 Columbia has a really important mission, and that's to protect the superb biodiversity and cultural diversity of one of the most beautiful countries in the world so that its people and nature can continue to thrive. And that caps role in this partnership is to collaborate with you all in this mission with our science and our experience from around the world that will share some of which today, but mostly to harness Columbia's expertise and deep knowledge of your country. So a little bit of nuts and bolts before we get started, this webinar will be presented mostly in English with Spanish interpretation available, and our Spanish interpreter is Thais Caroline Parlo. And in order to enable the interpretation, you can activate the option by clicking on the globe at the bottom of your zoom screen, it's highlighted here in a little red box. And if you click on interpretation and then select the language you'd like to hear, either Spanish or English. And if you have any questions, please put them in the chat, the little chat window down at the bottom of your screen and we can help you. So the Natural Capital Project or NATCAP is a collaborative initiative working to pioneer science, technology and partnerships that highlight the values of natural capital and environmental services in a broad range of planning and development decisions. And our goal is the same as Columbia's and that's to enable people in nature to thrive together. And the partnership is centered at Stanford University, but it includes five additional core partners shown here and we'll hear from two others of them, the University of Minnesota in State Pulaski and the Chinese Academy of Sciences represented by Professor Oya. So our agenda today has two main parts. We'll be introduced and have some stage setting from Santiago Aparicio Velazquez and then there'll be two main panels, a first one on GEP, the concept, the gross ecosystem product and some of its applications around the world. And then we'll have a panel led by leaders and experts from Columbia talking about work that's already been done in this arena of applying natural capital accounts and developing ideas of how to incorporate natural capital and biodiversity in policy and finance and talk about opportunities for how we can advance this work further. And then we'll have some closing time for Q&A question and answers and some closing remarks from Santiago and then Dr. Lisa Mandel who's a lead scientist at MACAP. And we're just letting you know that a recording of this webinar will be available on our YouTube channel and we will share a copy of these slides in a PDF a few days after this workshop. And one more just little nuts and bolts note is that any questions and we encourage your questions or comments please enter them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and I and Ale and others will field those questions we'll bundle them together and the speakers will answer them as we go throughout the workshop this will help us keep an active dialogue going since we can't be together. And then if you have any logistics or technical questions please just use the chat and we can help you there. Okay, so just to kick us off then this as many of you probably know is the Gulf of Montesquillo and people in many countries, including Columbia understand intuitively the diverse benefits that nature brings to them personally and to their societies. But it's another matter altogether to specify where how much and for whom nature's benefits flow to people. And the values of a special place like the Gulf of Montesquillo are many mangroves and coral reefs and other key ecosystems provide fishery coastal protection climate and tourism benefits. Plus water filtration benefits come from upland forests in the Potomio Park, delivering clean water into the Sinu River. And that cap and DNP have worked together to support municipalities in an initial stage of just mapping and quantifying the benefits of these strategic ecosystems. So laying out a path towards a more sustainable prosperity for the region through the territorial pact of the Gulf of Montesquillo that those leaders are working through. So at NACAP we're just thrilled to work closely with superb leaders like Santiago and others in this workshop to be sure that the values of ecosystems people care most about are quantified in terms that can transform decisions. So we look forward to working with other institutions in the country to make GEP happen, including academia and government and multilateral development banks and NGOs. So we view this workshop as the beginning of a journey together and that we're really excited to help Columbia become a leader in developing and applying environmental accounts, which is what we'll be talking about now. So just to remind us all that the purpose of this training is to share the history of the development of the gross ecosystem product and put it in context with other natural capital accounting metrics. So we can support Columbia and being an early example and inspiration for how this accounting can drive impact. So the GEP applications throughout China will be presented today by the leaders of that effort from municipal, provincial to national scales. And lastly we'll explore the potential for Columbia to adopt and adapt GEP. So my last slide is just to introduce the first set of speakers. So we'll next hear from Santiago Aparicio Velazquez, who is the director of the group in Department of National Planning that we're working with. And then we'll hear from Professor Ouyang Zhiyun, who's the director of the Research Center for Eco Environmental Services in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. And his colleague Tong is here to help answer questions and add interpretation for us, color commentary on the policy applications. And then Ale will introduce the government and other experts from Columbia when her panel starts. So I'm now going to turn it over to Santiago and I'll stop sharing my slides. Thank you very much, Mary. Good morning and afternoon to all depending where you are. I'm going to switch to Spanish so that I can be more fluent. Well, thank you so much for the invitation. This workshop is truly innovative and relevant. Columbia is one of the countries, well, with the greatest biodiversity, we focus more than 10% of our biodiversity. Well, 1% is on our terrestrial coverage and of that. And we know that natural capital is the greatest, well, patrimony of our nation. But the biggest challenge now is how to achieve or make this natural capital be accounted for and that the costs and benefits that are generated, not only for its conservation, but for its leveraging and its use. Be you be regarded from economic perspective. I opposed to the team and we thought about protecting this that it's hard to protect what we don't value. So what we have to do is value this or appraise it and start estimating and measuring in the country. Well, we've worked. We've endeavored to work hard on this through the waves of project first, and then we attain the adoption of the main framework of environmental accounts, economic environmental accounts, this guy. And it is important, however, to continue to directly incorporate net cap throughout the national planning process. It's also very important that this accounting effort be not something abstract, but it has to be reflected at a subnational and local level. So in this regards, we know that, well, our reality is based on the macro and the micro not the micro and the macro. Sorry, vice versa, not the macro to the micro. And we use the goal for more skill that Mary showed a spectacular picture of, well, it's an ecosystem. It's a marine coastal ecosystem, and, and the, the more is the paramour of San Torval, which is a high mountainous region. And in this regards what we seek is, is that these two ecosystems have to allow us to be able to measure an estimate or praise ecosystem services that are rendered there, and then not have that it houses and see how we can perhaps have more rapprochement to the government bodies and be able to integrate these net cap assets in their accounting mechanisms. So these are two isolated pilots, but we have to begin somewhere. So that's a very important issue we're working on with support from Stanford University as part and the IDB. So we are now in a learning phase from successful experiences in other countries to be able to see what other countries have done. And to be able to move from the technical assessment or appraisal phase, and then have that execute that and make it useful for conservation protection. And then there is a gap we have to close from the technical part, as I said, how we are able to account the GP and then use it. So it's this, this issue that we're working on right now for this task. Now it's not easy for us, it's very innovative, but we acknowledge that the first step is to have the metrics down as part of our gross ecosystem product requires and then move from there. GP offers an interesting experience undoubtedly. And we are now asking ourselves in Columbia, how do we attain that and it's just so new as new as as