 I think cognitive biases are key in this. People might know this is the right thing to do. They might know their role and still sit back and switch the channel. Okay, yes, yes, we agree and you have to do it and then someone will do it for us. So I think the realization of the place we're in in the world and the fact that because tomorrow looks the same as today doesn't mean that things are not changing. We've seen it with COVID-19, exponential change works in interesting ways. So hopefully there will be a realization that we're at a stage where all our economic valuation processes do not work when one of the variables is human extinction. Dr. Yusuf Nassif is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Yusuf started the work on adaptation to climate change in the United Nations system and has led the adaptation work streams under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change since their inception. He possesses 30 years of experience in diplomacy and international environmental policy and is the second diplomat from the Egyptian Foreign Services. While assuming progressively higher levels of leadership at the UNFCCC, he led UNFCCC support for a number of ongoing initiatives on adaptation. These include the inception and support for NAPAs and NAPS, the Nairobi Work Program and International Knowledge Hub for Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation and the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. He recently created the Resilience Frontiers Initiative which applies foresight for attaining post 2030 resilience. He regularly contributes his vision, insights and thought leadership to international conferences on resilience and adaptation to climate change in their nexus with sustainable development, often focusing on developing countries. He holds a doctoral degree in international technology policy and management and a master's degree in international environmental policy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy as well as master's degree in Middle East Studies and bachelor's degree in computer science and physics from the American University in Cairo. Welcome to the podcast. Yusuf, I'm so glad to have you here. Thank you, Mark. Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. It'll be great. Yeah, I'm so excited. I'm glad you could take time out of your busy schedule. This is a crazy time leading up to top 26 in Glasgow and you've got tons of other reports and initiatives and things you're working on. So you're very busy full-time. Matter of fact, you've been so kind. Today's your day off. It's a holiday in Germany and in Bonn where you're at at the UN and you decided to go into the office to help me out to do the podcast and I really appreciate it. Just for my listeners, I want them to know that we know each other. That's why I'm using your first name basis. For the rest of them, it's Dr. Nassif, but you're such a personable man that I'm sure that once you get to know people, you quickly befriend them. We know each other through Claire Bell Pajol, who was also at the UNF Triple C, and she introduced us because of a book, Moonshots for Europe, and that led to many other things where we ended up going to Sandol, Korea, to the NAPExpo, and doing a five-day intensive foresight workshop with future literacy labs, UNESCO, and many other things. And that's kind of how we know each other and have built a nice friendship and relationship ever since. And I really appreciate that and thank you for that so much on giving me deeper insights into the UN and into all fabulous work you're doing. Thank you, Marcus. It's been quite a journey. And I think the interface with people like yourself, futurists, people who are passionate about the SDGs, but not thinking in the here and now, but looking into the future, has been something we were really missing in the normal UN day-to-day work. So I think this has opened up a really interesting portal for us. And like you say, it's a mutual benefit and the thought process that went through this, as you mentioned in Songdo and thereafter, has very much enriched our work. So thank you for that. You're most welcome. It's been a sheer pleasure. And there were so many other friendships and new acquaintances that I met through that experience that have just enriched my life. I've already in the beginning thrown out some acronyms or some terms that most probably not everyone is aware of the United Nations framework for climate change conference or... Framework Convention on Climate Change. That's our basic... Framework Convention on Climate Change. That's the UNFCCC. The NAP Expo stands for National Adaptation Plan. And that's where a lot of your work for since the beginning has been, which is a mechanism known as National Adaptation Plans that is basically involving developing countries, large group of countries that have submitted these plans and will be submitting more plans to COP26 and presenting some reports. And hopefully there'll be a lot of objectives and things reached out of that. I'm trying to think if there was another... The COP is a conference of the parties and there's the most famous one is COP21. So we will throw out some of those terms and hopefully I will be able to keep everybody up to speed of what those acronyms and those terms are. And if not, we'll list them in the show notes and descriptions. You've been doing this for quite some time. So you've been concerned about climate change and human suffering and environmentalism, the human rights frameworks. You've been in this space for a long time talking about it, working on actions, trying to bring countries together to agree on a roadmap for to improve better things. And then in 2020, all sorts of craziness broke up. Not only the whole world was affected by the pandemic and COVID. And we had craziness with an inauguration. We had Black Lives Matters. We had a lot of issues around people of color. We had just recently Asian violence and racism, things happen there. So our world is kind of in turmoil. It's crazy things are going on. But I wanna know all these years of working for the UN being involved with us, seeing many different cultures and dealing with delegates and diplomats. Has any of that given you a little bit more resilience to whether this crazy time or storm may be even a better operating system for life so that the rest of us can get through these times a little bit better? Yeah, well, thank you for that question. I think the era we're living in, this COVID era has brought to for a lot of interesting things. You're confronted with a phenomenon that's fraught with uncertainty. You don't know when it will end. You don't know whether new variants will come up and how dangerous they will be. And it's a bit similar to the climate change narrative. So a couple of decades ago, yeah, we knew it was a problem. You could replicate the greenhouse effect in the lab knowing that increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would lead to increased temperatures, but we don't exactly know how the effects would be distributed. There are probabilities, there's high confidence, low confidence, but it's such a wicked problem and how to react to it. Now with COVID, it's very similar. There's a lot of uncertainty. However, it reminds you of that question of the frog being thrown in the boiling water. When it's thrown in the boiling water, it jumps out immediately. This is what happened with COVID-19. Despite the uncertainties about everything, you see the impact right away and immediately the investments come in, everyone is researching how to respond to it, people are wearing masks, et cetera. Now climate change is a longer-term problem, which means that in terms of the perception of any human being on the street, today looks very similar to yesterday and very similar to tomorrow. There is no exponential increase in perception of the problem. And then that's why cognitive biases kick in. And you see how, yes, we're taking our time, yes, it's a problem, we hope someone else will do it, you know, the bystander effect, et cetera. And this is what we've been thinking of. How do we transfer that passion that we've seen in responding to COVID to longer-term problems that could be equally or even more impactful to our lives? I mean, climate change is an existential problem. If left to proceed without any intervention, then humanity itself is at risk of disappearing. And so this is one of the things that one thinks of. On the other hand, it is a global problem where the world is not very well equipped to handling global problems. We are divided into nations, nation-states. And the primary responsibility of a government is to service its population. And so elevating the discourse to be a global discourse, to respond to something that does not respect national boundaries, injects a lot of complexity in how we deal with this because we don't have a global negotiation system. We have an