 Welcome everybody to this roundtable on refugees and restoration. We are very happy that you joined on this World Environment Day. And it is a Saturday, but a lot of people joined us here to think about the future, learn from practitioners, discuss solutions. And yeah, thank you very much already for this. So my name is Tina Teucher. I will be facilitating this roundtable. And I'm very, very grateful that all followed the invitation to this roundtable. Why? Because globally there are about 79 million forcibly displaced people, including refugees, and more than 75% of Earth's land areas are substantially degraded. And this undermines the well-being of almost half of the world's population. And the annual costs of land degradation are more than 230 billion US dollars. But the thing is there is hope. And this is why we're here today. There are solutions. There are examples showing that these global problems can be turned into local solutions. And many regenerative projects worldwide work on the regeneration of land and the healing of people and ecosystems, also together with forcibly displaced people. And today we celebrate the start of the UN decade on ecosystem restoration. So what if we use this momentum to bring the nature base and people-centered solution into the spotlight and let them multiply, pollinate others and scale the positive impact. And it's not about newness, but nurturing what is there already, because there are already a lot of good examples there. So this is an exploration, a discovery, and we want to strengthen the root system of a resilient society. Five hours ago we had a first round table with very inspiring talks and guests that also has been live streamed, and you can watch the recording on YouTube. I would say it's definitely worth it, and I can highly recommend it. There were also a lot of good ideas and projects from speakers, but also shared in the chat. So in this round table here today, we have inspiring guests who will share their experiences with us, too. It's Natalie Meyer from Movement on the Ground, it's Elham Abadi from Bayuda Village. It's Noah Sampia from Yize in Uganda, John DeLew from Ecosystem Restoration Camps, and Maya Henekes from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. I will introduce them in more detail later to you. And yeah, so you can see our agenda today, it's very delicious and rich, but we only have one and a half hour. And this is why I kindly ask all speakers to focus and be brief, and also for chat participants to not be disappointed if not all the questions can be addressed. Yeah, and for the speakers, so if you exceed the timeframe, you might hear some nature sounds like birds singing, kindly ask me to come to the end. But first, we would like to know more about you, the participants. So please share with us in the chat already, where are you right now? So everyone joining us in Zoom or in YouTube, where are you right now? For example, I can type in here and I'm right now in Munich in Germany. And as you can see, there are other people joining us from Fortaleza in Brazil, welcome. In Marseille in France, in Washington, welcome everybody, that's cool to have you all here, Los Angeles. And then there's Cuba, great. So with all these multiple perspectives that we want to include today, let us shed some light on this question with the question we invited you to come. And this is the question, what if we transformed refugee camps into regenerative camps? So what are regenerative practices? I think this is the most important thing to understand in the first place, because ecosystem land restoration is when you improve the soil fertility, the water cycle and the local climate with regenerative practices, just like permaculture, agroecology, agroforestry, holistic grazing and other techniques. And we literally plant the seeds for a healthy future of people because you strengthen ecosystem services like food production, clean water and air, cooling and shade, natural building material and much more. It can be large scale or small scale, but observations show that the small scale projects tend to lay more focus on empowering people and building local resilience. So if we unfold this potential in the refugee context, multiple benefits can arise for people who are supposedly displaced, as well as for the local citizens, the host countries and the global community. So now we can observe five points, and I will go deeper into them in this talk. So restoration with refugee has a great potential, and there are good examples with knowledge, with experience that already exists, but obstacles hinder them being implemented large scale. So learning from each other can help to overcome the constraints, and this is what we want to do in this round table. And this is also the question of this round table, we will find out during the next one and a half hours, but also we will bring in concrete ideas. But first, let's look at the benefits and the potential of ecosystem restoration and refugee camps. There are a lot of benefits. There is strong potential for global goals for refugee camps and regions. It contributes to all 17 development goals like no hunger by providing nutritious food, reducing climate change, strengthening biodiversity and building peace. In the UN decade on ecosystem restoration, starting today, scientific evidence shows that the restoration of degraded ecosystems by 2030 could generate an additional value of 9 trillion US dollars in ecosystem services and remove 13 to 26 megatons of CO2 equivalent from the atmosphere. So globally the benefits obtained from ecosystem restoration exceed the costs of the investment tenfold. But what if in addition, everyone in the world, even forcibly people can contribute to reach these goals, not only for ecosystem restoration have a positive economic effect on the global economy or on CO2 sequestration, but the most important thing is it can benefit the people. So people flee from droughts, hunger and war and they generate enormous forces to find better living conditions. And normally a refugee camp is seen as a stopover but the onward journey is risky, costly and hard and a lot of people will never leave the camp again, so they are stuck. There is no back and forth. But the potential lays in the wide overlap of what refugees need and what regenerative practices can provide. It restores land, water, soils and health using collective intelligence. People can feed themselves with healthy food, it creates compost for good soil, leaving from scarce resources to circle economy with trees for shade and protection from the sun, shelter and housing with natural building materials, schooling and education with a holistic approach, regenerative energy supply for electricity, cooking and heating, job training, employment opportunities and economic integration and improved health, well-being and even trauma therapy because gardening, restoring community building, all this supports a mental healing. So restoring the earth you're living in can be so empowering and satisfying and gives direction. It lets people transform from this place to well-placed, from dependence to ownership. It can help to retrieve a sense of belonging and regain hope for a brighter and peaceful future. So what if refugee camps become self-sustainable and produce more than they need? This would also benefit the hosting communities and regions. Because until now the current problem is that hosting countries suffer from land degradation, conflicts and resource needs for their own people and for the people in the refugee camps. And in permaculture we say that the problem is the solution. So the potential solution can be that ecosystem restoration can halt and reverse these high levels of land degradation and soil erosion that are often associated with refugee camps. Because they can restore degraded land into productive landscape, contribute to food security, to energy supply, to community development and combat climate change. So by restoring the soil, the water, the forest, they can contribute on-site to disaster relief, peace building and improve the resource management. And thus support a way to go from short-term emergency aid to long-term positive impact. So what if refugees can lead their host country in a better state than when they arrive? And the good news is that this is new. There are a lot of good examples