 As Nile said, my name is Albert Salamanca. I'm the cluster lead for Climate Change cluster of SEI Asia. We've already seen, felt, heard, and experienced the impacts of climate change. Some of you might have experienced already the 2011 flooding in Thailand. Although we know it as much as a human-made disaster. And then some of us here also experienced the 2014 Typhoon Haiyan or Yolanda in the Philippines. The impacts are immense. They're consequential and existential to the people in this region, South East Asia. The science of human-induced climate change is unequivocal. There is increased warming globally in both land and ocean. In a paper published by Halligate and Rosenberg in 2017 just recently, they have shown that climate change will bring 13 million people in Asia below the extreme poverty line, where the World Bank defined this as living with less than 1.90 US dollar a day, or about 65 Thai baht, 95 Philippine pesos, 25,000 Indonesian rupee, or 3,000 Vietnamese dong, in today's exchange rate. Of this, 13 million, 3 million will be in the Philippines, 2 million in Indonesia, and 1 million in Vietnam. The two most important channels through which climate change affects poverty through the effect of climate change on agricultural prices, as you've seen on the figure, and health through the impacts from malaria, diarrhea, and stunting. In other words, if we fail to address the impacts of climate change, climate change becomes a poverty multiplier, where poor people are made even poorer, and their number will increase. The Paris Agreement, recognized as the fastest multilateral environmental agreement to come into force, enshrines participation as an important aspect of its implementation. It's preamble states that climate change is a common concern of humankind. Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote, and consider their respective obligations on human rights. The right to health, the rights of indigenous people, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities, and people in vulnerable situations, and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity. This is a clear and definitive recognition that we need to be inclusive in our response guided by the principles and obligations on human rights. In Article 7, paragraph 5, it says that adaptation action should follow a country-driven, gender-responsive, participatory, and fully transparent approach taking into consideration vulnerable groups, communities, and ecosystems, and should be based on and guided by the best available science and, as appropriate, traditional knowledge, knowledge of indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems with a view to integrating adaptation into relevant socioeconomic and environmental policies and actions were appropriate. In the case of mitigation, the intentions for community participation are not the clear cut. The agreement mentions in different paragraphs, for instance, here, to incentivize and facilitate participation in the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions by public and private entities, enhance public and private sector participation in the implementation of nationally determined contributions, or the so-called NDCs. There are no mentions about the role of communities and mitigation. But the question is, how do we exactly involve local communities when, in actuality, they are not parties to the convention? In other words, how do we achieve a meaningful and inclusive implementation of the Paris Agreement when those who are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are not part of the discussions at global levels because all existing multilateral environmental agreements are state-centric? Our speakers will discuss the role of local communities in the implementation of the Paris Agreement and possibly offer recommendations on how we might achieve that moving forward, especially as we implement the countries' nationally determined contributions, and move forward to the global stock take in 2023. Understanding pathways for the participation of local communities in climate change adaptation and mitigation is an important theme in the work of SEI's Asia's cluster and climate change. May I invite now my colleague, Maitazin Ong, to introduce our panelists and commence the discussions. Good afternoon, everyone. Maitazin Ong, I'm a research associate at SEI Asia. And I work with Elbert and others on the climate adaptation cluster. So I thought the last session was a good segue because it began talking about inclusive ways in which we can engage communities, how we can use local knowledge. So without further ado, I'll introduce our participants, our panelists. So first is Richard Klein, who is a senior research fellow, very own SEI, and he is an internationally leading expert on climate change and policy of climate change adaptation. Richard, would you come up to the stage, please? And he will tell us about the key clauses and aspects of the Paris Agreement on inclusion and share his insights on the processes to get to the stage that we are at. Next, I'd like to welcome attorney Epat Luna. She is the Undersecretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the Philippines. This is the main department responsible for environmental management and policymaking. She is also an environmental lawyer, and she's led many environmental organizations. Welcome. She will be talking to us about the experiences from the Philippines, from the perspective of government, as well as advocacy. Next, I'd like to invite Ajahn Naruman, from Chulalongkorn University. She is an assistant professor in the politics department and also the program director of the Master of Arts in International Development Studies here. Welcome. She will be speaking to us about the role of academia and her perspectives on how the Paris Agreement or other environmental agreements are useful for engaging with academia. Next, I'd like to invite Mr. Daniel Cassander. He is the First Secretary and Regional Program Manager for Environment and Climate Change at the Development Cooperation Section of the Embassy of Sweden in Bangkok. He'll reflect on the climate change agreements and strategies for inclusion from the donor's perspective. And last but not least, Dr. Wanum Pampibul, the Director of Climate Watch Thailand, which focuses on climate policies and actions towards a just and sustainable society. She's also a member of Asia Climate Change Consortium and a coordinator of the Climate Action Network. So I will let these experts begin their introduction and I hope that it will be a very