international negotiation system. So still we're divided into countries. And we operate on consensus. We create international law, but all countries have to agree or at least no country can object. There's a slight difference in nuance between unanimity and consensus. So consensus means that any decision we make does not receive an explicit objection. And to get 200 countries to agree to anything is a miracle. And that's why people feel that, oh, we're too slow, you've been doing this for 20 years, what has happened? But on the one hand, yes, it is slow because you need everybody on board. It's not like a simple majority and you can move forward because it's global, everyone has to be on board. But on the other hand, a lot has happened. I mean, the process, the negotiations process and the science, the advances in the science and the signal to the private sector and R&D that has gone into renewables, et cetera, all of this has led to the transformation we're seeing now. There has been a system of incentives and disincentives from increased awareness and political commitment to solving the climate change problem, which emerged from the process of negotiation that is leading to the direction that we're on now with new technologies, with new opportunities and eventually a net zero objective that we have to reach in order to stem the problem of climate change. Yeah, that was the best explanation that I've received so far. And I really appreciate those examples and those analogies for our listeners to really kind of understand the bigger picture and what that journey is look like and also how extremely complex it is. Under the UNF triple C, you're part of the secretariat and the leadership in the secretariat. And I guess within that structure, there's Patricia Espinoza, who's the executive secretary. She took over for Christiana Figueiras and who's also the cop queen now, Patricia Espinoza, the cop queen, I guess, the conference of the party. And then there's you as director of adaptation, Olvis Sarmad is deputy executive secretary and we've had different events around food and different meetings in bond at the pre-cops and things, but you're surrounded by these fabulous leaders, these fabulous people who are really pushing the envelope forward on trying to bring these countries and these delegates together and diplomats and hopefully diplomatic people, people who are diplomatic and willing to agree and come together quicker than not, but even more on a little bit personal level. So your work out of the bond office, the UN has headquarters in New York. The cop or headquarters, I guess, are in in bond or the UNF triple C is headquartered in bond, who does the climate conferences. And then there's an office in Geneva and it's kind of spread around the world and it's very complex, many inter-agencies and organizations where their preparations already in place or type of operating structures that the UN itself was able to say, we've been preparing for climate. We've also, through the WHO been preparing for other things that we're able to, we knew this was coming and now we have these operating systems in place that are kind of better models because we're supposed to bring those countries together that kind of have us as an essential workers to weather the storm or to help for relief and different things. I guess I just wanna, before we move on, touch upon that aspect of it. So I'm sure the UN was also hit and suffered some severe issues and things but are there places or models in place already that are just a better operating system to get us through these hard times, things that we can apply and do? I don't know if you understand where I'm trying to go. I was just saying like, has the UN applied some of these negotiations or some of the things they're trying to get countries to do or that the inter-agencies are due on themselves? And now that we're in this time of extreme crisis of a pandemic that we've got some models in place that can kind of let us work through it to get not back to usual but to keep life going instead of just feeling like this big pause forever. Yeah, I think there are two answers to that question. So in terms of trying to practice what we preach, we certainly do that. So all our operations, including the annual session of the conference of the parties are offset. So we offset all the emissions. We make sure in our daily lives that we minimize as much as possible any activities that lead to waste in resources. We're mostly paper-free. We try to rely on online meetings as much as possible, not just during the pandemic, but generally and we will not stop. I think now we'll do it even more once we get back to normal because there's so many more platforms and better functionality. So in that sense, we do. And on the other hand, we also produce the methodological basis upon which countries can have a comparable platform from which to assess where it is in its climate change action and help with the reporting process, et cetera. But on the other hand, I think you've touched on something. You may recall my first answer where the world is divided into nation states. So we have an international system but also the UN is divided into thematic organizations. I'm not saying they're silos because we have built interagency collaboration and climate change permits everywhere, but countries have ministries and specific ministries interact with specific UN agencies. So you have an existing system and you wonder if we're trying to solve tomorrow's problems with yesterday's tools or yesterday's institutional setup, et cetera. So as we move into foresight thinking, one looks ahead as to how can we best make that transformation, either adjust our existing modalities and systems to be optimized for what is needed as we move into the future in reaching the SDGs and post-SCGs retaining them or improving on them. And also on what the needed transformation or the paradigm shift entails in terms of our own setup and how we conduct negotiations and how we conduct our own organizational work. And there are people working, there's several projects around the world looking at the implications of virtual work on the future of climate diplomacy. So they are looking at certain cliches of our process, certain elements of it that were shaped that way because of physical presence, the way observers engage in the negotiations, the way we crowdsource inputs, et cetera. And saying, now, maybe in a virtual world, we don't have these constraints anymore. So why are we just trying to replicate the physical onto the virtual without rethinking the fundamentals? And I mean, this is a story that always happens with any paradigm shift, whether it's the information technology revolution or before that the industry revolution. So I think the coming 10 years will see a lot of change. And the question is whether the change will happen to us as an exogenous variable or whether we happen to the change and try to design it in a way that then ends us up with that best version of humanity that we want to see post 2030. I love that. And I guess this would be probably the best time to tickle also going into resilience frontier. So everybody knows about the sustainable development goals. And matter of fact, I had Felix Dodds on the show, on the podcast and he did negotiating the sustainable development goals, wrote this book. But it really kind of was a culmination out of a couple of events, a Stockholm meeting as well as the, I believe it was Rio plus 20. And then this side meeting for Bogota, Colombia that they had over a long time where the sustainable development was talked about but then it slowly moved and was developed into something. Resilience frontier is now post 2030, obviously. And it's a resilience frontier around pioneering emerging technologies, old indigenous wisdoms. There's three main pillars and eight objectives. So three objectives and eight, how do, what's the right term? Pathways, eight pathways that we have in this. And it was some pre-meetings before Songdo, Korea with future literacy labs, UNESCO, real Miller with the UNF triple C staff and future IO Institute and many other thought leaders, futurists, environmentalists, activists, people who really know and are there. And then we're all invited to do this really kind of a moonshot workshop in Songdo, Korea to come up with some hard hitting discussions. And you invited a who's who of guest list to that event. One who was sitting at my table that I was facilitating and taking part of was Hindu Abraham Omar, Omar Ibrahim who is a sustainable development goal advocate as well. She's a beautiful person, represents all indigenous populations. And it was just a fabulous well put on event, lots of documents, lots of recording, lots of iterations of this moonshot canvas and things. But I'm just tickling it. I would like more your synopsis, what led to that? And maybe could you answer, do we have the maybe tickling