for regenerative practices in refugee camps that already exist. And some of them we have in our roundtables today, like for example, lemon tree truss by Yude Village, movement on the ground, lice in Uganda, permaculture for refugees. And there are a lot of pioneer projects also reported from Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda. And this is a list to continue. So more examples and contexts are welcome to please share the ones you know of in the chat and get in contact. So we can learn a lot from the experience of these practitioners. But they also report the constraints of restoration work in refugee camps. And we should take this very seriously and shed a light on the problems in order to find out how to tackle them. Because these obstacles prevent regeneration camps. And among other things, it is the fear of permanence from local authorities. Because refugee camps shall be temporary sites, but in reality camps are not as temporary as intended. The average length of time spent in the camps is 12 years. So government governments are afraid that planting leads to permanent residency. And there are often times it's also a lack of knowledge about restoration and a lack of awareness about the potential. The second block of constraints is the resource scarcity, as you can imagine, lack of water, seeds, building material, cooking energy solutions, and also the access to markets for the products from regenerative agriculture. And in addition, what is also reported by the organizations that already work on this, there are challenges for education of regenerative practices, like different stakeholder interests, a cultural and language diversity, which makes it not so easy to translate. And other things like threat of violence and logistical hurdles requiring us to go to camps. But fortunately, yeah, we can learn from each other. And this helps overcome these constraints. So thanks to the conversations we already had with projects working on restoration in camps, their observations show what helps and work. And it seems like involvement, so include people with a cultural heritage of gardening, participation, so established train-the-trainer programs, gardener-to-gardener networks, adaptation, so because every camp is different, so adaptive material and also evolution is different, adapted to the local, with the local experts, and set up good relations with the stakeholders on site. Provide translation, for example, interpreters that can help to translate the material, and resource management with regenerative principles like water catchment, use of local seed, and so on. And for sure there's also a question of funding, and it's important to think long-term and leave financial resources for the continuation of programs. So for example, in our last roundtable, Rosemary Morrow from Permaculture for Refugees supported that they leave $10,000 in each camp so that the permaculture project can go on. And in this roundtable here we will complement this with the insights from practitioners. So now the purpose of today's event is to talk about the obstacle and solution. And after we went, what we can do if, if this turns out as a good idea for meeting the needs that are here today, we can develop an adaptable living guideline for all interested people and organizations to use. Today's questions are, why are regenerative practices a good idea? What is needed to establish them in refugee camps and how can projects multiply, speed up and scale? So in the midterm we can set up, after this event, a working group, for example, for developing a guideline or a platform on regenerative camps. But always with a link to the practice projects, because it's good to have a theory, but also to have this implemented in practice projects and applied and tested. And we will follow up in different events for sure and in order to follow up with it. So if you feel inspired by the vision and today's insight, you can imagine to contribute to the development of the guidelines or implement a practice project, or you say, I can support in organizing the next events, please get in contact. And whether with me or support the project presented today, all about networking and bringing the good ideas together. And so today, we will focus on these three key questions here. And we have very experienced people with us sharing their perspectives on these questions. And our first speaker in this roundtable is Natalie Meyer, which I want to introduce to you. Yeah, it's working in for movement on the ground. And she is the marketing and communications manager of movement on the ground and organization with a fixed presence on the Greek island, responding to the humanitarian crisis there. And Natalie is responsible for generating awareness to the current refugee situation in Greece. And also for this concept of transforming refugee hotspots into safe feeling and dignified environment. We want to hear from you, Natalie, what you need in order to scale your project and also what works well from your perspective. So a very warm welcome. Thank you that you're here. Thank you so much, Tina, for the introduction and really honored to be a part of this event today. A happy world environment day to everyone. I think this is a fantastic opportunity for, you know, a broad range of different people working for different organizations, coming together on this incredibly important topic that impacts not just the environment, but also people in the context of the situation refugees. Obviously for today's conversation and I'm here to address a little bit about what movement on the ground as an organization but also what the refugee situation in Greece calls for in order to multiply and scale up projects related to restoration and regenerative care. But firstly before we dive into that, I thought it'd be good to give a bit of a recap into who movement on the ground is our mission and vision and a little bit about some of the projects that we've been running in Greece over the past couple of years. So we are a Dutch organization that was founded back in 2015. We're a small grassroots organization, we believe in being lean and mean that's really important to us because our key focus is working with and for the communities on the ground and that includes refugee communities, but also the local host community. So back in 2015, a group of friends from the Netherlands ended up on Lesvos, where they started direct response to the new arrivals coming into the Greek islands, specifically on Lesvos. So we started on the shores, you know, just relieving people with their basic needs when coming from their journey often from Turkey. And then from there the work escalated into the starting of a transit camp in the north of the island. What we were seeing when it came to humanitarian aid on Lesvos specifically was gaps when it comes to kind of conversations with and for refugees and new arrivals and how do we address those immediate needs. So we started this transit camp with the concept of music festival camping. So it had everything you needed from infrastructure through to, you know, a food truck. But what was a real pinnacle in terms of that formation was the conversations we were having with the community understanding first and foremost what their most important needs were at that time. And from there, what we now call our camp to campus philosophy was born, and it really kind of ties into the whole concept that's being presented in this round table today. So for us, it's the concept of transforming refugee camps into safe healing and dignified environments with and for refugees and their host communities. And for us that's kind of split over three different pillars. So that's from infrastructure programs and community and I kind of wanted to detail a few of those in a little bit more detail and of course go into some of the programs as well that we've been running. So for us, a refugee camp, the design and contingency landscaping should lead to an inclusive sustainable and protected environment with the prevention for overcrowding. It should, you know, have greater cost efficiency, maximizing the present human capital, leading to greater community outputs. We should have an active community living in a refugee camp that treats its temporary living environment with care and respect. An environmental cultivated through trust and inclusion, helping