useful and fruitful discussion. Thanks, May and Albert, for inviting me to be on this panel. The Paris Agreement to start with a tongue-in-cheek comment. For many, the Paris Agreement was actually very inclusive because it included countries that were left out of the Kyoto Protocol. So when the Paris Agreement was then agreed in 2015, most of the attention was focused on the fact that the distinction between the poor and the rich countries that characterized Kyoto was no longer that clear in Paris and that was a hopeful sign it was thought. But as Albert showed, the Paris Agreement does recognize the importance of local communities and the inclusion of indigenous people and it does that for two reasons. The first reason is that the UNFCCC being an intergovernmental process where countries, national governments, are the ones negotiating and deciding. When it comes to implementation, there's only really so much that countries can do. Much of the climate action, mitigation and adaptation will need to happen at the city's level, at the regional level, the level of the private sector and also civil society organizations have an important role to play in advocating this kind of action. And that process already started before Paris in 2014, the Lima Paris Action Agenda was set up which was a way of stimulating and motivating what are called now non-party stakeholders or non-state actors to indicate what kind of actions they were committed to. And also there is a non-state actor zone for climate action which is, I'm gonna read this out because the words are just wonderful, launched to galvanize the groundswell of actions on climate change, mitigation, adaptation from cities, regions, businesses and civil society organizations. Now the second reason for involving and recognizing the importance of non-state actors is when it comes to adaptation, much of the adaptation will target the local level and to be effective, it really needs to be, it needs to involve local communities and where appropriate indigenous people. To work on this further, the Paris Agreement also established local communities and indigenous people platform. The aim of that according to the Paris Agreement is to exchange experiences and share best practices of mitigation adaptation in a holistic and integrated manner. The next question of course is how, how would it do that? What kind of role would that platform have? There have since Paris been a few sessions of a dialogue to operationalize the platform. It has also broadened the scope. It is now seen as having three functions. One is to share the knowledge and experiences that I just mentioned. There's also a capacity building function, particularly building capacity of local communities and indigenous people to engage with the climate process and a function to incorporate that knowledge and engagement in climate relevant decisions and policies and actions. And that has led to that platform now being a negotiated agenda item from the next climate negotiations in Bonn onwards. Now, the words are all very fine and Frank Tomala also mentioned something like this in the previous session. There's a lot of rhetoric. What does it actually mean in practice? As Albert said, it's the national governments that are the ones negotiating and deciding but it is not only the national government it's really all parts of society that are necessary to implement the Paris agreement. The question of course is how that's going to happen. I think I'm gonna leave it there and be happy to talk about finance and other issues in the discussion or in response to other interventions. Thank you, Richard. Epat, would you mind sharing with us your perspective from government as well as advocacy standpoint? Thank you, Mae. I'm very happy to be here. National commitments, especially when conditional, can sometimes be meaningless in the face of daily community struggles but there definitely is a congruence between local level successes and best practices there and meeting these national obligations. As a new entrant to the civil service, I am finding that we face a few major challenges in inclusive implementation. One of them being, I'll state the three, relevance, access particularly through technology and equity. For relevance, it needs to be relevant to the community level and full transparency as a phrase in the Paris agreement leaves much to be desired because the focus is on the provider and not the receiver. 1.5 degrees is a global collective goal but people tend to act based on their individual and at least their family goals. Governments would have to start appropriating the marketing genius of corporations if they expect an uptake. If you spread out the initial expense for a solar lamp, for example, through credit programs or even solar lamp rentals, the family can expect to save money and have efficient lighting but you still need marketing to sell the idea. As much as communities need to have knowledge about climate change, governments need to have appreciation of local decision making process to understand what is relevant and to expand their options, offer choices previously unknown to them and finally what is relevant in the community must match the development plans and agendas of government. The second is access through technology. Climate spending should integrate bridging the digital divide. For the past six years, the Philippines spent $600 million of the country's coffers in a reforestation project. One would expect a deluge instead of a trickle down of the money but contractors for the planting and the maintenance of, do not even have copies of the contracts they signed or the payment schedules and processes. So the money doesn't really go to them. What if part of the contract is a tablet with internet connection containing understandable information on the program in their own language? The department already has an application, an app that shows the planting polygons what years they were planted and its geotag. It is a simple matter just to upload the relevant contracts and payment schedules accessible to the contractors where they can also post geotag photos of their plantings to prove that they actually grew these trees. Communities not only need to have access to information they need to hear their own voices and those voices have to translate as data. The future will be crowdsourced. The speed at which governments can get on board this is dependent on whether they are not burdened by corruption or incompetence. The third is equity and equity across scales. Common but differentiated responsibility presupposes