 Hi everyone, Marina Lika, can you hear him, Marina Lika? Yeah, I can hear you. Do you know where is Rima? Yeah, she will be joining. She'll be joining soon? OK. Yeah. Because the webinar is going to start soon. We're just going to be waiting for our moderator to arrive. But I know that Rima is the first person to give the keynote speech. I just wanted to make sure that she'll be here. Well, wait a bit. Thank you very much. Yeah, welcome. Hello, Rima. It's Brian here. How are you? Do you hear us, Rima? No, I don't see. Hello, good morning. Hello, Rima. It's Brian here. How are you? I'm well, I'm well. Thank you so much. It's a great honor to have you here. We very much appreciate you joining us. Thank you indeed. Oh, it's my honor and privilege both. I hope I'm not too late. No, no, we have people still waiting in the waiting rooms. So we have a couple of minutes and the other speakers are with us here. So I'll just say hello to all of our speakers and participants. We're very pleased to have you. We'll just give our audience a couple of minutes to get connected and then we'll start shortly. So thanks, everybody. Sure. Thank you so much. Thank you, Brian. I may have to leave by around. Go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. I may have to leave by around 6.15. Hope it's OK. Of course, yeah. And we're delighted that we have Marina Lika joining us as well. So we'll be very pleased to hear from her too. Thank you. Thank you. So colleagues, thanks again for joining us. We're just about to start and I would welcome any of you that wish to turn on your cameras while staying on mute until it's your intervention. But we're looking forward to this discussion. We're very grateful to all of you for joining us. And I hope you all enjoy the next hour or so in this webinar. So I'm just going to pause for 20 seconds while all of our audience join the connection and then I will commence. Thank you. Hello, everybody, and welcome. Greetings from the headquarters of the International Energy Agency. My name is Brian Motherway, head of energy efficiency and inclusive transitions. And it's my great pleasure to welcome you to today's webinar. Thank you so many of you joining us from every part of the world. We're delighted to be hosting this event today with a very eminent and knowledgeable set of speakers and on a very, very important topic. So thank you for coming to join us today. In the context of acceleration of a focus on clean energy transitions, we know that in many ways, policy is too slow. We've seen tremendous variations in weather, storm activity, temperature fluctuations in this year of 2023 in every part of the world. And we know that action needs to move faster. At the same time, we see some progress in certain areas. We see acceleration of deployment of some clean energy technologies. And of course, we see a stronger debate on how all of these issues impact on people in terms of the challenges related to climate change and climate risk in terms of the costs and benefits of moving to new ways of doing things in every sector, new technologies. And of course, we always working with our governments try to put a central central focus on people. We call this people centred clean energy transitions, because we understand that all of these policies are ultimately for people and about people in terms of making people's lives better, mitigating the worst impacts of climate change. And in the same time, creating job opportunities, making homes more comfortable, making cities more clean and making people's lives more affordable, more convenient and better in every way. Now, clean energy transitions ultimately will create more jobs than are lost in the transition. But of course, we know that this is not always of comfort to people who fear how their livelihoods, other communities, other local economies might be negatively impacted. And we know that not all jobs will be in the same places. Not all new jobs will suit all types of sector, all types of skill level. And we know that governments are rightly putting a focus on how to protect people who might be impacted in terms of their jobs, their livelihoods and their communities by changes driven by clean energy transitions. In these discussions around the world, around jobs and workers, we think that maybe not enough attention has been given to the category of informal worker. We know that in some countries, informal workers make a very significant proportion of employment. And of course, in many cases, informal workers are represented by larger numbers of women, by migrant workers, by marginalised communities and are affected particularly badly in certain ways, if not taken care of by through good programs and good policies. And it's highlighting some of those practices and those challenges that we want to do today. So we want to look at questions around what are the particularities of informal workers and communities in relation to the design of clean energy policies and their employment dimensions? We want to look at the particularities related to the representation of women, marginalised communities and other groups in those policies, how to make the policies more inclusive and more beneficial to those who need it most. And we want to look at what governments can do in terms of skilled programs, financial supports, industrial policy, agricultural policy, everything that goes together in the ecosystem of clean energy transitions, supporting workers and communities and particularly supporting informal workers and economies. I think we're really fortunate to have some such excellent speakers with us today who are really working on these issues in key regions and countries and have done so for a long time and really understand the subtleties and the nuances of what has happened and what needs to be done. So I'm delighted to thank all of our speakers for joining us. I think we're going to have some really excellent discussions. I'm very, very grateful to all to join us. I'll introduce the speakers as we go along. But first of all, let me introduce our keynote speaker. And I'm particularly delighted to have the honour of introducing Rima Nanavati, who is the General Secretary of the Self-Employed Women's Association based in India. Rima has been the General Secretary of SEWA since 1999. And the organisation under her leadership has grown to be the single largest union of informal sector workers in the world, now representing over 1.7 million workers. So who better to give us an overview of these issues and give us the benefit of her wisdom and experience than Rima Nanavati. So Sister Rima, thank you very much for joining us and the floor is now yours. Namaste, good morning, good afternoon, good evening from wherever everybody's joining. It is my privilege and I thank you, brother Brian and Matthew Prynne as well for inviting me to speak here. On behalf of SEWA's 2.5 million members, all women workers in the informal economy in India, 93% of the workforce in our country is in the informal economy. Having almost completed five decades since we were established in 1972, organising the informal sector for women workers across 18 states in India, our goals are full employment and self-reliance of our members. Today, the union has turned into