when Bhutan began to explore its index to be able to measure happiness, which is not a low one. And many people think that's ridiculous. When, when you look at metrics, you start realizing that it's very interesting and it's valuable, that makes sense. But then you see that any innovative process requires persistent or has resistance. And this, I don't think will be any different. And, but what we require is much technical rigor to be able to respond to that resistance so I do applaud the effort that have has been made in this direction, and I do thank you for your technical rigor. That of our stakeholders which has made this possible. So support this task to be able to move from estimating GP and being able to actually budget for that. We're visualizing or making that cap more visible. So in Columbia, we've been fostering our green growth. Now are we able to how we are able or sorry, how are we able to one day be able to by 2030 attain a point in time in Columbia where we're truly using our natural capital as a comparative advantage and continue to generate income to protect that that creates that help us prosper. So in our fiscal indexes we have much is spent on fossil fuels and our income well is is not sustainable, given the climate crisis that we are in, and our fiscal income from fossil fuel production has to have to be replaced through natural capital and harnessing that what we call our bioeconomy. So to the extent that this grows. Columbia and the private sector will acknowledge the value in natural capital and be able to visualize a future for this and the use of GP to be able to harness this important asset. So, so we need to be able to strike a balance especially for these complex times. So thank you so much on behalf of the National Planning Department in Columbia for this opportunity. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much Santiago those were really, really interesting and inspiring remarks there's a lot of opportunity and a lot to build on all that Columbia has already been leading as you say. I'd like to introduce next Dr Steve Pulaski from the University of Minnesota. And he will give us an introduction to gross ecosystem product in its concept and the breadth of it and as Santiago has been saying this is a nice, really broad framework that is very customizable so we're looking forward to working together with you all. In doing that. So Steve, you want to share your slides. Okay, sure. And thank you very much for the invitation and the opportunity to to speak with you today. I'm very excited to talk about GP and and hope this is useful in Columbia. So, let me share my screen. Okay, hopefully this is now showing up. It's not somebody please let me know. Looks great. Okay, wonderful. I want to talk a bit about gross ecosystem product GP and try to provide a bit of brief history and some relationship of GP with other ongoing efforts. So I already mentioned the waves program and see a so there are a number of things that are going on. And so try to fit GP into this into this context. So, why do we need a GP what's what's the role for it. We already know about GP is more famous cousin gross domestic product GDP, and it provides a clear and easily understood signal of economic performance. It's what in English we'd call a headline number. And, but we also know that GDP leaves out much of what is a value from nature, how nature contributes to our well being. And without some type of measure of ecological performance. We often leave out in economics and in finance and in business and government decisions, we leave out these values of nature. And that's much to the detriment both of nature and ourselves. So what GP is trying to do is to provide a clear and easily understood signal of the value of nature, what natural capital contributes to human well being. So to do for nature what, and the values of nature what GP, GDP does for the conventional economic measures. There's been widespread recognition, the need to move beyond GDP to have more complete measures of ecological economic and social systems that support human well being. The natural cover is something that was commissioned by the French government now about 10 years ago, with two Nobel laureates in economics, those of Stiglitz and Marcus in helping to lead the effort and pointing out that for sustainability, we need to move further we need to actually incorporate the value of natural capital. There's been an important opportunity in China to do this to move further beyond GDP. And this is, you know, so China is an important country in this respect. It's conventionally measured economic growth has been the fastest in the world, but it also has over over the last few decades experience significant declines in its natural capital. Water and air pollution being examples. There is recognition from the very top that it is important to deal with to maintain natural capital. President Xi Jinping has said clear waters and green mountains are as valuable as gold and silver. He has pursued what it calls the China dream to become the ecological civilization of the 21st century. So there's a move within China that that something like GP is every bit as important as GDP. So in China, there is the aim of developing these this GP accounting, and it has a number of potential roles that it can play. It will reveal the contribution of ecosystems and nature to the economy and well being show the ecological connection among regions. It will provide a basis for compensation from those who benefit from ecosystem services to those who supply the ecosystem services and service a performance metric for government officials. Here is that GEP will be reported alongside GDP and to be every bit as important. So what is the relationship between GDP and GDP. So GDP measures the value of goods and services that flow in an economy. And this includes many things that have very little to do with nature and things which really are ecosystem services. So things like timber or commercially caught fish, those will be currently measured in GDP. But many other things that nature provides are not measured in GDP, what economists would call the non market ecosystem services. So the value of clean air the value of clean water of providing habitat for biodiversity. These are things that lie outside of conventionally measured economic accounts, but for which are captured in GP. So there is some overlap between GEP and GDP, but GEP captures or tries to capture the complete value of what nature provides to the economy and to human well being. So I want to make one more note before talking about related efforts so GEP, along with GDP is a measure of current income. But there is also an important measure of wealth or of the value of the assets that a society has. So along with a measure like GEP is also important to have a measure of the stock of natural capital and to know whether that is increasing or decreasing. And for sustainable development that is important. And in addition to coming up with a measure of GEP, there are also efforts going on to assemble natural capital accounts. So let me spend a few minutes talking about the relationship between GEP and other efforts. So I'll talk about for one is the system of environmental economic accounts. In particular the ecosystem accounts, measures of inclusive wealth, and then work both at the World Bank, several different programs, and also work going on at the Inter-American Development Bank. So in terms of what is going on with the system of environmental economic accounts, particularly the ecosystem accounts, many of you are probably aware that earlier this year. The ecosystem accounts were formally adopted as a statistical standard so that this is, it joins the family of measures that the UN supports and expects countries to provide. So that includes GDP but now it will also include GEP. So GEP was included in this formal announcement. And you can see the how they defined GEP which actually follows from the way it was led by Professor Weong in China. There is effort within the economics profession to derive what is called inclusive wealth. So inclusive wealth is really a measure of the assets of the stocks, so it's not directly comparable to GEP with a flow of benefits at a point in time. But inclusive wealth is meant to capture the aggregate value of all capital assets, human capital, manufactured capital, natural capital and social capital, and report those in a common monetary metric. So this would be equivalent to having a set of wealth accounts that go along with the measures of income of GDP and GEP. It is important to note, however, that there are very difficult technical issues and data issues with trying to measure the value of wealth. And so far, the efforts that have been done to date have mostly focused on measures that are more easily put into dollar terms. So the value of natural resource assets, but much less has been done on the value of ecological assets. The World Bank is leading a number of different programs and projects related to this, so promoting the trying to capture the value of ecosystem services and of natural capital. So