a lack of equity among nations. But we have to understand that these layerings of differentiations are also present in the smaller scales and at every level. There are power imbalances within local communities and this is both an opportunity and a threat. The ones with more resources frequently gain leadership roles and these roles are not usually occupied by loan sharks for the most part. The ones that mop up the resources in the local level. Once there is uptake among the leaders of a mechanism or technology that can efficiently and cheaply provide their needs, the shift can be swift and can rely on the natural tendency to keep up with the neighbors. As long as of course there is credit and the loan sharks are kept at bay. Equity can be delivered not only through credit but also micro insurance. Families are pushed further into poverty by illness and they have to throw all the families resources into that spending pit. Micro insurance for health has been tried in several areas in the country but it also allows the state and the insurer themselves to engender policies for public health for an equally healthy balance sheet of the micro insurance entity. Of course all these local successes might be meaningless in the face of a national energy policy that still considers coal as the cheapest energy source. But more and more this is changing not just because of the cost of externalities but also because of the massive uptake and technological advances already available. But we are still entering into 30 year power supply agreements with coal plants. And these will last well into the years when for certain these will be more costly than renewables as prices of the latter drop. Business like developed countries must also bear a burden commensurate to the benefits they got. National commitments can be achieved through policies that provide options and incentivizes rather than merely persuades and disincentivizes lock ins to fossil fuels. Thank you very much. Please. Ajanaraman. For me I think it might come when we talk about the issue of to what a meaningful and inclusive implementation of the Paris Agreement. We might come with two terms. I think the first term is the issue of the inclusiveness that what do we mean by the meaning of inclusiveness and how for me to speak on behalf of the academic. I mean one thing that we can say is that as a lecturer from a Jula Longan University who taught who teach in politics and also development study. One thing that we found out in term of the issue of participation and partnership is that the role of the academic may involve with the local community in order to dealing with the mitigation from the impact of the climate change. But how to make the Paris Agreement more meaningful is that we need to revisit this kind of this issue. For instance, in case of Thailand I think now you are facing the floods in the morning. Some participants cannot come and some of my lecturers already tell me that okay, can we do exam to sky because we are from Salaya, we cannot, I mean swim come to Jula. So basically we face the impact of climate change already. But, and we already talking about Paris Agreement. So how the academic can do. We can also produce a kind of the knowledge to talk what's supposed to be the adaptation process. What's supposed to be the policy for the government that need to do. But to make it more implementation I think the idea of inclusiveness in a sense that not only from the government but also from the private sector, from the academic and from civil society we might have to sit together and saying that okay, let's admit that we are facing the problem of the climate change. What can we do together? And we should do not on the expense of the other. And right now to follow what Albert said I think we just finish the book on flooding and migration. And from vulnerable we found out that the rural are the one who pay the expense. When we look at the issue of vulnerability we found that even though people in the center plane of Thailand they might be able to be okay because of the flood. But they are the one who have to stop doing their crop, their rice plantation in order to make people in Bangkok not flood. Or if you are going to Ubon Rajatani it's the same thing. The spillway of the dam will be open when it's going to be flood in Ubon not because to allow the fish to migrate to the Moon River. So basically this is already an example of inequality. Inequality not in terms of what happened to the life but inequality in terms of power. So for me the definition of participation will not only form a ritual but participation should link with the meaning of equality. Equality in a sense that they should be able to do equal participation. Not only being to sit together to make it as a big group but their voice have never been heard. And second, equality in a sense of equal power in determining the outcome of decision. And I think to make the meaning of the Paris Agreement to be more meaningful that's the issue of the definition of the participation. And I think for academic we also feel the same thing. I think other friends from academia may feel the same that we write a lot of the paper but we are not sure who will read our paper and after reading our paper will they use our recommendation to do on any project and this is some kind of the example. The second issue that I would like to propose for this the meaning of inclusion is the partnership. Right now what the nation state including our government tend to see the meaning as we are subordinate rather than partner. So basically the civil society or local community being seen as those who supposed to follow the policy from the above. So in that case maybe the meaning of partnership should be an equal partnership in a sense that they possible be able to do. What will be the suggestion for the concrete how to make the Paris Agreement at least be implement at the local level if not at the national level. I think one thing that we might have to go back again is that when we look at the local community a certain local community they have their ability to do the climate adaptation. So in that case it might be another not only to be participation and partnership maybe come with another 2D decentralization and more democratization allow the local community to be more decentralized and they be able to propose what kind of the climate adaptation that they can do at the community level and allow them to be more democratization process in a sense that not only listen to the province governor and also those who are from birth. So in