to minimize tensions and reduce violent outbreaks and enhance physical and mental well being. It should operate with cohesion and respect for the local environment and community. It should be an inclusive place where all stakeholders can openly speak about their needs and their wants. And it should of course be a place where refugees are able to develop their skills, education and personal development before they continue with their asylum procedure. So to get back to the topic a little bit now that I've covered the camp to campus philosophy. I wanted to really bring in the example that you see behind me, which is actually the olive groves outside of Moria camp. As probably many of us know present here today Moria camp was destroyed in fires in September last year, but it was one of the key locations in which we worked for about three years within for the community. And when we first stepped into the olive groves, something that we saw was a massive overcrowding of the facility. So a lot of people were living in summer tents outside of the direct facility itself. And the first thing that we noticed was a massive influx of waste in this space. So a lot of people disposing of their rubbish in the direct environment, which was once actually an olive farm, belonging to a local lesbos farmer. And as well we saw a mass destruction of the olive trees which will be which were being used for firewood. And so as we started working with this community here. What we realized is that refugees on plight, often experience great trauma, great stress, and their fundamental needs are not met so that's everything from infrastructure food, water. So once we're addressed these needs were able to start getting them to think about how they care for their local environment. So it was in this space, they were able to start implementing a waste management program. So that was educating the local community and actually using refugees for their skills to be able to start thinking about the waste in which they were disposing of and how to do this in a more safe practice. And also using the environment as a healing space so using the trees for shading rather than cutting them down so by implementing an electricity grid, able to do that. I hear some noises I think Tina does that mean my time is already running out. I think I probably am speaking for a little bit long but to recap I guess a lot of the programs that we implement are very much based around restoration of the land and thinking about energy, such as a solar in one of the camps in which we've worked in. And I guess in order to scale this up, what we really need to see is, you know, more attention for the positive impact that this has on the mental health and well being of residents, the local host community. And in order to make this happen we need to see I guess a political willingness on a European level but also from different stakeholders, working in the camps as well. So I don't really get to go into the nitty gritty but I'm sure a lot of the other speakers will get to do that as well throughout the conversation and more questions will pop up to so. Thank you, Natalie. Yeah, I am. It's a great work you're doing and I'm really inviting the people also in the chat to we have people here from Spain Jordan us Germany Somalia Netherlands Kenya. So I want to ask questions to our speakers that we can answer like in the very short Q&A after the talks or in the discussion round afterwards. So, what would you say is one of the biggest obstacles for you right now to I mean, for example, COVID I guess it's not easy to handle this also can you say something about this. It's been an ongoing challenge, but definitely on a health front, I guess, a challenge that we've seen is a shifting paradigm when it comes to migration reception on the European borders. So the olive groves, no longer exist, kind of tip a camp which was a camp for the most vulnerable no longer exists and these were spaces where we had a little bit more autonomy as an organization but also willing with the stakeholders that we were working with. We were working more directly inside refugee camps. It means that there's a lot more dialogue that needs to be had with stakeholders. We need to have a willingness from camp management in order to implement programs and I think it's constantly being able to demonstrate the impact of restorative programs both on the environment, but also on the refugee community. And that's something that you need to showcase. So I guess, having those challenging dialogues being able to prove the impact of your work, and ensure that there's both economic and also human resources in order to bring these programs to life. I think that the biggest challenges now that we face. And while we see them as maybe challenges, maybe it's better to address them as obstacles because we really believe as an organization is, if we can demonstrate that impact. And we can really kind of motivate and encourage both the refugee community, which is what we often see as a real willingness. They want to use their skills, their resources, their talents. They want to be engaged and not just sitting around waiting. And if we can really demonstrate that to camp management, other organizations, that's how we can enable these programs to kind of grow and flourish. And we can see them on a wider scale versus a small community garden. We'd love to see that on a bigger scale as well. Thank you so much, Natalie, and hopefully talking to you in the discussion rounds later on. Thank you so far. So, yeah, our next speaker, I would like to present to you is actually Noah Sampia. He is the founder and director of the Youth Initiative for Community Empowerment. He is a yeast in Uganda, and he has raised the incomes of hundreds of smallholder farmers by 20% and boosted their food production by about 100%. Since he founded this organization and his enterprise won multiple awards and he's also refugee program coordinator of Opportunity International in Uganda and yeah, we are very happy that you are here with us. And to share your insights also, yeah, on the question how regenerative practices can empower refugees and how you did it or do it and use them. All right. Thank you so much, Tina, for that great introduction. I'm so grateful to be here this evening, probably morning for most of you to share our experiences as we see Uganda. Just a brief context into the Ugandan refugee situation. So Uganda is home of 1.4 million refugees and these come mainly from our neighboring East African countries. They are located across the country in over 11 settlements and these refugees have been here, most of these have been here for over five or 10 years, I think as Tina presented earlier on. Now, probably unlike the other governments that I've read, Uganda has a slightly better refugee policy that provides a small piece of land to the refugees so they are able to do a bit of funding. Now, a piece of land is really very, very small and for context it can measure around 50 by 100 feet, so they have to farm on that land and they have to do, you know, set up a small structure in small by small building for their households. Now, lots of organizations, as we know, are providing support. For example, the program is providing food and cash support for refugees in Uganda. The only sad news is that because of funding, WFP has cut their relations and cash payments in Uganda, I think since 2019, now around 60%. So what this means is that a lot of refugees in Uganda are having issues with getting enough food and more so enough nutritious food to feed their households. Now, these are some of the opportunities that Yisei Uganda as a community grassroots organization that implements practical relative farming activities look at exploring and supporting. So Yisei basically, our intervention is to, is aimed at promoting food security, regulating the biodiversity and achieving climate change adaptations while creating or improving incomes for the smallholder farmers that we are working with, especially refugees in Uganda. And we do this through a number of interventions. One thing we have learned is that permaculture and regeneration requires, just like Tina presented, requires for one to look at several interventions, looking at different intervention areas. One of which we do is we train farmers regenerative farming, like