struggle with for and and maybe throw it open to each of you, you know, the what we're talking about is using we're still working with natural resources so we're still working with forest we heard from Minister white rate, we're taking timber but we're turning it into added value and and avoiding the waste. And that, how does how do we address that paradox when so many environmental organizations are screaming about the degradation of natural capital, and therefore that we got to protect everything right and so there's this paradox of protecting everything and supporting biodiversity, but at the same time making it valuable, creating jobs and so I, I, I, that's, that's something that it's, I remember the first conversation I had with a, with a major investor on some of this a few years ago and they said, you're talking to us about we want to try and restore forests and protect forests and yet you're telling me, we're trying to use wood products and so there's sort of, how do we articulate that and and and find ways of sort of demonstrating that this is a both and conversation. And if we don't put people in the middle of it will will will fail and so maybe minister white you could, you could pick that up first and then would look to each of you is how do we how do we message around some of this complex. So you're asking the, the guy who for 35 years was a conservationist, working for WCS and then running the, the National Park Service in Gabon, why he's now cutting trees down as the minister of forestry, I think. I thought you'd be a good person to answer that conundrum. You know, it's, we have to find a way to make the forest valuable. If the forest is going to survive we have to find a way to develop nations without going through that catastrophic, catastrophic deforestation curve. And we, you know, we cite Costa Rica as an example of a sustainable economy. Well they actually trashed their forest and what they've been incredibly good at is bringing it back, because they realized how bad it was for their country to have destroyed the ecosystem services and huge lesson to learn there. For Gabon, about 10 years ago we turned our back on the red process and the climate change negotiations because we decided as a high forest low deforestation country in a system that was, was putting more value on deforestation than on actually maintaining the forests that that wasn't going to give us the ideal that we would need if we were going to actually save the 88% land cover that we have of our forests. And so we've been looking for a model that will preserve the forest. We have 21% of our land in protected areas. We're not exploiting all of it. We're setting aside the most biodiverse areas. Because when you log a tropical forest, even if it's low intensity sustainable selective logging, where you're only cutting a couple of trees per hectare you're still going to lose maybe 10% of your biodiversity. And if that's the 10% that's the most rare, the most endemic, the most unusual, the most sensitive, that may will be the 10% that Christopher is looking to develop with his pharmaceutical industries. So we have to keep them and so we have to maintain intact forests because it's the biodiversity value is probably much, much higher even than the potential immediate timber value. But if we don't find a way to put a dollar figure almost on the value of the forest land, then the forest land is going to become oil palm land or soybean land or cattle ranching land. And the great thing about forests is that if you manage them, they can live basically forever and we have some amazing examples in Europe of ancient forests, maybe once they were sort of royal estates but now they're managed forests that have trees that are millions of years old and are maintaining both providing value but providing ecosystem services and we see with climate change that the more by diverse those forests are the more resilient they are to climate change and so our monodominant lands are either in Europe or burning in the Mediterranean and dying of insect disease in the in the north. And so maintaining nature, but harvesting nature perhaps mimicking your harvesting on those natural processes that you have in the forest trees do grow and fall down and create light gaps and so and so we can mimic that and by maintaining the functionality of the ecosystem at the same time as as maximizing the value that we get out of every cubic meter and minimizing the waste. It's a crime to be less than 90% efficient in your use of this this precious resource. And to do that, you do need this, you know, the circular that the sort of the ecosystem of industry, not just an ecosystem of forest but an ecosystem of industry. We're starting to work we're starting to add value we're creating jobs we've we've by banning the export of logs in 10 years we've multiplied our economy times for and our job number times three. And we believe strongly that as we become more and more sophisticated in the transmission we can we can multiply by three and by three again. And so as a conservationist who who's helped to create almost 50 probably protected areas in the Congo Basin. I see a real synergy between the protection and the sustainable use. I think the NGOs that lobby against tropical timber. They mean obviously they they're well motivated they think that's the way you you save the forest but Congo Basin. I think if we were to ban sustainable forestry tomorrow we would lose the Congo Basin