a movement and we have spread our wings across the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Myanmar as well. Our approach is that how do you identify the needs or whatever are the issues of our members? And we try to understand these and design programs and initiatives around the needs or issues or challenges of our members. It is on this same approach that an internal energy audit and budgeting survey was conducted which showed that the owners are fulfilling the energy needs of a family is largely shouldered by women in the household. Not only that, but women had to spend almost 40% of their time and 25% of their income in accessing the energy needs. And this resulted in to their getting trapped into the vicious circle of indebtedness and poverty. And therefore, in order to address this issue of affordable access to energy, SEVA initiated its energy campaign. They call it as Haryali, which means green in our local dialect in since 2008. This energy campaign in 2009 with three goals to deliver energy access, financial inclusion and women's empowerment for our members as well to ensure the sustainability and feasibility of the Haryali campaign. We have set up a special purpose vehicle called the grassroots trading network for women for which of which Rinalika Thapola is the CEO who will be on the panel as well. We therefore brought access to energy tools and equipments closer to the women workers in the informal economy, both in the urban as well as the rural informal sector workers be it solar lanterns and then to solar lights, clean cooking to almost 27,000 households. Today, solar pumps for the salt mine workers, about 7000 women workers in the salt mines set up a solar grid. The first ever which is owned and managed by the women workers in the informal sector. It generates about 2.7 megawatts of energy, which also builds the resilience of these very fragile women workers. The above energy programs not only strengthen the livelihoods of our members, but it also creates alternative and additional employment opportunities for the women in the energy sector. The first was setting up a distribution network for solar lanterns, which then turned to solar lights. The women were compelled to spend at least 30% of their income in a wailing oil to burn out so that, you know, they could have some lighting in their homes. As a result, women are able to spend less time on productive work. The education of the children was also suffering. And as one of our artisan members says, when you live in darkness, your hearts and minds are filled with darkness. That was the reality of the women workers in the informal sector. And therefore, in order to address this issue of last mile connectivity and high power costs, it also not only addresses the issue in the context of lighting, but also has a positive impact on the health of the households. So so far, we have brought about 30,000 solar lanterns. We partnered with the government's electronic skill sector council so that now they have a whole kit. And from lanterns, the women graduated to having solar lights. So it gives them a better status in the society as well. So the kit comprises of solar lights, a fan, and till date, about 30,000 such kits have been distributed. In order to make it affordable, we have linked them with access to credit so that women could buy it. Let me share a life story of one such rural woman in a conflict, a remote area of India. This is in Kupwara in Kashmir, where Rubina Uptara, a 21 year old worker who had lost her father in the political turmoil and had to leave studies to help her mother in the household chores and sustain the family. In her hometown, Kupwara, they rarely have electricity and mostly have to collect firewood for cooking and lighting. When Rubina got a chance to visit Seva in 2014, she saw women assembling solar lights and also repairing solar lights. And she immediately enrolled her in the training. This training was a life changing experience for Rubina. She became strong, confident and a determined girl. On return to her native village, she formed a collective of women to assemble and sell solar lights. It was not easy for a young girl to form an enterprise in a Muslim community. The male members of the village challenged her to repair the light in the village mosque, which was not working for the last two years. Rubina applied her skills that she had acquired and the light was repaired in a flash. It was a life changing incident as the village head priest felicitated Rubina and today she earns an income of about 12 to 15,000 rupees just by her having her own solar enterprise. I can share thousands of these kind of experiences of informal sector women workers setting up their energy enterprises, turning into energy entrepreneurs. Let me also share what Hariyali has done in making access to clean energy more affordable to the salt pan workers who live a life of bonded laborers till they had access to solar pumps. Year after year, these salt pan workers had to migrate to the desert living in inhabitable climatic conditions where temperatures go up to 51 degrees centigrade and living in makeshift tents for almost eight to nine months of the year. Seventy percent of their income was spent on buying diesel oil to run these pumps for 24 hours for almost three months. And therefore, at the end of the salt season, they were left with practically no income to go back home. How do you address this challenge of energy poverty leading to, you know, stark poverty for these women workers? We piloted with five salt solar pumps as we did not want to play with the lives and livelihoods of these workers. Looking at the success of this pilot, the diesel consumption went down by almost 70 percent. And it led to increase in productivity and the quality of the salt and therefore the income. Today, we have close to 7000 women salt pan workers. And we have made this affordable by making it through a public sector bank loan. Let us see a video. I do not want to speak for myself. Let us see a video of a salt pan worker and we can and that will be the testimony. Can we play the video, please? This is my husband, Rani Barileva. This is my husband, Nasi. He has been serving here for a long time. He has helped me and made me worry about him. I have taken the solar pumps because of the service. We do not have anything to do with it. When the solar came, my husband took one of the solar pumps. I have been taking these solar pumps for a long time. I do not have any diesel. After taking these solar pumps for a long time, my husband told me to take these solar pumps. My husband and Rani Barileva are very happy. They say that they do not have any diesel. They say that they do not have any diesel. Thank you so much. And so, as you heard from Jamuna Barileva, a salt pan worker herself, the reduction in the operating costs and increased productivity, she says the sun has turned into a gold mine for us now. And I think as a result now, livelihoods of 7000 such women salt pan workers has changed and they have become far more stronger. And it has also increased and into additional production of salt. And therefore, I think looking at these examples, we did not want that, you know, when the women go back to the villages, they