the refugees who have these small pieces of land. They have produced food on them, but they have been deprated because they have formed on them for over five years and the government won't add them in land. So we look for ways of helping them rejuvenate this land through introducing permaculture design farming, through helping them to learn how to make organic fertilizers. And, you know, we promote water harvesting and we recently innovated a small water harvesting kit, which I think is really helping to help them adapt to climate change. So, but also one important thing that we do is organizing them so that they are kind of organized into small groups. And in these small groups, we also advise them to start savings to be able, you know, to be resilient, to manage any shocks that come up. And an example I can give is one of the groups that we worked with. Somehow they use their savings during the COVID pandemic, when the period when the country was on lockdown. They were using their savings to buy food, survive, and their gardens were also there to support them. We are currently considering scaling our work. And because we think we are really doing great, we have been able to improve incomes and shore food security. And the most important thing is because most of our interventions are looking at promoting vegetable farming, we've been able to improve nutrition for the young kids in the households. When refugees are given cash, normally household goods, men, they would go and use the money to buy beer or alcohol and they won't buy nutritious food for their children, which saw numbers of our now children increasing in refugee settlements in Uganda. And our intervention is trying to promote that, but in a way that is regenerative. So, yes, I can hear the time, but we are scaling and our target for the next five years is to reach at least 3,000 refugee households. And of course, we are put together a strategic plan to achieve this. And we are looking at raising over 100,000 USD for us to be able to get to that household. I mean, to reach those households, but we also learn, continue to learn and look at networks that we could share experiences with that can guide us in there. And we hope this is a great platform for me to start. Thank you so much. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you so much. Yeah, that's a very dense insight from you, Noah. Thank you very much. And it's interesting that you also said, or as far as I understood that you're also involving youth or especially in youth projects. So what is your experience with this? Why is it so important to also include young people? Thank you so much, Tina. So basically, across the group, that group, I would say the feeling has been that agriculture or farming is not meant for the young people. I think I attended one of the conferences in Ghana where there was a theme that we should make agriculture sexy or look sexy for the young people so that they can follow it. So basically the feeling is that the youth can't participate in agriculture activities. But what we've learned with time is just a matter of mindset change. And one thing I should say is that it has not been an easy kind of road ride for us to getting the impact and the groups together to having to adopt these skills. We have had to invest a lot in through mindset change, trying to teach the young people that you can also participate in farming and you can help your household benefit. Some of the households we are working with have really young people and very, very old people who can't even farm. So we try to make sure to motivate the young people to do farming on behalf of the older people and for them to get food. And we have seen this changing. Interestingly, most of the groups we have are having a combination of young people and the old and you find young people really very, very interested in what we are doing. But also the approach of regenerative farming is really interesting because they get to learn that different farming science, you don't have a huge piece of land to create impact and this is what mainly young people want to do. And we want to continue this by embedding in bit of technology, disseminating culture information, using smartphones, WhatsApp, things like those that we feel would really motivate more of them. I can literally imagine you motivating the young people now. Thank you so much for your insight and awesome. I'm a young person myself. Yeah, I mean, yeah, this is it. And we have to empower this. Thank you so much and see you in the discussion later on. So, Yeah, we are going on in the, in the round and there's our next speaker, who is from Jordan and it is a body from Bayuda Village. She is Jordanian environmental pioneer and entrepreneur in permaculture and farming and livestock production. And she's committed to provide innovative solutions to the local community. She has a remote ecosystem restoration technique and agriculture. And her cooperative gave birth to four other cooperatives serving 20 villages and also working with locals and with people coming from other countries. So, yeah, I can, I can, I have to find out where you are right now. And she's re entering seems there's an internet connection problem. Hopefully, we can see her in a second. So, she with us now in here. So, we're very to have you here and it would be great if you can share your insights from the work at the local with locals and refugees and Jordan so what from your perspective is needed. To have more of these wonderful projects that like yours. And happy environmental day everybody. Thank you for having me in this meeting and this gathering. I enjoyed the day. A knowledgeable people from all over the world. I learned a lot. I met very interesting people listen to you. So, it's my honor to share my, my perspective and my humble experience and conversion to yours. And it was very interesting today that I was talking discussing good some of my friends. And they told me, you should, you should notice one point that in the to the UN, I mean, it's a message to the UN that in the day, the world is separating the environment. It's also to us as Arab. We are facing the last occupation in the world. It's the same date the same time the same. So, even some, some calls are, are asking to change the date of celebrating the environmental day worldwide. So, I should send this message to you all. So, working with environment and permaculture and working with John Leo, meeting Tina and the marriage gamble and permaculture magazine meeting all those friends from all over the world. It gave me the power to continue my bath and continue this very slow and very different life commitment I choose in my life. Working with the farmers, working with the refugees, working with the youth, raising the awareness toward environment. Everyone is looking for economical opportunity, either by the first opportunity selling their land or, you know, this agricultural practices that makes huge yields, quick cash money without considering the soil, the water restoration or water harvesting. In the other village, we are lucky to work with the farmers who have this knowledge and who gain this knowledge through centuries and been keeping this knowledge and inherited to us. So, those farmers who taught me and gave me the power to continue and they are my teachers in this life. One of the, one of the good examples of working with refugees was in Jarosz refugee camp where we were doing rooftop gardens, raised beds and any chance to grow even one plant in their very own space. So, this was very special experience and it gave me the chance to learn how much they have knowledge and how much it's like theoretical knowledge they need to implement. They need the chance, the chance and the land to start implementing and this is it. Some of them they are working with Jordanian farmers outside the refugee camps. Jordan is one of the highest percentage hosting percentage refugees in the world with the water shortage, with the geopolitical situation with many circumstances facing Jordan. I think working in restoration and transferring the refugee camps into a restoration camp is a huge potential. It's very important work in Jordan. I can imagine having instead of calling it refugee camps, oasis in the desert or paradise or green hubs all over the country. And this is how I imagine it and I'm passionate