my opinion this will be the real meaning for the inclusiveness for the meaningful of the Paris Agreement. Thank you. Mr. Daniel please. Thank you. Good afternoon. On the global level of course Sweden has been and wants to continue to be a strong voice in the comprehensive and full implementation of the Paris Agreement. However, this discussion on the global level among the Paris Agreements and climate change agenda in general they tend to be quite focused on the emissions and the mitigation etc. And while this is of course of key important for us as a donor and a regional donor here in Asia we want to keep as directly focused on poverty reduction as possible and as such we will focus mostly on the parts of the Paris Agreement linked to adaptation and the financing of the adaptation agenda. And the ways in which we can do this is basically through the programs, organizations that we support financially but also through our dialogue with partners and the public and governments. And to support this as we stated is that the inclusive and meaningful implementation of Paris Agreement basically we have three main ways in which we do this through these programs and organization and dialogue. Firstly, I would say it's capacity building. Secondly, supporting participation. And thirdly, financing, racing and promoting finance of the adaptation agenda. And on capacity building, firstly, this is of course something that we worked on and believed in for a very long time in the development cooperation. But with this new and ambitions and strong needs in the climate change field, we believe that there's even more necessary to focus on capacity building and not least on the local level. Not least also then on government institutions and local government institutions because of course building the capacity of local communities is very much important. These are the right holders and they need to be able to build their capacity and raise their voice and demands. However, to be meaningful and inclusive the whole process, there needs to be a responsive duty barrier in place to be able to react and to respond to these increased demands and knowledge and needs from the communities and the rights holders. And so that's why we feel it's important to really build the capacity of local government institutions to be able to respond to this, to be a responsive duty barrier. Secondly on participation. In theory, all these processes as we have discussed and also all of our programs and projects that we and organizations that we support should be participatory. This is however easier said than done. We see in practice that many of these international agreement systems and also donor initiatives aren't so participatory in practice and implementation as said out to be. So this is something we really need to strive to actively address from the design of the initiatives and throughout the processes to keep the focus on participation. And actually we see that it's not enough only to focus on participation as such. We have also to keep an eye on who is participating, who is being represented, which groups are being included. Otherwise, if keeping a business as usual and approach women, minorities, et cetera will be underrepresented in these processes. Because this work will only be as inclusive and participatory as the countries and institutions will make them. So we have as a role, as a donor to be there and actively address and promote participation throughout. And then thirdly on finance. Finance, it will be a key part in the successful implementation of the Paris Agreement and especially the adaptation agenda. And so we work a lot with building the capacity of countries to access and implement international financing. However, even if the international finance continue to grow and actually will be available it will still be too little to be able to address all the adaptation needs. So we feel there is an increasing need to support the countries to actually raise and handle their domestic available financing in a more efficient ways towards climate change adaptation but also to help to direct private flows in the direction of climate change adaptation. So that's really important in terms of financing. And as to conclude, all these things may sound like it's very quite easy to address and that we're doing it as a donor all the time. However, it is very difficult to keep track on this and it's easy to forget in all these complex processes. And with this new Swedish regional strategy that we have for the coming five years it has puts a lot of focus on our working climate change to have a human rights and gender equality perspective in all the programs and partnerships that we support. And this is a really good reminder to us all the time to keep the people in the focus and to help to flip these sometimes top down agendas upside down and to bring the inclusiveness and participation to the forefront. So thank you. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for the inviting climate watch to share some of the views from working from the ground. I think we put Paris agreement aside and let's look at the reality on the ground. And with that, I have structured my presentation into three parts. I'll start with the cases that whether you have the Paris agreement or not communities have already engaged in protecting the climate and also engaged in making themselves survival during a time of disaster and also the time of climate change. And the second one is what has been stemmed out as something we might not want to see from the Paris agreement. For example, in terms of the net negative emissions, for example, that would be my second part. And the third one is you have the Paris and then you have a province like Rabi. You have a province like Piz Annulo, for example. Those are such a long way from Paris to Bangkok, to Thailand and to those provinces in the country. What is the missing link? So I'll start with the cases. I'd like to highlight three cases. If you are familiar with Thailand, it's not just only started with Paris agreement in 2015, but it has a long, long starting fighting of the communities against a big development projects, the coal fire power plant. Those are long, long before the Paris agreement. So people in Rabi province and also in other provinces in Thailand where coal fire power plants were to be constructed. Those people, whether they know about Paris or whether they know about climate change, it is a different one. But they want to protect the climate. So they want to stop coal fire power plants. That is one case. And the