have to keep paying the installments of their loan. So in the in the lean season, when salt is not produced in the desert, where the desert is flooded and covered with water, we have set up a solar park, the first of its kind, Minigrid, which is owned and managed by these women salt pan workers, which is producing 2.7 megawatt of electricity. And that helps the women with an additional income. So this has resulted into energy inclusion, financial inclusion, asset creation and lifting these bonded laborers out of poverty. And this is what the women workers in the informal sector workers at SEVA call just or clean energy transition. Such decentralized production and distribution of energy by setting up the micro grids, which are completely owned and managed by the women workers themselves, making them not just workers or consumers of energy, but producers, users and managers of energy. And this is what will generate into more and more livelihood opportunities. How do you build resilience of women workers in the informal sector once they have access to clean energy and clean energy? And that's where SEVA is piloting energy farming. You integrate energy farming with your farming, whether it's horticulture, aquaculture or agriculture. And the surplus energy that's generated through the solar panels provides with the farmers, you know, a steady source of revenue, which therefore they are able to withstand the climate shop and the market shops, which these informal sector women workers face. So having said these are a few examples, I what I really want to say is that how to ensure employment transparency in energy investments is a big issue, that policy issue that one has to address when it comes to women workers in the informal sector. How many poor women with limited access to energy live on work in locations? As I was talking about Rubina with by fragility, conflicts and violence. That's the other aspect that one has to see. What energy and when employment combined opportunities are available to displaced women in the urban and the rural areas? And I think this brings to the next important aspect when green energy inclusion for informal sector women workers happens. It has clearly brought about the nexus between women, work, energy, food and climate. And that led SEVA to launch its Cleaner Skies Campaign to initiate women's role or women's role in climate action in a big way. And in this last one and a half years, we have reached over about two million women workers, which has led to some very interesting outcomes like plantation cover, increasing plantation cover, both in the urban and in the rural areas, adoption of clean cooking solutions like bio digesters, bringing in reduction in electricity, bills and consumption, cool roof. And how do you switch over to natural and regenerative farming? This has also initiated circular economy of energy, spiraling upwards. How can the bio digesters bring out slurry, which can be used into their own farms? And that's how you reduce the drudgery of the women and also improve the productivity of the land. And these kind of promoting green practices and adopting green products. How do you convert the villages and the slums into greener slums? And the other important policy lesson that it brings out is the key to all this is organizing, organizing informal sector workers, rural young women and men to ensure participation and continuity of the clean energy transition. There is a need to adopt systems change approach. Given that transitioning to clean energy solutions is a cross cutting challenge. There is a need to undertake action research to understand the impact of just energy transition on the lives and livelihoods. Second, how do you also show that energy projects and programs close the gender gap in employment generation and prosperity sharing? Why poor women working are still last to be invited in the energy sector opportunities? Climate change, mitigation and adaptation measures, therefore are meaningless if they do not generate work, build skills, help form assets and transform the life of the poor, vulnerable women and workers in the informal sector. I would therefore say that a major policy shift that is needed is create a climate resilience fund for women workers, which helps in consolidating and upscaling their adaptation and mitigation measures and find new way. And this is going to be a blended finance mechanism. This will protect women and their work from risk and accelerate building resilience by generating green jobs and clean assets. And last but not most important is it will also make women leaders of decarboning economic activity by building an economy of nurturance. So I think the title of this today's webinar, which is on women workers in the informal economy and how do you support these women workers is too full. Setting up a global climate resilience fund for women and how do these funds women take lead in building an economy of nurturance? Thank you so much. Over to you, Brad. Thank you so much, Rima. We're really very grateful to hear those wise words from you and to hear of the fantastic work Siva is doing with its 2.5 million members and beyond. And I think you really gave us a very powerful address that was very real about what happens in women's lives in particular on the ground and how they're affected by these energy issues. But also looked at all of the dimensions in terms of how energy access, clean cooking, solar energy, employment, income, all of these things are connected and all of the opportunities as well as the challenges are connected. So I think it's really impressive to see the work you have done and what you have achieved. And it's an opportunity for us to learn from that. And to do so, I do want to now turn to your esteemed colleague, Rinalika Dapola, who's the chief executive officer of Siva. So first of all, Rinalika, thank you for joining us. But also congratulations to you and Rima for the excellent work you are doing. And we have seen some examples of that. And I would like to bring you in as a follow up to what we've heard from Rima because we had a focus on the empowering of women's lives and when they take control and the work that women themselves can do, that their communities can do and when they work together. But we also know there are dimensions related to what business decisions are made, what what companies decide to do and, of course, what policies are put in place. So I wonder if I could ask you how much do you think going in the right direction here is a question of leadership by government and the policies they make or more focus on women and the communities themselves to take action? Yeah, thank you, Brian. And thank you for hosting me in this panel discussion. Pleasure being a part of this webinar and discussion. Thank you so much. Rima has very rightly made a point that there is a need to change policies and consider while designing energy transition policies while designing energy transition policies, policy makers need to really consider several key informal issues alongside formal labor issues that may arise as a result of transition. This issues can have a significant impact on workers in traditional energy sectors and should be addressed to ensure just an equitable transition. Some