of an option or possibility that it could evolve into something more from 2030 to 2050, some resilience development goals or something like that? Well, thanks, Mark. And this is a project I'm really fascinated by. And perhaps the original motivation for trying to tackle this exercise, which is intended to identify, how do you move towards permanent resilience post 2030, was the realization that there's a mismatch of pace of the evolution of our problems versus our capacity to handle them. So you're seeing the SDGs. So the SDGs intend to tackle 2015's problems by 2030. Now between 2015 and 2030, are we looking at new problems that are coming up and preventing them from happening or doing that systemic shift in our activities that can lead to a fundamental fix in the main ailment that keeps producing these things all the way from acid rain in the 70s to COVID-19, now passing through the ozone hole and climate change and species extinction, everything else that we've experienced over the past few decades. And the idea there is that we keep, we seem to be plugging holes all the time. And then come 2030, we will say, oops, there's all these new inequities because of AI benefiting some people and not others. Let's have a new set of SDGs. So a third wave to solve this by 2045. First we had the MDGs obviously and then SDGs and then who knows what's coming next. So something was wrong in that paradigm. And it's a matter of pace. We take a long time to be able to adjust institutions to put in place resources. So I thought, let's start a different way of thinking. And closer to home, basically in climate change, we've seen the Paris Agreement had a certain rhythm associated with it. So our first political moment was intended to be in 2023. At that point, we have something called the global stocktake where countries give themselves a report card. How well are we doing? Are we close to achieving our objectives of stemming global warming at 1.5 degrees or not? And then, so the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, 2018 and 2019, the science came out and gave us a different narrative. So first the IPCC and then IBS, which is the Biodiversity Intergovernmental Platform. And both were consistent in saying that we need transformative shift in how we do things. And it has to be done in the coming few years. Now negotiating processes, heard this and continued with our same paradigm and rhythm with the hope that by having this sort of voluntary setup that we have, it's a pledge and review system that we would reach the necessary outcome. But I was seeing that, okay, we might do that if we treat climate change as the problem. But what if we look at it as the symptom, just like acid rain may have been, just like ozone's like COVID-19 and who knows what else might come? Can we look at the fundamentals that keep producing this in terms of our behavior, in terms of economic activity, in terms of our values, how we value certain things, in terms of inequalities, et cetera. It's very close to the thinking that led to the SDGs but then not intended to have that rigid deadline by 2030, but look at it beyond that. And at the same time, I'm looking around me and we're looking at plastics in the ocean and the littering and let's fix it and whatever and everyone is intent on doing that and technologies are being created. But hey, aren't we doing the same to space? Aren't we littering space now with tens of thousands of little satellites? Some have a mechanism for degradation, but some don't. And what will happen then? Will we come to 2030 and say, oops, now we fixed the ocean, let's fix space and whatever else that we're doing? Or yes, we fixed inequality by its old definition but now we have all these techno halves and techno have nots because of all these new technologies and prosy that have come out. So I thought, okay, if humanity is going to fix itself which it should because now for the first time in history we are facing firstly Anthropocene which is where humans have for the first time in history had a discernible impact on their own surrounding environment but second, we have that risk of extinction which I think humans and it's an extension due to our own actions. What other species does that to itself? So I sort of- It's really that bandaid that you were talking about. We're just continuing to put band aids on a much bigger problem. But then all the foresight exercise that I had seen before were focused on specific areas. I thought, okay, let's have a holistic encounter and you may recall when you participant you gave an amazing keynote presentation that everyone appreciated there because it gave us that view of the earth holistically from sort of an outsider's perspective. I love that. And we had there people from three clusters. One, the drivers of change. So all the technologies, AI blockchain, autonomous systems, biotechnology, satellites, etc. Then we had basic needs. So regardless of what systems are in place or what the world looks like, you need food and water and health and nature and security. And then we had a look at institutional setups which are then the variable there which is how you set up financial systems, education, regulations, laws and governance and arranging habitats, etc. And bringing all these people together and using those methodologies from both UNESCO and from Future IO in a merged setup was something that had never been done before. And it resulted in a very objective process that is traceable. So it's not just we ended with the usual shopping list just because that was the consensus of people there. Everyone could trace back how we got to those eight pathways. And the eight pathways are those visions in different areas, which if implemented, you can guarantee that the world will become permanently a better place. So it dispenses with that notion of plugging holes. And that's the beauty of that exercise. We got these 115 knowledge leaders who, and I don't know if you know this, not many people know how they were selected. Each person who was invited to be part of these expert groups had to cover expertise in two different areas that had to be from different clusters. So an AI person that was also a water person. So the interdisciplinary was built in into the selection process of the experts that were there. The first couple of days were to move their brain to another place. So it's not just that they're coming to give the expertise they have. No, it was elevated beyond that that they're supposed to engage in collective intelligence and together create new insights and new knowledge. And I think in the end, we had very clear agreement on these outcomes. Now we have these eight pathways converted into storylines which is what would the world look if this was fulfilled and if not, so there's a utopian and the dystopian narrative. And when you read those, the dystopian is not if things go wrong. It's if things continue as they are. I mean, that's the sad part. The default is the dystopian and it's very scary. It's almost like, you know, back to the future when you saw how bad the world could be. It's very similar to that. And the next step is what we call the road mapping phase where there will be eight groups, one for each pathway, and they will engage in a methodology that is supposed to prioritize the seed actions, the topmost activities that could spur through a flywheel effect, more actions to take place to reach the end vision. So it's not that we're looking for the usual things, the most efficient, the most effective, the most sustainable. No, it's what should the first mover be? It's like something like Rosa Parks being on that bus. That was the first move. It wasn't about campaigns or investments or this. So Black Swan events that are planned and predictable. We call them blue swans. And so how do you do that? There's a methodology group thinking about that right now in order for the pathway groups to be able to follow that sort of innovative way of finding and predicting those blue swans. There's another group right now looking at cutting edge communication action for behavioral change. So we have people from media, from show business, from neurobiology, from marketing all together. These disciplines have never talked to each other before. So they gather once a month and trying to get some insight out of them to feed into that road mapping process. And the end result is, yes, you'd get a list of things. Here's the stuff that if you do, we guarantee that it would lead to this. It's not just proposals that will help, but this is very deterministic and we can trace back the logic. And so that point will be where we would need the people who can take action to then say, okay, I'll adopt this and I will make sure that this action is undertaken, I will invest in it. So people who are into social entrepreneurship will be really important in moving this forward because it will be the first time they see the list of