real case right now is in Taipa Songkla province and also in Rabi province. And continuation of those cases of against coal, community is getting together in order to go for 100% renewables. So that means Gabi would go green 100% renewables in the next three years. And then the second one would be on adaptation. Communities around Thailand who've been faced with changes to the climate, whether it is disasters or whether it is something that I'm not so sure whether it is a real climate change or just only a climate variations. But communities are there and they are adjusting themselves and they are trying to engage themselves in the policies and measures in order to survive during the time of the disasters. Some of the communities experiencing in terms of like making their own risk reduction plan and trying to engage those plans into the policy and also the local planning process. So those would be one thing that would need to be highlighted in terms of how communities are engaged themselves in the decision-making process. And then the second one, very short one on negative emissions that has been stemmed out from the Paris Agreement. Paris has set up the ceiling for temperature increase, temperature increase, 1.5 to 2 degrees. So if you're translating that, that means what? That means you need to do something that is missing and that is the urgency part of it. So it's not gonna be a business as usual. The energy policy can't go away with the fact that they need to be adjust and also transformed into a more greener and also more renewables. And also in terms of adaptation, you need to work more, even harder and put more resources in order to reduce the risk and also build resilience and also to go for a long-term adaptation. Adaptation in a sense that the whole world right now is controlled by CO2, let's say. It's not gonna be a natural process. So with CO2 as a new factor, and that means you really need to plan for what would be happening in the future. And the long-term adaptation needs to be planning ahead. And then that comes to the technology that has been put in the discussion under the Paris Agreement, the clean coal technologies and also the carbon capture and storage. Those are kind of what we feel as a false solution to the climate protection. So those, if you're implementing those that will be delaying in terms of the engaging the civil society and also engaging the people in getting out of the poverty and also making themselves surviving during the time of the changes to the climate. What is really, really missing is the urgency part. We see a number of policies in ASEAN countries. You can see a lot of coal-fire power plants in the pipeline and also you see a marginalised part on renewable energy. If you continue on doing that, that is the business as usual part, but you need urgency in terms of protecting the climate and managing the mitigation side and also increasing the capacity of the local communities in dealing with the changes to the climate. So urgency part needs to be put in in the discussion of the climate change. And the last one would be on linking the community's perception and also knowledge on climate and climate and the changes to the climate to the science community. As I said, CO2 is the main factor here. CO2 is increasing. What will be happening in the next 10, 20 and 30 years? It's not going to be a business as usual. It's not going to follow the natural process in terms of disasters. Changes are going to happen. How are you going to plan and survive during the time of those changes? So that would need to be communicated with community and you need the science to communicate and also to facilitate the discussion in order to engage the local communities as well. Okay, thank you very much. So we have so much information, maybe some skepticism, some evidence from communities that there are a lot of things happening on the community level, but how can those be included? But before we delve deeper into that, can I urge the participants to just ask questions of each other? I have one as a policy drafter. I frequently find myself asking scientists to just please tell me what needs to be done in the policy level instead of just giving me results that hardly mean anything to policy makers. They're very risk averse in terms of making prescriptions and laying out what needs to be done in a policy way. And I was hoping the panel here can give us some ideas on how to tease these recommendations out of the ones that generate the information. Thanks, I'll try and address that. Not that I have the solution here, but I mean, I can imagine that it can be frustrating to hear so much information and not a clear answer as to, okay, so what is it actually that we should be doing? This morning we saw the yellow and the red smileys, right now still has one over there. And the question was, are we ready to make change? I would have answered yellow, yes, we ready, but are we willing? That's another question. Now when it comes to the implementation of the Paris Agreement, I think there are many opportunities and I think also that what I've presented, the involvement of many non-state actors is a very important sign that action can take place at many levels. When it actually comes then to promoting and advancing a kind of action, where does one start? And I agree with you that the urgency is there and it needs to be clearly expressed, but I don't think it's particularly effective to say, you know, the Paris Agreement should do this or the UNFCCC project should do that. The UNFCCC is a UN driven or a country driven process. And when it comes to the implementation, it really is then up to the countries. So when we're talking about the involvement of local communities, of cities, of civil society organizations, much of that will have to take place at the national level. And I think organizations like CDAC can very much guide and steer that process. But the role of the UNFCCC is in a way of facilitating one. You know, until Paris it was facilitating the negotiations, you know, the decision making process until we had an agreement like the one in Paris. Now it is changing tack to some extent to facilitate the implementation of that, which is a new process, which they're also in a way looking at how that can best be done. But to engage in that process, it doesn't really help to stand on the sidelines and argue we need to put this on the agenda, we need to put that on the agenda. The best way to do that is to use the entry points that exist by, for example, and we do that as the Stockholm Environment Institute to