of the key informal labor issues that should be considered based on our ground experiences are like limited access to energy services. The informal workforce lacks currently access to modern and reliable energy services and energy transition policies should prioritize expanding this energy access to rural areas which can improve their quality of life and open up economic opportunities. Secondly, rural energy production, the informal workers in the rural areas contribute significantly in energy production, such as working in small scale bio energy production. And energy transition policies should support and formalize these roles, ensuring fair compensation and safer working conditions. Another impending issues are like unpaid care work. Rural women are typically responsible for unpaid care work, which includes cooking, cleaning and childcare and affordable energy efficient technologies and clean cooking solutions can reduce the time and labor required required for this task, freeing up women time for another economic activities to ensure their livelihood. Energy transition policies, that is it's important that this energy transition policies should create opportunities for informal sector to participate in the renewable energy sector, whether they're through employment in energy projects or entrepreneurship in areas like solar panel installation or bio fuel production. Informal laborers in rural areas who often work in low skilled or unregulated sectors are a significant part of the workforce in the country. So neglecting their training and education could lead to a growing socioeconomic divide during the transition to a green economy. It's essential that this policies focus on skill development, developing their training programs tailored to the needs of informal workers focusing on renewable energy, energy efficiency and other relevant green sectors. Accessible education is another important factor. We should ensure that these programs are easily accessible to informal laborers, including provisions for flexible schedules and financial support. Awareness campaigns, which Rima mentioned that we have just initiated this effort conducting awareness campaigns to informal laborers about the benefits of transition to green sectors and the opportunities available through education and training to deal with lack of information and technical knowledge regarding various technology solutions is very, very critical. Access to financing, buying down cost for new energy technologies intended to meet sustainable development goals, public subsidies are critical for adoption and is the need of an hour. Financial incentives to stimulate new renewable energy development is needed and incentives should encourage lower technological costs through all possible means. Access to financial resources can be a barrier for seeking to start or expand energy related businesses. Policy measures should facilitate access to affordable financing and micro loans and the most important is community engagement. Engaging local communities for planning and implementation of energy projects can ensure that policies are responsive to the needs and preferences. Policy options for promoting technological adoption should consider these practical issues and demonstration and pilot projects should be encouraged because they believe seeing is believing. So I feel demonstration and pilot projects should be encouraged. Thank you very much, Rinalik. And you've raised really many really important issues there. But something I heard you stress very strongly is that programs such as skill programs need to be tailored to the needs of informal workers. So I wonder in practical terms, what advice would you give to governments to make sure that that tailoring happens correctly? Oh, you're we have a very practical experience here. What I meant here is like there has to be a targeted outreach. There is a need to conduct outreach efforts, especially targeting women in marginalized marginalized groups and to inform them about the opportunities in the clean energy sector and provide access to relevant training and resources. For example, the project of green skilling under SEVA, where we are imparting training to SEVA sister aims to empower disadvantaged rural communities, particularly low income women's salt pan workers in underserved areas, such as but not limited to little runoff cuts in renewable industry. It has been designed with a vision to create scalable and sustainable employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for the women. This project seeks to achieve this by augmenting their skills, building their capacities, establishing viable business models and facilitating market linkages to foster self reliance, sustainable livelihoods, environmental conscious economic opportunities. This training provides and aims valuable skills in the green energy sector, enabling them to generate income. Additionally, it will empower them to address everyday technical issues related to solar panels, especially within their salt pan farming sites. And the main outcomes of this training are to nurture the young women of salt pan workers to become grassroots, barefoot solar engineers and train and give self employment to young women who become capable of recognizing and troubleshooting issues that occur more frequently in solar replanches. Thank you very much, Marina Lika. Thank you for raising those issues. Let me turn now to another very important perspective this time from Indonesia, and we're very fortunate to have with us Ellie Rosita Silaban, who is the president of the Confederation of All-Indonesian Trade Unions. So, Ellie, we're delighted you're able to join us. We're very grateful. And maybe I could ask you to tell us a bit more about recent developments in Indonesia on clean energy transitions and informal economies and also maybe tell us a bit about your organization, the Confederation of All-Indonesian Trade Unions has engaged with this issue. Over to you, Ellie. Yeah. Thank you, Brian. Do you hear me? Yes, very well. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for giving me a chance to set a genuine point of view related to clean energy in Indonesia, and also I can share a little bit about the issue of informal workers in Indonesia. The energy transition funding commitment through the just energy transition partnership, 20 billion USD, has serious challenges. One of them is that public knowledge is minimal because of space for public participation is also limited. However, however, the plan must be carried out because our government already committed about it. I can say an example about the clean energy. We have one area in one island in Java, the utilization of the micro hydropower plant in Sumbawa, which was built in 2009. The micro hydropower plant operates 24 hours and can supply electricity for 400 houses and also five public facilities, 20 foot stall and seven productive works, including coffee, processing machine. The factory is managed by a local multi-business cooperative and also with the the the society in that area. The availability of electricity can improve people's standard of living by providing a good value for their product. So in order to encourage the optimization of the energy