actions produced through a rigorous scientific process, not by consensus of experts which could work or not. And so that's where we are. It's the thing that makes it special is its holism. It covers all aspects of the transformation towards a resilient world, not just resilient to climate change, but resilience to anything that will keep producing these things that eventually come back to harmless. And it's also a process that creates that tomorrow's thinking to be able to solve tomorrow's problems. Having said that, I have to emphasize that it's not a problem-solving exercise. We're not trying to plug holes again by saying, we have a problem of this and this and this, now how will we solve it? No, it's a problem of co-creation of a new paradigm. Hopefully that will render today's problems obsolete anyway. I mean, I always remind people when they say, oh, but today's systems are bad. We need to change them. I say, go back three decades ago. I mean, did the Apple computer set out to destroy IBM actively? No, I mean, they set out to be the paradigm shifter. They were a tiny company, no one would have seen them as the bright light of the time. But I mean, IBM got out of the PC business as a result eventually, not because anyone targeted them, but because the world shifted to a different state in which the old system became obsolete. When automobiles came, they did not actively try to sabotage force-driven carriages. They just took over and people had a preference to moving to the new system. Here it's more complex because we're talking about worldviews, we're talking about values. And communication is essential in this story. And the whole notion of, I think cognitive biases are key in this. People might know this is the right thing to do. They might know their role and still sit back and switch the channel. Okay, yes, yes, we agree and we have to do it and then someone will do it for us. So I think the realization of the place we're in in the world and the fact that because tomorrow looks the same as today, it doesn't mean that things are not changing. We've seen it with COVID-19, exponential change works in interesting ways. So hopefully there will be a realization that we're at a stage where all our economic valuation processes do not work when one of the variables is human extinction. When you know how cost-benefit analysis works, you have a discount rates, not about inflation, it's the time value of money. And it goes totally contrary to the principle of intergenerational equity. So on the one hand, we're saying, yes, we want sustainability which is about future generations having the same opportunities as coming generations. And at the same time, all the business schools and economic schools are telling people, no, you do not do that. Today's dollar is more important than tomorrow's. So if you can make a million today while imposing a loss of 10 millions on your kids, you choose the million today. And there are fundamental problems of thought including academic thoughts that have to be transformed in order for us to shift to that new world. We are close to the end of the viability of the current ways of thought and of teaching and of learning to solve these problems and to transform us to where we need to be. So we're constrained by things that we don't need to be constrained by really. I mean, so a lot of changes need to happen and learning is part of the resilience from these pathways as well. So it is holistic, like I said. That's so beautiful and you explain it so nicely so that we get this nice broad overview as well as where it's going. You know, the sustainable development goals and sustainable development in general is not just another add-on to business as usual. It's an entirely new operating system. But at the core, it's set out to be a solid infrastructure, a sustainable infrastructure for humanity. It doesn't matter how sustainable that infrastructure is, if climate catastrophe, pandemics, things like that occur, that sustainability can be wiped out in one day. You know, and you kind of address this, the reason of resilience is we need to be able to have food, water, basic infrastructural needs tomorrow after those events occur. And so we really need to build this resilience into the system. And so it's perfect, the way this has been set up with objectives, the pathways now doing the science of the blue swan because I was there and we were talking about desirable futures, probable futures, practical futures. You know, we were talking about the third horizons and the different dimensions, not only the future literacy foresight back casting, we're going into all the different ways to not only shift the way of our thinking but to expand it out well into the future. What do we need to have that resilience there? And there are some different models of resilience. There's a very dystopian resilience, one where we're all running around in spacesuits and gas masks or even face masks and social distancing. But that's a very dystopian resilience. We're still surviving but it's not enjoyable for anybody overall. Then there's that really that resilience where it's desirable, where we can still enjoy food and water and air and nature and each other. And still, even though we're facing hard environmental times, still have food and the basic necessities, that infrastructure that is continuing to operate as if we are on this spaceship earth or this closed system, which we are. Or there's that, the other resilience of, it's more psychological and mental where if somebody swears that you or hits you or does something wrong, that you have the mental or physical capacity to bounce back with a little resilience instead of being permanently disabled or dying from that situation. So we really need to understand what is that resilience that we want? And everyone at the meeting and everyone that you're talking about really that I see in here is the kind, I guess utopian resilience is the wrong word, the desirable resilience is where it comes out. And so I like that you addressed that. And the other thing that I really liked is you mentioned the blue swan. So we're going to have a meeting here on the 25th of May with Futurio as well, where John Elkington, he just wrote a book not too long ago called green swans. And so for those of you out there who might not know, a lot of us have heard about the black swans, but we didn't know that there's also ugly ducklings. There's gray swans, there's black swans with green wings. There's green swans with black wings. And there, yes, there has blue swans as well. And that's a form of where are we going? What are the operating systems? What are the models that are resilient? Not just for humanity, but for our whole biodiversity, our whole world. And those are truly the science, the facts and the topics, the way we try to frame that and what you guys are working on. It's still a work in progress. So I really appreciated you sharing that with us, but I'm sure you have something else you'd like to add. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of conceptual fallacies that we have to address. Some people know about the fallacy of composition and the fallacy of division, where I mean, you know the joke, why do white sheep eat more than black sheep? And the answer is because there's more of them. And so when you're talking about the components, sometimes when you talk about the group that encompasses the components, these attributes don't apply both ways. So we talk about global resilience. It's not necessarily the aggregation of the resilience of individual humans or individual countries. That I think is being taken care of by our own policies, but no one is speaking for the globe as a whole. And the globe will survive. It has built-in mechanisms to get rid of us and continue as it is. But when we talk about permanent resilience, just for absence of a better word, we mean the capacity of planet Earth to continue sustaining humanity, which is very different from the wellbeing of planet Earth. That's not, we don't have the power to influence that. We only have the power to influence our own capacity to be hosted by planet Earth. And that is different from resilience in the context of policy, where we talk about individuals, communities, cities, countries, being able to withstand external shocks and either bouncing back or using it as an opportunity to get to another developmental stage, that's okay. But the thinking of the Earth's natural hospitality to humanity does not have a home in the discourse. And that's really what we're talking about. Eventually it reflects back on our own resilience because if the natural support system is no longer willing to accommodate us, then it doesn't matter if we can withstand a flood or a drought, we just get out of there. Now, the other thing is the notion of futurists and foresight experts engaging in trying to predict the future. And saying, okay, the future is