forests. I'm looking forward to do that as I said. Yeah, wonderful and deeply insightful. Jennifer, pull you into to the same conversation where with where investors are today. How do we bring them into the conversation. Thank you and just moving right from the minister's comments I can again go back to the Seychelles example because what I've noticed in doing this work this transition phase that the minister was articulating at times. We need to free up resources for the country and also you know alleviate pressure on the national natural resource so it can regenerate. And you know specifically in the Seychelles transaction, what that meant was the debt swap for nature that was a precursor to the issuance of the blue bond was a vital component that debt swap for nature was supported by the nature that we see in the World Bank, and it refinanced the Seychelles debt obligations to a lower rate so they could free up some cash, freeing up that cash, enable them to map the ocean floor, monitor that natural resource in a responsible way, it was vital for creating the right ecosystem to then responsibly finance responsibly monetize that asset. Likewise, you look closely at the blue bond transaction itself. There was blended finance in there, there was risk capital sitting beneath the senior capital, which was vital to blend down that cost of capital for the government of the Seychelles, so that that capital could be invested at a low rate, and therefore support some of the efforts around business that just weren't market rate opportunities. You know specifically we needed, you know some pressure taken off the asset we couldn't fish it as hard. So, you know, ensuring the livelihood of those small fishermen's businesses was vital. And so we needed to help them, you know, in a way subsidize that period of time when they weren't actively fishing so robustly. So, you know, through the transition, I think thinking creatively about finance and being aware that we need to make sure that the capital we're putting into these projects is priced right and the tenor is right, so that the investor capital is really aligned with all the outcomes that we're seeking to achieve. Great. Thanks, Jennifer. And Christopher, how with your investors but also with the entrepreneurs and the businesses you're investing in, how do you wrestle with some of these sort of dilemmas and the complexity of what you're trying to do here? Well, that's a tough question. We try to be students of the dynamics in this space. We try to keep a close tab on policy and regulatory forces that are evolving, and there are many of them. We try to very closely focus on market forces and what's happening with the economics of this entire space, and we look at investor behavior, patterns of investment and consumer behavior. So this is really the conversation that we have with our investors and what we do internally, what we try and keep track of. So in the policy space, what we observe is that there are more and more regulations and policy interventions that are changing the calculus and they're pushing the economy away from this linear type of economy towards a more circular economy. They can be pretty standard carbon pricing, water pricing, other types of putting a price on natural capital that has, as we discussed before, limitless value. It could be payments for ecosystem services, which are starting to gain traction. Here we also see extended producer responsibility, getting more into the circular economy side of things. This is a real thing. EPR is a real thing and companies are starting to have to grapple with the full life cycle of the products that they create and the financial and the physical costs that may stick with them. It's the same with climate, scope three, upstream, downstream emissions. So we see plastics taxes, we see prices, water pricing in California, water futures being launched. Natural capital is getting priced and investors are starting to figure that out. And the thing is that change tends to happen slowly and then all at once. The market has a tendency to pull forward transitions. Once a critical mass of investors understand that a new paradigm is occurring, that we're at some type of tipping point, the market will pull that forward. And that can be a pretty aggressive repricing that can occur. So we want to be ahead of that. That's very important for us because market forces are super powerful. And what we're seeing is that the circular option is becoming the cheaper one. Okay. I mean, you see this. Yeah. So one quick follow up on that is, and are you seeing as well, interest and increased appetite for investments in the global south? Or are these investments going to continue to be, and this isn't in any way critical, but are the investments going to continue to be with, you know, with the innovators in Europe and North America, where the political risks may be smaller. But a lot of what we've heard this afternoon is around the kind of huge need in the global south as well if we bring this vision to life for a global circular bio economy. So again, very good question, hard, difficult to answer. But what we observe is that there is no lack of innovation and advancement in the global south. It's full of it. And that's fantastic. The situation is that the global capital markets, as we know, are not as deep and not as pervasive in the global south. And as investors who operate in liquid global capital markets, you know, that's a real