transition, the government implement mark system and digitalization, but also pay attention to community contribution. Unfortunately, public awareness still very far from the expectation. Some of them say that the impact will not come suddenly, still like 50 or 100,000 more. So they they added, but some of them also already increased their awareness about the impact of the energy. In order to now the government also encourage community participation in the development of renewable energy by regulating Ministry of Energy and Mineral regarding the installation, establishing minimum energy performance, standard regulation, developing small scale renewable energy, providing incentive and grants, holding seminar, training and workshop to disseminate of the information. Post-call economic transformation planning needs to prioritize economic activities that provide multiplier effect in the local communities. I think the problem also stayed the same with the previous speaker. We see that impact of a potential decline in co-production in the informal economic sector, which has not been recorded in microeconomic analysis. I don't know, maybe in global already there, but in our understanding, and we didn't and we never get it and we didn't know yet about the microeconomic analysis about this issue. The core mining industry has a significant social and environmental impact on the surrounding communities, for example, degradation of air and water quality, changes in communities, livelihood resources, economic inequality and increasing consumerism and rent seeking. Different interests, knowledge and access to information make its party have a different perspective in addressing the energy transition. For example, for companies are more aware of the risk of the energy transition to their business than the government and our citizens. But now companies and local government are starting to carry out various economic transformation initiatives. However, local community actually more skeptical about the potential decline in coal because lately they have seen an increase in production of the coal. However, changes in perspective are also taking place in society and coal industry companies. The community began to have a vision for economic diversification and coal companies began to develop business in other fields. It is important that government and various stakeholders can encourage wider awareness and initiative structural changes towards economic transformation efforts. We know that some factors that change their adoption of clean energy such as the problem of land ownership, lack of local experience and unattractive tariffs. We found from various discussions that how to realize sustainable development requires some point like comprehensive economic diversification and transformation planning and by important stakeholders and community participation, expand access to education and training to prepare a competitive workforce in sustainable sector and increase financial literacy for the community and increase the participation of all elements of society, especially those vulnerable groups. We also see the interest of women involved related to energy transition is quite low. There is a gender bias that needs to be observed as if the energy transition is a male technical work. That is the introduced to the people and to the citizens. The importance of women in decision making in the energy sector can oversee the perspective and interest of women to be accommodated to produce inclusive and sustainable quality. And now I'm going to help our organization to engage about the issue. Since a few years ago, we already organized informal workers to join the union and we trained them and introduced them to have access to social security and explain the impact of just energy transition to their life and their future. KSBC had a discussion with the employer association to immediately establish the National Committee for Just Transition and Transition Energy and soon we will deliver it with government. We seek in contribution from other stakeholders, partner organizations, ILO, IPC to organize seminar, on friends and do socialization because the president has no budget to do by ourselves. We organize collective bargaining agreement training for two regions right now in Indonesia because only two regions affected mentioned right now. Even though we understand more than that. Establish a cross-region and federation forum for just energy transition to make some perspective about the issue. Social dialogue with government at national level and the region. Capacity building to increase awareness and ready to accept changes and ready to seek skill development. Active in every activity carried out by the government or other stakeholders. And we provide our input. For example, the total of our member or workers affected in the region and also how the future of the community. Forge the government to incorporate union in the designing roadmap and inform transparency of their scenario. So we can introduce it during our discussion and meeting with the workers and also the society. That is only I can say right now. But if you like me personally. Ellie, thank you very much indeed. It's great to hear of all the work you are doing in Indonesia, but also to hear your judgment of the issues there. And I do think there's quite a few similarities in the kind of debates and challenges as well as opportunities that you have raised that we heard from our previous speakers. So it's a great pleasure to hear from you and thank you very much for that. And I'm going to return now to another Indian perspective, another very important one, because we're going to hear from Sri Harika, who's an eminent PhD scholar in the School of Public Policy in IIT, Delhi. And Sri, first of all, thank you very much for joining us. It's great to have you here. And having heard Ellie from Indonesia, but also Reema and Marina Lika from India. And we've heard quite a lot of emphasis on the positive benefits of clean energy transitions, if they're done right, if their policies are designed well and we've heard about people benefiting from clean energy. But of course, we know as well that there are many informal workers and especially women working in the coal sector in India, for example, right now, and there must be many concerns about the future of their livelihoods and those of their families and communities. So I know this is something you look at very closely. So based on your research focusing on coal communities, could you tell us, please, a little bit about what your views are on some of the key issues that are specific to informal workers and economies in the context of India, please? Yes, thank you, Brian, for your introduction and the question. So as we have heard from our colleagues at SEVA, that majority of Indian workforce is employed in the informal sector. And so is the case with the energy sector as well. For instance, in the coal sector, we have more than 75 percent of the workforce, which is informally employed, though there is no official estimation of the numbers. But this is like an approximate number that we have arrived through conversations with the workers and also spending some time in the coal regions. And adding to this, we see that there