they put out a series of reports every few years on the changing wealth of nations, which includes the value of natural capital. The next one is due in September of this year. We've also done wealth accounting, of which Columbia is a part, and puts out a report just at the beginning of this month called Economic Case for Nature, which actually builds on the invest modeling and a computable generative delivery model of GTAL. And then finally, there is the Inter-American Development Bank, which is also similarly doing reporting on integrating an economic model with environmental modeling and also using some of the invest models. There are many other reports going on. Let me just skip to the end, however, and say this is a time where there is a great amount of rapid progress. The importance of having measures like GED is becoming clear to many people. It is important as a way to correct the blind spots in standard economic accounting and provide better measures for what is truly valuable. So just as GDP started because we were, we didn't have good signals of what economic activity, how the economy was doing in the Great Depression. The great degradation of natural capital should push us to develop similar measures of GEP and show the values of natural capital to the economy and to human wellbeing. So with that, thank you very much. And just as a note, the wonderful team of collaborators in China and outside of China. So thank you very much. Thank you so much, Steve. That was really great overview. And there's some already some good comments and questions in the Q&A based on Santiago's remarks and some good updates from Camilo. We'll keep that discussion going in the Q&A. Please feel free to enter your comments or questions for Steve or Santiago in the Q&A and we'll collect those as we go. And Steve and Santiago, you can feel free to comment in there too. Next, it's my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Gretchen Daley, who is a co-founder of Nat Cap and a professor of biology at Stanford. So Gretchen, you have the floor. Fantastic. Thank you for being here. It's a great pleasure to, can you all see me well? Sorry, we're very sorry for covering the screen. I'm happy for this opportunity to learn from you and work with you to be able to protect the environment in Colombia and to, well, as Dr. Santiago Aparicio says, to open up a pathway for sustainable, green sustainable development. We're truly grateful for the opportunity to participate and work together in such a pioneer effort and a necessary one as well, such as this one. As Steve Glawski just mentioned, and we're truly committed in supporting the global leadership of Colombia with Santiago Aparicio and all of you in, on this pathway to inclusive green development. Now, I'm going to, well, present my, or make my presentation in English, but I just wanted to mention that I'm truly looking forward to working with you in person in Colombia very soon. So let me just get my slides up if you can just bear with me. Can you see me? It's in, it's in that presenter mode. Oh, there you go. Great. So we heard very clear and compelling explanations from both Santiago Aparicio and Steve Polaski on both why and also on how we need to advance this pathway of development that's green and inclusive. And how GEP can help us realize the values of natural capital and transform to this future by this trajectory by 2013. We're emphasizing the needs for a clear and easily understood signal and metric for guiding investments and measuring performance. It comes to how I will just lay out a little bit more about the work that we've all been doing together over many years through the natural capital project and related efforts to support this change that we're seeking now. So first, co-developing science together with leaders in many arenas like yourself to develop an actionable approach that is helpful in connecting with the amazing technology that we have now for sensing the values of nature and their change across the world and bringing that science and technology together in a useful way to inform decisions and drive investment in regeneration in recovery from the pandemic and in well-being. This co-development we do with leaders internationally here just showing in Costa Rica and with a large team from China led by the leaders both in financial and planning departments in the central government. Also working with many other experts and many institutions both research and technical and also focused much more on policy on business on finance in many, many different arenas. Together we've co-developed a system called invest this software system for making this science actionable and accessible. And for revealing like Mary Ruckelshaus said at the beginning where and how much to protect and the values of nature for people under different scenarios and pathways of development. This integrated system is now being used in about well most countries over 185 countries and now thanks to great efforts by Steve Pulaski, Mary Ruckelshaus and many others on this international team being adopted by networks of cities across the world. So we're seeing the application of this work in many regions and Latin America and the Caribbean really stand out as opening up pathways for scaling and mainstreaming these values of natural capital. These pathways include scalable demonstrations in development planning in the black diamonds in sustainable livable healthy cities in the green diamonds and they're actually many, many more underway now. And then in particular sectors and places. There is a lot of focus on coastal climate resilience on securing fresh water. And on advancing standards through the private sector for using a universal approach to measuring and reporting and accounting for natural capital in policy and finance. And this is all being supported crucially by the inter American Development Bank for scaling across Latin America and the Caribbean, they are showing Luis Alberto Moreno, who really transformed the bank and in launched and really drove compelling change during his tenure as president. And now, looking at GEP, the idea is to use this co developed approach of science, technology, data, and connecting across scale to field studies as well. To account for natural capital using invest to value the goods and services from natural capital and calculate GEP for the three primary uses that Steve mentioned, number one, illuminating the contribution of ecosystems to the economy and to society. Number two, informing compensation and financial investments to be made across regions and also across countries. And finally, evaluation of policies and these investments and tracking of progress through time. So this advance of GEP is being supported the adoption of GEP being supported, not only by the inter American Development Bank. In Colombia, and soon other parts of Latin America, but also by the Asian Development Bank, which supported development of GEP from the beginning, and is promoting. Many countries actually more than seven major Asian Asian countries, asking for support in deploying GEP, since the UN approved of GEP as a global metric. The World Bank is also advancing this together with the global environment facility supporting all of it. And in a phase, starting this October, we will be working together with South Africa and development institutions across Africa to deploy GEP. But we're extremely fortunate now to support Colombia in any way we can in driving this transformation in seizing the momentum behind scaling in guiding investments with the new data and science. In connecting policy, planning, finance and practice demonstrating compelling success in key sectors and places across the country. And finally, in scaling up and accelerating the recovery that we are all reaching for and regeneration. Thank you so much. And I look forward to hearing the discussion and working together as soon as possible and in person. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you Gretchen. That was also a really great overview. I definitely encourage people to keep adding comments and questions in the Q&A. I see that that's happening already, which is great. And we have one more presentation here. Before we'll take a little pause and have a discussion with the panelists from this session. And this is, these are some remarks from Professor Ouyang, who's the director of the research environmental center in the Chinese Academy of Sciences that we introduced earlier. As Professor Tong said, Ouyang is very sorry not to be able to join us today, but he's has recorded some remarks that will now share with you. And then Professor Tong is here to help us in the question and answer period about the amazing innovations that China is demonstrating in really practical applications of these natural capital accounts in GEP. It's really, really interesting to see all the work they've done. So Lori, will you be sharing that presentation with us? Yes, I will. Just give me one moment, please. Thank you so much. Do you see the video? We just saw the front of it and now we're seeing your windows screen. There it is. Is everybody able to hear it? No, we can't, Lori. We can see it. It was advancing, but we can't hear anything. Okay, I think it's because we have the interpretation on, let's try it one more time. And now it's on like this third or fourth slide. Are you able to hear it now? I can't. I don't know about others. It's just getting, it's getting louder. I think it was a volume problem. I think it's a volume problem. I think you got it there, Lori. It was just turned the way down. I could hear Tong's beautiful voice. A voice for radio. Is it still, Lori, are you still working on the volume? Yeah, it's, it's funny and now we can't hear it. I wonder if you try starting over and I don't know what the fix is, but. Sorry about that. Let me try starting over. Yeah, it's okay. We'll get it. Greetings, distinguished guests. I am Chinese Academy of Sciences. Now we have good volume and no, no video, but that was good volume. We're going to get it. I'm very sorry about this. It's okay. It's a challenge. You're doing great. Greetings, distinguished guests. You got it. I am Chinese Academy of Sciences and I'm going to introduce you to gross ecosystem product or GEP. The content of my presentation will cover five dimensions shown here. To put it simply, I hope to answer the questions, what is GEP? How do we measure GEP? How do we apply GEP? First allow me to describe why GEP has been proposed and its conceptual basis. In other words, what is GEP? A country, a region or a city can be considered as a human natural system, which includes the subsystems of economy, society and nature. Gross domestic product or GDP is widely used to assess the performance of economic systems. While the human development index is used to assess the state of social systems. However, we lack an indicator to assess the contributions of nature to human well being. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a way of measuring how nature benefits humanity. In order to advance the construction of ecological civilization in China, China's President Xi Jinping has proposed that lucid waters and lush mountains are worth their weight in gold and silver and emphasize the significant value of nature for human development. Realizing this goal requires, one, incorporating ecological benefits into the government's assessment and evaluation system. Two, establishing an ecosystem services based financial compensation system or eco compensation. And three, establishing a natural capital accounting system. In order to account for the contributions of nature to humanity, we define GEP as the aggregate value of final ecosystem goods and services provided to people in a given area. Ecosystem assets are natural resources that provide ecosystem goods and services, including forests, grasslands, wetlands, marine ecosystems, human managed ecosystems such as farmlands and urban parks. GEP and GDP are different indicators, but the two are also related. GDP covers mining, manufacturing, destruction, transportation, communications, commerce and finance, among other sectors. GEP primarily covers water retention, flood mitigation, soil retention, pollination, carbon sequestration, pollution filtration and so on. However, some goods and services are included in the accounting of both GDP and GEP, such as agricultural products, forestry products, ecotourism and leisure, and hydrology, among others. Now, let us move to GEP's accounting framework. GEP accounting guidelines mainly take into consideration the following five aspects. One, accounting for the monetary value of ecosystem goods and services in a specific location. Two, accounting for the use of ecosystem goods and services, including direct and indirect use value. Three, accounting for final ecosystem goods and services, including material goods, regulating services and non-material services. Accounting first for the functional quantity of ecosystem goods and services, that is to say their biophysical value, and then determining the price of each ecosystem good or service, which together with the corresponding biophysical value provides the monetary value. The ecosystem goods and services indicators used in GEP accounting are shown here. Material goods include food, herbs for traditional Chinese medicine, water resources, nature-based energy sources and raw material. Regulating services include water retention, carbon sequestration, pollination, water quality improvement, air quality improvement, soil retention and flood mitigation. Non-material services, also known as cultural services, include recreation, ecotourism and aesthetic experiences. In GEP accounting, the first step is to determine the list of ecosystem goods and services in the accounting area. Then, based on ecological and environmental monitoring and statistics from relevant sources, we can get the necessary data for GEP accounting. Next, we calculate the functional or biophysical quantities of ecosystem goods and services, and at the same time determine their associated prices. Finally, we calculate the account areas GEP, which is the sum of material goods value, EMV, regulating services value, ERV, and non-material services value, ECV. This table shows the specific methods used to calculate the functional quantity and monetary valuation of different ecosystem goods and services. For instance, food production values can be derived from available statistics and market prices. Pollination values come from pollination model calculations, water retention values are based on hydrological monitoring and water balance models, and ecotourism values can be calculated on the basis of tourist visits and the travel cost method. Now, I will introduce how GEP accounting pilot demonstrations have been carried out in China. At present, GEP accounting has been carried out in at least four provinces, more than 10 cities and over 100 counties in China. Provinces include Qinghai, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, and Hainan. Cities or prefectures include Shenzhen, Nishui, Fuzhou, Tu'er, Ganze, Tonghua, and Xin'an Banner. Counties include Youqing, Kaihua, and Xishui. In fact, every month, there are new cities or counties that adopt GEP accounting. Here, I introduce GEP accounting in Qinghai province. Qinghai is located in western China on the eastern side of the Qinghai Divinity Plateau. Qinghai is the headwaters of the Yellow, Yangtze, and Maekong rivers. It is known as east and southeast Asia's water tower. Qinghai covers an area of some 122,000 square kilometers and has a population of 5.8 million people. Grassland is the main ecosystem type, including alpine meadow, alpine steppe, and other grassland types. Qinghai is also a global biodiversity hotspot, home to many rare and endangered animals, such as Tibetan antelopes, snow lovers, wild yak, bactrian camels, Asiatic wild ass, and black-necked cranes. This table shows the types, functions, and economic values of ecosystem goods and services in Qinghai. These include material services, water supply, flood mitigation, soil retention, non-point pollution prevention, water purification, air purification, sandstone prevention, carbon sequestration, ecotourism, among others. The value of water-related ecosystem services accounts for 58% of Qinghai's GEP. In 2015, Qinghai's GEP was 185.5 billion RMB. The value of material goods accounted for 64.6%. The value of regulating services accounted for 23.7%, and the value of cultural services accounted for 11.7% of the total. We further assessed different ecosystem goods and services contributed by different areas of Qinghai. For instance, the value of agricultural goods mainly came from highway and high-sheet prefectures. The value of animal husbandry mainly came from Ushu prefecture. The value of water resources primarily came from Ushu, Guoluo, and Haidong. And the value of carbon sequestration came mainly from Haidong, Haibei, Guoluo, and so on. We also analyzed the other areas of China that benefit from Qinghai's ecosystem goods and services. We found that there were 16 provinces that benefited from Qinghai's water retention services, especially Ningxia, Shanxi, Henan, Shandong, and other provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Additionally, more than 20 provinces and cities benefited from the ecotourism services offered by Qinghai. All provinces and urban regions in the Yangtze River basin benefited from Qinghai's flood mitigation services. We also analyzed the changes in Qinghai's GEP from 2000 to 2015, finding that the value of material goods increased by 82.6 percent, the value of regulating services increased by 9.8 percent, and the value of non-material services, mainly ecotourism, increased by 408.8 percent. Now, let us move to the application of GEP accounting. This framework diagram shows the application of GEP to decision-making. First, GEP accounting can be used to help meet policy and administrative goals. Second, GEP accounting can be used for land use and infrastructure planning, allowing us to evaluate how changes impact ecosystem goods and services. Third, GEP accounting can be used to formulate eco-compensation policies, particularly in terms of determining reasonable payment amounts. Through these applications, we can promote ecological protection and restoration, improve ecosystem assets, enhance the supply of ecosystem goods and services, and grow GEP, leading to a greater ability for nature to contribute to human well-being. In China, government departments have actively promoted the application of GEP research. For instance, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has supported the research and development of GEP accounting methods and demonstrations of application. The Ministry of Science and Technology, the Standardization Administration, and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment have supported the creation of technical standards for GEP accounting. The National Development and Reform Commission, or NDRC, and the Asian Development Bank have backed methodology to apply GEP accounting to the evaluation of provincial, municipal, and county-level eco-compensation policies. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment has also supported the organization of training for GEP accounting. Finally, local governments have supported the application of GEP accounting to evaluate the effectiveness of ecological protection and green development. The application of GEP accounting in China has five dimensions. First, it can be used to evaluate government and policy effectiveness, as has been the case with the NDRC, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Qinghai, and Zhejiang, and cities such as Xinjiang, Shunde, and Tonghua, among others. Second, GEP accounting can be used to determine eco-compensation, as in Lishui, Puerh, and other cities. The amount of compensation payment is determined based on the level and associated changes of GEP. Third, it can be used to assess sustainable development, namely the coordinated development of nature and humanity, as reflected in the changes of and relationship between GEP and GDP. This has been the case for the large cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Fourth, GEP accounting can be used for policy or corporate decision-making, as demonstrated by Zhuijiang province, the cities of Lishui, Fuzhou, and Ant Forest. Fifth, GEP accounting can be used to assess the contributions of nature or ecosystems to people, as in Qinghai province and Ganzhou prefecture, among other places. Now, let us move to the main findings and challenges of GEP accounting and application. The application of GEP accounting in China has yielded five main findings. First, GEP provides an intuitive way to convert ecosystem services into monetary value and to understand the value of nature's contribution to humanity. Second, GEP provides policy makers with a clear and convincing indicator of the value of ecosystem services. Third, GEP can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of government and policies in terms of conservation, land use, and infrastructure planning. Fourth, GEP can provide the basis for determining reasonable eco-compensation levels. Finally, as shown by GEP accounting in Shanghai and other parts of China, the data and methods already exist to enable GEP accounting to occur in different countries around the world. However, GEP accounting also faces several challenges. First, there are data limitations. Existing environmental monitoring systems were not designed to carry out ecosystem service assessment and accounting, so monitoring data cannot meet the needs of GEP accounting. Second, many quantitative methods and models of ecosystem services are not completely accurate and need further refinement. Third, many ecosystem services lack market prices, which means other valuation methods are acquired, which then mean that this may influence applicability. Fourth, current accounting methods often make it difficult to distinguish the value-added contribution of nature from the value-added contribution of human input. Finally, in China's GEP accounting, ecosystem service indicators are not comprehensive, and there are many ecosystem services that have not yet been accounted for, such as the value of ecosystem-based oxygen provisioning in high-altitude environments like the Qinghai Tibetan Paito, health-related ecosystem services, and the full value of cultural services. To address the problems faced by GEP accounting, we have three recommendations. First, the standardization of GEP accounting methods should be promoted so that comparable results can be obtained for different regions and for different researchers. Second, environmental monitoring systems should be upgraded to provide stable data sources for GEP accounting. Third, island projects for GEP accounting in different countries for promote development that is green and inclusive to improve applicability. The development of GEP accounting and its demonstration applications in China have been the products of international cooperation. Members of this collaborative team include those from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Capital Project, China's National Bureau of Statistics, and other experts from the United States, the United Kingdom, and local governments across China. Our research has received support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the Standardization Administration, and the Bureau of Statistics, as well as the support and collaboration with the National Capital Project, Asian Development Bank, the United Nations System for Environmental Economic Accounting, and other partners. This is the conclusion of my presentation. Thank you. Okay, that was great. Thank you, Laurie, for the technical help and Tong for the wonderful narration. So I'd like to, we have a few minutes to get a little bit of question and answer started now. I'd like the panelists, including Tong, to please turn your videos on. And I've got, there's some good questions in the Q&A that I'll pose to each of you, just to get a little discussion going. So first, Steve, there's a question from Neri Londoño, and they asked, does the calculation of GEP incorporate effective taxation? And do the analyses conducted in various economic sectors show the usage of natural resources and also include taxation rates? It's a great question. The application that Tong just talked about in Qinghai and in other places in China, we focused on the total value of the ecosystem services and actually did not worry as much about the distribution of the benefits between taxes going to the public sector and what went to businesses and households. However, if one knows the tax rates and you can apply them so that you can, you can track back the distribution of the benefits to various government entities as well as to businesses and households. So the system is set up as like the system of environmental economic accounts to keep track of not only the total but the distribution among different entities. So in principle, the answer is yes, we can incorporate taxes and the flow of benefits to governments as well as what's kept in the private sector. The other part of the question on the use, yes, there we definitely track who is it that benefits. So where is the service being provided? So in the figures that Tong showed, we track, you know, if it's, for example, a water related service who either in Qinghai or in the downstream province benefits from that increased water supply or more clean water supply so that we actually do know who is it that's using the resource and what benefits they get. Thank you, Steve. That's great. And thank you for the question. There's a question for Gretchen from anonymous attendee who's been very active in the Q&A. We appreciate your questions a lot. And they ask how do we quantify the existing deterioration of ecosystems? The numbers of living planet, the WWF report are dramatic and also those in the IPBS report. It's very important to show the urgency of the change. And this person's wondering how can we do that? How can we quantify the existing deterioration before we figure out how to move forward? Thank you so much for raising that question. A really important one connecting to all of this. And they're basically two primary ways. One is through direct monitoring, like Professor Wu Tong was describing in the presentation together with Professor Oh Yang. That involves technically trained researchers and others using sometimes technology, sometimes direct measurement of the cover and the quality of vegetation, such as mangroves or grasslands or tropical forests, it might also involve tracking change in the abundance and the types of birds or mammals or other biodiversity. Another way of measuring, maybe I should say there are three ways. The second way is to look at the output in production systems and track change in production in, say, grassland ecosystems with grazing animals in forestry systems, in fishing and the range of marine production systems. And then a third way is using technology. And this is getting a lot better, such as through satellite imagery or other remote sensing. And that involves connecting changes that can be detected by these different sensors to changes on the ground or in the water. And that is