 I'm delighted to welcome you all to this special session on climate action in a time of debt distress. I'm Uli Walsh, I'm the director of the Center for Sustainable Finance at SOAS, University of London, and I'm very privileged to share this session with an absolutely outstanding cast of speakers. A global debt crisis is looming even before COVID, the IMF and the World Bank deemed global public debt burdens unsustainable for a majority of developing countries and COVID has made this problem much, much worse. So this new systemic debt crisis is emerging at a time when the global climate crisis demands the urgent mobilization of huge efforts on both climate mitigation and adaptation. And again, the debt crisis while enabling far reaching actions for climate adaptation mitigation. So basically what are the options for debt rescheduling that will allow for people send it investments that address climate change while expanding drop opportunities and livelihoods. Let me very briefly introduce the speakers. We will first have a keynote by Alicia Bartena, who is executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Alicia has had a very distinguished career in the UN and has also helped senior positions in the government of Mexico, among others. And Alicia has called for a debt for climate adaptation swap and the creation of a Caribbean resilience fund. After Alicia's keynote, I will invite the other speakers to make brief intro remarks and then we'll have a panel discussion among all speakers. We will have Shamshad Akhtar, who is chair of the board of directors at Kanderas Pakistan and Shamshad served among others as the governor of the central bank of Pakistan, as well as finance minister of Pakistan. She's also been under Secretary General at the UN and executive secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific and has really a wealth of experience in issues around debt and sustainability. We will then have Jean-Paul Adam, who is director for technology climate change and natural resources management at the UN Economic Commission for Africa. And Jean Paul in a previous life was minister of finance trade and blue economy in the state of the shells where he negotiated a debt for climate change adaptation swap. I then invite Romina Piccolotti, who is the president of the Center for Human Rights and Environment and climate change senior advisor at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. And Romina is a previous former environment minister for Argentina and in that role. She implemented a debt for environment swap with the US and she's recently published a note on debt for climate swaps. And last but not least, we have Stephanie Griffith Jones, who is financial markets program director at the initiative for policy dialogue at Columbia University. And Stephanie is one of the world leading experts on debt crisis and international capital flows and she has actually arranged two of the very early debt for development swaps for Sudan and Chile. So we have an absolutely outstanding cast of speakers and I would like to invite Alicia to deliver her keynote and Alicia it's a great honor to have you and I'm very much looking forward to your speech. And if I could ask colleagues to please turn off cameras now and then come back. Okay, so let me see if I can, if I can share with you my presentation. I'm going to do my best. Let's see. Just let me know if you can see it. That's very important for me. Can you see the presentation. Hello. Can you see the presentation story. Yes, we can see it. Okay. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Can you see it complete because yesterday I had a little problem. Okay, so what I'm going to do and thank you so much for the invitation. I'm so glad to be joined by these fantastic panelists and you and thank you for the opportunity. I am going to talk about climate action in time of COVID that distress and I'm going to do the case of the Caribbean. So, of course, COVID is happening in a heating planet. I mean, 2016-2020 will be the warmest five year period on record. Global sea level rising is increasing. Sea ice extent is declining. One meter of water equivalent glacier ice loss per year ice sheet losing ice. So I'm going to refer to that in a minute in the Caribbean case. This is going to be the worst construction in a century in Latin America and the Caribbean. And what's happening in our region is enormous fiscal costs are being dispersed. Limited resources due to the sudden collapse of sectors in the case of the Caribbean, such as tourism. Tourism has fallen strepitously and with a decline of commodity prices. In spite of this, they have injected resources around $1.5 billion in the Caribbean, more than 50% are loans. But basically the debt burden is increasing. We believe that there is an urgent need to reform the international financial architecture system. First of all, to consider financial stability as a public good. And therefore, the situation we are confronting today as a systemic problem, not a case by case. I'm very concerned that this is going to be seen as a case by case, but this is a systemic problem. And when I say this, what I want to say is that we need to expand financial support. For example, the DSSI that has been put forward by the G20 to middle income countries, small countries that are highly indebted and very vulnerable to climate change. Middle income countries represent 96% of external debt of developing countries. So DSSI is only focusing on the 4% of the global debt. So if the middle income countries have a problem of debt, the insolvency issues are going to be systemic. The