is a very strong gender dimension to this informality, especially in the mining and quarrying sector, where we do have some official data available. We see that 50 percent of male workforce is employed in the informal is employed either informally or through self employment. But we see that more than 80 percent of female workforce is employed informally. So they definitely we see more female workforce in the informal sector, especially in the mining and quarrying sector, which are important for the energy transition. And again, as our colleagues from SEVA have highlighted, that informal workers in coal regions as well work in under very precarious conditions without proper job security. They do not possess social security benefits as well. And the wages in most of the cases are lower than those of the formal workers. And in addition to this, occupational health hazards are very prevalent in this sector. And these include chronic lung diseases, such as celicosis, asbestosis and also hearing loss is one of the major illness which lowers their working age and forces them to retire early. But however, if we compare informal workers in coal sector to other to other sectors, such as garment garment industry or building and construction sector, we see that the coal workers are paid more than the other sectors. And this also suggests that there are economic factors that are driving some workers to choose employment in the coal sector, despite its inherent risks and informality. So then these numbers then set the context of why do we need to consider the informal workforce when planning for an energy transition. And it is seen that in the coal sector, informal workers are employed at all levels from coal mining to coal washeries to coal transportation. And along with this, there's also a very huge economy around coal which caters to this industry, and it is mostly informal. This can be in the form of milk trading, tailoring, carpentry, grocery vending, small businesses, operation of modest hotels, eateries and all which basically are around the coal industry. So it is not just energy transition that we're looking at, but it is more of an economy transition that we should be focusing on. And also we have seen in the past that with any transition or closure of a particular industry, it has detrimental impacts, especially on the informal workers. For example, in the recent past, we have had some closure of coal mines mainly due to under productivity and extinction of the resources. But we have seen that in such cases, the formal workers have been rehabilitated. They have been given jobs in some other industrial units. But the informal workers were again left to themselves with no other job opportunities. And with this, also the informal economy around these areas also, I mean, it also gets affected because we have seen in some of the case studies that we have done in mining regions that close to 45% of household income is spent on the local economy of that region. So after the closure, if there's a closure, then this spending becomes zero and the informal economy then just drops. And there's also a very large loan burden on the the people who run these small businesses and small enterprises around these coal regions. And for example, we have seen this not just with the closure of coal mines, but very majorly we have seen this with a sudden ban on iron iron iron mining in some states in India, where the truck owners who have whose primary source of income was transporting the ore. So when there was a ban on this mining, they did not have any income from transportation. And then they also had loan burden, which they had taken to buy the trucks. And now the situation is still ongoing with no proper rehabilitation for these informal workers. And with the closure, we also see that the public goods infrastructure that is created by the companies, the schools, the healthcare centers, the vocational training centers, all of these also get disclosed. And again, in this also the informal workers are the ones to suffer the most. Another major issue with closure or with shutting down of a certain industry unit is migration. We see that because of lack of opportunity in the region, the workers tend to migrate and also because there is there is desperation to find a job. They settle for less wages and they settle to also work in hazardous or harsh working conditions. And especially in the coal regions, what we see is that because there is no proper mine closure planning that is happening in India so far, there's a lot of illegality around it. So we see the local communities gathering and selling coal in the local markets. This is also this is a source of livelihood. But the way this gathering of coal is happening is also very dangerous in its life threatening and it also has environmental implications. And if it is not done with proper safety standards. So then considering some of these issues around informality and coal transition, I think it is important that we identify some key stakeholders who play like a very important role in advocating for the rights of these informal workers. And these to me are civil society organizations, the trade unions and the local governments, which are the panchayati large institutions in India. So I'll begin with local governments. Sorry, I'll begin with the civil society organizations. I think civil society organizations are the most underutilized stakeholders in this discourse on energy transition so far. So CSOs operate in various activities ranging from education, health care, livelihood promotion, human rights, etc. And majority of them cater to problems of informal workers and the economy. So they have expertise. So they also have expertise in working in very niche areas. For example, an organization called Samatha, it works on children in mining areas. So they do not just look at child labor, but they also look at what happens to children in these areas in general, in terms of their education, their health and all. But however, children as a speck, as a speck, as a different category has not gotten any importance at the national level discussions so far. So their proximity to local communities, their understanding of the local context and the understanding of the political dynamics actually makes them very important stakeholders. And it is also important to note that informal workers is not a homogeneous category. So they come from various socioeconomic cultural backgrounds and some of these CSOs are able to cater to those needs as well, needs of those groups as well. But so far in the energy transition discourse, these organizations have only been used as a source to gather data. And we do not see actual partnerships or meaningful collaborations with these organizations at the national level. So I believe that along with government support to the CSOs, it is also important that we as civil society engage with these organizations with their capabilities and with their expertise, which they have developed working for many years in these areas. Then having said that it is also important that we converge the isolated activities of these CSOs in order to address some of the pressing issues. We need to like maybe provide platforms where these organizations can come