submit our research wherever relevant whenever there is a call for submissions under a particular agenda item. That will then be taken up into a document that goes to the negotiators and we've seen several times on our work on fossil fuels and our work on indirect climate risk that this does actually enter the discussions on particular agenda items. I think that is one way in which we can facilitate some change at that level when it comes to facilitating change sort of at the local to national level. There are many other entry points as well and maybe somebody else is better qualified to answer that. Daniel, would you like to respond to that first since Richard's perspective is that the UNFCCC is just a facilitator and maybe but a very powerful facilitator and yet donors like CEDA have a lot of influence on the way this process can go. So would you have any insight on that or elaborate on your role and what you could do to push the process to be more inclusive and better? Well, I mean, of course, as you say, of course the donor countries can influence these processes a bit. I mean, on the global level, Sweden as a country and the government influence the discussions. But for us as a regional donor here in Asia, we try to really focus on the regional level and from our perspective, this is sometimes a missing link in these type of global processes where there is a global discussion, a global agreement, but it's actually focused on national responsibility and implementation. The regional level becomes a missing link. Although, and especially in terms of the climate change agenda, this is really an important part of the solution because the problem itself is a transboundary, the issues are regional, so you cannot only address them at the national level. So in terms of our influence, what we really want to do is to strengthen the regional institutions, the regional discussions on these issues. We want to include more participation in the regional discussions on these issues. But I think there is where we really now put our focus and by addressing the regional level, by addressing cooperation amongst countries, we want to build a strengthened national government, strengthened national ownership of these processes all the way down to the local level. Of course, we cannot really be present all the way down to local level in all cases, but our many of our organizations that we support do help those networks. But by addressing the regional level where there is missing links, we want to have an added value. Can I ask myself? Let's go ahead, yeah. I also, I mean, may not ask people on the panel, but also need to ask myself and people on the floor. I think, for instance, in terms of the role of academic, I think we are very discipline-based. We do not work with each other cross-discipline, and also in many times, for me as a social side, it's very difficult for me to talk with friends who are from the side and tie to debate that can we solve the issue of the climate change? Can we work together? Can we solve the issue of poverty with the new technology or something like that? And I think this is a thing that maybe we also need to ask the question and to bring something like a more interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary study. It ascends that in terms of the academic, can we work together to make the Paris Agreement to be able to realize? And the second thing is why do we need to wait until civil society have to stand up and say, or yelling, saying that you need to do something for us? We also might need to act ourselves that why we wait for so long until the situation happen and then we try to find the answer. The second thing will be in relation to the regional and global organization. I think one thing that we are quite, I don't know, in Thai we use the word kleng chai, try not to force or put pressure to the nation state level. But I think in some way we need to do that because this is one big problem for us in the sense that we hope that it should be voluntary to do things even though the situation of climate change have already showed the impact. Maybe it needs to be suggest or more push pressure to the country that facing or creating this kind of thing because otherwise the civil society or the local community will be the one who have to face the problem and have to be the one who have to speak out. So I think this is maybe the question to ourselves as academic and also the question for the regional organization. Thank you. Epat and Dr. Wanoon, do you have anything to add to Richard's earlier question about sharing your perspectives on including the communities or even engaging the government more? I think a number of cases are already on the ground and it just depends on the United States in order to pick those up and then trying to find the tools or mechanism in order to link those cases up to the decision making process. And also in trying to starting to recognize those voices and bring those voices outside the country during the negotiations. And those mechanisms are even the tools in order to bridge this process between the local communities and those voices of the marginalized to the policy level that needs to be strengthened and also it needs to be established. It's not just simply ignoring what is happening on the ground. And also as Richard mentioned, Paris Agreement is the first of its kind right now that is engaging a number of, engaging all the parties let's say to the mitigation effort. But the work needs to be done at the national level and you can't really miss the link of the national level and also the local communities who are really, really going to be pushing forward for a more renewable for example and also who are going to be badly affected by the impacts of climate change. I think we really need to make those links quite clear from the ground to the national government and then trying to strengthen the voices into the policy and also the decision making process. Okay, thank you. And Ipod would you like to respond since everyone is asking for the national government to be able to connect to the communities and really do something, what is your response to that? Well, I'm kind of new to the national government. It's only been eight months and I've spent nearly three decades in an advocacy position. I think advocates need to know that there is a lot of money in government. It's not as poor as it usually makes it out to be. Government has the resources. People especially now in the Philippines in government are not as lowly paid as they used to be and we just need to get