establishment, we are suggesting an establishment of an independent agency, and this is very much done by Vera Songhwe, and I'm glad ECA is here, in coordination with the multilateral development minds that could assist the liquidity in a sustainable facility to help countries on their sovereign bonds. The other proposal is to have a UN tax committee, because in the Caribbean the problem is their voices are not heard anywhere. And when they have to raise their issues of blacklisting, grade listing, or even corresponding banking, they simply don't have a place to do this. And they are being imposed by OECD and by others. And we need to review the income per capita criteria and include vulnerability indicators. This is essential because climate change has an asymmetric effect on countries. Latin America and the Caribbean contributes only with 8.3% of the global green gas emissions, but is the most highly vulnerable region of the world in many ways, because look at 2,390 disasters affecting 297 billion exacerbated by climate change costing almost $440 billion. And the estimated costs with the main physical impacts will probably cost to the region 1 to 5% of the region GDP. So this is going to have a very huge impact in agriculture, droughts, health, and other areas, as you can see. So we are all, I mean, this is a very asymmetric situation. COVID-19 in the heating planet, climate change vulnerability in the Caribbean. Look at how many people live in below 5 meters that is in the oceans, in the coastal areas. Look at this is the blue, the blue lines are the population that are leaving 5 meters, 5 meters below the coastline. And then population that live 25 kilometers of the coastline that is in orange and of course in yellow, I mean, in population within 5 kilometers. So in the Caribbean is being most affected. Look, this year we're going to have 16 storms. I think we already have 4 and look at Dorian. Dorian costed 3.4 billion dollars in the Bahamas, 1% of GDP. So the problem of the Caribbean is that they think that they didn't do macroeconomic fundamentals very well. And that's why they are highly indebted. But the reality is that they are very vulnerable to climate change. So they have a debt vulnerability and very low growth because the GDP growth is going very much down and the debt ratio is going up. The total public debt is between 120 GDP ratio and it goes to 60% GDP ratio. And the Caribbean countries have structural vulnerabilities. So this is what we need to understand. Look at the levels of debt service that they have to pay. Caribbean countries have to pay between 30 and 70% of the government revenue. Nothing left to do other things. Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica are paying for example 70% of the total government revenue. Antigua and Barbuda are 42%. So you can see that debt service is very costly for these countries. And of course we have the increased need for fiscal measures and falling tax revenues is raising the risk of debt distress. Here are the amount that the countries of the Caribbean are investing. 0.5% to 5% of GDP except Barbados, who is investing 19.2%. And we have to say that the Caribbean countries don't have financial assistance. They don't have access to markets. The only three countries that have been able to access some loans are Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados and the Bahamas. So increasing borrowing to cope with the pandemic will lead to a spike in global public debt. You can see here how much in 2020 the debt is going to go up in all the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. The number is not here, but it's 55%. A case for resilience, I think that we need to really help these countries to build resilience and to address vulnerabilities. And this has to be done and the Caribbean countries cannot afford additional loans because they already have high debt. So ECLAC is supporting a debt relief for resilience, access to concessional funding and a debt service stands still. So we want them to be included in the DSSI as we will see right now. So we are suggesting a regional resilience fund as a purpose vehicle for adaptation, green investment to build back better. The total debt of the Caribbean is $57 billion. We and the debt service, as I said, range between 30 and 70. We are asking a relief of $6.9 billion, 12% of the total debt. And that is to establish a Caribbean resilience fund that could link debt with debt sustainability. And that will be to do the following, to move into non-conventional renewable energies, nature-based solutions, agroecology, I mean the Caribbean countries are importing 80% of the food. So they have to develop agroecology and aquaculture, digital inclusion, smart tourism and sustainable resilience infrastructure. We have a portfolio of projects that could be done through this resilience fund. Renewable energies, we have calculated the amount of jobs that could be generated by each one of these renewable energy. We have all the detailed information of how many jobs can be generated in the operation, construction and maintenance. So we have five key policy recommendations. Number one, a special dispensation for the Caribbean through grant and concessional funding, debt relief, cancellation without condition analysis, access to DSSI and making sure that the private sector comes and not only on the voluntary basis, issue reallocation of SDRs. If we get $500 billion SDR, $2 billion will go to the Caribbean. Engage private creditors for center countries like the Paris Club establish a Caribbean resilience fund. As I said, with this initial