uncertain and here's how we can adjust to it. What we're trying to do is something totally different. We know that the future is a function of our actions. It's not exogenous. So let's not look into trying to predict. And yeah, if this happens, we'll be ready because of this, no, we can actually create it. So let us, and there is an old saying, I mean, said by many different people. So the attribution is unclear that the best way to predict the future is to create it, Abraham Lincoln, several people said it. And so the difference from what is generally considered futurist literacy, futurist literacy looks at your capacity to anticipate and to respond to an unknown future. FLL, the moonshots, you know where you want to go and here are the steps you can design to go there. So we try to merge these. So try to have a futuristic mindset and then do that backcasting or moonshot exercise to get there. And so it's a process of creating that future. Don't let it be an exogenous variable, something that you have no control over because then we descend into apathy and just pray that someone will take care of it or that the future comes in a better form. Whereas the only reason it may be a bad future is our own actions. So we cannot relinquish our responsibility collectively and individually as humans. Yo, Professor Dr. Johann Rockstrom has done the planetary boundaries in the safe operating space of the planetary boundaries. He just barely came out with a book this week. Matter of fact, two days ago called Breaking Boundaries. He'll also have a Netflix on that. I want to know, he's also part of the UN advisor or also an advocate in some form consultant in many different ways, not only for the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, but along with planetary boundaries thinking, doughnut economics, the new green deal and those things. How did those different models spin into resilience frontiers, but also into the UN system? How are they being used with circular economy? So many people are hearing these different models, these different things out there and they're like, is that just for the EU? Is that for the whole globe? How do we understand it? How is it being applied? Does circular economy compete with planetary boundaries? Does doughnut economics compete with circular economy? Things like that. And I kind of want to know, how do those fit into what you just said, specifically planetary boundaries with resilience, but then maybe even the bigger picture, how's just the layperson supposed to understand all that confusion now? Is that competing with the UN or is that in line? No, I'm so glad you mentioned this because I see it as a continuum. Perhaps the starting point was the limits to growth report by the club of Rome. And we still haven't shifted that paradigm even with the notions you mentioned because the idea there was there are limited resources, so let's reduce our consumption, but still behave irrationally while reducing the consumption. You can just do less of the bad stuff because you'll end up with a limit. Of course, it didn't take into account any technological evolution or any of that. And so the world did not end in 2000 as predicted. Then you got your and Rockstrom's planetary boundaries. So, hey guys, there's another limit here. Don't go beyond it, reduce your consumption, improve some of the stuff, but the basic paradigm is there. You keep that system that keeps producing all these inequities and whatever. Then you got the donut economics. Yes, you have the boundaries, but there's a minimum inside too. So don't go below that because that's detrimental to people as well. And I think we're going a step ahead of that with Resilience Frontier saying that these boundaries, many of them are a function of our actions. So don't treat them as exogenous. Don't pretend they are there as a given because we can change them. I mean, many people, look, okay, over population density. So people are the problem because people are doing bad things to the environment. So maybe if you reduce the number of people doing bad things, then the environment will be better rather than get the people to do good things. Hence they won't be a problem. But one of the main essences of that desirable future we're seeing is for each human to put into nature more than they're taking away from it. Then that gets you thinking very differently about population growth. Then, hey, yeah, maybe we can accommodate a bit more people so they can do more good stuff for nature. And you'd say, yeah, but you can't increase the population at nausea. Maybe we're seven billion, you can become 10 or 15, but do you really think the earth can take more than that even if they're doing good stuff for nature? Well, look at this. If the world was to live at the population density of New York City, the whole seven billion people would fit into the state of Texas. So I believe that if each person was to behave responsibly and sustainably, the world can accommodate a lot more people. And those boundaries we're talking about are movable. So that's the essence of Resilience Frontiers. The planetary boundaries are a function of our actions. They're not givens. They are givens within the constraints of our current paradigm. But if we start thinking more intelligently, then you'll see that we determine those boundaries by our actions, by technological evolution and ensuring that the technological evolution is directed in a way that enhances our sustainability and our capacity to remain in a hospitable environment. And so that's basically it. That please do not imagine that the future is imposed on us from another planet or the limits are imposed on us through physical necessity or givens from biology or from physics. We're nowhere near that. The limits we're seeing now are mostly due to things that we have done and constraints that we have created. Now, fortunately, we've only been messing up for two centuries. And you mentioned Hindu. The reason she was there was for us to benefit from the wisdom of indigenous peoples and modernize towards indigenous thought, which turns upside down the notion that indigenous peoples are just there so we can protect them and their suffering and whatever it is, all that is correct. But they've managed to maintain their world and their natural support system over centuries. We've just been doing what we're doing for 200 years or so. And we've already messed up, so it's not working. And so we need the values, the worldviews, not just about the practices and the knowledge, that's ancillary. But you will note that indigenous cultures that have never talked to each other, some in the Inuit, in the polar region, the Chadian indigenous people, the Japanese, the Latin Americans everywhere, they've all come to that similar principle that any action you take has to be assessed for benefits over seven generations to come. And for me, that's mind-blowing that they all came to the same conclusion separately. And that destroys that whole cost-benefit analysis, discount rate stories. So that's the value we get there. They've managed to retain sustainability by really applying intergenerational equity. And we have a lot of stories from today's world with indigenous communities where extreme events happen and there were proposals for quick fixes that even though they would immediately solve their problems, they would have detrimental effects on future generations and they would refuse adamantly. And this would have cost clashes with local communities and others. And so there's a lot to learn from conventional wisdom. There's very little to learn from people who have been doing activities for two centuries that have led us on this downward spiral. So looking back at our experience to try to derive guidance for the future is the worst thing we can do. But to think afresh, to visualize that future world that we want, do not assume constraints that are not there except because of where we have put ourselves in and benefit from the people who really know, mostly the indigenous peoples for now and whoever is intelligent enough like yourself to think of that different world in the future that does not necessarily need to evolve incrementally from today's world without disrupting systems. And I think it's doable and it's actually doable without massive disruption or massive investment. I mean, if you look at the pathways, it's very small tweaks but that have to happen synchronously across all pathways that can lead us into that wonderful new world that we're aspiring to. I couldn't say it any better and thank you for making that so understandable. I believe that that is a big enough picture for something that's still evolving, developing more. I mean, we have a while till 2030 but we're actually have started and doing many steps towards there in COP 25 in Madrid last year, the wonderful resilience lab pavilion was there, many wonderful talks, people who were in Sando Korea were