 Hello. I'm Fergus treaties chief scientist at Siegwric Grad and co convener of the transformative partnership platform on agricultural known as TPP. Here at the global landscapes forum on the sidelines of COP26 in Glasgow, I was able to interview the president of Schrampp on recent developments in implementing a national agroecological Welcome, your excellency, Godabaya Rajapaksa, president of Sri Lanka. It's a huge privilege to be able to take a few minutes out of the frenetic activity at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP26, here in Glasgow, to talk with you about linkages between agriculture and climate change. Firstly, could I ask you how agriculture and food systems are linked to climate change, mitigation and adaptation, and what implications this has for national policy? A considerable amount of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. This is specially true of large-scale agriculture and agricultural practices that rely excessively on artificial fertilizers. Excess use of artificial fertilizer can lead to nitrogen pollution on land, waterways and in the atmosphere, which the Colombo Declaration on Sustainable Nitrogen Management seeks to reduce. At the same time, agriculture and food systems are very vulnerable to climate change as well. In Sri Lanka, which is a developing island nation, climate change has resulted in changes in weather patterns that have affected agricultural output. Climate change mitigation and adaptation measures are there of great importance in policymaking when it comes to agriculture. Thank you for being so clear, Excellency. Back in June this year at the 48th session of the Committee on World Food Security, you changed the game by urging countries to take old steps to tackle climate change and led the way by announcing a national ban on the import of harmful agrochemicals to Sri Lanka. How difficult has it been to implement this policy and how has it had to be adapted as implementation has unfolded? The restrictions made to import of harmful artificial fertilizer as well as of wheat sites and pesticides has met with a lot of resistance in Sri Lanka. Some of this resistance is due to entrenched lobbies that want to promote these substances. However, despite overuse of chemical fertilizer leading to soil degradation and inefficiency in farming over many years, there is still a very widespread belief within the farming community that organic fertilizer will lead to lower yields. For this reason, there is a lot of resistance coming from the farming community against the restriction of these imports even though such restrictions are better for human health as well as the health of the planet. We also have significant practical challenges in moving away from a system that was heavily dependent on artificial fertilizers and towards organic agriculture. One significant issue is increasing production of organic fertilizer domestically since there are serious concerns about transplanting different microbial cultures. As a result, we are left having to seek newer alternatives such as nitrogen extracts which is in short supply globally. We need support from the international community to obtain technological solutions to the problems caused by lack of viable alternatives to chemical fertilizers. We also need scientific alternatives for chemical wheat sites and pesticides. Sri Lanka has taken the bold step of trying to turn its food systems organic in a short span of time. Such bold steps are needed to achieve transformative change. However, if our attempts at change don't receive the support it requires, our efforts may not succeed. This will send entirely the wrong signal about sustainability at what most people agree is a very critical time for the health and future of our planet. Thank you for being so candid, Your Excellency. Now, you have seen that so far 27 countries and 35 organisations have listened to your call to action and signed a declaration of commitment to transform food systems through agriculture. What advice do you have for this new coalition to ensure that it gets beyond talking about the problems of agriculture and climate change to start acting at scale to tackle them? I'm very glad that more countries are acting to transform food systems through agroecology. I strongly believe that such urgent action is essential to make global food systems more sustainable, which will also increase food security, which is a major concern for most countries. However, I firmly believe that there is a lot more scope for international cooperation in this regard. Countries with more developed agricultural systems can do more to share the technologies they use and to support developing countries that are trying to improve the quality of their food systems through agroecology. I hope that more such support will be forthcoming in the future as more and more countries start to see the importance of sustainable agriculture globally. Thank you for that very inspirational call to action, Your Excellency. It was a great privilege to talk with you today.