about it and we can make it true if we start working together. We have a very good experience with John Leo where we in 2014 started something called Bayou the declaration that John invited the friends from all over the world. We gathered under the oak tree in Bayou the village and agreed together that we will work together to regreen and to restore Mother Earth and work together. I work with my community here in Bayou the with Al-Balka Innovation Institute to grow more trees so farmers won't need to go to access to the trees in the forest and cut trees or degrade the natural habitat. So we work together to have more trees to have in the gardens more fruit trees for the families which we called it Hakur Bayoula. We managed to grow almost 10,000 fruit trees, 15,000 medicinal plants like Zaatar, Rosemary, Lavender. We work with this whole scale youth, engage the youth by giving them the chance to redesign, restore a small piece of land they own with their families to grow more trees. Thank you Alham so far for your insight. I really appreciate having you here and sharing this knowledge that you are doing. But as I already said, sometimes the birds are calling this is why we have to interrupt here. And I think there is a lot of things we can discuss also maybe in the discussion round then. So thank you very much so far. So there is a question coming up what ideas can be offered on how to successfully engage with local authorities and policymakers on this concept. So maybe you can briefly answer on this Alham. Yeah, I think with the local authorities we are discussing like Monday I have a meeting with the scientific arm of the Ministry of Agriculture to discuss the restoration camps with them. So implementing permaculture working and having one model and we are discussing to start two forests now. So we are doing the landscape working together and how to make these are as a pilot and raising the awareness of the community that we need to work together as refugees refugee camps and the community in the villages. So it takes time. Once we start the first model, it will be easy. It's always the beginning. Okay. Thank you so much. Right now we are going to a very short comfort break. So you can time to stretch your legs or grab a cup of tea or quickly go to the restroom or you enjoy our short song that we want to share with you that one of the guests that came to our previous round table shared with us, which is permaculture is Africa. And thank you very much for sharing this with us and I would like to try it out so you can see. And here, especially how permaculture can sound like. If you share this with us, thank you so much. Thank you to Vagetta who translated this to their saying permaculture has brought some clean water, fresh food, no chemicals. We are happy and love permaculture and they sing in different languages, including Swahili and 1D. So there's the song is also on on YouTube so we shared the link in the chat. And now time to come back from this short comfort break. And, yeah, to welcome our next speaker. But, yeah, again, I really want to say thank you also to memory. Who just shared this wonderful song with us. So I now have the honor to announce our next speaker who John D Lu, an internationally known environmental documentary filmmaker ecologist and well known for his award winning ecological documentaries like green gold and hope in a changing climate. And in 2017 john founded the ecosystem restoration camps foundation, a global movement of people, creating an abandoned earth to ecosystem restoration and sustainable life he hopes and he has been. Yeah, to all over the world right now he's in Los Angeles, and we'll share his perspective on our topic today, and the question how can knowledge, education media help people all over the world to get in their power and, and to pollinate each other with restoration projects so welcome, I'm happy to have you here. I hand it over to you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tina and everyone here. It's wonderful to see Elham. We have. We have really enjoyed going to Jordan and seeing what that is and hearing all the other people who are who are presenting. Thank you. So, communications. Well, I think it's the evolutionary trait that human beings have that sort of separate us from other types of life forms. And we can transmit knowledge over time and even beyond our own lifetimes. And so we accumulate knowledge. And this knowledge is growing and ecosystem restoration represents something which is I think the next step in human evolution and understanding. Because our societies have been built on selfishness and on extraction and buying and selling things. And we need to realize that the true value on the earth is in the earth's systems, which created constantly filter and continuously renew the oxygenated atmosphere. Water system, somebody else's got the audio on. It's Elham, yeah. And the fertile soils and the amazing biodiversity. So it's critical that this kind of understanding becomes the central intention of human civilization at this time. Because we face so many problems and we have to ask the question, why are there so many refugees? Not just address the questions of how do we deal with the infrastructure to take care of refugees but to ask what about peace? What about human rights? What about justice? And so we're at a turning point as we come together with the refugee populations and the people who are dealing with this. We have a huge opportunity to grow the knowledge and wisdom that is understood about how we deal with ecosystems and how we deal with the infrastructure and work together with the people who are refugees. So that body of knowledge continues to grow. Translation of this materials so that they're available to everyone, making them freely available to everyone. So it's growing a collection of reference materials but it's also monitoring and assessing because when we can see exactly how much we can lower the surface temperatures, how much we can infiltrate and retain moisture and how much we can propagate and plant out and restore the biodiversity using and together with people who are the most vulnerable in the world. Then gradually we see that the interests of all are exactly the same, that it's not just the host countries are superior to refugees, we're all the same. There's no us in them, there's just us. And so this is how we have to approach this problem I think. And we have some other thoughts about communication. We need to have a profound and nuanced conversation. This is not easy. And so it requires everyone to participate together in this conversation and for all voices to be heard. So it's critical to have this as a continuing conversation. And what we see is that we can't think of it as influencing policy because in a sense that's giving up the sovereignty of the individuals and saying that those who make policy are in charge of everyone else. I think what we need to do is to have equal voices and to listen to all the people who are participating and especially those who are experiencing the problem. So the voices of the refugees are critical in this discussion, not simply expert class or policymakers or scientists. And we're really talking about justice and rights and sovereignty. The other thing that we have to look at is value. So a lot of people are talking about how much does it cost to do this or that and so on and so on. But there's another way of viewing this because we're sort of saying that the money, the capital that's going into this to address these problems is valuable. But we're denying the value of the people. We're denying the value of the earth systems. So I think the most important part of communications is to get the message right. If we don't ask the right questions and we don't get the message right, then it's very hard for us to come up with the correct solutions to this. So I think this is where I have noticed that over a very long period of time, now it's almost three decades for me working on ecosystem restoration. And what happens is that like in permaculture, you need to observe. You need to have a time to reflect and consider what is important rather than grasp at this policy, that policy, this action, that action. But actually relax and sit together with all of the people who are involved and create a collective intelligence. I've been calling this collaborative inquiry for collective intelligence. And I think that what happens when you do this is that basically we all come to the point where we share the same understanding. And then we can really work together effectively. And we're talking about very, very serious problems. When I think about the refugee situation, I hope we can try in certain areas and ring the existing refugee camps with smaller camps of ecosystem restoration camps. Just surrounding all of these camps. And there we can invite the refugees because I really feel like we are not strong enough as a movement yet to address the problems in the refugee camps. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming for all the agencies. It's overwhelming for the refugees themselves. And if we go there and we can't really do much, we're just compounding the problem. But if we take a small aspect and we work the permaculture groups that are doing this with creating compost. I think humanure, the idea of working very carefully to deal with sanitation, to deal with water. These are the very, very basic things. And then at the same time ensure that the refugees themselves are able to speak and that their voices are heard. And that they're treated with respect and equality. And gradually, as this happens, I think we transform the landscape. We transform the psychological landscape as well as the physical landscape. So those are my thoughts. I think that ultimately we end up changing the economy as well as other things because we start to realize that the value of ecological function is higher than everything that human beings have ever made and everything that human beings will ever make. And when we do that, then we're in the ethical thought that, well, all life has value. It's not like there are some people who have less value than others. If anybody's alive and any life form is alive, then it's a representation of all life since the beginning of time. So true, John. Thank you so much for sharing. And we really invite you in the Zoom chat and in the YouTube chat to ask questions to our speakers or to share your thoughts on this also. If you are, well, wherever you are, whatever you're working on, so that we can take this into our discussion later on. So far, there's no direct question now and regarding the time I would now go to the next speaker and then we can discuss in the figure round again. So thank you so much for sharing, John. So, yeah, so last but not least, it's my youngest with us. She's a sustainable finance expert at the European Bank for reconstruction and development, and also, yeah, responsible for the ESG subject there. She has over 15 years of experience with the ESG work of this bank with financial institutions, private equity funds. And she designs and supervises environmental and social risk management and safeguard frameworks for portfolio of 3.3 billion euros in new approvals per year. She gives us insights in the way impact funders choose projects to support and what we've just heard is not, it's not about policymakers and money, but on the other hand, oftentimes this can help a lot. So welcome Maya, we are very happy to have you here to share your perspective on this and also maybe your feedback on what you've heard so far. Hi Tina, thanks very much for having me. I feel a little bit like the odd one out because I don't work full time like you all do on issues of refugees and camps. So I've learned a lot and I'm very grateful for the insights that I've heard so far. So, yeah, as you've mentioned, I work for a large investor. However, I'm an environmental and social specialist. So I've always tried to put as far as I can push it, the environmental and the social perspective into money. And I think very broadly the good news is I would say that's my personal perspective. There is enough funding out there. So I don't think we have a lack of financial resources necessarily. And of course, environmentally and socially impactful investing has become something of a trend in the past few years. So I think there are a lot of dots we can connect and a lot of resources hopefully that or ideas even maybe first the ideas and then the resources that we could tap into. And of course this specific question really to me is very fascinating and highly, highly relevant because it brings the social perspective and the human perspective together with the environmental perspective. And I think given the backdrop of the experience that we've all had collectively over last year with the pandemic, it's just becoming even more pressing and even more timely to find solutions for that. So I'm also probably a little bit here to provide a reality check why unfortunately finance isn't flowing as easily and as fast as we would all wish it to happen. I think the problem is for investors we always look for projects that we call bankable. That means that, you know, imagine the random finance officer or loan officer they need to be able to plug the information into financial model they need to understand the business. They need to understand the ratios that are applied they need to understand the business model and most of all they need to understand the risks right and financing is always about risks and it's about real risks but it's also very, very often about perceived risks or there are risks that we just cannot judge or that the officer in question cannot really, you know, penetrate and therefore cannot plug it in their financial model because they just don't know really what they are. So that's often a hurdle to getting financing and it's particularly a hurdle to getting financing into newer innovative areas and even more so areas that have a high social environmental impact especially social because it's so hard to measure. And bankers don't like to finance things that can't measure. Okay, it's unfortunately one of the obstacles I think we need to tackle here and that's why I really liked what John was making alluding to that we really need to bring all of the information that is out there in different places and then different shapes and forms together and make it usable because obviously John was referring to it in general, you know, as to the benefit of generally society but from my perspective I think that would also be very beneficial to finance because finance needs data and the more data we can collect and serve up to finance institutions that will certainly enable I think to unlock finance to flow. So we have a general problem right our economic system is built in a way that ecosystems, the value of nature, the value of natural capital, the value of human well-being is not priced in most of the time. The easiest example is the lack of the price on carbon. Everybody understands that but I think the same applies to notions of well-being of people, notions of ecosystems, preservation and so on. It's not easy and it's actually not part of our financial models. It's as simple as that. It's a massive market failure in my view. So saying all of those things, it sounds like it's unsolvable but I'm not that pessimistic. I think we have potential solutions. I think this is a very complex question because it has a large environmental, it has a large social perspective and I think we have learned a lot. We need to pull together a lot of things that we've learned. We have a lot of knowledge about microfinance. We have a lot of knowledge about agricultural financing including to small-hold farmers. We have a lot of knowledge from climate financing about unlocking finance for new ideas, not technologies and ecologically impactful ideas. We have a lot of experience from venture capital financing where we can finance social startups and these kind of companies. So I think the solution can be in bringing all of these together, finding a few examples, really figuring out a business case, really figuring out a financial model but also capturing the social value and the environmental value and then creating a demonstration effect and showing how it can work. I mean I don't have the perfect solution ready to throw out here yet but I think I've picked up so many things from what the other speakers have mentioned that I think in the collective effort and I think this is another important part of the solution. It requires partnerships, right? I don't think any camp or NGO or bank can probably do this alone. So I love this