together and develop plans that are more holistic. Here, I also believe that donors and funding agencies also can play a very important role in curating these partnerships between the national and local organizations. So the funding should not just ensure that money comes not just for top down knowledge generation and top down capacity building of local organizations, but creating those knowledge partnerships where both benefit from each other. And along with this, I think another least concerted stakeholder, I would say, is the trade unions in Indian case. So especially post the discussion, post the Paris Agreement, we see that there has been a revival of trade unionism in India. In my area of study, which is the Singarene Cold Region in India, we see that there is a rise of something called as the social movement unionism, where trade unions are not just advocating for the rights of workers, but they're also advocating for the rights of co-dependent communities. And in the past couple of years, we have seen some of the major trade unions bring in their ambit informal and contractual workers and are advocating for their wages and their rights as well. So and if you're talking about renewable energy sector, in most parts of India, renewable energy workers are also not unionized. So it is like a two sided opportunity for trade unions to actually unionize the renewable energy workers as well and to also advocate for their rights. So I mean, I think what is happening in Singarene and the way they are the trade unions are playing a role in advocating for, especially the rights of informal workers. I think we can use that as an example for other cold regions as well. And in general, if we see that human development indicators in most of the cold regions are worse performing, this can be due to lack of resources. I mean, there's an argument about the resource curse or lack of infrastructure development or other issues, and we can theorize about it. But I think what is important is we need to understand what people want on ground. And in this, local governments can play a very important role because they are the they interact very closely with the local populations and and they can help us in the needs assessment and understanding the and planning some of these programs. So I think in order to gain confidence of local communities, spread awareness of the just transition planning, CSO, trade unions and local the capacity of these organizations should be leveraged and they can form the bridge between the international national commitments and what is happening at the ground here. Thank you. Three. Thank you. Now, that's very, very clear. And you've raised a number of really interesting dimensions and given us some insights as to the real issues here, as our other speakers have done. And I was struck by your use of the phrase, the transition of the economy as well. And because you talked about national issues and more regional issues, and I know you focus on that. So could I ask you just for a brief word on how much do you think looking at looking at the states across India, the nature of the of coal in the economy is very, very different in different states. So how much are these issues the same in different parts of India in different regions of states and therefore are they different? And therefore, how much when we talk about policy, are we talking about national policy or more local level policy being the most important? Yes, thank you, I think very broadly the issues that all in the different states that we're talking about are more or less same. But it but it but when it comes to the other human development indicators, we see that some states are performing better than others. And that is the reason why in those states, we also see the coal sector or the coal workers performing better in terms of income and in terms of job security. So I think it is I think as you also said that it is it's more about having that holistic planning when we're not just looking at coal workers as a part of a certain sector. But we we try to bring them within the larger developmental planning and larger sustainable development planning. And I mean, it's it's definitely important that we look at local context, have more state level policies, have more state level planning. I would even I mean, if we have the capacity, then we should actually do these planning at the local level. We should include the local governments and their expertise in this. But if even if you don't go to that level, I think it's very important that we have state level policies and not just a top down national policies on these things, because I think these are also geographically very different. They have different land, they have different soil. So even in terms of rehabilitation of the of the mining sites, it's important that we consider these local factors. Thank you very much, that's really very interesting. Thank you. And several of our speakers have raised all of our speakers, but I think I've raised dimensions around finance and capacity building. And I'm going to go now to Elise Hating for a particular perspective around that. Elise is a sustainable growth researcher at TIPS, Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies in South Africa. We all know that South Africa is a key player in some of these discussions. Though the nature of informal workers is very different there, but Elise has been really active in this agenda for a long time, particularly around the nature of financing, capacity building, entrepreneurship. So Elise, thank you very much for joining us. And maybe you could share your perspective from the perspective of the South Africa dimensions, but also how you see its best to support marginalised and informal communities. Thank you. Yeah, I think from South Africa, we have a very unique perspective in our social, economic and political context. I think the whole world is starting to see South Africa from a just energy transition is becoming quite a bit of a bulb, if I can say it like that. So a lot of lots of activities on the ground. But for today, what I'd like to kind of highlight is how we've been dealing with our energy shortages and energy security challenges, but also being very mindful to leave no one behind. And there's a very big focus on youth inclusion and female inclusion with involving the new economies and green industries. And this obviously also have a big focus on the informal sector and the skilling of workers and addressing a lot of the anxieties that there is, especially with facing out of coal mines. So what we've seen from a policy perspective over the last two to three years, our organisation has worked quite closely on looking at access to inclusive finance. And this is very much for the MSME on the ground in rural and marginalized communities who is looking at climate mitigation and climate adaptation, more specifically a solution. A lot of this is not necessarily because the marginalized groups want to be entrepreneurs, but there is an absolute failure in our economy to absorb anybody from a worker seekers perspective. So one of the programmes was Youth Breach Trust. It's about 300 unemployment youth under the presidential stimulus programme, which was quite successful, but