there, very successful, beautiful event in time with also more momentum, more people awareness, understanding how they can participate that they have a seat at the table that they're part of this as well. And that's more and more over the years that I see that something that the UN in general, let's give everybody a seat at the table, let's give them a voice, have them be a part of this journey for transformation and change, we need everyone. And so I really, really love that. Unless there's anything else that you wanna, that we left out on resilience frontiers, I think we'll move into a couple other topics before we wrap up today. Sure, go ahead. Okay. So the UNFCCC will be hosting and taking care of the COP 26 in Glasgow, which is, if I understand it correctly, is kind of co with Italy as a kind of a pre-COP and then the United Kingdom, and which is a wonderful event. Because of the pandemic and things, do you believe by the time the COP comes around, we'll have the availability for people to travel? Is it going to be a hybrid event? What can you already tease and tell us about that? And what can we expect? Why would this event be pivotal coming out of the pandemic or out of the experiences we've had as well? Well, the expectation now is that it will be a physical event, at least for the negotiations. We're still far from being able to replicate the functionality of in-person negotiations with huddles and corridor talks and coffee shop engagement, et cetera, on the virtual world. It's not that easy. And the expectation is that we would have physical negotiations in Glasgow with the appropriate health measures and social distancing, et cetera. But having said that, I think we're on an irreversible path where online engagement is here to stay. And so the idea is that it would, I mean, I characterize it as the largest COP in history. So we'd open the possibility for participation to many thousands of people through also virtual participation. And so for those who cannot justify the emissions to come to Glasgow to present at a side event or to participate in the resilience lab that you mentioned, we would make sure that we have the capacity for full engagement through online means. So the question is where to draw that threshold, how much would be virtual, how much would be physical? And that will be mostly a function of the global health situation at the time. But for now, the expectation is that there definitely will be a physical component, including with the presence of heads of state at the outset. And there definitely will be a virtual component as well. The ratio is still to be decided. Everyone is hopeful that by then we'll be closer to having more of physical engagement than not, unless something happens along the way, the trajectory is good, the vaccinations are proceeding. And if that happens, then it will be a major positive signal because I think no big physical conferences are taking place before that. So this would be the first huge one. And if it takes place, I think it will be, it will be really good for morale and for us finally getting on track to moving the discourse forward and benefiting now from all the experience we've gathered in virtual work to augment our in-person engagement with this new space that we've created and would benefit from. And like I said, there's a lot of people thinking of now, how can we reinvent the way that countries engage together to reach decisions, taking full advantage of both virtual and physical means? What does that paradigm shift entail? So yeah, that's where we are at the moment, but there's still time and hopefully we'll move in a positive direction. That's really my hope. And the COP25 didn't really have the results that we wanted, but as far as a resilience lab and some of the other wonderful objectives and new agendas that came out, it was a really great meeting, it was worth it. It was also unbelievable how quickly it was pulled together from going from Brazil to Chile to from Chile saying having issues to go to Madrid and having it all pull off and work, which was absolutely amazing. I'm sure you will amaze us again. The UNFCCC will amaze us again with what coming for Glasgow and we'll hope for the best that our world can get back in alignment. Right now the next big event that I know of is the World Economic Forum in Singapore. They moved their annual meeting from Davos to Lutzer and Bergenstock for a while and then said, no, we're gonna go to Singapore and it's still kind of on hold for that for August because they're unsure about the rules or restrictions or health conditions. So it would be nice to have a big event, one specifically around the climate and moving forward in that being in Glasgow is our first event coming out of this to get back together and to have a be hybrid as well. There's something else that actually really kind of started emerge in 2020 and that is the UN Food Systems Summit. So really big Secretary General Antonio Guterres producing the kind of pushing this agenda forward on the UN Food Systems Summit and Fabulous will have a physical event in June as the kind of the pre-food systems summit in Rome at the UNFAO and then in Italy and then we'll go to New York in September depending on how that looks as well if that will be a big physical or hybrid event as well that could turn out to be still up in the air as far as everything we've heard. You guys are involved in that as well. Good colleagues, not only David Navarro, Martin Frick who's also part of the Secretariat and has been for a long time has moved over to that position. What can you tell us about the UN Food Systems Summit your involvement and why it's such a pinnacle super coming together for the world? Well, thank you. I mean, we haven't had sort of one of those mega events in the UN for a while. You remember we had the Women's Summit in Beijing. We had the Durban Summit. We had the Population Summit and it's been a while since one theme has emerged to become that kind of a priority that necessitated that type of coalition or coalescence. The thing is that with climate change and its impacts food tends to be at the center of all these impacts, food security, food insecurity, water impacts affect food, food insecurity affects health. So it's connected to everything that we're talking about. And the types of decisions that we need have to be a bit beyond the usual. Why? Because we've reached that stage where as we've been talking for a while about paradigm shifts the nature of how our food production works today is one of those elemental factors that would need to be transformed in order for that desirable future to materialize. Especially the way the food industry is totally based on monoculture. And you know that that is sort of at the very contrarian to sustainability where diversity is key for plants to thrive. And we've known that forever. The indigenous peoples know that the principles of permaculture are basically the guarantors of a sustainable future. But this is what we have now. We've got to using soil not as a source of nutrition but just as a medium, a physical medium in which you place plants and all the nutrition comes from somewhere else. And of course you have problems with pests so you try to address that. Eventually you lose the top soil and the natural carrying capacity of the earth keeps being reduced as a result. So the transformation is interesting because the reason why you have these massive large scale monoculture establishments is that it is easy to use agricultural mechanization when everything is planted with one crop. But now with AI and automation and IoT, et cetera, maybe people can still continue making money but doing things the right way. And so yes, you can plant corn, beans and squash corn, beans and squash together which comes from indigenous communities in the Americas and have the machines go and just pick one of them because it can recognize them. And the idea here is that when you combine the right species together, then they help each other without human intervention. That's how forests work. You don't see a forest ranger going in and planting the seeds or watering the trees or whatever. They sustain each other. And you'll never see the same species planted next to each other because that's not how nature works. It thrives on diversity. They protect each other against pests and they nurture each other. The output of one serves as input to another. So eventually, and these are the basics of regenerative agriculture and we have to move in that direction. So I'm hopeful that actually we're very heavily involved. We are co-leading one of the action areas under resilience. And I'm hoping that we do not go back to plugging the holes but we see when we talk about systems, it's not about retaining today's systems as we move into the future and find how to make them better but you can actually disrupt the systems because today's food systems have certain ideas