capitalization of $7 billion, $6.9, which is only 12% of the total debt. And the participation of the global green climate fund is very important. And of course, we are proposing a UN forum to an orderly sovereign debt restructuring that we will soon be there. The three final things that we need for the Caribbean is to reestablish the corresponding banking to lower the cost of remittances, to expand the role of the UN tax committee and give voice to the small countries of the Caribbean. And we are suggesting a very, I would say audacious proposal, which is credit rating regulation and a new public credit region that could be independent because we are in the hands of only three rating agencies. And in general, what we are suggesting in the financing for development is new SDRs issuance or reallocations to mix, expanding G20 debt service suspension to brought the term to 2021, to brought the beneficiaries to mix it, to include multilateral debt and to ensure private sector participation. And of course, as I said, this initiative should be done in response to climate swaps, debt services payments into SDG related, ensure country ownership, create these original resilience funds, and of course, institutionalizing state contingent, then debt instruments like natural disaster clauses. I want to thank you so much. I hope by giving you an overview with a case, the case we are making in the Caribbean for a debt relief for climate. I hope this has been useful. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Alicia. This was really very inspiring and very. Apparently, for some, the PowerPoint was was not completely visible, but hopefully we can share this with with participants later on. I think your case for the comprehensive systematic solution is very convincing. Before we have direct responses to your proposals and ideas. I would like to invite the other panelists to make their interventions and I would like to ask Shamshat to please go first. Shamshat, the floor is yours. Okay, so good morning to people out there in New York. I have, it's very hard to follow Lucia Barsana in anything you talk, but perhaps rather than talk about a region, I'd like to focus on the global dimension. We know that global crisis is nothing new to this world, but this time it's definitely very different. Global pandemic, given its nature, has triggered the deepest recession since World War II. Loss of jobs is significant. This reversal of poverty gains and worsening of inequalities. Getting through this crisis has been complex given multiple challenges. Given the lockdowns necessity, it has been accompanied by tight and global liquidity. Economic contraction has resulted in loss of revenues, both on the external and domestic side. The shock to the developing and emerging markets that have been driving the global growth and exports have been phenomenal. So it is going to impact global economy. It's of course distracted government from climate action as they principally struggle to run day-to-day affairs with the economic stimulus packages that are beyond the fiscal limits. And the rescue packages are confined for vulnerable groups or revival of businesses. And we are in the territory of zero interest rates policy along with other forms of monetary stimulus, and one doesn't know what lies ahead as we go forward. In midst of this, obviously G20 steps in and does a number of things. So the good thing is it has a standstill. But imagine what the obligations of debt servicing of large debts, which is a challenge as Alicia has pointed out at a geographical scale. Global debt has risen to $258 trillion, which is $87 trillion over 2008, and it's 331% of the total GDP. And according to the World Bank of the four waves of debt accumulation over the past 50 years, first three have ended with financial crisis in many emerging and developing countries. The latest wave since 2010 has already witnessed the fastest and the more broad based increase in debt in these economies that we are targeting emerging and developing. For emerging, it has risen by 54 percentage points of GDP to a historic peak of almost 170% of GDP. And there are latest numbers still evolving. Current low interest rates, of course, are low, so there is a hope that some of the risks associated with high debt and if there is a recovery could be mitigated. But I don't think so. It'll be some time when we have sustainable recovery. So emerging and developing countries face weak growth prospects, mounting vulnerabilities and elevated global risks at the same time exports markets have been dwindling. International cooperation has been there, but its scope and scale is limited as G20 grapples with crisis on its own doorsteps. The advanced countries are giving more liquidity domestically than internationally. So G20 debt sense still is limited to bilateral creditors, excluding multilateral and private creditors whose debt servicing liabilities were quite high. And even for countries with market excess, the irony is the necessity to limit non-concessional borrowing during the suspension period might limit participation. But for others, it could be an essential provision of liquidity. Debt relief response as Alicia has pointed out, and I fully support her recommendation. But I would go to the extent of saying they have to be holistic, coordinated and equitable. They have to look at variety of criteria. This requires extension of the DSSI beyond 2020. I would go even beyond 2021, depending on what the development from 2021 are, because we are going to have a second wave of COVID now and we could have more complications. We have to reach out