also improving dramatically. So those are the primary approaches. And we have good enough data on many types of change to launch GEP accounting now. But like Professor Wu Tong emphasized, it would be helpful to launch more systematic monitoring of key ecosystem attributes and key benefits in order to best track the changes and best be able, especially to understand where investments are leading to improvements. But thank you very much for raising this really good question. Great. Thank you, Gretchen. And that's a really good segue. I want to ask a question to Tong and then we'll finish with one question for Santiago and then we'll move to the panel. But there's an interesting question for you, Tong, which is from Natalia. And she asks, how did you calculate the economic value of ecosystem services that do not have market values, such as cultural services? And she and then Diego also asks a related question, which is what sources did you use for pricing the ecosystem services? So could you help address those questions from the attendees, Tong? Sure. Thank you for those questions. In terms of developing or arriving at prices for ecosystem services that don't have market prices, we use the variety of methods, many of which have been commonly or frequently used in environmental economics research. So in the presentation, one that was mentioned was or was displayed on the PowerPoint was the travel cost method. In terms of the cultural services or the non-material services, the one that we primarily focused on was ecotourism. And in China for GDP calculations, the method that was used, the data sources that were used for that were mostly based on tourist visits. And the data for that, we got from official statistical accounts because those are numbers that tourism bureaus and local governments keep track of. Again, it's not a perfect method to capture the full or the genuine value of the ecotourism service or the cultural service, but it's the one in terms of our experiences where we have the most reliable and consistent data. Thank you, Tom. And we're running out of time on this one, but I just wanted to note that Santiago, there's a question from Yolanda Casayas if you can do a quick one for her and then maybe continue in the Q&A. You've been doing a great job responding to questions in the Q&A, but she asks, we have evaluated ecosystem services from the environmental authorities and we find it difficult to quantify the change of ecosystems in biophysical terms and also find it challenging to choose the adequate method for economic valuation. So she wonders how we can access more information to do a better job on those questions. Okay. Gracias Yolanda, por la pregunta. Una pregunta bastante compleja que me heritaría una sesión de trabajo pero en términos generales. Thank you for your excellent question and I think that answering it well would require a whole other webinar but given the difficulties in well answering your question, I think what we could do is go back to a specific case. We did this with the Morosquilco with our NACAP project done with Sanford University and the Mi Paramo project that we're working on with the Swiss Development Corporation. So the idea is to analyze on a micro level how with these two systems we've been close to resolving the complex topics in being able to quantify these ecosystems. So I will give you my email and respond to you more precisely. There's a lot of good questions. We'll continue the discussion in the Q&A but we'd like to move now. I'd like to introduce Dr. Ali Echeveri who is a researcher and leading with NACAP and is Colombian and is leading a lot of this work connecting Colombia to natural capital accounting and decision. So Ali, I will turn it over to you. Muchas gracias Mary. Gracias a todos. Thank you Mary. Thanks. Welcome to all of you. I'm Alejandra Echeveri, a researcher here at Stanford University, the NACAP project and I am from, I'm in Colombia right now which is from represents the Embaracha Mi mountain and habitat community, native community. It's a great pleasure to moderate the Colombian experts panel to hold a debate regarding the future of ecosystem accounting systems in Colombia with regards to the gross ecosystem product. I'm going to present our panelists and remind them to speak slowly because we do have interpretation. So so please when I ask you to give you the floor turn on your videos. We have professor Diego Andres from the which is the Colombian statistical department coordinator of alternative concept satellite accounts. We have Byron Covillos from the Colombian economist and has an MA in economics. We have Dr. Mara Cecilia Londoño who is a researcher from the biological research institute and then professor Juan Carlos Mendieta from the National University of Colombia University and the University of Los Angeles. Welcome all of you. I'd like to begin with a question for a professor's Diego Juan Carlos what elements that have been presented in methodologies for calculating the GEP applies in Colombia and out of that that applies what do you think is desirable. I'm going to give you the floor professor Diego. Thank you. First of all I'd like to just thank you for inviting me to be a member of this important panel. It's truly a great experience to be part of this discussion. I'm Diego and I'm a member of the government authority in charge of developing economic environmental accounts in Colombia. So we have moved forward here in implementing our environmental accounting system and economic accounting system as part of the central framework in Skype. So our strategy is to implement that the methodology of our environmental economic accounting system has started to be accounted for and formally that is and now that it's official we will establish a guideline to develop a Colombian accounting system. So we've moved forward in this effort and we're in the process right now of moving forward in this. So it's very important as was said essential we believe to continue to account for our ecosystems we're doing that right now but since the GDP looks at ecosystem accounts as essential we believe that's an important element of our methodology is just to continue to do what we're doing it's that simple but something important to note that Santiago also mentioned at the start of his presentation is how to appraise these accounts so I reiterate so we're providing we're accounting for monetary and physical information and as Dr Steven mentioned we need to appraise and assess the ecosystem services that are provided so that's the crooks that's what we need to do and before we start to actually appraise or gather our GDP we have to set a price on this and there is no doubt that we can't do this without technology and even though information is limited technology is also something that we need to incorporate as part of our exercise to make this estimate thank you thank you Juan Carlos basically to respond to the question I just want to mention something very important as background information just for our international experts to kind of get on the same page and understand that Colombia because it has an ecological constitution actually and that's really important because based on this premise there's something very key which is that the creation of that cap has moved forward to the extent that our economic activity develops so the presentation on gross ecosystem product reveals that there's a great potential for applying this in Colombia and it started back in 2003 resolution 1478 was passed and the ministry of the environment established a methodology for economic assessment which is used for market prices and transfer of benefits which is a focus that is commonly used today when we which we use for environmental impact studies subject to life well Colombia is a pioneer country in moving forward in environmental appraisals last week we published an environmental appraisal method that is part of the 1930 Paramore law of recognizing the environmental value of ecosystems for moors in Colombia so what's important is that we have to move forward in two directions now the first one is to further promote environmental economic assessment and then how to include different stakeholders given the importance of this concept it's important to include for example PANLA which is a player in setting price cost for government entities and autonomous agencies for example the Valle del Cauca Corporation they've been working since 2015 on ecosystem services values for different watersheds the Tula and Dawa and they've praised and done great efforts at this including to see how they optimize investment in conservation and restoration so the large conclusion is that we're on the right path we just need more events such as this one that will show best practices and then go back and compare this with all the different studies that we have to leverage on the information now thank you I'm going to ask Dr. Landoño and Mr. Covedo's questions how do ecosystem services play a role in public policy decisions or investments at the institutional level or at your institution so the government can consider that for