issue for us. We want to see, talking about the debt market, we need to see, you know, more investment grade issuers. We need to see development banks helping cities to achieve, you know, a credit rating so that we can invest in the bonds coming out of urban environments. We need to see a lot more focus from the development banks to unlock, you know, the capital markets in the global south in developed countries. We have enormous appetite to go and invest there, but we need to see a development of the investment vehicles and the liquidity and the, you know, the taxation rules, the repatriation, all of that, that we need to see in order to invest in a prudent way. Thank you. I'm sorry for peppering you with just hard questions. We're running tighter on time and I know the organizers want to try and wrap over all so and I also know we've got lots and lots of great questions from from the audience so I'm going to apologize that we're not going to be able to get to them all. But I think in the interest of respecting people's time. I want to turn to each of you just giving you a 30 second one minute kind of maximum kind of reflection of what is going to be needed to bring this wonderful vision what's the one two things that's needed to bring this vision to life. And, and then we will, then we'll, then we'll wrap. But minister to you first. I think for me, I think we need to see government to government engagement between developed and developing countries. And, rather than thinking about sort of handouts, international aid money. I want to see developed nations encouraging their industries to come and invest in, in, in, in our countries we know there are challenges we know we have to improve the business environment we have to improve the governance. And I think with the challenge we all have of dealing with climate change and dealing with the biodiversity crisis we need to do it together and when there's a government to government relationship on top of a government to private sector relationship, then, then, then you tend to be able to resolve issues that might not be possible when it's just a private sector. I agree more wonderful Jennifer. Thank you. I heard his Royal Highness say this morning we have the capital it's how we deploy it. And so I would just echo that sentiment. And with the how we deploy it just ensuring it's the right capital for where that project or that community is. At times, as I share that can take blended finance, the blending and threading of multiple sources of capital. It can take participation across many different types of actors, government NGOs, private capital, and that's can be tough and messy stuff but at times will need to do that so we can really demonstrate and then get to the place where we can scale it to some of the things that Christopher articulated the capital markets are seeking and will need to really invest scaled capital. So we're on the right path. And, you know, now how can we accelerate and grow. Excellent. Thank you, Jennifer. Christopher. And so I very much agree with Jennifer we are on the right path and with the minister as well you know we are on the right path. And I would just say for us it's about this interplay between policy and regulation and market forces. That's what's so important policy ambition, keep the eye on the ball. Keep the keep, you know, keep on increasing that policy ambition, the private sector will respond companies will see the shape of the path ahead. They will innovate they will invest venture capital will flow into it money will flow where it will chase returns and it's going to chase growth. And so as that you know interplay continues to escalate as as we continue to see circular becoming cheaper, you know, consumer demand will start flooding in that direction and investors will follow. Great. So thank you all. I'm, I'm, I'm really buzzing after the discussion and I wish we could go a little longer so and really, really rich input from all of you so I just have a few very quick remarks to try and sort of wrap some of it up but I love the idea we are on the right path and undoubtedly this vision of a circular bio economy is the right vision and I want to just thank the organizers for their vision in putting the event on and for bringing the circular bio economy alliance to life. I think there's this huge huge potential here secondly, I think it's also clear though that it's still very nascent not everybody understands this there's huge education needs and as we're starting to think about some of the opportunities it's going to be messy because we need to bring different types of capital, different types of stakeholders together to figure out how we're going to unlock the huge opportunity that that I think everybody can feel and we've had great examples of this afternoon. But I think we shouldn't underestimate now the challenge of bringing this to life. I think thirdly then what we really need is the examples and those great examples of innovators and companies the types of companies Christopher as investing in his portfolio. And so I think the type of example that the minister so so inspiringly laid out in terms of how do we actually shift to nature based bio based sustainable economies of the future and I think that's going to be particularly important as we look to build back from the COVID, how can we actually support countries like the bond stand up and shine as the lighthouses we need of actually what this can look like in the