to multilateral and private creditors for considering debt relief on their obligation. As I mentioned, sizable collective action is critical on building and protecting safety nets, notably for low income countries. Inadequacy of global action will hurt the pace of recovery and attendant delays will be very costly beyond what it is today. So possible large scale HIPAA can MRDI is critical. As you know, Jubilee debt campaign has estimated that cancellation of poor countries' debt payments, including to private creditors, would free 25 billion for the countries in 2020 or 50 billion if extended through 2021. So that's my recommendation too. Overall, the proposed plan still for bilateral loans for recipient countries represent 3.7% of their government revenues and 0.7% of their GDP. The World Bank collective debt service payments forecast indicates have already mounted to 46 billion in 2020, quadrupling 2021. Now, just very briefly, if private lenders come forward, the impact of standstill increases in terms of the revenue by 8.8 billion. So if you add up everything, it's about 1% of GDP or 5.4% of government revenues. Of course, there are all these issues about the collective action clauses, but in legalities, if you get into, there will never be an end to any resolution. So a potential model would be debt reduction facility used under HIPAA initiative, but it requires extensive negotiation. Now, I have discussed this overall, but I'm going to speak less on the latter part. I just want to say that there is need to mobilize financing for rescue packages, accelerate and reinforce implementation of 2030 agenda for sustainable, inclusive and green recovery along with pursuance of low carbon pathways, swift action to climate adaptation and mitigations in line with Paris agreements to keep all the indicators with Alicia has pointed out. Climate debt swaps have happened in the past, but very small in scale. And there is a lot of literature that has been written, they have been very small in terms of their rescue effort. But basically what we need to do is to make sure that the debt swaps are organized in an efficient manner and in an effective manner. And make sure that the cost of administration is manageable and that it is focused on the larger scheme of things, not on little isolated ad hoc schemes. I'm going to stop here and the rest of it can be covered because I know we have some very good outside speakers and I'd like to hear them more than myself. Over to you. Thank you so much. I can see that there is quite a bit of overlap and agreement between you and Alicia and you are also calling for a systemic solution. And now it's my privilege to hand over to Jean Paul and we're keen to hear your take on this. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rick, and it's a great pleasure to follow two such great speakers and I'm also in agreement with the key points that they've made. I think one of the first things that we need to ask ourselves when talking about that is what is debt for that should be developmental. So it should allow development gains to be accelerated in a given country based on investments that can be done today and with the confidence that future economic prosperity will allow repayment to take place in an affordable manner. Now, for the most part, if we look at the OECD countries, debt is an instrument which is leveraged effectively both in times of plenty and in times of difficulty. On the one hand, it's used to multiply prosperity and on the other, in difficult times such as the ones we are facing now, it's used to protect populations and also to relaunch economies. The situation for Africa, however, and like much of the developing world, debt can be effective to finance their priorities when the sun is shining. But in times of distress, this debt actually becomes a part of their vulnerability and exacerbates their inherent vulnerability. And Alicia spoke in quite detail about some of the factors of vulnerability. Africa is extremely vulnerable and climate change was one of the biggest factors of this vulnerability even before the onset of COVID-19. Climate change has an annual cost to African economies of between three to five percent annually. And that's keeping in mind that before COVID-19, the average growth in Africa was 3.2 percent. So almost all of the gains that are made through economic progress are actually mitigated largely by the impact of climate change. We should also note that African countries are actually currently running large deficits and this was the case even before COVID-19 where deficits were on average over 3 percent. The average debt-to-GDP ratio in Africa is also rising rapidly and is currently around 55 percent. And this is coupled as well with a scenario where Africa has an extremely low tax-to-GDP ratio of below 15 percent and recent trends show that it's actually falling. The most recent figure that I have for 2018 is that the tax-to-GDP ratio is 13.4 percent. And this is coupled in the era of COVID-19 with rapid depreciation of local currencies linked to the impact on main currency earners, for example really in relation to commodity exports or in relation to tourism. So thus while the debt-fueled stimulus which is being deployed in OECD countries will probably be effective and is addressing a lot of those needs. In Africa, firstly there's the lack of capacity to raise the stimulus from their existing access to financial facilities but also it's diverting resources away from financing the Sustainable Development Goals. So one of the options in particular that I'll talk about in terms of my experience is that of debt swaps. And I think these are some of the innovations that can be of particular interest because they can help us adapt to climate as well as addressing some of the needs of the SDGs. So when I was working in the Seychelles government, Seychelles undertook a debt swap and as far as I'm aware it was Africa's first debt swap in 2015. And the debt swap that we undertook allows a portion of the country's debt to be bought back in advance at the discount. In Seychelles case the debt was bought back from the Paris Club of Creditors using a vehicle that was part financed by a soft loan from the Nature Conservancy which is a U.S.