little sphere that we have here because precisely it's bringing all of those things together and I think that's the only way. So yeah, I hope we can maybe try something out, create a demonstration effect and then further down the line that is what's needed to scale it up, right? We can only scale up finance if we prove first the concept and hopefully we can find a way of doing that together. I think it would be fantastic. I'm going to stop here because I'm conscious of time but of course I have many more thoughts in my head so maybe we can come to it a bit later. A lot of things to think of and there might be one question that comes immediately up to one's mind when hearing funders and projects and many regenerative projects are reported that they want to grow in their capacity but they become trapped in a power dynamic with the funders or investors because the focus then can shift to appeasing the desires of the funders or the investors rather than expressing what is truly needed in order to grow their regenerative programs. So from your experience, how can this be tackled, you know? Well, I mean first of all at least when we finance stakeholder engagement is the number one rule so we need to capture what the people on the ground know is working and because that makes also total financial sense, it increases. You know, if I learn from the local communities what is working, what are the obstacles, what do they need, what do they want, we can build this in and that will make my project so much more resilient and therefore much more profitable. So I think first of all it would be crazy to say that I mean to me it does not make quite sense initially the idea of that there should be conflicting interest so maybe you would need to explain that a bit more what that could mean. But in general, I mean frankly yes of course we're playing around here with the basic notions of how markets function and not everybody likes those but in general finance institutions are always interested in growth. So if there is good concept on how to grow or even change but therefore make more efficient and more long term and more profitable or even just stronger, more resilient any economic activity I think every financier should be delighted so I'm not quite sure where the conflict could be there. Yeah, sometimes you apply for a funding for example but the funding is not exactly what you're doing but you're trying to target group right now in the development aid it's a lot of doing it with women for example so yeah. Yeah okay but this is the general problem of finance givers. Yes. They connect sometimes from the needs on the ground so I think this is probably general an issue for development financing that we could look at almost separately but yeah I know what you mean. So I want to invite all of our speakers from before to join in the conversation and discussion and we can only on the surface touch for and get a lot of joy for the next event actually but there were some questions from our audience in the chat and maybe there is one that can be answered for example by by Alham also by Noah but I can't see no right now. Maybe we lost them. If you can hear us no one was just tell me. There was this question about who is the right person to talk to in camps or is it the settlement planner and there was also some answers in the chat also already. For example from Bama Rick saying the person who should talk to the camp manager is one who works in faith in the camp only. If it is an international organization it should be given permission by the Commissioner of Refugees from the Ministry of Disaster Management and Preparedness so oftentimes it's a question. So which stakeholders do we have to to to address and maybe Natalie you also have a movement on the ground experience with this. I think it's really interesting in the context at least in the camps in which we're working. Obviously we have a concentration of specific coordinators that all have different functions and oversee different programs. So often when it comes to the implementation of a new project or we're looking to get further attention or approvals in order to expand an existing project for example so something we're looking into doing now. In the new camp on Lesvos is we started a small community garden how do we then expand that further greening across the space so it requires an ask to put a full proposal together. What does that budget look like what's that manpower look like. How will it be implemented how will it impact the space. What we often see is working groups with other organizations that have missions to work in the camps. So smaller grassroots NGOs. Some projects often touch points with a UNHCR but it's often our campus representatives so our head coordinator from the location in which we're situated in this case Lesvos that will have then direct conversations with camp management or the camp manager in Lesvos you know providing that proposal. And what we see as well is that can sometimes go all the way up to the ministry of migration in Greece depending on the scale of that project. So there's different touch points and different stakeholders, but I think for us, it always starts with and it was something that John also said and I think it's been reiterated through the conversation today is that it often starts with that first dialogue with the community. What do they need first how can we amplify those voices and how it can we be the enablers and the carriers of that message to then the people that we need the permissions to implement that future project that in the end supports those people so that's a bit how the structure works from movement side at least. Yes. There's another question from a YouTube participant Antonio asking does the European bank for reconstruction development fund small organizations also. Yeah, I mean, mainly indirectly so we're a lender. So mainly we lend we don't provide grant funding so much, although we have some grant funding what it's usually also related to larger investment projects. What we do a lot is what we call intermediated financing so so we may for example lend to a local bank in Jordan and the local bank in Jordan may set up a facility for small holder farmers and we will then work out the general condition so who's eligible eligible for those type of loans. But it would always then go through the local bank actually doing the individual lending. That's a because they know the local conditions better and be because we don't have the capacity. The transaction costs for the small small small funding is very high you need a lot of people. So we don't have that capacity. I see. Thank you. So now I expect with that. It's wonderful. There. In the earlier round table that was also the question. How do you think the concept of ecosystem restoration fits into the first emergency phase of settlement or how does this go together. And if there's a lack of everything. How can you talk about this long term perspective and maybe nor you can shed a light on this. Because this, well, oftentimes seems with no I've gone again. The connection is bad. But John, can you say something about this? Well, actually, I wanted to mention that I think this question of value and sovereignty go together that in some ways people have lost their human rights. And we need to ask why have they lost their human rights and how can they get their human rights back. And this question is connected to what is value. And so if the value is in the capital formations, but those capital formations that exist are connected to genocide or slavery or mercantilism over centuries and millennia. Then basically they're connected to domination of other people and that's the reason why people are refugees, because they've lost their lands, they've lost their rights. And so in addressing this, it's not really about blame and retribution. It's about truth and reconciliation and the need for the people who have lost their rights to regain their rights. And for us to value the earth systems rather than these sort of casino economics. And when we have real value, there can't be anybody who is hungry. There can't be anybody who is homeless or disengaged and separated. So this I think is a possibility for this moment. And we have this, what's happening now is also that currencies and economics are being discussed. So we don't have to accept the