future, because we need the Congo base and we need the Amazon basin to still be standing in 50 100 years without any chance of addressing the critical crises we face. So that I think becomes so important. And I think lastly, and a point we heard from Isabella and the previous panel. Yeah, we have to put people to the center of this because that's actually ultimately what's going to drive the innovation that drives the investment and crucially drives the inspiration for why and how we can bring this circular bio economy to life and I think that will make it all much more investable. And we will see the big wall of capital that Prince Charles talked about right at the beginning but we've got there's a lot of work to get to get it to work and to get it to work in all the right places but I want to thank you all for a really rich discussion I want to thank you all for your responses for a great session and and thank all of the audience for their attention and apologies we haven't got to to the questions but thank you all and I hand back to the wonderful Sonya. I think to bring us to a close. Thank you, Christine for very inspiring discussions. And sadly, it now bring us to the end of our event. And I hope all of you have enjoyed this discussion as much as I have. And we have now that the circular bioeconomy is a compact topics. The strategies are still being decided. The financing, especially in the global south still needs to come in, and there is still research that needs to be done. We also heard from many instant speakers today about the need for putting nature at the heart of the economy, urging those making investment to make long term decisions with people and also planet in mind. And we learn about the need for more research to understand the relation relationship between nature, people and economies. We also heard from the environment ministers about new opportunities to manage ecosystems more sustainably, while providing higher value products and also jobs. But for sure, we do know that circular bioeconomy approach offers a solution to our current challenges from accelerating climate change to biodiversity laws, and also to increase inequality. And most importantly, we need massive investment in the global south and collaboration with the industrialized and developing economies. And in a nutshell, it's time to just do it and make this investment and take the steps to act. Thank you for following our discussion along. And we had a lot of interest in this topic with 3000 registered participants watching on Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube. It's generating more than 2 million reach in the social media. And before you leave us, I would like to inform you that we will send along an email in the coming days with a very short survey. We would like to know what you thought about the event and also about the discussion through the survey. So please take a look at the surveys. I think it just needs a few minutes to share your inputs and keep following us on social media where the conversation will continue. Finally, I'd like to give a big thanks to our partners in this event, the European Forest Institute, the Finnish Innovation Fund, the Sustainable Market Initiatives, and the Global Landscape Forum, or GLF. And GLF will host several important events this year, including a GLF Digital Forum on Forest Landscape Restoration hosted jointly by the Collaborative Partnership on Forests and the Global Partnership on Forests and Landscape Restoration on April 29. We also have GLF Aureka on 2nd and 3rd of June that will focus on dry land restoration and it is aligned with the kickoff of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. This will be also followed by a deep dive into the state of the world's largest tropical forest ecosystem in GLF Amazon as well as climate and finance-related conferences later in this year. So thank you and hope to see you again soon. Bye bye. Have a nice day. The year 2020 marked a year of change and adaptation. The COVID-19 pandemic washed across the world and damaged our economies. At the same time, a rapid transition to a circular economy is more important than ever. The whole world needs to find ways to get back on its feet and we have a unique opportunity to support the sustainable recovery of our economy with circular solutions. Two days, six sessions, 50 speakers, 123 countries, over 4,000 participants and 80 side events. The first fully virtual world circular economy forum online took a deep dive into why and how a circular economy can help reboot and build resilience in the economy. Top speakers from around the globe shared practical examples that would help us rebuild our economies stronger, greener and better. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape our economy. During the two days, we heard inspiring examples of solutions for clothing, energy, farming, wastewater, technology recycling and food. Anyone around the world could take part in discussions. The key takeaways were that there's no time for short time fixes and we need everyone on board. We need to invest in R&D and innovation to accelerate the shift to a circular economy to build a resource efficiency, resilience and inclusiveness to engage women and youth to make the circular economy mainstream. We need courageous, caring and collaborative partnerships and we can turn the economy into a solution by tackling the root causes of global challenges. Join us at the next WCF events.