accountability for every cent that comes out of national government. That's why I mentioned this national greening program because it's a lot of money. It's nearly half the budget. Well, it's nearly a third of the budget of the Department of Environment to get out this money for a large national greening, a large reforestation program and the ability with which to deliver in an efficient and effective way also rests on how civil society looks at government and without that, it's very, very easy. And it's not just civil society, it's the contracted people themselves, the ones that are getting the contracts to plant. It's very, very easy to skim off that money and not get any accountability. If the panelists don't have any other questions for each other, can I open the floor to the audience? We can take one question and then wrap up. Thank you very much, very interesting presentation. My concern is about mainstreaming gender in the climate change. I didn't hear much about your talk, so can you give me more on how gender will be mainstream? Because I was in Peru, I was in Paris, I was in the Committee of Gender and Climate Change. We tried our best to embed gender issues in all development projects that will be financed by development partners. So I'd like to hear from you about mainstreaming gender. I think it's a very important issue. Thank you. I think there was another question in the back. We can take another. Georgia. Hello, thank you. My name is Nicole de Palau from Global Health Asia Institute, hosted by Mahidon University. My question is for Richard, but maybe other member of the panel has any idea what are the chances that cities can get direct access from these international funds, notably from the Green Climate Fund. So I'm trying to understand how we can make cities more active in this climate adaptation scenario. Thank you. Yes, we'll take the last question and then we can respond to them. I'm Professor Momoe from MEI, Yama Environment Institute, which is one of the very close and intimate and long-lasting partner of Stockholm Environment Institute. We have been conducting a collaborative research project on Chandruan River Basin. Chandruan is one of the largest tributaries of the National River of Yama, Eowri. We have, in our country, we have experienced climate change since 1978. There are very salient climate change phenomena in our country. I would like to ask those scholars from Philippines and Thailand, what are the salient climate change phenomena have you experienced in your respective countries and how and to what extent do these climate change phenomena impact upon social activities, economic activities including agriculture and livestock farming and livelihoods within your respective countries and have you already got relevant and appropriate policies in your hand to combat or address those climate change phenomena in your country? Thank you. Yes, thanks. Quickly on gender, the word gender is just like the word local communities and indigenous peoples everywhere, well not everywhere, but it is definitely in many of the of the decisions and the relevant places. I think it's a very similar story as the one that we're talking about now with local communities and indigenous people. It is very much recognized as an important issue. The relevance of gender is in various preambles and in decisions and conclusions. Whether or not then the implementation of the Paris Agreement within countries does justice to the gender considerations that are discussed in Paris is of course a different question. And again there, the UN FCCC, the UN treaty that is about climate change has a facilitating role and there are, as you say, there are gender committees, there are discussions and meetings and workshops about gender to stimulate and facilitate taking gender up as an issue and mainstream it into climate decision making. Whether or not that happens in the end is very much up to the individual countries, but again there donor countries and civil society can of course play an important role in advocating for that. The question about access of cities to the Green Climate Fund, that's a tricky question. A year ago I would have said no because again it is usually there's countries that receive funding from those funds, whether it's the Global Environment Facility or the Green Climate Fund. As it turns out, the Green Climate Fund has been a little bit more flexible in accepting entities that can receive funding. They have to be accredited, sorry, I have to speak up, sorry. They have to be accredited and they have to fulfill a whole bunch of criteria, fiduciary standards and so on which is not easy and I would think might actually be very difficult for individual cities. On the other hand, I can well see a coalition of cities, whether that is, you know, C40 or IKLE or the Rockefeller Foundation even having the opportunity to apply being an entity to receive funding under the fund. You know, there are private sector, Deutsche Bank for example has now received funding under the Green Climate Fund. I believe it's conservation international. So there are non-state actors that seem to be able to receive money from the GCF, whether it's the case for individual cities, I don't know, but for organizations representing cities, I could imagine that may well be the case. Well, we have a gender and development budget which is a 5% of all the budget submitted has to address gender and development. The question is, there needs to be a scrutiny of whether this budget is really used for gender because normally when there are new things that need to be accomplished, certain needs that were not thought of, they would look at the gender and development budget to fill up the need. As for the question on the impacts of climate change on countries like the Philippines, of course, everybody knows about Yolanda. The question is for some slow onset phenomenon, not even communities recognize that they are actually climate induced. As such, when they are considered acts of God, there frequently isn't enough of a response financially as well as in other ways that is required when these things happen. For the fast phenomenon like Yolanda, it's not easily attainable, the level of response, especially when you need to get agriculture back on track, when you need to get infrastructure back on track, when the ones that need to respond are also part of the ones that were attacked by the phenomenon. So when national government responds, it diverts the, of course, it diverts the effort and the finances, but there are also failed responses and that