of what its components are. They have to have transport, for example. Maybe in the future, you don't need that because you'll be surrounded by the food unit. There are no food deserts. You're within a hundred or a thousand feet from wherever you need to be, whenever the food needs to be. And so I think the essence of that and what we will try to bring in is also rethinking the systems in trying to produce a world with regenerative food production because that would satisfy several objectives. One is that process of global recovery, the Earth recovery, not COVID now, but it has a benefit to ecosystems and the carrying capacity of the Earth but also to humans as we start producing food through regenerative means, they will be far more accessible than they are now. You're seeing a seed of that today already with community gardens, with permaculture outfits inside urban areas. Florida, not Florida, Atlanta, Georgia has just enacted the largest food forest within a city in the US and it's an amazing project. And it is in what was designated a food desert. So it was in a place where nothing was grown nearby. So if this starts becoming common practice and we keep replicating the good examples, there's so many regenerative farms in the world. They're small scale though and of course the big money is in the large scale stuff. So if that gets transformed, then I think we can get one step closer to that regenerative world that we want to get to. The problem now is there's a lot of corporations that are defining regenerative in their own way because there's no sort of official mandated definition. So some of the claims to be doing regenerative farming are not really the ones that we would consider to be regenerative. So hopefully the summit can help with this type of thing. But I think most importantly raising awareness of the practices that are totally win-win for everyone. And giving also exposure to new technologies whether they exist or they're in the pipeline that can actually enable large scale food production through regenerative and sustainable practices. So that's why I'm seeing the food summit as a turning point. So instead of us, we deal with food from one perspective, FAO from another, you know, EFAD, WFP everyone. We needed that umbrella engagement so as to plant the seeds, no pun intended of that paradigm shift in food as we move forward. That's so important. I'm glad you feel that regenerative agriculture, regenerative agroforestry is a big topic. I mean, I've spoken on it just in the last, since the pandemic, at least 26 times just had a podcast yesterday with Eric Tonesmeyer who wrote the section in Project Drawdown and the Drawdown book and his own book, The Carbon Farming Solution about perennials, regenerative farming where he started out the book just talking about the IPCC report about what's out there and what's going on with climate change and how important it is. We just make these big shifts in our food systems and like you mentioned, there's five action tracks. One of the tracks has a strong part of resilience in it. I guess that's the one you guys are definitely involved in and I hope that there will be a, not just the UN Food Systems Summit but that also the COP26 and Glasgow will have an aspect where we're actually talking about food and maybe bringing some more results of the UN Food Systems Summit there and that we really disseminate those new wisdoms and learnings. I've been getting updates and I'm doing a couple of the food system dialogues from David Nabarro and really learning and seeing how many innovations, how many changing things are emerging around the world in this area that are specifically within these guidelines of those action tracks and the heroes and the champions that they have working on this and doing this, it's really wonderful to see. I only have five questions left for you and we're kind of getting close on the time. One of them could be actually a little bit longer and so we might want to skip it. It's also one of a little bit more complexity. I don't know how positive it would be. Last time I heard you speak, you were really talking about NDCs which means nationally determined contributions and that they're cornerstone of national pledges for climate ambition and that you have just kind of been compiling and receiving new NDCs that you've had to do a report on or a synopsis, I don't know how a synthesis report on and that it will demonstrate a positive global transition towards a low carbon future that we aspire to. This is always a difficult thing NDCs regardless, I guess with the UN and I don't know if you want to give us an update on how that went, how the report and where we stand or if it's too much to go into and then we'll go into the last four questions. I can go through that quickly. I mean, the Paris Agreement in contrast to the Kyoto Protocol which had specific reduction commitments for groups of countries with numbers, et cetera, the Paris Agreement is different. It works through a Pledge and Review system. So it's left to each country to say what it wants to do, then we aggregate this and like I said, we have this global stock take every five years and we look at it and say, hey guys, we're doing really well, keep doing what you're doing. Or no, we're really not doing well, please do better than we hope for the next pledges to be better. And we have a mandate that no NDC will be less ambitious than the one before, so no backtracking. And so the first synthesis, this is actually the second one was for NDCs submitted till the end of the year, end of 2020. And we did not get from all countries. We actually got from countries responsible for 30% of emissions. And for those countries, the reduction that is being reflected is not close to where we need to be. And it's the same for those who didn't submit. So the old ones weren't, these aren't yet, but it's still lacked input from huge countries. And those will be included in the next update, which will be out right before the call. Now, how do we measure ambition? The IPC told us that we need a 45% reduction from 2010 levels by 2030. And where we are now is at 0.5. So it's an order of two orders of magnitude away. And it's the good news that it's heartening that a lot of countries have volunteered or pledged a net zero world for them in 2050 through different pathways. So along the way, we also need to see where they would be in 2030 to see how feasible it will be to reach net zero in 2050. We are also heartened by the fact that technology is moving faster than expected. So if you look at the IEA estimates, they've always been conservative compared to what happened in progress and renewables and in the price per kilowatt hour. And so this is happening, technology is moving faster than we think it will. And so might pull ambition up in ways that we can't see with a linear extrapolation in our heads. So I think the numbers will be much better by the end of the year. Officially, we were supposed to make a determination on ambition in 2023. But like I said, because of the science drive and as a result, the activism that took place whether from Fridays for Future Extinction Rebellion or others, we've seen a lot more interest in seeing that ambition be reflected earlier rather than later. And in Madrid, we saw a very vocal interventions from civil society because of the lack of that signal. Even though it's not a negotiating item, it is about countries pledging better action. And so I'm really hopeful, especially with what we've seen from the U.S. since the beginning of the year that by the time we get to Glasgow, we'll have much better figures. But if we don't, I think it will be a really bad message to the world that more needs to be done and some transformational thinking needs to take place. And I think better awareness of the consequences we're talking about. Thank you for giving us that update and even though kind of gloomy, definitely with the results. Last four questions I have moving on to a more positive note. One is the hardest question I'm gonna ask you today even though you've addressed some pretty hard topics and it's the burning question WTF and no, it's not the swear word, it's what's the futures? And I really wanna know from you and what your hope and ambitions and what you would like to see, you don't need to give me the two diplomatic or the two U.N. stance, but in your vision, what's the futures? Where are we going? What's the plan? What do we have to be hopeful for to look at that seventh generation horizon, so to say? Can you answer that for me? Yeah, from a climate change perspective, I think the future is very likely one that will be quite positive because if we do not take action as we anticipate should be taken, we will get into the frog in the boiling water sooner rather than later because we are seeing increases invisible impacts of climate change. So in no time, you start seeing hurricanes in places that have not