-based non-profit organization. And also together with grants that have come from philanthropists supportive of environmental protection. The repurchased debt is transferred from external creditors to the specially created Seychelles Conservation and Climate Adaptation Trust. So this debt is continuously serviced by the government but instead of paying external creditors it's paid to the trust and it's paid on more advantageous terms and paid in local currency. So in Seychelles case the average interest rate dropped from almost 8% to below 3%. The payments to the trust are then reinvested in climate adaptation projects. And in Seychelles case specifically to support the creation of marine protected areas covering one third of Seychelles exclusive economic zone. And that means that an ocean space of over 400,000 square kilometers. So the debt swap that Seychelles undertook also opened the door for further financial innovations including the launch of a sovereign blue bond in 2018. As the conservation and adaptation trust that existed was also used as the vehicle to manage the proceeds of bonds that were floated on the international market. The bond became affordable because it received the guarantee of the World Bank hence making it more affordable in relation to the normal cost that the Seychelles government would have paid. And this is something that is important for developing countries a lot that don't have market access in the first place and others who do have market access but pay a premium. So the project was also supported by the Global Environment Fund which allowed a portion of the proceeds to also be used as grants to finance adaptation projects as part of Seychelles marine special plan and therefore contributing to climate adaptation. So debt swaps and green and blue bonds should become part of the architecture to respond to the climate crisis and also allow us to build back better post COVID-19 and allow us to mainstream this sort of climate adaptation funding. I fully agree with previous speakers to say that it must be part of the systemic approaches that we can take. Alicia also mentioned the work that UNEA is doing to support African countries and also developing countries in general to build regional capacity to undertake the preparation for debt swaps but also to address the cost of financing more generally. And we are using particular innovation called the liquidity and sustainability financing facility which will hopefully allow countries to reduce their cost of financing by tapping into the support from AAA rated countries. And also by leveraging existing for example energy assets to raise additional finance and this additional finance can come from the private sector. It's a question of making it affordable. So a lot of the work that needs to be done around debt swaps is around making sure that debt is developmental and that it doesn't contribute further to vulnerability. And a lot of the factors that we have also discussed in which Alicia mentioned such as having access to SDRs will help build that resilience and allow us to address climate change as well as the response to COVID-19. Thanks so much and back to you. Thank you so much John Paul. Again very inspiring and I would like to invite Romina to join. And we have a PowerPoint that should be uploaded now and hopefully this will work. Romina over to you. It's great to have you. Thank you Rich. It's great to be in this panel. I think it's so opportune to have this discussion and thank you for putting it together. It's an honor to share the panels with such experience and officials and scholars. So the key I agree with with everything that have been said here including and I think that's a very important point from from Alicia about the systematic approach. So the question is how to do for me is how to do the systematic approach at the same time that we move forward. Let's show us how the pathway. So I prepared this small PowerPoint to launch this discussion. It's called the synchronizing the sustainability of the debt with the sustainability of the earth in terms of the pandemic, which I think summarize the three challenges that we are facing as a global community, fighting a pandemic and at the same time, at the climate emergencies looming in the near horizon. And also there's a debt crisis. Also in the horizon that has been already worn many times during the past years by different financial institutions. So this challenge might present. And, you know, I think the unique opportunity for humanity to say to save ourselves and the decisions that we made today are life and then decisions for millions of people. And I think we need to take this in mind when we approach this issue. Could you please move to the next slide. So let me let me. So this is like shows basically the context where we're trying to implement this kind of debt relief package. And as I say will represent the difference between life and the situation so 40 to 60 million people will be pushed