is what is more hurtful to the economy when the failed responses are added up, not just locally failed responses, but failed responses of foreign infusions. And the need for scrutiny for the spending of these resources would need to be assured so that the diversion of funds can be efficient and effective. Main streaming gender, I think, what we can see right now, at least in the academic field, those that we are working with, I think one issue that related to the issue of gender is when we see the impact of the climate change, when linked with gender, it's also related to the issue of the power sharing inside the family, and I think this is also a great impact because the climate change also, we also linked with the professor, because of the climate change, it's changing a kind of economic activity. What we found out from our study is that the land ownership pattern has changed because of the climate adaptation. People cannot, the kind of cropping will be even shorter or some decide not to do academic, sorry, agricultural right fields in the area or some have to change their economics activity in order to deal with the climate change. One thing that we also found out that may also link with gender is the more internal migration, and those who are migrated internally, mainly are women, and this is not only for Thai, we see a lot of the female migrant worker cross border to Thailand because of the impact from the climate change, especially in Myanmar. So basically if we look at the link between mainstreaming gender and also the impact of the climate change to the economic activity, social activity, we also see that they have a lot of change, but can the resilient will be able to work out? One thing I still feel that the network, the local community network, and this is also a cross border and cross ethnic, this is one thing that is very interesting for me and it's a positive side that they can go beyond the issue of nation state that they are on the same situation that be flagged and at that time this is regardless what nationality you are on the same situation in the same area and I think this is might be one kind for the positive side that the local community and also can work together and this is might be one kind of a new project or resilient project that can be working out. Okay, thank you. We have one quick comment from Dr. Wan Noon and we'll be wrapping up with Albert concluding the remarks of the session. Thank you very much. A quick one on gender issue. For the civil society's work, we've been trying to engage the gender into our work and also the next step would be trying to influence and also trying to ensure that policies have engaged the gender lens into it and also gender is not just only women or men, but we also consider the LGBT as well into the gender lens. So be sure that we are considering onto that as well and trying to implement and also mainstreaming into our work in terms of the impacts of climate change. That is a very long story too in terms of defining the climate change impact. So I would say that to me I would see the coral breaching 10 years ago that is happening in the Gulf of Thailand that is the real impact of climate change. Coral's been changing and it's bleaching. So that to me would be the impacts of climate change and that's even with the coral bleaching in the Gulf of Thailand where the economy of the southern part of Thailand are really heavily depending on tourism industry. So that affects quite a lot in terms of the tourism and also in terms of fishing industry and affecting the local fisher folks. And in terms of the other impacts of climate change I would say a number of changes has a number of changes have been happening and observed by the local communities who are depending their lives on the changing of the climate. I didn't say climate change. I said a number of changes to the climate have been observed. So in that case you really need to do something about it because even the farmers they can't observe the change. So among the scientists they need to know what is happening in terms of those changes whether it is climate change or whether it is climate variability that is another thing. Okay, thank you very much to all our panelists. I think we had a really rich discussion and thank you to the audience as well for posing your questions. And now I would like to reintroduce Albert Salamanca who will be wrapping up the session. Thank you. Thanks May, I think you agree with me that a lot of ideas were discussed and a number of them are quite inspiring for the work that we'll be doing. Just a few things to wrap up. We agree that the Paris Agreement is like any other multilateral environmental agreements in that it is state-based and much remains to be done to bridge the concerns of local communities with the implementation of the Paris Agreement. But these communities are also the vulnerable groups. So the challenge for us is how is we need to do more to enable their participation. And then there were a number of ideas that were presented that I thought were really quite inspiring. One of them is that we need to develop or we need to build more responsive duty bearers. I think Daniel brought this idea forward and there are some opportunities on how this might be done through capacity building, supporting their participation and also enabling through financing. And then also EPAT raised issues of relevance and equity. And in particular, she talked about while we talk about power in balances between the global and the national, there's also power in balances of the local. So how do we address that so that people can actually participate in responding to the climate change challenge on the ground? So another thing that sort of we, these ideas that were presented, we wanted to take this forward in the work that our cluster is doing. And if you want to know more what we plan to do, you haven't seen this Asia strategy, but it's in your RUVA, in your application. So you can have a look at page 12, there's an strategy there for the cluster. So if you're interested in what are the things, the themes that we're interested in taking forward, please have a look. And again, the strategy is in your RUVA or if you're interested in a hard copy, I think we have some copies of the secretariat. With that, please help me thank our panelists. We have Daniel, we have EPAT, General Moon, Richard, Dr. Juanon, and of course our facilitator, May, who enabled a rich discussion on the implementation of the Paris Agreement and how we can make it more meaningful and inclusive. Thank you very much.