their decisions Dr. Landoño, thank you let me just answer your question with some reflections on the global environmental facility so this is a metric sorry, not the global environmental facility the gross ecosystem product sorry, GAP we are subject to many ecosystem services so when we use these metrics for a decision making process I think that there are three factors that are imbued in this one is the change in the different products and services that are rendered and the other is changes in the market of these services and products that are rendered and changes in the stock in the state in current function these aspects are part of a single metric so my thoughts have to do with the fact that you need to be able to if you disaggregate this these attributes in the metric it's going to be easier to see where we have to guide our actions if for example the GEP goes up in areas due to the type of services that are rendered or a different market response to the improvement of ecosystems actions taken are different but if the GEP is going up because the services and the stocks improve and the services go up that's a different scenario so I think that we have to find a way to disaggregate this metric and understand it better and communicate it so that corporations, researchers the government can use this in a clearer or this will be better understood by them and they can use it and the Humboldt Institute themes this as very important and it was also mentioned by the speakers that monitoring the stock and the structure and function thereof requires much more monitoring within the country we have data we move forward in that endeavor various research institutes have made a great effort at that and we've now we now better understand the status of our biodiversity and enforcement and oversight systems of our ecosystem services so how could this measure be standardized with regards to how we quantify it setting up a formula but to what extent should we measure also the global is working at mapping different essential variables that need to be measured and thus measure these stocks so it goes beyond to the condition of ecosystems and its extension so we need to simplify what needs to be measured and which is what many of the attendees asked what do we need to measure to be able to gain this index so my thoughts now are that and then we need to as we said appraise economically but comprehensively and researchers in Colombia have done a great job at this and Colombia is a pioneer in this type of assessment a world example of comprehensive assessments so Santiago started by saying that what we don't assess we cannot protect that very difficult we also have to understand that there are many ways of assessing things not only biodiversity and it's not only from an economic perspective we also have to well think a little bit more on that thank you and if you could quickly explain just in a single sentence what do you mean by comprehensive assessment for the audience members that don't understand this type of methodology what does that mean I recommend that well that you read about it well comprehensive assessment is what Alexander has researched he works at the National University of Colombia developed this concept that means thinking that assessment is not only economic assessment there are benefits such as human well-being that go beyond what is traditionally measured so how is this comprehensive assessment made that not only attributes an economic value on something but that includes well-being for example since I'm not an expert in the field I suggest that you look at research done by Alexander Rincón and they're great examples as to how to implement this thank you doctor Alexander Alexander can you hear me yes wonderful I'd like to thank the NDP for participating in this important meeting with regards to decision-making I'm an expert on finance and biodiversity I work at the NDP but I also work on the development and bioeconomic finances project that is run by the national government and it's an international initiative that's backed by the Convention on Biological Diversity since 2010 when this need arose of supporting countries in mobilizing resources to strengthen investment having to do with biodiversity management and regarding your question I'd just like to state to all the attendees that since 2015 the implementation phase and last year sorry the formulation phase in 2015 up to 2019 we've included that through finances and and it's been part of how we develop policies so we support the national planning department and we also support other stakeholders in policy development administer the environment autonomous regional governments as well as a result of the methodology and that's applied in Colombia there are four large stages that have allowed us include the dimension of SNAPCAP and how it's necessary in the decision-making process and including institutional stakeholders at a national, territorial and regional level and promote scenarios where we have more participation effectively being able to manage biodiversity so this is one of the initial Nazis that we did and then we've been working on well together with the national planning department and the Dane reviewing public, private and international cooperation expense and spent on conservation of biodiversity because if we have a DEP indicator in the future we need to be able to analyze the fiscal what the what the economic fiscal cost is and being able to protect and restore our biodiversity so that was a part of the second phase currently well it's published in the UNDP the efforts that we've made our third phase has to do with assessing goals and the ambitions of our national policies with regards to ecosystem services and biodiversity so this was done together with the Ministry of the Environment in 2016 and the last effort was to identify potential funding sources to help cover well that deficit of biodiversity funding so this is an effort that requires much support there are many stakeholders UNDP is one of them and then there are many other organizations that have provided support for this process and created investment projects tied to closing the gap we could speak about this for a longer period of time but those are five financial solutions that we promote from biophene increase in donations and carbon sequestration industrialization sorry reform of incentives that have been generated to promote productive services but that have impact on biodiversity and this is what we've been supporting and that we're very happy to well we'll be happy to show the results once we're ready thank you Byron we have three more minutes as part of the panel before giving the floor to Santiago I'm going to just make ask a second round of questions very quick answer from your perspective what are the next steps that Colombia had to take in environmental accounting very short brief thoughts Diego thank you Alejandra that's true that's the first one four great steps we need to involve more high level representatives from to get their buy-in and make more timely decisions on this important topic and thus assign economic resources which we need to be able to obtain results for such a novel topic we also need to include these topics part of our planning process with a long-term purview we have our long-term policies which provide a guideline for developing specific topics named two of them green growth we mentioned that already and controlling forestation and sustainable forest management and this paves the way for developing other topics so focus efforts on preparing these plans for future purposes and holding these types of meetings because discussions enrich our knowledge and training and activities that will contribute to providing more knowledge to experts and quality makers and better economic resource management working with international cooperation agencies through the planning department internally to obtain those much needed resources for continuing to develop PEP thank you Juan Carlos well I think we need to standardize assessment studies see the scope of each focus not just use one single focus comprehensive environmental studies economic studies studies from an anthropocentric perspective and fast ecological appraisals should include both aspects in a multidisciplinary fashion that we need to further explore there are also key items to promote information among different stakeholders and if ANLA is requesting studies from all development projects in Colombia and we want to change that trend of only looking at short term benefits as Dr. Aparicio mentioned then why don't we standardize our assessment studies so that this information which is enormous and for which we have limited resources in appraising how can we use that information for DANA the planning department and the sustainable development department who uses and focus investment on sustainable development funded by subsidies so efforts have to be standardized so we all have the same objective which is to be the beneficiaries of environmental impact in Colombia I agree with what has been said before we need to hold more discussions