into a stream poverty. This is something that the World Bank has said in August, and it's a consequence of the impacts already off of the pandemic. They've reached a record of 253 trillion last year, that's equivalent to 322% of global GDP and I have been said before by the speakers, you know, all most all of the revenues, the large percentage of the revenues of developing countries are going to serve the debt. So there's no room at all for for development, or for increasing climate climate ambition or climate resilience, more than 40% of developing countries are at high risk, high risk of the distress. In 2019, before the pandemic, more than 60 countries spend more on debt servicing than on public health. So obviously nobody was prepared for when when global pandemic stroke. The total amount of certain debt repayment do at the end of 2021 is 2.7 trillion with 1.62 trillion doing 2020 already and 1.8 trillion in 2021. It is clear that most of the developing countries will not be able to repay the debt as was negotiated. So debt restructuring is happening as we speak and will happen massively. In 2019, also climate change contributed to stream weather events costing at least 100 billion in damages. And as John Paul was referring to, obviously this impacts tremendously Africa and also also the Caribbean as Alisa was was referring the most vulnerable suffer the most. And by 2015, a cumulative damages from climate change may reach 8 trillion in power engine by 3% gross war product and some economists already are saying that the heat will be 10% on global GDP by just by climate. And as the IPCC has told us on the 1.5 C report, and we have 10 years to remain under 1.5 and and to revert the the course of irreversible climate change where mitigating shortly time potential is essential to revert the crisis and tackle the emergency. Can we move to the next slide please. So, connecting the dots and many of you have already seen this pictures many times that's the little dot over there is the earth. So when I say connecting the dots is to save that dot basically that is planet Earth. And what we do have today that we didn't have when I least I was implemented the depth swap and the for environment in Argentina with either a bilateral agreement with the US. And that allow us in the case of John Paul to undertake several projects in exchange for for the swap to protect the environment. We do have a Paris agreement, we do have the mantra protocol, Kigali amendment, we do have the UN by diversity convention and we have an IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5. I mean, this is our strong governance governance and pillars that I think can help can help us on the systematic approach. Some of these treaties include a strong scientific panels that can guide governments on what can deliver the most on jobs on resilience on to tackle the climate emergency. And at the same time, provide some vehicles included in DC's national action plans, etc. The government is, you know, can use when they negotiate also the portfolio and include this as part of the of the governance structure. And when we move forward to the next slide. So, I developed these principles after having a lot of discussions with many stakeholders, including governments and officials at different financial institutions. It's just, you know, these are just very, very preliminary but they wanted to share this with you. The first principle is, you know, dead for climate swaps are not new conditionalities to that relief, but a new form of sovereign debt payment this basically recognize the effort that developing countries are putting and can put to preserve a common good, which is the atmosphere. And I think this is, this is essential. It's not. This is this is not just new condom this is not should be seen as new conditionalities but rather as an investments on the capacity of debt or countries to to repay that you know nobody will be able to be able to repay that with an unstable climate system that's impossible. So if you're the creator and you want some of your debt back. You need to invest on the capacity of the of the countries to pay back and that investment on on climate mitigation and adaptation. I've only been too little too late. This is a little bit at least a touch on this. This is not little things here and there. It's not trivial negotiation of debt. That for climate swaps should be mainstream on the sustainable negotiation of restructuring of debt. Principle three is incorporate climate risk in this assessment. This was also touch with some of the panelists. The countries that that accepted the offer of debt relief during the pandemic will work hit tremendously by the debt rating agencies. I mean this is this is and we need to we need to begin to. But I said talk about, you know, having a new debt agency because we're being hostages by three or four or four of them. But what I think is really, really important here is that climate risk. Is incorporated in economic models. So the more that you swap that for climate, the better your debt rating should be. The more that you invest on climate resilience. The more your debt should be and not the other way around, because it's not where you know where we're just putting so much pressure on on developing countries that they will end just exploiting the natural resources to pay the debt and then accelerating the climate crisis and we need to we need to cut this perverse cycle to break this perverse cycle. So that's the connection the connection with debt rating is really really important and the IMF and the environmental development bank and the