it was exposing graduate youth. So these were engineers and highly skilled and graduate youth, whose families have offered a lot to get into university and the economy is failing to absorb them. So they've been sitting at home two to three years without absolute any income or even an ability to get work experience. So what we've done, we've exposed them to green industries and especially in South Africa, water shortages. Also the quality of water, drinking water and access to water in rural communities. Pollution obviously from from water bodies due to mining activities, but also really looking at Umbu Mulanga, where a lot of our coal mines are situated, looking at new industries that can absorb these skills. But these unemployed youth, especially in a lot of women as well, in that area just don't have any economic means. They've got qualifications and skills to contribute to the economy, but it was to create awareness levels for them of where new industries and services are needed and what kind of programmes are there to support them. So they have to become entrepreneurial and they are very likely then also to create two or three informal jobs in the economy by setting up their businesses. But what we've seen is climate finance not really reaching the level of a micro enterprise size of accessing finance. I think it's really much the climate finance in South Africa still in the very large renewable energy projects and for even a woman with very little financial background or in most entrepreneurs being highly indebted to access finance and the eligibility criteria, it's not viable. So what we're looking at at the moment is also greening microfinance and looking at different types of financing models to bring the climate finance much closer to the ground, smaller amounts that could really also respond to climate mitigation. And we see this as quite something quite beautiful in terms of how the just energy transition is also unfolding to be more inclusive in many areas, many sectors of green industries. But we still do not have a dedicated climate finance MSME policy. We see that some critical attention is needed within the next two years to develop such a policy and also attracting the climate finance to these groups. And so, yeah, very good research and projects is taking place, but that's how we are shaping our agenda to also look at the informal workers that would benefit from entrepreneurs getting access to inclusive finance. Thank you. Thank you, Elisa. It's great to hear the work you're doing and you've emphasised the inclusivity dimension. So could you say maybe just a little more about how do you make finance inclusive? How do you make these programmes inclusive? And if they don't mind, I'll take on a second question because your focus is on the green economy and decarbonisation related matters. And when you think about finance at a micro level with a focus on inclusivity, if you're focusing on clean energy, decarbonisation, sustainability, is it different than if you're doing it in other sectors or for other reasons? There's kind of two questions there. One about the inclusivity side and one about what makes focusing on the clean and decarbonisation special. Great. So yeah, I think in terms of the inclusion, a lot of the enterprise development and youth development and female entrepreneurship development programmes are very much inclusive due to the nature of the beneficiaries that they are actually onboarding in these programmes. And in South Africa, we regard youth as the ages between 18 and 35. So that's one aspect. And then the businesses and programmes and even the youth development funding is linked towards, we call it eco-inclusive, kind of programmes. And they are specifically also situated within the Malanga, which is a coal mining region, to start letting youth be incorporated within the new green industry. So that's the one aspect. So I think that's just from a beneficiary selection criteria. And number two would be in terms of the sectors. I think we are all aware of 2050 decarbonisation commitments globally and our commitments as South Africa. But it is important that we're looking at a number of industries. So in South Africa, we look basically at eight green industries and we've identified opportunities for MSMEs. So this is water, transportation, energy, climate-smart agriculture, waste. There's a couple of the obvious ones. But I think the big focus is also between clean and renewable energy and energy efficiency, how that is embedded within the sectors. So if you're going to start climate-smart agriculture business, how do you look at your water, the way you pump your water, the energy mechanisms that you do so that they are very much connected. It's not that we're isolating them. But I think very important in the discussion is when we're looking at the ability of small enterprises and micro enterprises absorbing informal sectors into their businesses. We are looking at small pockets of funding. So if you are in agriculture or even in water provision, the type of finance that you need is very different than when you are setting up a micro grid for solar PV. So we need to be very conscious around a sectoral approach and also the types of skills from informal that can be absorbed into these smaller enterprises. But it's very important that when you're looking at the energy and just energy transition and you want to invest money into, for example, female youth-owned businesses who are setting up renewable energy projects, it's a very, very different story than looking at more mitigation level regarding water pumps or just water filtering and providing communities with water. So I hope that helps. It helps a lot. Thank you very much, Elise. And colleagues, time is upon us. We've heard really excellent perspectives. I'm sorry we don't have another hour. I certainly learned an awful lot from listening to all of you and I know everybody joining us today have. It's been really enriching. We've heard different countries and different angles, but I think we've heard a lot of commonality too around the importance of focusing on these issues and some really excellent work going on across the world on supporting informal workers, women in particular, marginalized communities. So I think it's been very uplifting to listen to you all today but also really educational to understand the issues and to understand what governments can do, what communities can do, what civil society organizations can do, and also of course what unions and other key actors can do. So I want to thank you all very much, Elise, Sree, Ellie, Marina Lika and of course Rima. We've really enjoyed your perspective and thank you very much for joining us. And everybody who's joined us today, thank you for joining us, thank you for spending this time. And just to remind you that this webinar is part of the IEA's growing work program on people-centered and clean energy transitions. So we'd love to hear from all of you. Please get in touch if you have experience or ideas to share. All of our speakers, I hope we can continue to learn from you and continue to stay in touch as we work on these issues in the future. So we'll draw this to a close for today but thanks again everybody for joining us. Thank you.