experienced it before, more frequent, more intense, et cetera. And that should trigger an acceleration. See, the good news is the direction is there. We're moving towards a shift to renewable energies. The transport industry is there. I mean, they've put timelines, cities have committed. So the problem we have is time. It's not direction. I think direction is set. It's irreversible. It's how fast we can get there. So anything that will accelerate will be good. The fact that the Paris Agreement is a voluntary pledging system does not really inject that time element. So we need a bottom up push as well from civil society, from science, from R&D to accelerate at a higher rate. So I think that's going to happen because everyone is vigilant. Now everyone is watching. And once that happens, once you solve the climate change problem, it links to so many other things in the SDGs and to ecosystems and to food and to water. So I think there'll be a lot of entry points for helping us move to that desirable world through the climate change lens. I mean, it's like I said at the beginning, it's a wicked problem, partly, not just because of the multiple players or the uncertainty, but also because it links to everything in our lives. You move something here, everything else gets affected in other ways than you have a whole group of interest groups and economic implications, et cetera. And so I think we will get to that sweet spot where everyone is happy and business is able to contribute as they should. And to make that transformation into that new techno economic paradigm where new jobs will be created for these new industries and a new level of economic activity will be pursued. So we're in a paradigm shifted world. And we know that we have these waves of economic development that happen where old industries go and new industries come. So I think that's happening. My challenge is to make sure that as we fix the symptom, we're also fixing the ailment. And I'm hopeful that as we get to 2030, we fix the SDGs, we fix climate change and we'll also manage to fix the foundation of everything else so that our relationship with nature is no longer one of enmity or just an extractive one. And in schools, they still look at natural resources as factors of production rather than as things that sustain us. And so this is my aspiration that we change the worldview and the mindset towards engaging with nature in a regenerative and more friendly way. It's not our adversary and not our enemy and not just something there to be pillaged, but it's a totally different type of resource. I love that. I also believe that we're in the right direction. It's just that time factor as well. One thing that humanity has always been really bad at is judging the exponential function. And I believe anyone who knows how that works at first on the exponential function, it seems like we're just going flat. We're at the same line. And then that growth, that hockey stick really occurs as we reach critical mass and things happen. I think we'll be surprised that we start to implement more and more of those things. And I've seen a lot of people wake up since the pandemic, I've been busier than ever. It's all around environmentalism. It's all around the climate. It's all around sustainable innovations for purpose and really talking about these big existential problems that we have and how we can resolve them. Last three questions I have are for my listeners. If there was one message that you could depart to my listeners as a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change their life, what would it be, your message? Seek out regenerative products. Make sure that you vote with your money. It's not just about putting out the message and continuing with our lifestyle, but make sure that your lifestyle reflects the values that we're talking about. And so whether it's a daily decision of walking versus using transport or public transport or whether it is buying a product from the supermarket, please take the time to look at the origin of everything. Make sure it has not contributed to something unsustainable or to enhancing inequities. There's a lot of labels that will give you that information. And with that, I think the seed for transformation will be put into effect. What should young innovators looking... And I get this question a lot. People, the youth in general, I wanna be in the UN. I wanna go do an internship. I wanna be there. But what should young people, young innovators and even those advancing in their life be in your field be thinking about if they are looking for ways to make real impact for the world? Join the UN, do an internship. What are some of your suggestions? Well, it depends on their passion. I mean, I'm seeing now, I'm collecting a lot of what they call bright lights for resilience frontiers, which are existing initiatives that are either already living in that future we're aspiring to. So they're conducting their business and producing things that are already compatible with that desirable future or are doing things that can help with the transformation. And predominantly the people who have started these startups have been youth, people right out of college. I'm seeing an amazing drive and passion for not just solving the climate change problem, but sustainability in general. And a lot of the greatest ideas are coming from young people and a lot of the new companies that are doing this are coming from young people. So if that's the passion, please pursue it, noting that it's not risky. The world is moving in that direction. I think that could be a built in fear that, hey, no one's doing this. Should we really use AI to conduct risk assessments for poor farmers and whatever? Yes, you should, because that's the direction. So once you know that, you would realize that it's better to be one of the first movers than to come in later. If the passion is to work in policy, then certainly the UN needs more youth and needs fresh thinking. So we'd be very happy to, I mean, we do host internships, we have also fellowships, but jobs, I mean, our entry level starts with positions that require two years of experience. And for anyone with a passion for a future regenerative world, we really need this type of thinking in the UN across the board, not just in my organization, but everywhere. And the idea is to have that vision, that storyline in one's head of where we want to be when we grow up. Is this the world that you want? So are we pursuing just individual affluence and to have a great life? Or are you also aspiring to live in a place where everything is sustainable and you've prepared it in a way that would be good for future generations? So the UN is a great place to push these ideas forward. Certainly welcome. Otherwise, those more scientifically and technically inclined should do their own startups and create the seeds for that future. What have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far that you would have loved to know from the start? That most of the constraints that we think are given are movable and do not need to be there. So all these things from you can't do this because the rule says so. Well, there's always a channel to change the rule if you advocate enough. Or you can't do this because it's never been done before. Well, so what? There's always a first time. So not to be constrained by any conventional wisdom that can hold you back. So when one is new, you want to conform. You want to not break rules. You want to not break molds. You want to come into the in-crowd and not seen as being disruptive. But then I think what I know now is that one has to speak up and act in order to change things that even though the majority might be seeing as normal, you can see that they're leading you to a wrong place. And I'm not just talking about fixing the world. I'm talking about even little things. The rules say this and you find that the rule is unethical or inequitable. Then one has to see, okay, how do we change the rule? Let's go. Let's discuss it. Let's have a committee, whatever. So this is the thing that I know now that I didn't know then. I just thought that if people say it's not allowed, then it's not allowed. What can I do? I'm glad you said that. So I'm gonna have Dr. Bertram Picard on the show in a couple of days. And he's really someone who doesn't, does things that others don't know are not impossible. And you know, kind of this explorer mentality. And that's really the thing. If you take that stance, it really, you'll be surprised. So I'm thankful for that. Yusuf, thank you for letting us inside of your ideas. I really appreciate your time today on your day off to sacrifice for us to let us know your wisdoms. It's been a shared pleasure and we could talk forever. We'll see each other very soon. And I just thank you very much. Thank you, Mark. It's been a pleasure and happy to talk with you anytime. Take care. Have a wonderful day. Thank you.