European sorry development bank should be at the top front I think on promoting the incorporation of climate risk modeling in in the economic assessments. Link that for climate swap with national climate commitments. This is something that C shell has done with John Paul, I think that's extremely important. You know, the basically the revenues that you generate with your debt slots or reinvest in climate and climate ambition. Set a transparent government system to make decisions and track the money. I will go faster so so we can move on to the discussion. Can you move to incorporate metrics to evaluate climate and economic impacts including jobs creation, etc. Reinvest the revenue revenues to increase climate ambition. Use climate depth slots to leverage climate finance. We did that in Argentina and John Paul did the same for the seashells we can use, you know, the green climate fan, the green environmental facility to increase and the and make a strength stronger that the climate debt swap. This is very important the role of the states to protect people not to bail out inefficient company. So this moment and through the debt swap country should be investing in the transformation of the industry. Rather that trying to use. And the little economic stimulus package they can put together or the big economic stimulus package they can put together to bail out inefficient companies. And the principle 10, which is linked that for climate threat with pipeline infrastructure project that reduce climate risk, create more jobs and save consumer money. Investment on renewable investment on energy efficiency. We do know they produce jobs at home they create. Fabians for the consumers and at the same time, they hate help with resilience. So that's it and I will, I will stop there. Thank you. Thank you very, very much Romina for again, very rich discussion. We are running out of time so I fear we won't get to the general discussion in the end that we really would love to have but I would like to invite. Join the discussion and make your input. Stephanie, are you there? These are the problems with online conferencing Stephanie. Are you with us? Okay, let's hope that Stephanie will will join in a moment but if I could please invite all speakers to go back, turn their video on and then we'll start the discussion now I hope Stephanie can manage to get back in. But. I'll jump shot is there Romina. It's pretty that we've lost Stephanie because she would have without doubt made some very insightful comments. So, we have. Well, a little bit more than five minutes left. Which doesn't lend itself to a very elaborate discussion, especially not since we had so many very rich points. I would say that. So, there are no questions in the chat right now. But I would say. Let's briefly talk. What are in terms of moving ahead. We've we've heard a lot of great ideas now. How do you think could could we really move this agenda ahead if everyone could just spend one minute on saying. I mean, there's a relatively broad agreement on on the general direction of travel, I would say. But. And we go in the order of appearance. So if I could could call on Alicia to go first and please everyone keep with one minute because we have to close on time because there will be another very good panel. We must not eat into their time. Alicia, please. And also kind of one minute comment and closing statement at the same time. And you're unmuted muted. And my Michael. Okay, thank you very much. I really I truly enjoy the panel and thank you so much. And what I would like to say is that I think we want to go for five things and I guess this is where I believe we have to make to make us a tangible results. I see the financing for development initiative of the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Canada and the Secretary General is an opportunity we need to make sure that on 29 September, we have the heads of state there. We had a very powerful meeting yesterday with all the Caribbean Prime Ministers and we discussed these issues and we agree that we're going to go for these five proposals up and running because we believe that these are essential. So we are going to go for the special dispensation for the Caribbean grant and concessional funding that relieve without conditionalities access to enhance DSSI bringing in the private sector extending the term and of course including middle income countries. Secondly, issuance and reallocation of SDR. So we believe this is possible. It has to be done for the establishment of the Caribbean resilience fund with the $7 million, which is 12% of the total debt of the Caribbean. And five, we need the green climate fund GCF to come in. And I think we are in very good shape to at least get these five proposals and John Paul, we are seriously yesterday, the Prime Minister of Barbados mentioned the elements that you said about the special vehicle of sustainability and liquidity because that is for countries that have access to markets. And that's to alleviate them liquidity to these. Some countries do have access to markets, but some don't. So we have to make sure that we prepare those but I think we do have capacity to do and to get tangible results on 29 September. We have to push for that and we have all the Prime Ministers of the Caribbean on board and we hope the rest of the Latin Americans will also show there. I think this is what we can do. We have to convince them to be there. This is a political process. Thank you. Thank you, Alicia. I just saw that Stephanie is back back room. I hope she can join us at least for the last three minutes. And I'm very sorry