status quo, just like we don't have to accept degraded landscapes. We can change them. And if we change them and we make them based on ecosystem function and on equal rights for human beings, then we get a completely different result. But if we continue to give away our sovereignty and say that others can decide because in the past they dominated one culture or another and gathered great deals of material wealth to themselves and disenfranchised millions of people, so they should be the ones who choose, I think we're probably on the wrong path. So that means we have to have a very profound and nuanced conversation with all human beings. And the shared intention of human civilization has to change. That's I think where we're actually at. I would also like to invite Vagessa who's with us here and to join her perspective on this. She's working in Kenya and maybe you can introduce yourself in quick and share what comes to your mind when you heard our conversation now. Thank you very much, everyone. I just appreciate the way this meeting is going and the insights we're getting from all the participants, Elham, Maya, Noah, Natalie and John. And I appreciate so much because I know that degradation is a really, really big problem, especially like here in Kenya and in East Africa and bringing communities like IDPs and the refugees in the loop. It's going to help a lot to restore actually the balance in society because their needs are higher than what nature can offer. So thank you very much and incorporating actually the local communities living around the camps and the camps themselves. The IDPs to learn about restoration is key to restore degraded lives. Thank you. Thank you, Vagessa. There's a question from YouTube asking to all speakers who are working on a road check. So maybe to Noah, what type of skills are specifically needed? How can I as a student prepare myself to be useful for scaling up these wonderful solutions or what skills are needed in your opinion? Or is it something, yeah, or something to learn also? Yeah, sure. I think I'll take this quite an interesting question and I'm sorry my internet is a bit shaky, but I hope everyone can hear me now. Interesting question. Actually, you need a combination of skills. That's what I would say. You need both the practical hands on as well as the soft skills. And I think for the hands on skills, those we can learn from school, they are very easy. You can learn how to set up a garden and stuff like that. But experience working with refugees has taught me that you need more of the soft skills. You need to learn to be a very good communicator. You need to learn to be a very good program solver. There always has had questions, but we also end up working as counselors. And I think one speaker talked a lot about mental health because considering the backgrounds of the refugees, whether you have gone through it, where they are, the future they are looking at, they have gone through a lot. So while you are preparing to work with them, you've got to learn to be able to talk to them, share experiences with them, cast them wherever it's possible. But also another important thing, which is not basically a skill, is the ability to not cause any harm to them. And in my organization, we have strongly worked on safeguarding, trying to make sure that we respect everyone we are working with. We've taken from the staff on safeguarding and how important that is. Yeah, but basically, you've got to be free, good communicator, good negotiator, program solving skills. You should be able to address their mental health issues and also being empathetic because that's another important thing here. That's a lot of things. Thank you, Noah, for sharing. Elham, do you think there is something to add on this list? There are also an entrepreneur working on so many things, what skills are needed. Can you speak more into the microphone because I have traveled to this country? I don't see what the law is. I speak the language. Elham, now it's getting better. Good? Yes, perfect. I was saying language as a student to work. I can imagine he or she will work as a volunteer, working with the youngsters or with the youth in the camp, starting a friendship or getting closer to them. So, I always consider language is a safety preparation. You need to learn again some language to protect yourself and to be able to deal with situations because, sorry for saying this and maybe Noah agree with me, people in the refugee camps, they suffered, they survived. So, they have nothing behind them to worry about. We only give them hope to start loving the life the way we are doing it, to give them a new perception how they will dream for their future, what they want. So, as a life skills, they don't trust easily. If they trust, it's a friendship, a lifelong friendship. So, you need to be prepared not to do mistakes, again, their trust relationship at the beginning, be careful. It's a life survival skills, let's say, because they know how to survive. Their social intelligence is amazing. Those people, adventurous people who like to go to the refugee camps and became, to me, this is my personal experience. Why I enjoy working with refugees, because they give me the chance to examine the very deep dark corners of myself, my fears, how to express myself, how to be honest with myself, how to get rid of any racism, you know, as a Jordanian, Bedouin, living in my country, sharing everything, the water, the land, everything with people who came to Jordan. So, I'm getting rid of all of this. I became a wiser woman. I became a human. So, all of this, every day I learn, every day I recover from something, every day I become a bitter Elham, you know. So, this is not easy. Yes, it is. What a beautiful conclusion, Elham. Thank you so much for sharing this. We could not end this discussion better than with each become a better Elham, a better Tina and better Maya and Natalie and everything, just by getting in dialogue with people and really starting to listen also. So, please let me let me wrap it up in a short way, because the next question is already on the run, it's beyond three, you're on the ecosystem restoration YouTube channel. So, okay, so to wrap it up, we've learned a lot today. And it seems that transforming camps and regenerative way can really help to regain hope and to regain dignity, joy, peace and confidence and connectedness. That we transform from being alone and going this journey alone to have a sense of all one and creating soil for the peace and for the healing. So, regenerative practices can build this bridge and to create places to empower generations to start a better life, to have a place to unfold also the good potential that is also in this room. So thank you also to all our virtual guests here on YouTube and zoom. So what are the next steps so you can register if you haven't done it so far to be kept in the loop about the next events about the next steps. So we will share this link in the in the chat. And also, we have started to do a duck to document what we've heard today in our two sessions so there is just to give you a quick overview how it looks like. This is the whiteboard we created with some of the most interesting or some of the points that our speakers made. And we will refill this also with a recording and this recording of this event also is available on the ERC YouTube channel, so that we can you can dive into this and, and yeah, find out more later on. So, thank you very much for the two roundtables also to the ERC team the ecosystem reservation camps team who supported a lot in this and also provided the YouTube channel. Thank you to our speakers for your time and dedication, even on this holy Saturday World Environment Day and thank you for all the participants for your contribution. We are very happy to have you with us. And I think this is really what it can go in this direction to say, okay, there are a lot of things we can do and we have this path like, and maybe there's a possibility to set up a working group, work on guidelines or really find out what is it that we need next and join the follow up events. So, yeah, again, thank you all for being with us here. And yeah, the environment day. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye. Bye. For what you've done. It's wonderful. Thank you so much for your. It's wonderful to have you all here.