among the biological ecosystem community and the economic community because there seems like when we speak about development data we are each in our own we're not playing together we're each in silos so we need to strengthen our oversight systems and then I heard I need we need to open this further and include the Humboldt Institute many other universities also have the oversight the Colombian biodiversity institute as well so we need to include that broader perspective because it's not all about coverage there are other aspects that need to be strengthened and it has to be seen from a broader picture and what the different stakeholders are doing and attending and the attendees to this meeting from this has said how about the human footprint we need to take that into account so we need to sit down and think hard one more thing opportunities the different topic altogether and perhaps it entails another meeting but it's how to use the metrics and for what purpose so enormous opportunity is that this metric we need to think about flows among regions and countries if all countries measure this we could begin to see how the different flows service flows are measured between more distant in more distant geographic areas and it has to do with fair distribution of benefits and common differentiated results that virtue multilateral agreements appropriated in different public policies and which are not operational I see a great opportunity for this through this index but that's well the topic of another meeting Karen Yes Alejandra I'd like to mention various topics such as what Diego mentioned because Diego and myself were colleagues and that's why we have that well similar technical vision because I think we need to we need more political will and institutional will to be able to assess the damage already done so we need to acknowledge that we need this information because a lot of information is being gathered that is the result of a specific idea of meeting information but once you get the information then that interest in the information is lost so when we present the results clearly there's no longer any interest projects are then important so first we need to do an inventory of our information but statistical, geographic and scientific information as well and I'm going to mention what Maria Cecilia mentioned including the research institutions both EDM all the different institutions that research and generate information and put that under a single framework and thus identify the information that's available and look at the cross reference the information that we have in the demand and the core GP purposes and then do a diagnosis and assessment of the quality of the information what that diagnosis allows is to come up with more coherent items when we and an essential stakeholder that can be part of the information gathering phase is academia must actively participate through its research institutes but through these in these processes to be able to fill the gaps of information we yes we need more financial resources I think academia can also help us with that they also are close brads they could all work on attaining funding and also establish institutional technical cooperation mechanisms so the same people won't always be talking to each other and convey the mission that we have set forth here Dana of course is part of this but the idea is head of of reporting on environmental information so I think we have to really include a mix of stakeholders to provide data that's trustworthy and scientifically founded and supported by our institutions to see here the process that is going to be new although it's been applied to different countries in different countries national accounts have existed since 2017 and this is the longer process so working with what we have along with gathering more information to be able to also learn from others through best practices thank you for your responses panelists I'm glad to hear that this was a good workshop because we included different types of stakeholders and you had the opportunity to ask your questions so different research institutes should be included and I do agree with you Byron Academa plays an important role especially since, well, Stanford is leading this presentation precisely from the academic perspective so I'm going to give the floor to Santiago Apparicio to close to just give some final remarks and then some closing remarks from Dr. Mandel so thank you attendees and thanks Lori and myself for the interpretation it's been my pleasure and definitely a feat in coordination among countries, among languages and thank you thank you definitely everything that has been said is truly valuable and interesting especially the panel it gives you much food for thought so thank you Stanford University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences for organizing well this meeting as Byron mentioned we've been working on this since the 70s but knowledge is never something that we do not need so thank you so much for this meeting and providing the state of the art in this novel topic I'd like to mention something important and it's well after hearing all the thoughts and the status of this topic in Colombia and since we've been addressing this for years there are two challenges that we face one has to do with the technical side the scientific side that we have to provide enough scientific rigor but also from not only the scientific technical perspective but the policies and creating public policies political science and economy of behavioral economies how can we convert this into tangible results I mentioned this at the beginning I think the way to start doing this as Byron mentioned is to use precise and current tools that already exist so everything that the environmental information system has already so we need to continue to move forward in consolidating not cap and ecosystem services and calculate our GP hopefully as a result and parallel to that to be very much aware and precise that it's easy with regards to innovation that there could always be there could always be something better and we don't want to be the cat that's trying to catch its tail we have to find these areas that we can adopt through two or three pilots that's the challenge how do we find that specific example the presentation by China showed us concrete examples so I need we need to do that find those entry points many times it's easy to speak and not reach conclusion and I was saying that in an internal meeting the other day sometimes we take so long trying to reach perfection but sometimes it's too late by the time we know what to do the net cap that we're trying to preserve is already lost we don't want that that's what we fear so we have to be a little bit daring and not so much to write things in stone but think that this is an iterative process that's going to be dynamic and changing and growing thank you for sharing those thoughts my name is Lisa Mandel I'm a lead scientist with a natural capital project and wanted to share some closing remarks from our side I wanted to start off by thanking all the speakers and panelists who shared their expertise and insights and vision for enabling people and nature to thrive together in Columbia I think we've seen from the example in China how GEP can be a practical approach for measuring and valuing natural capital in a way that supports decision making from planning to policy to finance and we've seen that Columbia is really a pioneer in these efforts and a leader as well but not going alone in these efforts GEP has been approved by UNCIA and a number of other countries are also starting to embark on this effort and I think there's real power in being able to go together in this journey as Mary said at the beginning and we've heard from the fantastic panel of experts from Columbia as well how GEP can build on and even bring together longstanding efforts in Columbia that are already very well advanced in terms of different approaches and data and existing policies so I and the rest of the Natural Capital Project we've had the pleasure of working with Director Apricio and his team over the past year and we're really excited to continue to collaborate with DNP and others in Columbia as you take the next steps towards advancing these efforts and embarking on new directions and intangible change I wanted to remind everybody oh let me show my slide here that let's see I want to remind everybody that this webinar will be available on the Natural Capital Projects YouTube channel over the next few days and we will also be sharing a PDF of the slides to the email address with which you registered so you can look forward to receiving that in the next couple days and finally I wanted to thank everybody who made this webinar possible behind the scenes especially Taiz and Lori and especially thank all the participants who have spent the past two hours with us and joined in really great questions and discussion so please enjoy the rest of your day and look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you thank you Thank you very much Thank you very much Thank you Bye Bye Bye