we have to log off at on time because they will be following session Stephanie are you with us. And in the meantime, may I ask some shots to please clip in. And you're on mute. So I'll be very quick. First I want to say I'm delighted to be here with such excellent speakers and distinguished. I want to start by backing what Alicia said at the beginning about the need for reform of international financial architecture. So things like SDR issues, and also I would like to highlight increase the capital of multilateral development banks, because we have to think not just about that relief but also about new money. Debt relief as Romina said, in general, and in relation to nature debt for nature swaps. In the past has always been too little, but also too late where there was the Latin American debt crisis, the hippie initiative, and the EU debt crisis. The help has always come too late with massive costs to the debtors and in the end to the creditors. So what we need, and I want to focus on the debt swaps, what we need is significant scale of debt relief, as well as additional finance both public and private for climate change mitigation and adaptation. And I think that establishing the link between debt relief to climate finance may both generate significant additional debt relief and additional climate finance. And why is that? We have a problem because this crisis is actually symmetrical. And whether we like it or not, unfortunately developed countries are not feeling so generous because they are suffering from the crisis themselves. They, of course, don't worry so much that the crisis are worse and have worse effects in regions like Latin America and Africa. So I think if we create this link where climate mitigation is very clearly a global public good, and it's totally urgent because we know that the planet cannot wait, and we only have one. And there is very strong political support by governments, but also by people, especially young ones, for effort to mitigate and adapt to climate change. We may get a better chance of achieving significant debt relief. And also from an economic point of view, of course, if for example you have proper climate adaptation, this increases the benefits of reducing the cost of raising money on the sovereign bond market. And what evolves our distinguished chairman has been part of a report by UNEP, which shows that if you reduce climate vulnerability, your sovereign rating will actually improve and the cost of finance you can raise will also improve. So there's a clear link between money spent on climate mitigation and even climate adaptation with improving the creditworthiness of countries. So the experience, as has been said, has been a fairly small deal, not trivial. The total of debt development swaps was about $6 billion in the past, but we want something much bigger and less transaction costs, more agile. So the large scale is essential. So we have to move at a national level from specific projects to budget support, to special trust funds. And internationally we have to move from specific credit to debt to deals to multilateral initiatives. I think the initial step was established by the Paris Club, which has already accepted to allocate resources that go for development for additional debt relief. It has to be streamlined and accelerated and it has to be broadened much further, both within the Paris Club to other official creditors. And we haven't mentioned China, but of course now China is a major creditor, but also of course very difficult the private sector and the multilateral. And I would just like to add that we need a comprehensive package which includes debt reduction and new flows. And I think what is very interesting in the case of Seychelles and of Argentina that we've heard is that the debt relief linked to climate swaps has catalyzed new funding, both public and private. And the modalities and the balance between both may vary by country. I think that is very important to have a sense of flexibility. But the way Colombia would do debt relief would be different from the way Mali would do it, for example Haiti. So we have to be flexible, but we need a multilateral initiative. And in the Finance Minister's meeting at the UN that Alicia mentioned, there was broad support, particularly from African countries and from ECLA for these debt for nature swaps, which I think can be a valuable mechanism to achieve the far greater goal of liberating resources for development. Thank you very much. And I'm really sorry about the problem before. Thank you so much, Stephanie. And I'm so glad that you managed to get on because this was really important intervention. So now we're facing the problem that we are already three minutes over time and the organizers told me that I must, must, must finish on time because three minutes ago, another session started on financing the Paris Agreement. Post COVID with Barbara Buchna, Joan Carling, Patricia Espinoza and Bill McKibben. So we are in good competition. I would love to continue this discussion with you and I very much invite you to have this discussion with us going forward because we need it. But unfortunately, I have to cut it off now and I'm so sorry about this and sorry for, for starting a little bit late and and poor time management from my side. But thanks very, very much Alicia for wonderful keynote, incredible swords. Jean Paul, Stephanie Shamshat and Romina. Very rich discussion. We'll close now and have a great rest of the day. Thank you. And bye bye. And do join the next discussion with Barbara, Patricia and Bill. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you.